How up-to-date are the tile improvements/other things that don't automatically update? That land seems pretty underdeveloped.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
Merovech Wrote:How up-to-date are the tile improvements/other things that don't automatically update? That land seems pretty underdeveloped.
I don't THINK those update without a world map trade, which we're probably not going to do. The one thing that *I* noticed is that it seems like there's room for another city in the middle there (NW of Tarsonis). There's no food tiles, but lots of grassland, so it's probably worth a filler city there (you can bring the irrigation in either way, though of course it looks like he's blocked that with cottages )
Though to be fair, he may not have Civil Service at this point.... (like us)
Also - is there room on a galley for our GG axeman? He has a spare promo that could be used on Medic 1 - otherwise we don't have a medic currently. I've moved him down towards CJ just in case we can find a berth for him
And since you're not around, I'll keep regoarrarring up the thread by pointing out that one other thing is that I realized that we don't want to chop the tile SW of Schweddy Balls, since having that forest there prevents us from being 1-moved out of the fog by Yuri's (hypothetical?) knights.
YURI - WHY ARE YOUR CITIES SO DANG FAR APART?!?!!?
PBEM 38 Spoiler:
He spaced his cities pretty far apart (and not super well) in PBEM 38 as well.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
Quote:1) What is our goal? What criteria define "success" in this case?
2) Strategically, where are the weak points. With a 2 mover stack, we need to look for ways that we can cut off and fork his cities.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say our goal is taking over administration of Yuri's land. I think what we need to define for our 33 knights is "how do we use this force to achieve that goal?" For instance, do we try to win the war in one push or try to cripple him now then mop up later down the tech path? What tactics do we use to take over his land?
* IMO top priority is we need to find and neutralize his army. Let's get those spies out into his lands. They need to locate any troops near the border cities, especially a catapult stack and any other mobile defenders. If we can get the jump on his catapults (or even just keep tabs on them so we know where not to move) then we have a leg up. Even better if we can destroy them and take over control of the battlefield.
* You had a great idea earlier with going after the iron. Even if we can't take it out on the first turn of the war with our amphib knight then it is still worth doing. I think the goal after taking Char needs to be eliminating that iron mine. The horse & copper is too far away (for now), although maybe Funyon's job becomes trying to take out his strategic resources. We have some flexibility there if we choose.
* That Fork Tile may actually be one we consider later on. Take this battle path for instance: Char -> iron tile -> Tarsonis. If we can take Tarsonis then that Fork Tile becomes a very plausible target. So yeah, we can fork the US via Kansas, especially if we're invading via Canada or Mexico.
* Yuri's spread out cities will actually help us keep cities we capture (if we choose to). With less cultural overlap there is a chance we can do less raze & replace.
Initial thoughts on an attack plan are: Char -> Tarsonis -> "Fork Tile" or Char -> Xil -> Tarsonis / Monolyth (depending on Yuri's force distribution). The problem with going Char -> Tarsonis is that we're likely to face whatever defenses Yuri has in full force at that city. (So lets get a spy down there.) But you can't really go anywhere else after Char than those two targets.
Funyon / Dumbo Drop - this really depends on how the war is going. It could just be worth it to keep all those units aboard the ships and go down his coast, making him tie up troops for the defense down south and giving our knights freer reign. I wouldn't go for his Inferno Island holdings unless either the main force is a stalemate or we are just romping Yuri's troops.
Going to get a run in and try to get the creativity going. Maybe we can do something a bit less orthodox to get his defenses off balance.
![[Image: Civ4ScreenShot0354.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8082680/pb5/Civ4ScreenShot0354.JPG)
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