0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
Weird battle, most of my loses died without scratching defenders, most of my kills happened at low odds. Dave has 1 Cat, 1 very damaged Mace and 1 even more damaged Pike, all my units can promote high, I'll be taking that city next turn.
I think we need to wait for trebs or collateral after razing that northern city. With his all pike setup, some mace or crossbows will make Davey unable to counter attack us. Then we have to slowly grind him.
Keep whipping when needed. Every 10% culture is 2 happy for us, so use that if needed.
Is the lack of Theocracy hurting us much?
I'll try to open the next save and look at the situation more properly.
Ichabod Wrote:I think we need to wait for trebs or collateral after razing that northern city. With his all pike setup, some mace or crossbows will make Davey unable to counter attack us. Then we have to slowly grind him.
I'm building some maces right now in the south. I'll float a couple of ships too.
Ichabod Wrote:Keep whipping when needed. Every 10% culture is 2 happy for us, so use that if needed.
I have six cities on non-stop military duty while rest catches up on courthouses/grocers/markets. That said I'm trying to tech us towards rifling right now. Commodore is powering to Steel/Rifling at fast pace, I don't want to face rifles and cannons with phracts and trebs.
Ichabod Wrote:Is the lack of Theocracy hurting us much?
On the whole, no. Units from Composure and those that survived low odds combats are all at least double promoted now and make for a majority of surviving forces. Once pikes get scratched, we have more than enough shock troops to mop up at good odds.
No, we're not. I've played that turn not long after waking up with Noble whining on gchat that we're holding up the save, and I just forgot to flip it on Much headbutting the desk was had afterwards.
![[Image: eot102_units.jpg]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14578363/bts/bts38/eot102_units.jpg)
![[Image: eot1070000.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14578363/bts/bts38/eot1070000.JPG)
Much headbutting the desk was had afterwards.