Lurking - The Not-So-Silent Service

[Kaiser]

I've never played Civ6 and followed the games here only sporadically and unsuccessfully, but I'd like to emphasize a few comments here:

I think V2 and V3 are most representative of what the players expect, and both look pretty to someone who has no idea how the map will affect gameplay.

(This is especially important because it was posted before players started making post-pick map directives.)  The main difference between this map and those two (and the main difference between this map and PbeM20's) in my eyes is the number of landmasses:  Those maps had a lot - it looks to me like somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 - but this map has hundreds!

The first 4 - 5 maps were there to get a feeling for which base settings for the map should be used. You are right that this one has significant more one-tile islands than V2 (Island plates), this is apparently within the natural deviation of map generation because V27 (this base map) is also an island plates map. (I only changed the poles around V15 as I was feeling it was messing with getting decent player starting areas, which I was mostly looking for to get a base)

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.

If you want a map that's minimally-edited and similar to PbeM 20, I think these suggestions from Cornflakes are the way to go.  There are alternate solutions that could presumably be done "naturally"/procedurally, like Jabah's suggestion:

1. Seems to be a lot of small islands (and coast around) that make the map very different.
Would it be possible to remove all the 1 and 2 tiles (and possibly 3 tiles) islands and turn some coast around them into deep sea ?

[...]

Right now, although there are ocean tiles and land tiles, it feels like there are almost no ocean or land areas - which I think is very much unlike what the players were expecting.

One of the biggest difference is actually that this map has significantly more land than PBEM20 due to the cropped polar regions and the few deserts (which might be a real drawback for Mali/China now that I think of it). This results in more fertile land available to the players, so I think just replacing the one tile islands with ocean + normalizing the surrounding coastel areas to ocean should already close this gap and also reduce the amount of coastal connections and land based choke points (the other big difference).

You are right that the PBEM22 feels more fractured than PBEM20, it is by now clear to me that at least thrawn was expecting a less fractured map than PBEM22 is (because it benefits an already very strong Norway in the early game). I am not so sure personally that the other players were (or are) having this exact same expectation on the map and they did not discuss it either beyond "similar to PBEM20" which I feel is poised to fail (as mapmaking seems to be in general :D) on one detail or the other.
I for my part still think that this map is going to be interesting to play on (and Norway is one of the strongest Civ if not the strongest to play on it) but the players have to decide how they want to proceed.

All that said ... I recognize that a significant amount of work has already gone into this map, and time is limited ... and then if the game is going to die before it starts (or after a small number of turns) regardless of the map (Thrawn's recent posts don't sound to me like fear that the map will be bad, but ~~unrelated loss of interest and/or regretting making the time commitment in the first place...) then putting more work into a new map doesn't sound very appealing. And of course I may be all wet here: A zillion tiny islands sound to me like they'd make the game more of a chore, but it's possible I'm missing something, having never played Civ6....

My expectation might be wrong, but the main influence I see coming from the 1-tile islands (and other chokes) will be that is easier to defend these areas, meaning you are able to amass your fleet in space which can be shut off by utilizing chokes. 
That means that ranged ships will be more important to break these chokes and that it will be easier to defend your homeland. I am also curious to see if there will be things such as combat settlers to make an island tile traversable (Phoenicia has a nice ability for this )

I feel like thrawn is just worried by not being able to predict the map, maybe my history of maps has made him worry of this particular map as well, but then this would likely have been true for any map created by me.
I have no issue with any way this is going to proceed, I just hope this game is starting. 
- I am happy to provide the map based on the current iteration (in that case please let me know your feedback to the starting islands screenshots, ressource distribution and balancing)
- I am happy to remove 1 tile islands and replace them with ocean (I think replacing the land somewhere else will be a chore as you are right that I then have to manipulate ressources again and start looking at balance of the general map which I want to avoid if possible)
- coming up with a new map (this should likely be done by somebody else just to avoid running in the samp trust issue for the mapmaking again)

Sulla

Kaiser, you put a lot of time into putting the map together and it seems fine to me, nothing's ever going to be perfect. I would stop trying to cater to these whiny crybabies and tell them to shut up and play the darn game.

Thank you for the feedback, I luckily have some time at hand due to waiting for the arrival of the newest family member so I was not to pressed and enjoyed the mapmaking process so far.
The way thrawn was pushing for details and influence on the map was feeling a bit iffy, especially as it felt it was mostly/only him with such (undocumented) detailed expectations. I am mostly worried about my communication being in-line with all the other players expectations so nobody feels that thrawn gained influence/information just by being demanding.

They should play however they think it keeps them best engaged and interested with this game, but I fully agree that this type of dicussions give a bad precedent on future starting games if there will always be such discussions after the fact of choosing CIVs.

[Kaiser]

The starts look good to me.  I think that RefSteel does make a good point about tiles vs. areas.  Looking at the map from that context there is an "area" between yellow and black, another one that's sort of between red, yellow and black but none anywhere near purple.  It might be worth editing in something to merge the larger islands N of red and SW of purple into a third land area.  Likewise I think that deleting any islands with 3 or fewer tiles might also be the way to go. It'll open things up a little bit but not too much.  Just my $0.02.

