[SPOILERS] Map Creation Thread for PBEM25

[SevenSpirits]

Players go away!


















































...

[SevenSpirits]

Info I plan to give to each player for the snake pick:

This map is 30x30, toroidal, and has no saltwater. Your warrior will be replaced by a scout if you take a hunting civ.

More pics:

As you can see this map is pretty mirrored. In fact there are only a few non-mirrored things - the luxuries. Every player's "area" has two copies each of two luxes. There is a third copy of each luxury on the opposite side of the map. (Due to the toroidal nature of the map, being opposite a player means being equidistant to the other four players.) The pairings are:

Desert hill gold / grass jungle silk
Grass hill gems / grass jungle spice
Plains hill silver / grass wine
Grass hill forest furs / grass jungle sugar
Grass ivory / grass jungle dyes

Additionally (to compensate for being crappier - not doubled by forge, and eventually obsolete) the furs/elephants players have a single desert incense replacing a grass forest. And on the far side of the world from each of them is another desert incense replacing an oasis.

I was planning to make some more inconsequential changes - swap a plains/grass, move a hill, etc, to make it less mirrored, but I'm not sure it's worth the effort to be honest.

Comments?

[novice]

Should be pretty balanced, at least... That map makes my head spin though.

[SevenSpirits]

Here's a diagram of the map layout. I've added copies of everything to make it clearer how the toroidal scrolling works out. Letters are 12x12 squares centered on the player, the smaller boxes are 6x6 squares opposite the players.

[Lewwyn]

I was looking at the lux resource thing and one of the things that is really important early game are those early metals. They give significantly more commerce per turn than the furs and ivory. Additionally, grass wines is much superior to all the calendar resources. My suggestion is twofold.

1) The Silver/wine duo should swap with the ivory dyes so that we have Silver/dyes and ivory/wines.

2) The non metal starts, fur/sugar and ivory/dyes could be given a couple extra river tiles in their starts.

Giving them Incense is a good way to balance the happy resources for mid and later game, but it doesn't address the advantage that Gold or Gems give to a player who mines them early and works them continuously. As it stands, if I had a choice I would pick the Silver/Wines first, then Gold/Silk and Gems/Spice. I think additional river tiles just outside the capital might be helpful in giving the furs and ivory players a little extra commerce.

Another option is giving the fur starters 2 furs to work instead of just one.

Maybe I'm being anal about it, but I think its a legitimate concern.

[Krill]

I bet someone picks an Agri start and moves the settler 2SW.

[SevenSpirits]

I bet someone picks an Agri start and moves the settler 2SW.

At random? The corn's not visible.

[Krill]

Not so much at random, but they know there is a river over there and grasslands. The north is a lake, the south has no river, the east is jungle and they can use the warrior to see there are grass forests down there to chop. Moving 2SE means they can settle the turn after next to the river on flatland, but if they move the warrior SW again (which makes sense if you move him SW on the first turn to support the settler move) then they'll see the corn. They'll likely settle next to the lake, which means they'd also have copper.

[SevenSpirits]

Fair enough.

I decided to block off that route with a forest and additionally give a plains hill start. Warrior/scout is moved 1W so the pig is still visible.



To make the PH start a bit less good for expansive (though the lake fish already helps with that) I removed all 2h tiles from the first ring. (Removed a forest from a hill, turned another into flatland.)

[SevenSpirits]

I was looking at the lux resource thing and one of the things that is really important early game are those early metals. They give significantly more commerce per turn than the furs and ivory. Additionally, grass wines is much superior to all the calendar resources. My suggestion is twofold.

1) The Silver/wine duo should swap with the ivory dyes so that we have Silver/dyes and ivory/wines.

2) The non metal starts, fur/sugar and ivory/dyes could be given a couple extra river tiles in their starts.

Giving them Incense is a good way to balance the happy resources for mid and later game, but it doesn't address the advantage that Gold or Gems give to a player who mines them early and works them continuously. As it stands, if I had a choice I would pick the Silver/Wines first, then Gold/Silk and Gems/Spice. I think additional river tiles just outside the capital might be helpful in giving the furs and ivory players a little extra commerce.

I think I'll probably just go with the solution of adjusting river tile counts. Here's the yields of that nearby metal/animal, how I would rank them (solely by yield):

1/2/6 gems
0/2/7 gold
0/3/5 silver
1/2/4 fur
2/2/1 elephant

I'd say there is about a 3c difference from best to worst, which is not that much. Having incense later for more extra potential happy might be more important than that. So I think what I will do is add a couple nearby river tiles for the camp players, and the same number of far-away river tiles for the mine players. Additionally I'm going to permute the land a little bit, shift hills/plains/grass around a tiny bit so it's not completely mirrored.

Any other opinions on the luxes? Obviously I'd prefer to be fair there.

Oh btw I added two whales per player to the map, so make optics (and markets) a tiny bit less terrible.

Edit: Also since all the other Luxury Resource Bs are jungled, I jungled the wines.