Kyan Wrote:Oh and the turns are going fast as we're blitzing the start quite a bit. Will do the occasional report just to see how Ref's map is holding up!
Cool - I'm looking forward to seeing updates when you have a chance! I'll post stuff (of course in spoilers) if anyone else asks, but if you and I are the only ones reading this, spoiler tags would be kinda silly; I'll save my thoughts until you guys are done playing the game!
Okay - sorry it's taken me a few days to get this together. I'm using spoiler tags so Kyan and company won't find out the secrets they don't already know; if you have any questions related to the map, please put them in spoiler tags too!
On balancing resources and the map in general: What Kyan and company were asking for changed a lot between the first post in this thread and the time I sent the map off to them. Originally, they wanted a map that would create different levels of challenge for three different players, based just on the map itself. This evolved into wanting a balanced map (with some fairly specific requirements) with the different levels of challenge created by leader, civ, and starting units. The balancing job I did was relatively quick and dirty because that seemed to be what was called for (getting it ready soon rather than making it even close to perfect) and because on a Huge map for just three human players, there's only a limited amount you can do (without going crazy).
So, between the change in what was needed from the map and time-related issues, the resource balance ended up being a bit haphazard. What I eventually tried to do was to give everyone roughly equal resources, with each player's region missing some (not strategic ones) that turned up in others' regions - just a normal map, but quickly vetted and fixed. I think I did it too quickly though, and missed a couple of resources in Player 2's (Byzantium's) area. (The strat resources are fine, but he has a couple too many of the non-ubiquitous food and luxury types.) That might come out okay anyway since the map they requested and the starting freebie they gave him don't synergize very well with his choice of civ, but it's hard to judge these things against each other.
In any case, if I were making the map now, knowing what (little, still) I do about the players' skill levels and the way they decided to compensate for the differences, I would mostly still keep the resources "balanced" - leaning slightly toward giving "better" non-ubiquitous ones to the less-veteran players - but also to make Byzantium's and especially India's land more forgiving of things like poor city placement or worker mismanagement while giving Kyan good but difficult choices for how to manage his civ. I did this to an extent - for instance, Kyan can choose to build a relatively weak city for copper early, or invest in sailing and a galley (or a long, long walk) to get early horses, or research hunting and archery early so he can defend with skirmishers - whereas India and Byz both have better-placed resources, and India has copper in its home city's third ring. I think I could have done it better, especially if I gave some more thought to the advantages and weaknesses of the individual civ and leader choices, but hopefully it's good enough to make for an enjoyable game.
SO: The players asked for a huge continents/custom_continents map for just nine players, six of them AIs. This means there's an ENORMOUS amount of space on the map. I could have made most of the space into water, but that didn't seem desirable, so I just went with it. The map I chose was about the fifth I rolled up. Then, lacking the time to edit it with fine pen and scalpel (since the map was huge, for only three players, and not an RB event) I took a sledge-hammer to the thing where necessary and left the rest as it appeared. There were a number of things that I didn't get a chance to do because of time constraints (like changing the civs' colors) but I learned a bit more about worldbuilder and hopefully I turned out a decent map.
I don't like mirrored or identical starts - I prefer Sullla-style variation across the whole map, with all its flaws and imperfections. Unless everyone is playing with the same civ and leader, mirrored starts aren't necessarily balanced anyway, but in this case, the starts are DEFINITELY not balanced; the leaders/civs and bonus units will provide some handicaps, but the map itself needed to be at once interesting (and fun) for Kyan and playable (and fun) for Players 2 and 3. That meant rather different starting areas for each of them. What I did in the time I had was to leave the map more or less as it was rolled, and then edit a few specific things - but edit them heavily. (The sledgehammer blows I was talking about). First up were the human players' starting areas.
More in the next posts ... with actual pictures and things!
The Malinese region. If you're in the game, even/especially if you're Kyan, NO LOOKING!
Here's Kyan's start - he's Bismarck of Mali. (When he said he was "player two" in the beginning of the thread, it was sort of a sideways way of being humble; he's of course "player one" for this game. I also selected Mali as the starting player at random, before I knew it was him.) The land tiles in the BFC but on the other side of the water came with the map the game rolled. I left them intact, but otherwise edited the setup severely: Its original resource tiles were slightly ridiculous - something like three clams, a grassland corn beside a lake, and a grassland sheep. There were neither hills nor rivers anywhere in the BFC. I had to edit it pretty heavily just to make it less one-dimensional, and then used its resources as a sort of template for the other starting areas. The forge luxury nearby, the plains hill start, and the large quantities of food, were intentionally selected to get the game going reasonably quickly (i.e. get quickly past the early turns of just hitting 'enter' a lot). One could make it go even faster, but I felt this was pretty good without stretching the limits of credibility.
