Huh - looking at it, you're right: I should be able to add three more islands in the outer seas without messing balance up too badly. I'll hopefully try that tomorrow. Thanks for getting me to take another look!
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[NO PLAYERS] (LV+)IIIrd Time Lucky - Map-Making and Lurker Thread
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I'm not a rush player at heart. It's possible that Sheelba is strong enough to overcome them with Warrens, though I believe you don't get the AGG promo on Wolf riders / chariots which is the medium term play. ORG always feels weak.
I also don't love Alexis but I want to give Calabim a go again some day. Without testing, I'd suspect 15ish turns to Calendar. Could be way off though, I've not played EitB / Emperor difficulty (or is it Monarch?) in a while. I will say I found Rhoanna underperformed my expectations in our last game. Not sure why. I probably shouldn't have commented on AH for Auro. I asked because I thought he'd convince me and I was on the fence anyway. I would stop by Priests with Auric. I believe it's faster than mages, and the raw strength is not to be underestimated. In other modmods PoW can build Ice nodes, which I believe is missing here. I'm perhaps being a bit unfair, but I think Auro starts out as the favourite regardless. Keelyn is fun but doesn't have anything helping her upgrade the mages - unlike potentially several other ARC civs. So she can be a later game pick than immediately appears. Definitely support islands. If you want something less thematic but with more of a reward, you could place a scorpion. A spider also gives silk.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
 (January 7th, 2025, 04:59)Qgqqqqq Wrote: Definitely support islands. If you want something less thematic but with more of a reward, you could place a scorpion. A spider also gives silk. I missed responding to this, but very cool idea! I'm going to leave the (two inner) islands with Gorillas, partly on the theory that maybe someone would actually consider building the Grand Menagerie and even be able to this way (probably doubtful, but maybe there's a chance!) but scorps would definitely be a boost for pursuing recon units, and raise interesting questions about tech paths. Definitely tempting, but I think I'll hold off this time. Spiders are also great exactly for the silk - there are no silk tiles on the map - but I expect there should be enough of them showing up naturally for subdue-animal players to pick up one or more of them, and I don't want the island animals to have a "gotcha" factor: The land masses are too small for barbs to spawn there normally, so a player might well send an undefended settler and workers on the first boat if they don't see an animal moving around there in advance. You might notice I added a small island in each outer sea - less valuable than the inner islands, but hopefully good enough to be worth contesting. I also (subsequent to posting the map above) did add some more barb animals - not on the islands themselves, but (a random split of) sea serpents and giant tortoises in the seas. A quick playtest showed that these sea monsters would otherwise only appear in the northern waters; this way, their numbers will be ~proportional to the size of their immediate navigable water area, but there will be at least one in each "sea." I put the sea monsters in the most-remote tiles of their respective bodies of water, but this is extremely unlikely to matter anyway: It'll be a while before anyone has a coastal city and fishing.
Good point on Spiders. You could make them held, but it kinda defeats the point.
I believe barbs only spawn on water bodies over a certain size.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
Thanks, Miguelito! I hope the players enjoy the ride! And thanks to both of you for your comments and suggestions!
(January 10th, 2025, 13:53)Qgqqqqq Wrote: I believe barbs only spawn on water bodies over a certain size. Yes, this matches my quick tests. I could have replaced enough snow tiles in the south with ice-covered water to get something to spawn in the southern sea, but nothing would ever have appeared in the two central seas if I didn't place them there myself, so I just rolled dice for unit type and placed them where I felt they belonged. If killed, the central-seas monsters will never be replaced by respawns, but the northern ones might.
Btw, I dislike preplaced improvements because they can be pillaged, and Raider doubles pillaging value. Can't recall if anyone is that but it's an extra degree of randomness.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
(January 19th, 2025, 01:23)Qgqqqqq Wrote: Btw, I dislike preplaced improvements because they can be pillaged, and Raider doubles pillaging value. Can't recall if anyone is that but it's an extra degree of randomness. I can understand disliking them, but: The base pillage value for each of the tile improvements I placed (there are 12 total, two in the sphere of influence of each player) is 10 gold, and I think the average is closer to 6 because of Quick speed. Even max roll with Raiders vs. min roll without probably wouldn't match the difference between a high and low roll on a "use this as an excuse to raise taxes" event - and events are doubled in this game. I preferred the random improvements, with the tactical decisions that surround them, with or without the small buff to early Raiders, over the random chance of jungle spreading onto a gem, rice, or pig. (I could have used forests or 0-pillage-value city ruins to block inconvenient jungle spread instead and in some cases I did, but I like the variety.) Unrelatedly: I'm a bit disappointed by Auro's opening. Moving makes sense as a long-term play to get a better super-city, and he couldn't know when picking his tech that he'd move to put all his AH resources in the third ring, but I think he'd have been better off revolting Pacifism -> Religion on Turn 1 since the move means Pac costs him 16h in the first warrior instead of just 8, and Rel would let him build more warriors (and/or scouts) without penalty prior to the next revolt. The cost is about 10 beakers and 3 food, but 15+ early hammers when scouting is critical (as he expressed) seems more important to me. (Another alternative if he really only wants one warrior would have been to work on the warrior only on turns when he works the plains hill forest, which would mean Pac would cost him only 4 hammers and the opportunity cost of working other unimproved tiles. Might be worth it to avoid the revolt turn, even though Rel also adds to culture so he'd get the 3rd ring at the same time either way - probably depends on the timings for Calendar and Myst. That's just micro though; Auro's a very good player, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he can do with the Kuriotates! |
