Lurking - The Not-So-Silent Service

[suboptimal]

Not sure what I think of "I picked my civ based on map expectations now make a map that fits that" - there are seven other people in the game and that's almost lobbying for advantage or handicap, no?

I suppose that if we wanted to address the city-state situation that we could "fortify" the ones that "belong" to the teams (since they're less likely to be contested and the defenses require more resources to take) and make them find the unprotected ones (or vice versa).

One of the things my program did when I was messing with it was do a "max fill" of land tiles - the map had four evenly spaced roundish start areas (like the screenshot I showed previously) and the rest of the map was multi-tile (3-9 hexes) islands with channels between them (4 hexes, I believe). Almost like a maze but with no dead ends. I can post a screenshot of one when I get home tonight if you like. I also think that I have the island-to-island distance as a parameter so could widen (or narrow) the gaps a bit. However, I don't think they'd consider that "minimally edited" even though it would be a randomly generated map.

[MJW (ya that one)]

CMF salty about Norway! Anyway more than "off-coast" would be a heavy edit because they don't happen on a regular map. Maybe make one coastal and one off-coast per player for an 8/8 split? More than half would feel rigged on this map type.

[Kaiser]

I think we need to wait for the other players to voice their opinion on how to proceed with the map generation. Currently thrawn is driving this discussion and naturally he is driving it in his favor.

A map like PBEM20 would looks more like this:



sorry for the bad resolution, this is snipped out of CMFs PBEM20 thread




This closeup of the area between Phoenicia/Norway and England/Japan shows the constraints a bit better. Norways ability to sail on ocean about 100 turns before the other players achieve this capability is huge if there are only 6-8 coastal lines which are connecting you in an E to W fashion to the other players. Especially because this means that there are large ocean areas which can be used for counterattacks while you only need to position one boat on the lane to be safe for multiple turns as the enemy team can only attack you with one melee ship at a time.

I do think PBEM20 heavily favored Norway from the layout, it did not help that they got one of the better continents as well (and that I underbuilt navy, but that is a different topic). If the other players are fine to play a Norway optimised map, then we can create one.
I do think that the current layout with few ocean and many chokes gives more options for counterplay against Norway than PBEM20 did, at least until cartography comes in at 740 (you can save 276 with Eurekas) and the field will be evened out.

[suboptimal]

I think on a PBEM 20 style map one way to rein in Norway would be to give them the most isolated start position.

Given Woden's comment, though, I think we might be able to get away with "more" so long as we don't go gimmicky. I think that puts the city-states in play even though the map scripts wouldn't land-lock a city-state under any circumstances on a water map (Antananarivo in PBEM 20 was not "landlocked" according to the map scripts).

I agree that more coast and less ocean is a way to balance things out a bit.

[Cornflakes]

Why so much interest in balancing for specific civs? Shouldn't maps be mostly neutral?

My biggest comment after looking at the samples that you posted are that those maps appear to be polka-dotted with tiny 1-3 tile islands and the "main" starting islands are snaky. Whereas PBEM20 had blob starting islands with small-but-not-tiny islands between. Maybe PM TBS and see if he remembers what script was used for that map? Also Civ6 map scripts are relatively simple to hijack and manipulate the landform generator suit what you are looking for (as I did for PBEM 7) while still keeping it mostly random. In fact I think I even developed a "teamer islands" script. That was 5 years ago though () so it may take a couple days to dig that back up refresh my memory on what I did.

[MJW (ya that one)]

What? CSs never spawn not on coast, on water map? I would consider making them landlock cheating then. No wonder thrawn wanted to ban Maori . Rigging the start against Norway is also cheating. You can try making CSs start super-close and add a lot of coast to stop Norway from stealing CSs that aren't "theirs" though....

[Jabah]

In any case we should randomly assign the starts to the teams after balancing. So no specificly weak or strong or easy CS for anyone (Norway or not).

[Kaiser]

@Jabah
There will definetively be randomized starts.

@cornflakes
I have already started fleshing out the player islands so they get them become less snaky, I can upload a new screenshot by tomorrow evening so you get a better picture.
Maybe it is my past experience, but I do think that the PBEM20 map heavily favoured Norway (at least the side facing us) with the amount of oceans and chokes which are only present for non-Norway players. My goal here is to offer more options for non-Norway players by having more chokes which are also blocking Norway (more islands) as well as offering less opportunities for safe spots to hide damaged boats/overwhelm without being in danger of counterattack for Norway

@MJW
The goal is not to rig the game against Norway, but to offer more options to non-Norway.
I am not sure I follow your idea for the CS, it is anyways planned that at least 1 CS is close per player. Do you mean we put 2 CS close to each player?

@Suboptimal
I am not sure how to isolate Norway on a water based map, as they are the only ones able to travel on ocean. I am also against it as it would mean it needs a defined starting position (unfair for balance as we wont come up with a perfectly balanced map and I want to randomize start positions for that reason) or all teams are far away (huge map) but this might benefit Norway still as it is likely the CIV to cover the distance the fastest

Again, I might miss the subtle hints, just hammer me with a "your map is to gimmicky/unfair to Norway" and then I start a different approach with more oceans and less coastal connections instead.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Yes, I do mean having both CSs start near player. Because you cannot not put CSs next to the coast (heavy edit), that and adding coastal hexes is the best we can do.

[MJW (ya that one)]

"like PBEM20" is a very broad description, and it's not clear what was expected beyond "island plates style map with some start balancing." Was the pattern of dotted mountains across each major land mass important? Do we need exactly one snaky continent where the natural wonder is way off to the north and pillages are easy, then three other thicker continents where they are way harder to reach? Etc. There's a ton of ambiguity there, and as usual it's the Mapmaker's job to sort out exactly how the map is going to shape up.

This is the level of uncertainty that players normally get about a map. It's rarely going to perfectly match up with expectations, and part of the fun is dealing with those unexpected twists (and raging about them in your thread).

As for 3v1s and whatnot, this is a no diplo game. I don't think anyone can or should be discussing that here.

Oh, it's pretty obvious. It happened after thrawn was allowed to pick 2-uber civs. Now thrawn assumes that the other 3 just messed up but really 2/3 just thought Sumer was banned. Now, I would feel guilty but thrawn will get dogpiled and I'm sure he would object if he was in this situation. The fact that he would have what it takes to object makes him a better player and he deserves this edge.