[PB61] Map-making thread (No players)

[Tarkeel]

One change I will make, is make sure everyone can pick up copper with a city that's working a shared tile with the capital.

[civac2]

That's good. I will have time to have a look at the map during the weekend.

[Tarkeel]

Civac (or anyone else), did you have a chance to look over the map? I can finish it tomorrow evening.

[civac2]

Had a look. You wanted everyone to have a copper city that can borrow food from te capital. Currently, only starts A,E,F can do that. A's copper city in particular is very strong. B,D while not able to borrow food have nice copper cities regardless. C's options are a bitt iffy. They need early culture and/or Animal Husbandry for a good copper city. So in many situations it will be fine but it may not be. You could change the pig to a grains resource or something. G's copper is in a terrible spot with desert and no food, farther away from the capital and on a desert hill to boot. Did they insult your family?

The distribution of gold, silver, gems is interesting. Ultimately, I think all choices are reasonable and I like the way you balanced them. It is perhaps not necessary to be quite so miserly with the double gold starts. Yes, you can trade them early but even plains hill gold is a much worse tile than grasland gems. Doesn't need to be changed though, it's fine as is. I would probably convert one of the gold hills to a ph though. Again, the area around the copper/double gold at start G is too weak.

Can't judge distribution of players/food/tile quality. I simply don't have an eye for that kind of thing.

[Lazteuq]

I think the shape is good. It has sort of fjords! You're from Norway, aren't you, Tarkeel?

I expect it to feel more spacious than it really is and discourage early conflict, so everyone should be able reach the medieval without being crippled, which I think is good for a greens game.

I'm trying to imagine what people will complain about. Probably distribution of resources.

I like the scattering of calendar resources but I think it should be more consistent with duplicates. 2 is quite a bit better than one because you can probably trade the second one. Trade is fun and interesting, so I think everyone should get at least one duplicate luxury. For example, A has 5 singular luxuries, while G also has 5 types but the gold and incense are duplicated. It's not a big deal, but that doesn't feel fair. 
Similarly, I think everyone should have two copper in different places, like you did in PB60. More importantly, it should be consistent, right now C has 2. Other strategics look good, although I'm a little worried about the horses between E and F (PB56 flashbacks).
D's coastal backlines seem pretty skimpy on food resources, but maybe the long grassland river valley helps compensate.
Only 3 out of 6 have Wine right now. I would scatter it equally or remove it entirely, but again, maybe other things will compensate.
I see no whales. Is that intentional? I think giving a little buff to that Optics line of the tech tree is good. I guess circumnavigation helps there.
I would scatter the mountain islands a bit more chaotically instead of in straight lines to look natural and more interesting to explore. Maybe add some useless sea resources by the mountains just to help distinguish the different island chains. At this point I'm just being trivial.

Aren't there some old RB vets who can help give advice for the map? Almost all the discussion here has been from relatively new people without a lot of mapmaking experience.

[naufragar]

Looks good to me. I haven't been following the design process.

1) Were you trying to give everyone a mining lux? If so, Start D seems to be the only one lacking. Start A's flat grassland gems is way stronger than other starts' desert or plains hill gold etc.
2) I would un-jungle Start D's sugar to match Start B's.
3) Start D's Stone is the furthest away of the starts and looks to be the least fed, as well.

Contra Lazteuq , don't stress too much about Calendar and later luxury balance. Having doubles of luxuries for trade is fine as a gimmick but unnecessary. Similarly, with Copper in such safe locations, there's no point to doubling up. Yes, it can make players immune to chokes and rushes, but it's not the mapmaker's job to tell the players how to play.

[Commodore]

No plan whatsoever for IC-TRs? Even an astronomy Madagascar might go over well.

[Tarkeel]

Thanks for the feedback guys, I hope to be able to wrap it up later tonight. In arbitrary order:

At this point I'm just being trivial.

I like trivial feedback! it could lead to ideas, and if nothing else it tells me that the map seems pretty decent.

I think the shape is good. It has sort of fjords! You're from Norway, aren't you, Tarkeel?

I expect it to feel more spacious than it really is and discourage early conflict, so everyone should be able reach the medieval without being crippled, which I think is good for a greens game.

I've gone for a natural feel, and I do think the coastlines look pretty good. The fjords help divy up the land, witout creating chokepoints, so everyone should have some border to defend. I do think an early rush is possible on this map, and you might even end up with the victim's backlines if you're lucky.

