[SPOILERS] - Gandhi of Mali - Krill

[Commodore]

I just don't know what to say, but Commodore, this is a really bad map for a limited cities game. I honestly think you need to remake the map from the ground up, coastal maps are too broken for these types of games.

Always listening for input, what is it about the coastal-ness that is particularly broken? (ignore the NE and SE coast into the fog, they ought to say "construction site")

[Krill]

In a limited cities game you are very production limited. We all have no choice but to settle 3 coastal cities and focus on a naval game come the IND era - if we only plant 2 cities we'd get crushed and then have 2 of our cities shut down totally. That basically ends the game. We can't rely on the land tiles because there just aren't enough - none of the cities can afford to overlap more than a single (bad) tile.

Add on to that you are basically forcing players to go straight to MC to get triremes to defend their coastal cities and screw over their opponents, the game just became a one right choice decision. It's defend, tech to Destroyers, win the game.

The map doesn't actually look bad for a normal game, AW or not, but it won't work well for a limited cities game. Limited cities games basically need straight land maps, a highlands map or really tight TBG map. Or maybe a tiny donut with peaks around the outside. Anything but a coastal game.

To leave you with a straight forward question: would you play that out as an OCC?

[Commodore]

To leave you with a straight forward question: would you play that out as an OCC?

Hum, probably, but that's mostly because AI are morons. Duly noted, see tech thread.

[Krill]

Hum, well, after some complaints from scooter and Krill and some of my own doubts, let me add an addemendum: This is a map with land as the way to fight your opposition. You'll have coastal capitals as an option, but there will be peaks or ice facing you if you try Viking crap on someone.

This isn't a solution: either you've blocked the early routes with ice, in which case the same problems still exists with destroyers and galleons breaking hte game (so same metagame exists) or you've iced up the entire way in which what's the point in this being coastal? You've just limited everyone to having to deal with 1 route of invasion and that basically removes the barbs from the game, and makes it significantly easier to defend.

[Krill]

Commodore, I'm not actually sure you get this, but...we don't actually need more than about 300 tiles to use on this map. That's it. Maybe 360, on a 18*20 tile map. If the map is on an actual Tiny map script, the rest won't get used and just creates a builder game. A map with more than 500 tiles of land is just too large. We won't plant cities more than about 6 tiles apart either, so unless you make the land absolutely atrocious so that we can't plant like that to force us to plant far apart we'll have nothing to fight over. And if the land is that bad, well, everyone will end up bitching.

[SevenSpirits]

It sure didn't sound from the setup thread like the point was to fight over land. I mean, you're limited to three cities and raging barbs are on!

[Krill]

We understood it (speaking for Cyneheard and myself here, but I think scooter and Dazed as I've chatted with them a fair bit) that this game is basically a game that is fighting against the barbs to expand and then fighting against each other because our cities are going to be close together (read: fat crosses touching, potential one moves).

This is a buildfest. Even Raging barbs aren't going to do anything.

[Krill]

I mean, I shouldn't complain, I got pretty much the perfect leader for this land. At size 7 I can easily work 4 specs if I settle 1S. The land is that bad though I don't actually need to tech anything after CoL IMO. Probably Monarchy, Feud and Lit and I can just turn tech off.

[SevenSpirits]

We understood it (speaking for Cyneheard and myself here, but I think scooter and Dazed as I've chatted with them a fair bit) that this game is basically a game that is fighting against the barbs to expand and then fighting against each other because our cities are going to be close together (read: fat crosses touching, potential one moves).

Isn't that impossible? That would imply that like three units from each player would fogbust the entire world.

[Krill]

Barbs start spawning on turn 13, the world isn't going to be fogbusted that early, so barbs are a problem right at the start. The game would then progress into an AW game (and we'll each have a military to use there due to fighting the barbs). And with a lush map and nothing to build after city 3 we have plenty of extra hammers to spend on military.