I should also note that the land across the sea can be reached on foot, by circling around to the northwest. It does mean two of the ten(!) forests in this BFC can't be chopped right away, but none of the resource tiles are out there at least. And I really like the idea of having to circle or cross the inlet to improve part of the capital's BFC. Anyway, all that done, I went to work on Mali's surroundings.
The first thing I did was to make sure of the strategic resources. I felt no obligation to make Player 1's early war resources easy to reach, but I did want to make sure he wouldn't get frustrated and think I'd forgotten them, even if he scouted the wrong way. Horses are visible from the city's BFC, and copper from its third ring, once the relevant techs are in. But the copper demands a fairly questionable city, and the horses really need a galley if they're going to be acquired early. (There's land access, but it would take ages to go around the inlet). Of course, Kyan can afford to put off both of them: He's Mali, and his Skirms will take care of any barb problems that may arise - especially on Noble. It means he'll likely have to spend beakers on Hunting and Archery earlier than he might otherwise prefer, but it also means he should get some good use out of his UU in this game.
Stone is fourth ring, so he'll need a dedicated city if he wants to connect it early. I originally was going to give everyone access to both marble and stone, but decided against it and removed the marble. This was before I learned the actual gaps in civ ability between the three players, and if I'd had more time after learning it, I'd probably have put it back in. There is still marble on the map, but it's nowhere near anybody.
With copper available and plenty of space between civs, I felt no obligation to put iron in a convenient spot. The only one at what I would normally call an acceptable distance from Kyan is on an off-shore island (but in the BFC of any of several potential mainland coastal city sites). The two mainland iron sources are quite accessible however, and in spite of the distance, they are clearly in Mali's zone of influence. (Well, or the barbs', depending on how you look at it.) This map is BIG.
Finally, I looked at the late-game resources - just to make sure they were within reasonable range. Uranium is pretty close to everybody's capital - no nukes allowed, but if someone wants to build modern navies without oil unhealth, or wants to build nuclear power plants or whatever, they've got the option. Coal, oil, and aluminum are further away than I might put them on a "normal" map, but on this monstrosity, on Noble difficulty, they'll all be in Kyan's culture by the time he gets the techs that reveal them. I also made sure there were a couple of rivers nearby, including one with floodplains, as well as all three forge luxuries, to prevent the chance of "popping one" from a mine changing the face of the game. I did try to create incentives for meeting other civs and establishing trade routes and commodity exchange, though I tried not to go overboard (and made a couple careless mistakes). Kyan lacks corn, spices, and sugar in his near vicinity (and bananas, dyes, and ivory, but those are special cases) although there's some sugar accessible not far north of this image even without any trade (probably after war with the AI "neighbor" in that region.)
One other question, were AI civs placed closer to Kyan than the others? More aggressive civs? Or overall were the AI's just placed where they were rolled?
So, that brings us to Byzantium. Again: Top Secret Spoiler Stuff Ahead.™
The Byzantine start is landlocked. Originally, it consisted of about ten thousand floodplains and practically nothing else. All of that went away. In addition to what you see here, there's a plains hill gold in the BFC, though it isn't visible until a unit moves north or northwest (or they plant the city). The oasis provides fresh water and also irrigates a rice tile 2N of the start. There are only five forests in this BFC, but the land-based food helps to make up for it, as do the rivers: Two river grasslands are in the eastern BFC, and the gold tile has a river as well.
It should be interesting to see if Byz can make any mileage with Cataphracts on this map, considering its size and the number of civs (too few for the space - the players agreed with me about that on consideration, and asked that a few more be added, but it would have taken time, and everyone preferred to get the game started at that point - including me). In any case, in Player 2's place, I would have avoided Byz simply because of the free worker with which he starts the game: I gave them an oasis here so they can use a decent tile while researching a worker tech, but for now all the free worker can do for them is build roads.
