This is quite a nice trick, waterbat and fluffyflyingpig. Thanks for sharing.
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.
Yeah, quite interesting. Though I guess mainly usable for important tiles. But it might be a way to track their cultural progress and newly claimed tiles, too.
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I used Waterbat's worker trick to check how close CFC would be to settle westwards (ie towards us), and found a finished cottage 1NW of Indira, and another nearly finished 2W of Indira. There were however no roads leading westwards from the capital or Daivagati, and no signs of development around the pig and cow to their west either.
Ie, there are currently no plans being executed by CFC for a westwards expansion from what I can tell.
For the Germans, I also did a quick check, and they've cottaged the flood plains 1E of Worms that was farmed earlier, but I couldn't find any other new cottages, even on the riverside grass 1NE of the jungled pigs.
I also found a quirk in this: it only works if you have OB with the team in question. I couldn't use it on CivPlayers unless I declared war (which I carefully avoided to do).
Oh, and we've met the Spanish! That's one nicely promoted impi (of course, it's not level 4 yet, with C1 free).
They have contact with the Germans and CFC among our contacts, and OB with CFC. They run Slavery but nothing else. 0 surplus gold, but 195 stockpiled gold. They do not show up in F8. GNP analysis shows they know Masonry (we can run 40% research and still finish it, actually, which I think we should do).
Diplo overview shot and diplo deals
Another team that couldn't be bothered to name their cities and units...
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CFC just 3-pop-whipped the city of Mantra, going from 30H invested to 120H. Quite probably a settler whip. It is now size 3, and CFC has 30 pop now.
The two probable options would be to send it northeast, eg to the desert hill where CFC Welcome Wagon is right now (picking up three flood plains otherwise unused, and sharing several with Raj and Lana), or send it westwards. However, we will whip our settlers next turn, and our road network is far more developed towards the oasis (our road head is 3W of the oasis; they have hardly any roads west of Indira).
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Another small tidbit. The WPC city of Great Plains isn't connected to the rest of the WPC cities yet, as far as I can tell, despite being founded on T88. Ie, a five turns old city doesn't have a road connection yet.
I was intrigued that we only received 20 in foreign trade, despite the Germans having six cities and WPC five, so I checked the trade routes of our cities. Great Plains is missing.
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Also, both CFC and at least one more team has really turned on the research. Rival best in GNP rose from 128 to 159, and the rival average from 78 to 90 compared to the previous check this turn.
It is almost certainly CivFr (Apolyton hasn't logged in between the two checks), turning back on research after stockpiling gold for two turns.
For that matter, I just checked Apolyton, and they haven't researched a tech since T83. Since then we have researched two classical techs (Calendar and Currency), and CivFr two ancient and one classical. Not sure what's up with that, they're deep into diminishing returns going this long without any new techs. Especially since their costs should be fairly modest.
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That's one possibility. Another is that they're going for some really expensive tech. The only fit I can think of for that is Theology, if they've decided they really must have a religion.
It took us 6t to get Currency (720b), and Theology is 900b, 25% more. The other expensive tech option would be Metal Casting, but that's less expensive, and it's not like the Colossus is that strong on this map.
But it's sure odd.
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The only waypoint trick I was familiar with from these forums was using it to calculate the payout of a Great Merchant. Definitely some nice work there waterbat and fluffyflyingpig!!
![[Image: ISDG-T93-diplo-overview.jpg]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/10039024/ISDG-T93-diplo-overview.jpg)
![[Image: ISDG-T93-spanish-diplo.jpg]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/10039024/ISDG-T93-spanish-diplo.jpg)
![[Image: ISDG-T93-post-cfc-demos.jpg]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/10039024/ISDG-T93-post-cfc-demos.jpg)