No plan whatsoever for IC-TRs? Even an astronomy Madagascar might go over well.

This is one of the things I was thinking a lot about early on, but I wanted to go with the feel of an AI survivor game. I also think a greens game might be better off without too much naval focus; it's quite possible that there's not enough competition for astronomy land.

I see no whales. Is that intentional? I think giving a little buff to that Optics line of the tech tree is good. I guess circumnavigation helps there.

Yes, I decided to skip them for this game. I was going to put them on the coastal borders between players, but didn't find spots that would be fair.

Similarly, I think everyone should have two copper in different places, like you did in PB60. More importantly, it should be consistent, right now C has 2.

It's supposed to be only one of each strategic per player; I caught that one after I'd uploaded v4.

D's coastal backlines seem pretty skimpy on food resources, but maybe the long grassland river valley helps compensate.

Novice's balance tool rated that as one of the strongest starts, so I toned down the food there some. Now it's in line with the other corner starts.

I would scatter the mountain islands a bit more chaotically instead of in straight lines to look natural and more interesting to explore. Maybe add some useless sea resources by the mountains just to help distinguish the different island chains.

Will do that.

Had a look. You wanted everyone to have a copper city that can borrow food from te capital. Currently, only starts A,E,F can do that. A's copper city in particular is very strong. B,D while not able to borrow food have nice copper cities regardless. C's options are a bitt iffy. They need early culture and/or Animal Husbandry for a good copper city. So in many situations it will be fine but it may not be. You could change the pig to a grains resource or something. G's copper is in a terrible spot with desert and no food, farther away from the capital and on a desert hill to boot. Did they insult your family?

While redoing copper, I spotted that start C has the most insane first-ring city I've seen in a while: The plainshill W-W of the capital corn will pig up pigs, fish, horses, spices, and two gems. I'll get back to you later with what I've done with the coppers.

The distribution of gold, silver, gems is interesting. Ultimately, I think all choices are reasonable and I like the way you balanced them. It is perhaps not necessary to be quite so miserly with the double gold starts. Yes, you can trade them early but even plains hill gold is a much worse tile than grasland gems. Doesn't need to be changed though, it's fine as is. I would probably convert one of the gold hills to a ph though. Again, the area around the copper/double gold at start G is too weak.

Were you trying to give everyone a mining lux? If so, Start D seems to be the only one lacking. Start A's flat grassland gems is way stronger than other starts' desert or plains hill gold etc.

Everyone should have one mining luxury; I've counted the gems between the horse and cow as safely belonging to start D. Any ideas on toning down that gem without jungling it? I might just go with upgrading the golds terrain and adding an extra to the silvers.

I think I'll stick with the calendar and wines as they are; thanks for all your thoughts!

[civac2]

I had assumed you wanted to balance the gems by jungling the second copy and giving everyone else 2+ copies of their mining luxury. Start C cannot settle on their jungled gems without orphaning grasland pigs. Starts D and A only have 3 gems between them, one each and a middle one in the jungle. It's possible to settle on the middle gems but they are contested. As I said, I think it's fine as it is. You could upgrade one of the gold/silver hills maybe but that's not necessary.

[Tarkeel]

I've updated the map to RC1:

Start A

• Moved the copper 1W
  
• Removed the central gems between A and D; added a new one 1S3E of the un-jungled one.
  

Start B

• Moved horses to where copper was
  
• Moved copper to where the southern desert-gold was; changed to grass
  
• Added a new plains-hill gold on the western coast
  

Start C

• Moved the jungled gems S-SE, so they can't be both worked by the plainshill city w/pigs+fish.
  
• Moved copper to where horses were
  
• Moved horses to where the western copper was
  
• Removed the other copper and oil
  

Start D

• Removed the central gems between A and D; added a new one 2W of the un-jungled one
  
• Swapped the horses with the grassforest 3W2S
  
• Unjungled the southern sugar
  
• Moved the stone NW and turned the hill it was on into a flooplain
  

Start E

• Swapped the horses with the plainsforest 2E
  

Start F

• Swapped the horses with the grassforest 1W
  
• Added a third silver on a tundra hill
  

Start G

• Moved the copper to where aluminum was
  
• Moved aluminum to a new desert hill W of where copper was
  
• Upgraded the eastern gold to plains
  

I'll upload the map when the final picks are in