[SPOILERS] Map Creation Thread for PBEM25

[Gaspar]

Here's what I currently feel I'd do differently if I were making the map now. (Of course if I had to make another map I wouldn't do this one again; part of the point is having a new puzzle to crack.)

1) Lower the difficulty to monarch. Yes, the players asked for emperor, but I made it compact (by leaving out ocean) and toroidal. Monarch would still be painful enough in terms of maintenance.

2) Move the luxury A above each player's capital away a bit, e.g. swap its position with the banana NEEE of it, but then maybe move it 1S or 1W. In the case of the metals make the yields even worse by a bit. (Gold: desert hill -> desert; gems/silver: plains hill -> desert/tundra hill)

3) Warn the players before the picks that there is no marble/stone on the map. (Yes, keeping those resources out is important - wonders are pretty good in this setup even when they're not being discounted.) But as some players have said, missing these resources makes IND a better trait so it's worth warning people about.

4) Try to have the map be for a no talking game and not one where people can sign stinky border agreements. But that's probably not strictly necessary.

I think I pretty much agree with everything - though its worked out to be a quite nice map. This game in particular would be about 1000x better without diplo.

[luddite]

yeah, sounds reasonable.

One thing I've been thinking lately is that stone is very different from marble. Most of the stone wonders- great wall, stonehenge, and pyramids- come really early, often before you've even got time to hook up stone. The marble wonders, other than the Oracle, come a lot later. The late stone wonders (UoS, Angkor Wat) come really late and aren't that good anyway. So the value of Industrious seems to mainly depend on whether or not the map has marble.

[SevenSpirits]

yeah, sounds reasonable.

One thing I've been thinking lately is that stone is very different from marble. Most of the stone wonders- great wall, stonehenge, and pyramids- come really early, often before you've even got time to hook up stone.

That's really just Stonehenge. Pyramids are later and typically only built with stone if there's stone available. Great Wall is even later, given that spies are off.

You also didn't mention HG, Notre Dame, and Moai.

Your point still has something to it though.

[luddite]

yeah, i mean stone definitely helps. I just don't think it makes nearly as much of a difference as marble, in terms of changing the value of industrious.