[NO PLAYERS] PBEM5 Map Making & Lurkers

[Cornflakes]

I love the look of the map.

The city state distribution is pretty good, but one of the western civs could end up with only one while one of the eastern civs will get three (possibly four). You could move the mid-western CS NW to the coast to make it more likely NW civ gets it and move the centre-southern CS SW to be nearer to the SW civ.

Good comment on the city states. I'll look into those suggestions before setting up the starting save.

This map was rolled on the Fractal script, and I was pleasantly surprised to see this one in the set that I rolled. Now this was #22 out of about 200 and only 1 of about 3 that looked decent. The rest were all horribly unbalanced or boring circular blobs. But my AutoHotKey script did all the tedious work of rolling, so it only took about 30 minutes to narrow it down to the top 3.

I did see a map that might work well for a 2v2v2 teamer. It had 2 snaky continents that would work with 3 starts on each. It could be set up with 1 civ from each team on each continent.

[Singaboy]

The starting positions look beautiful! Great job, cornflakes.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Whoever starts near CFCJF gets a big edge due to lack of city maintenance system. That leaves Pindicator and Krill. Pindicator failed to take Russia so I give the nod to Krill (he did pick Greece over Germany but that isn't nearly as bad as Pindicator).

[Sullla]

CFCJester opened with scout into slinger into warrior before finally starting a settler. I'm not sure why someone would need so many military units out of the gate; maybe the scout and slinger, but certainly not a second warrior for the third build. All of those were trained without Agoge, by the way; he only finished Code of Laws on Turn 14 and hasn't even started Craftsmanship civic yet, nor does his civ have a builder finishing any time soon for the boost. CFCJester is actually researching Foreign Trade first because... reasons?

If anyone is wondering how he fell so far behind in PBEM4, look no further.

[Woden]

CFCJesterFool
I could also easily manage Pyramids for whatever that is worth (maybe the culture?)

His downfall started on turn 1. If there is one Wonder that China needs to build, it is the Pyramids. The extra Builder charge brings there Builders to 5 charges, where everybody else need to wait until Feudalism. It also is basically free to build, since it grants you a free builder. His second build should have been a builder and used it to get the 60% early inspirations/euerkas. He really needs to look at China's abilities. It seems like he is not using any of them.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I'm glad I called CFCJF--on top of it all he got horse-camped too.

[Singaboy]

Did I see that correctly, that Krill has founded a second city a little far away from his capital without the proper army support. I guess Jester will be able to raze this city since he went for military early anyway.

[Sullla]

Japper's decision to finish Archery research so early (he completed it on Turn 21) is a questionable decision. Slingers cost 35 production and can be upgraded to archers for 45 gold each, while archers cost 60 production to build. Slingers also don't cost any gold in maintenance during the early game when money can be scarce. It's usually better to build about 3 slingers and only finish teching Archery when the player's ready to upgrade them into archers. Knowing when to finish researching certain key techs is a big decision in Civ4 since they obsolete the previous unit in the upgrade chain. This isn't a terrible play or anything, just a very odd decision given that Japper has no nearby neighbors and doesn't appear to be getting pressured by barbarians.

[Sullla]

If China isn't finishing the Craftsmanship boost until Turn 40, and still doesn't have the civic completed yet, something has gone very, very wrong. Note as well what Jester is researching here: Mysticism, a low-value civic that does nothing to help him. He literally has nothing else to research because he's already completed Foreign Trade and Early Empire, and he can't research State Workforce yet because it's blocked by the unfinished Craftsmanship. That means he's using precious early game culture not progressing towards Political Philosophy and the first governments, instead sinking it into a civic that unlocks two Wildcard policies that are unusable until reaching said first governments, and the Oracle. This is a serious failure of planning, an opening where individual actions were taken without thinking about how the pieces fit together. And from a strategic pairing, getting involved in a race for the first Great General with Gorgo is exactly not what China wants to do. China wants early game peace and the ability to focus on landing wonders, not engaging in a Classical era slugfest with another civ that's much better suited for it. Maybe Jester has no choice because of Krill's proximity, but this game looks like it's heading down the same path as PBEM4 to me. Jester didn't play to Spain's strengths in that game and he's not playing to China's strengths in this one.




I like what pindicator's doing with his opening here, and he's benefitting from the fact that Krill is completely focused on his other neighbor. It's a shame that pindicator didn't pick Russia for his civ though: this religion into culture setup that he's going for would have been vastly more effective with cheap Russian Lavras and all those free tiles Russia gets on city settlement. Pindicator must not have played Civ6 into the lategame if he thinks National Parks are anything other than variant material, and the Film Studio comes too late to make any difference. Russia would have been a perfect fit for his gameplan here - as in pretty much all Civ games, America simply isn't very good as a choice.

[TheArchduke]

I do not get the defensive mindset of Mike at all. He is playing Rome, he should be eyeing up Saladin not befriend him, I get that he closes up to America, but Arabia at this stage?