As much as I don't want to tech archery, I think we must. Maybe sometime soon we could also tech horseback riding and go ruin Menagerie's day?
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.
Cool. And yeah, opening the door for HBR is a side benefit if we feel that's a valid option down the road since we'll likely be settling for horses after this city.
I'd rather not go Archery next if it's not absolutely necessary. I agree that Menagerie's Power graph is looking scary, especially that latest spike on T46. However, I think they might have just gotten Archery themselves, which to me would signal a hot war on their other side, so they shouldn't be in any position to attack us.
YossarianLives Wrote:on Turn 46, Menagerie also had some score changes. They 2-pop whipped something for -8, then got +10 for a Tech plus pop (I think size 4 to 2, then size 2 to 3).
Looking at the full Power Graph, it looks like their first big spike around T25 was them finishing BW. Then it looks like 2k on T29 (Warrior), 1k on T30 (Pop), and 4k on T31 (The Wheel). Then there is nothing for about 11 or 12turns. Around T43, it looks like they got another 2k (Warrior), then about 3k on T46(Barracks? or Warrior and I'm reading it wrong?). This brings us to the big jump, which looks to be about 7k-10k (Rival Best Soldiers shot up 7k this turn, so they went up at least 7k soldiers). Seeing as how they whipped something and completed a Tech this turn, maybe this is their first advanced unit, along with Archery? It took them 7 turns to complete the tech, and Archery costs 84, so that seems to add up correctly.
OTOH, they definitely seem engaged in a military build-up, so if the pro's think we better start arming ourselves as well, then I won't argue.
Thanks Yossarian, that's really great stuff. I suck at reading graphs. If you're right and they did tech Archery, then that would be pretty conclusive to me that they're in a hot war with Pirates. Is there any way to confirm this?
The only way I can figure is sinking a turn into Archery and comparing beakers received with our bpt output. From there we should be able to calculate what kind of known tech bonus we're receiving, and therefore we'd know the # of met civs with archery. Right? The only wrinkles is we wouldn't know if TEAM had Archery or not - unless Yossarian figured that out too? Trolls we could just ask probably, but given they settled for copper they are almost guaranteed to have not bothered with Archery.
Thinking on that - I find it hard to believe they would have teched Archery even in a hot war. Surely they've got copper hooked, at which point axe/spears are going to be more hammer efficient than archers, right? So maybe it's something else. Sorry, stream-of-consciousness here. I just guess the only reason to tech Archery is if you're waiting on horse/copper like us, and from their graph they very clearly just built some sort of copper unit.
In the event that we don't take Archery next, I think it should probably be Writing. The right time to tech Mysticism is probably "3-4T before we want a Monument," and I don't think we're all that close to that just yet.
scooter Wrote:The only way I can figure is sinking a turn into Archery and comparing beakers received with our bpt output. From there we should be able to calculate what kind of known tech bonus we're receiving, and therefore we'd know the # of met civs with archery. Right?
Isn't it possible to do that by counting pixels? If you can take a widescreen screen shot with archery selected i'll give it a go.
Although I agree we should go archery next so no point.
For your sanity's sake, I'm not going to take that screenshot for you.
Anyways I tend to think 3T of teching into Archery is a worthy investment, even if it's just a paranoia thing. I don't think it necessarily slows down how quickly we would have built a Library, for instance.
SevenSpirits Wrote:No need to actually put a turn into archery or count pixels, just check our GNP with archery selected compared to our GNP with HBR selected.
Archer is 34 GNP, HBR is 33GNP. So somebody has Archery. No idea if it's TEAM or Menagerie.
SevenSpirits Wrote:No need to actually put a turn into archery or count pixels, just check our GNP with archery selected compared to our GNP with HBR selected.
Awww... someone always has to spoil the fun. Next you'll be telling me the little switch thingy controls the plug and I don't need to put my fingers in it to check if its on...
On m3 and archery - won't their copper be just as hard to get to as ours? Or are we sure that whip was an axe?
