Note I had to run this out to T205, as there was still a lot of unsettled land on T145. Map is BIG. Starting land quality is pretty even, at least as far as food goes, which is good. I feel like player 2 has an inordinate amount of ice (and beavers) and not enough food; that start is worse than a glance at its area and isolation would lead you to believe. Player 7 and Player 8's starts, and Players 9 and 2 to a lesser extent, do not look fun at all to play out; they could use some land/island bridges towards their neighbors. Player 7 in particular can get 3 cities on its island, and would be unlikely to get off of it without knowledge of the map. (they need to bumrush southeast ASAP, settling into jungle, before player 5 seals them off) I also feel that the difference between those 4 and better starts (players 3, 5, and 7) is too large.
Triplets of descending quality:
Victoria French
Cyrus Indian
Darius I Ottoman
Catherine Byzantine
Isabella Sumerian
Mansa Musa Babylonian
Julius Caesar Viking
Pericles Portuguese
Huayna Capac Russian
Elizabeth Arabian
Roosevelt Roman
Zara Yaqob Spanish
Louis XIV Dutch
Boudica Zulu
Kublai Khan Greek
Hatshepsut Incan
Justinian I Japanese
Frederick Egyptian
Ramesses II Khmer
Napoleon Native American
Gandhi Korean
/\
|| (maybe swap)
\/ Wang Kon German
Shaka Celtic
Qin Shi Huang Mali
Gilgamesh Aztec
Alexander Carthaginian
Stalin Mongolian
Hammurabi Persian
Charlemagne English
Lincoln Ethiopia
Several objectives; clearly these are ordered by quality but I'd like for there to also be some real choice in between the three options for each player.
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.
Much better IMHO, without looking too closely at capitals and such. This is at least good enough before we start assigning specific players to specific starts.
The frowny faces are fish that are orphaned if a player SIP, btw, and the ? are areas that are so highly contested among multiple civs that it's difficult to call them for one specific player. Also, in contrast to the last image I posted, I only ran this out to T145. I figure that any area that's unsettled by this point is probably not going to matter for mid-game wars until the very late game. It was making players 1, 5, and 6 look much better than they really were, even with players 1 and 6 already being the two best starts. You can still think of them having free backfill, I guess.
Not sure, if this has already been said (not really following this): Piling up all bad features to best players easily make their position totally hopeless and unfun. You could base handicaps only to land quality and keep pretty much everything else be as equal as possible or alternatively pack things up so that best players position is not worse in every metric available.
I think part of the fun with civ/ leader picks is if the players follow the lurker's judgement. So while the best optics should of course not be offered to the highest ranked players, it would be interesting to offer two good and one regular pair to weaker players and see what they pick.
With Ot4e on 2metra's team I think that's enough to push him above the other middling players; REM, Al, ipecac and Molach. They seemed to work well together in PB22 and I think he covers two of 2metra's biggest weaknesses; not paying much attention to early micro and staying engaged.
I'd also rate Molach below the other 3 based on past games. I thought he was doing well in PB27 but it's a bit early to tell really.
The other 3 have all impressed me but they made some mistakes too and I couldn't tell them apart.
I'd put all those 5 rankings at 'fairly confident'.
Regarding your danger to neighbours point Bachus, does that include both late and early game?
Did you get any directions for the map Comm? I'm mainly wondering do they know (roughly) the size and that isolated starts are possible.
TBS/Bacchus: Regarding the "danger to neighbors" rating, how do we actually factor that information into where we place people? I was under the impression that we couldn't mess with the map too much, thus we can't mess with strat resources too much?
TBS: With OT4E joining 2metra, I think I up their rating to an 8. He is quite skilled, especially considering this is a BTS game, where he'll be in more of his element than PB22. Regarding the map directions... I assume OH specifically asked Commodore for a certain type of map before the game started?
I think this, together with the civ/leaver handouts, has to be our primary method to balance the geographic disparity and bring it in line with skill disparity, we can then fine-tune with lushness. I think access to strategic resource should not be used as a balancing tool, at most we can play with how conveniently these are placed.
One thing to note about the map: Player 2's and Player 4's areas are very well-defined regardless of skill, whereas how land gets split between Players 1 and 9 is almost entirely down to agression/skill/trait choice.
Overall, as Plako said, we don't want to give the best players the worst start, the worst leaders and the worst neighbours, what we need to do is make the civs/leader, starts and neighbours into a package that would provide a handicap of the needed magnitude. The size of the magnitude? Well, we need to establish a baseline, say Alhazard (mid-table), playing Hatty of Inca from Player 0's position, and then bring others to it.
And yeah, the most obvious ways to use the "neighbour agression" would be to put REM next to Gav and 2metra next to OH. Something like Player 3 - REM, Player 8 - Gav.
, 7/8 got more land access, added more bridging).