One thing about Byzantium though: People tend to get so caught up on the 'phracts that they forget the civ's amazing UB. The Hippodrome is a theater that provides a free point of happiness, and has double a theater's normal culture-slider happiness effect. It also provides an additional happiness from horses - a resource to which everyone is going to have access in virtually every game - instead of dyes, which require calendar, and may not show up nearby - or even on your home continent! (As is the case here, by the way; I didn't even think about it at the time.) The one drawback is that it doesn't provide any artist slots (while a Theater lets you hire up to two) - which in most games, in most circumstances, isn't really a problem. Artist Specialists (especially outside of Caste) are of occasional, situational value. Happiness is one of the keys to the game. And with Creative Sury (half-price Theaters) to lead them, these Byzantines have a building that provides two happy faces for just 17 Quick-speed hammers!
Anyway, let's look at the Byzantine region.
This is actually the same continent Kyan is on - just the opposite end. Unlike Kyan though, Player 2 has a lot of "backyard" into which he can expand peacefully: The continent ends a few tiles to the west of this image, and all of it belongs to Byz undisputed unless someone comes across by galley. Copper is visible from the capital's BFC, and horses from its third ring, once the relevant techs are discovered, and both are in more convenient locations than Kyan's. Iron is similarly distant-or-stuck-on-an-island, and the late-game resources are placed at similar distances to Kyan's. In addition to the special cases (dyes, bananas, marble, and ivory) the Byzantine region lacks wine, and its incense and wheat are at a distance (off the screenshot to the west) but on the whole, this set of resources is more nearly complete. If I'd had a bit more time to look over the map, I'd probably have replaced the off-screen wheat with corn or rice, moved the spices way off to the disputed area further east, and put something else there in its place. Or placed wine and rice near India, now that I know just how large the civ-experience gap is between players. And speaking of India...
(NO PEKING EITHER!)
(China is NOT IN THIS GAME!)
(And anyway it would be Beijing!)
(ANYWAY!)
India's start is a bit more like Kyan's, with ten forests in the BFC, grassland gems, and seafood. I added the tongue of land extending to the southeast that provides more land tiles and makes all the water tiles coastal. The visible fish is their only seafood tile though, and they have a dry corn tile in their BFC (in the fog N-NW of the starting tile). I was told to give India a free Settler and a free Worker, but since it's India, I made it a free Settler + Fast Worker. If I'd had a bit more time to think about it after learning the players' real skill levels though, I'd have at least moved a forest from a hill to the flat grassland you can see there. Still, India starts with mining, so the gems tile gives the Fast Worker something valuable to do while waiting for other worker techs to come in, and when he's done with that, even if the player pursues an early religion or fishing or something, the Fast Worker have a chance to help improve the second city. The positioning for that city is an interesting question, and I'd love to know (eventually) where he placed it.
Since he has two settlers and the starting spot is so obviously strong, the right move here is to settle in place immediately for maximum scouting info, and then move the other units according to what's revealed. Settling east is probably the best deal here, and the capital's first ring will show a floodplain there right away. Horses will again be visible from the city's third ring if exploration hasn't found them - and copper will actually be IN the starting city's third ring, which will hopefully help ensure Player 3 doesn't get eaten by barbs at least. The other strategic resources are placed at similar distances to those of the other players, including the now-familiar offshore iron (it looks like it's in the ocean on this picture, but it's actually a plains tile on that little island). In addition to the usual suspects, (dye, banana, ivory, marble) India's immediate region lacks sugar, rice, and wine. Looking at it again, I should have added another spice or two closer by (there are more off the screenshot to the west) in addition to what I mentioned under Byz.
Lewwyn Wrote:Sweet thanks Ref, can't wait to see the others.
Glad to oblige!
Finally, some notes on the map overall.
Quote:One other question, were AI civs placed closer to Kyan than the others? More aggressive civs? Or overall were the AI's just placed where they were rolled?
Yes, they were placed closer to Kyan, and were arguably more aggressive, but everything is far away from everything on this map. In particular....
India has most of a large continent to itself - it extends well beyond the screenshot to the east and especially west (and then south from there) with only Carthage in the far (south-)west. Its "back lines" are also generally safer than Byzantium's, since the nearest civs on other continents are further away from them than from Byzantium's.
Kyan and Byz share a continent with Spain (north of Kyan) and Arabia (north of and ~halfish way between the two civs). The Vikings, Celts (Boudica) and French (Louis) share a much larger continent to the west (or east - the map has cyllindrical wrap). They all have their regular leaders, and they're being played on Noble and with no bonus units, but I did select Aggressive AI, so hopefully when they inevitably get crushed, they'll do so a little more intelligently. (I did check with the players that this was okay).
