[LURKERS] Civ 6 PBEM 15: May the Odds be Ever In Your Favor

[Exrook]

VA, Scythia: No commentary needed. Double stuff is way too much for this game to handle. Maybe for a tactical wargame like Age of Wonders where you can BS things but here you just die. VA might be okay on Pangea but it doesn't make sense to unban it for just one map type.  

No arguments here. Building the VA, where it's allowed, is the One Right Play, and there's no way to counter endless Scythian horsemen.

As horsemen are resource dependent in GS, Scythia is now somewhat less overpowered.  Might be worth a reconsider.

How does the free horseman work with the resource limit?  Lets say I need 2 horses each and I produce one light cav unit as Scythia.  Do I need 4 in my stockpile to get both or just the 2 and the second one is actually free?  Same question for the VA. If the units are free does not make them less overpowered so you seem to be implying that the stockpiles are needed.  Just want to be clear though.

Ordinarily, you need 20 horses to produce one horseman unit.  An improved resource produces 4 per turn, and you start being able to stockpile up to 50 horses (encampments, stables, and the like can increase this limit, usually by 10 per).  For Scythia, you produce two horsemen at a time, so each effectively uses 10 horses. 

Saka Horse Archers are resourceless, but they have the same strength and a shorter range than archers and can't be upgraded until field cannon.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Scythia should be banned. On a map with a lot of horses nothing has changed. On a map with few horses Scythia can still get double horses and there Saka Horse Archers are equal to Archers (including price) so they get double horse and archer production. Nothing else is worth building due to the dumb movement rules. So Scythia effectively gets double production. The game will be over before Saka Horse Archers are obsolete.

[williams482]

Now that everyone posted their starts, I'll stand by my earlier thought that Archduke got screwed over by the RNG. I don't know if it's "we should restart" level screwed, but that is looking like easily the worst capital of the bunch, and he won't be able to settle it until t3.

[Sullla]

Every few years, someone in the community comes up with the idea of playing a game on a purely random map. When the game starts, it turns out that the random map is wildly unbalanced and most of the players have no chance of winning from Turn 0 for reasons that are completely out of their control. The game turns into a disaster and everyone agrees not to use completely random maps again. Then a few years later, someone in the community comes up with the idea of playing a game on a purely random map...

I've rolled a lot of maps in Civ6 and the scripts simply do not produce even remotely fair starts. Maybe this will be the exception but this whole concept feels like a bad idea to me. When you're going to be spending the next six months on a game, it's worth the time to have someone look over the map and make sure it's at least remotely balanced.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Every few years, someone in the community comes up with the idea of playing a game on a purely random map. When the game starts, it turns out that the random map is wildly unbalanced and most of the players have no chance of winning from Turn 0 for reasons that are completely out of their control. The game turns into a disaster and everyone agrees not to use completely random maps again. Then a few years later, someone in the community comes up with the idea of playing a game on a purely random map...

I've rolled a lot of maps in Civ6 and the scripts simply do not produce even remotely fair starts. Maybe this will be the exception but this whole concept feels like a bad idea to me. When you're going to be spending the next six months on a game, it's worth the time to have someone look over the map and make sure it's at least remotely balanced.

I think everyone would prefer a hand-tailored map to a random one. But basically every community member who owns Gathering Storm is already playing the game, so there aren't a whole lot of options here.

Is Archduke's start weaker enough than the others to warrant a reroll? I'd like other people to chime in, since we all know my evaluations of balance are, uh, not the greatest, to put it mildly. My thinking is that yes, he's worse off, but not significantly so compared to the others, and any reroll would just screw someone new over, so what's the point?

[williams482]

That CS is a gamechanger with the current rules. Nobody except for Archduke has any incentive to put 3+ envoys into it, and it's blocking off the only freshwater sites currently visible.

This would be a playable start if Archduke could just take the citystate.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Hmmmm…. I posted in Archduke's thread and it doesn't display even through you can read it when you look at "post history". Maybe it's an ignored list bug? It never displayed through and Archduke reacted positively to my latest post before then (following my suggestion). A mod should take out Archduke's two double-posts and my two posts after then to see if that would solve the problem.

Pindi is forgetting that Nan Madol was unbanned and CS was unmentioned. A player will correct him.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Archduke 13-posted.  At least one of the posts has the right pic. Here it is:

   

In other news the Nan Madol ban should be back on now that Archduke is the mapmaker. Maybe Māori should be banned too because they mess things up? Too much depends on were they send their settler, expect arguably on Pangea and like Nan Madol and VA they shouldn't be unbanned for just one map type.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I wonder if Archduke will make sure Nan Madol is not on the map. With only 8 city-states now it probably won't show up even if he doesn't. Probably not broken on this map (small, single-blob Pangea, means small coast) but it doesn't make sense to allow it for just one map type like the VA (it would still be broken still on a single-blob before they fixed overflow but they did).

[TheArchduke]

Why do you wonder? As new mapmaker I can read the spoiler thread.

In any case, fractal is a tricky thing.

The Worldbuilder is a lot better now.