It looks like they are going with the partial repick, which means this map is still on. 
I feel like reducing one tile islands to be replaced with ocean is the current consensus, I will start working tomorrow on a separate save with the removed 1-tile islands and will also think about possible CS locations. 

I will also see where there is opportunity to create a bigger landmass near purple/red/yellow or black.

I would love to have some more people checking the start areas as well (not that I do not trust you, it would just be good the be able to shift the inevitable blame on more shoulders
I for my part feel red east has less reefs and thus less coastal campus locations.

[Kaiser]

before I forget it, due to the family expansion, it might be that I will be off the grid for 1-2 days at least without access to the notebook

Please feel free to keep this going and start the game, here is the current file. I will try to keep the newest state of the file in the thread from now on

CIVs and start positions need still to be defined (I suggest after the player randomization)
CS need to placed
Above changes need to be implemented

[suboptimal]

So....Thrawn went from debating map setup to re-picking Civs to "this is a time commitment, I'm out" in, what, 3-4 days? He's the one that wanted to get this game going, no? Didn't he also withdraw from PBEM 20 on the same rationale (too much of a time commitment)?

[Kaiser]

Despite the current bleak outlook with thrawn laeving, I did implement the first changes and some CS placement ideas, here is the current map



Please note that the two pink circled CS are the only defensible ones with only one adjacent coastal tile. All others have at least 2 up to 4 tiles (maybe this should be balanced a bit). Do you guys think this would be feasible?
All CS have freshwater and are on a PH. I tried to make sure that there is one CS on the back and one facing the other teams, this did not work for gold, which is why I think their CS being more defensible might be feasible, but it also slows them conquering it in the first place.

The one tile islands and non-logical cost around has been replaced with ocean.
I kept some coastal connections and there still remain the coastal connections from the original generation which split the ocean areas and I could try to tune them down to create larger ocean areas, what do you think?

[suboptimal]

For the pink circle city-state SE of Gold, what if you took the island to its NE, shifted it that into the ocean area NE of the gold start and then rotated it 180 to have the river facing the start? Dunno what to do about the pink circle over by purple. However, the SE black city-state also appears to have one tile of ocean exposure...if that's the case then maybe add a couple of tiles to the SE red city-state (because there's room) and make that a 1-tile access. That'd even things out.

Otherwise I think it looks good.

I'll take a look at my HAMG tonight and see if I can come up with some workable contingency maps if they switch from teams to 6 or 7 person FFA.

[Kaiser]

Great idea with the the SE red CS and good that you picked up on the SE black CS, I completely overlooked it

Let us hope there will be a game starting anytime soon

[RefSteel]

Let us hope there will be a game starting anytime soon

It looks like there's a chance that it might!

I think removing the one-tile islands made a big difference - bigger than I expected! - and though I'd still recommend sinking most of the two-tile islands too, I think this is a big improvement. I don't know enough about Civ6 combat to comment on the shallow-sea bridges: Can melee ships attack from shallow water into deep water without being able to occupy the deep water tile? How many tiles of movement do typical shallow-water boats get each turn? I think it's important for the ability to enter ocean tiles to have significant tactical and strategic importance (regardless of whether Norway is in the game) but this may be true already in some parts of the map at least, and would be more so if some two-tile islands sink as well. Your point about choke points is a good one; my feeling about different "areas" of the map is basically that there should be some zones with choke points, some with open sea, some with choke-points-until-[civ6 equivalent of civ4 astronomy] and some with landlocked land, partly for variety and partly so that taking and holding a choke point can be a strategic decision instead of just the tactical choice of which among innumerable choke points can best be held immediately. Again though, I feel like sinking all those one-tile islands was a huge step in this direction. Lacking Civ6 knowledge though I do, I like the look of the map much more than a few days ago.

[suboptimal]

Generally speaking a melee unit in Civ VI cannot attack into a tile it cannot move into, so for instance a galley cannot attack a longboat that's in ocean. Most early-game boats can move 2 tiles.

[RefSteel]

Ah - thanks for the answers, suboptimal! That definitely suggests the shallow passages are going to speed exploration and early transit while leaving a lot of value for deep water navigation. Actually, looking at the map from a flipped perspective, I think my biggest remaining concern might be the single-tile (and to a slightly lesser extent two-, three-, or four-tile) deep ocean plots! For normal civs, I can see this functioning to create potential chokepoints prior to [whichever tech lets you sail on them] sort of like uninhabitable islands that can be traversed later in the game, but they feel unnatural aesthetically, and have the added disadvantage of basically giving Norway a bunch of free "pit stops" for healing and escaping galleys outside of "normal" ocean zones. My inclination would be to connect some of these to one another and/or larger spans of deep ocean, and raise others to become shallow water instead - but unlike one-tile islands, of which a small number can help lend character to a map, I do think tiny bits of deep ocean should be merged or removed wherever they are. Again, just an uninformed-about-civ6 mostly-aesthetic opinion in the hope that All Feedback Helps!