Special resources: Marble, as mentioned, is a rare commodity, and far from all the human players. I removed ivory from the map entirely because the AIs won't get the memo about "no building uberphants" otherwise, and so trading ivory to another player's AI enemy would be legal and dastardly. The AIs won't get the "no nukes allowed" memo either, but if any of the AIs get to Fission and Rocketry (remember, no tech trading is allowed) before a human wins the game, it would mean something is very wrong. That leaves dyes and bananas.
There are three islands like this one around the map, each similar (but not identical) to one another, that are not reachable until Astronomy. They were added by hand, each closer to a different one of the three human civs, and are the only sources of dyes and bananas on the map. Of course, those weren't the only edits outside the players' immediate regions.
Originally, the map consisted of two enormous continents: One in the north, which extended downward in the middle like a "T" - and one in the south, which extended haphazardly upward at each end like a frazzled, unravelling "U". I split both continents just west of center, with galley-crossable coast, extended some of the upward extrusions of the south-western continent to connect it to the northwestern one, and added little islands that would allow passage between any of the three continents in any direction by galley (the three islands mentioned above are the only things on the map that can't be reached by workboat or galley ... eventually.)
Circumnavigation by workboat is possible, but not easy. Between ice floes in the north and south, the north-south extent of the three- AI continent, and the path of island "stepping stones" between the far west and far east, it's a bit of a maze. A scouting land unit taken over to the AI continent on a galley will probably make pre-optics circumnavigation much easier.
One other thing: (NOT a spoiler, as all the players know it) I tried, but failed, to create the -5 relations penalty for Kyan with the AI civs. (My Worldbuilder skills are not terrific, and the mechanism that seemed intended for the purpose didn't appear to work.) I told Kyan about it, and since we didn't want to wait/spend the time it would take for me to figure out what was wrong, I suggested an alternative, which is being used instead: Kyan is playing with a variant. Whenever he meets an AI civ, he must choose the "Your head would look good on the end of a pole!" war option for first contact. After that, he's allowed to seek peace and try to repair relations normally - but each new contact always begins with war.
If any lurkers have any other questions (or criticism; there aren't many better ways to learn) please let me know!
I really like the little dye and banana islands. I hope that the newer players are able to recognize the value of these islands and that they even try to find them. I think it might be harder for newer players who are less familiar with expand,expand,expand. We'll see htough. One thing though are the islands for the newer players at least closer to home?
![[Image: Malstart.jpg]](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u5PMxCx9Skg/WjvADoc_2yI/AAAAAAAAEME/Z7VAa1de6U0FWP33lMfMlJ5VO9rdr_98gCLcBGAs/s1600/Malstart.jpg)
![[Image: Malizone.jpg]](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FuwsBRmEr_k/WjvADs1eTdI/AAAAAAAAEMI/XobwR4W5-GQFcbWGy91X9jVOHoMH7CEZACLcBGAs/s1600/Malizone.jpg)
![[Image: Byzstart.jpg]](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-p-rWtXZhDhU/WjvACiHbpPI/AAAAAAAAEL0/8oM1_WK7ES052IugDf5eah-YYgDBbP2wgCLcBGAs/s1600/Byzstart.jpg)
![[Image: Byzzone.jpg]](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jNAhKjgxvxM/WjvACib7p_I/AAAAAAAAEL4/np77FDGHnI4L0Rfe116hrBl3SEoF4XkfwCLcBGAs/s1600/Byzzone.jpg)
![[Image: Indstart.jpg]](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UEwcrQWlZx0/WjvADS9VqzI/AAAAAAAAEMA/rCqc3nL930MtlGckP-Sf0fKTkgjsO35bgCLcBGAs/s1600/Indstart.jpg)
![[Image: Indizone.jpg]](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YkiB17kMEFo/WjvACjoQ32I/AAAAAAAAEL8/ISQBlQ0_yq81zAU3pJ3f0eRv0byu6Hy-wCLcBGAs/s1600/Indizone.jpg)
![[Image: astrisle.jpg]](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dzGaTfeARhQ/WjvAD1ZltKI/AAAAAAAAEMM/QrOK5Ak_4mIGmjVSZ99jTJxIQr3XtAzVQCLcBGAs/s1600/astrisle.jpg)
![[Image: mapshape.jpg]](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-L2J1_bWTQfA/WjvAEbsA9lI/AAAAAAAAEMQ/hEPR1i3oAJ4MnQCk46xmUWC2K5-dVYd7ACLcBGAs/s1600/mapshape.jpg)
