Thread title says it all.
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[Spoilers] PB12 Lurker Thread: Where everyone blames the mapmaker
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May 12th, 2013, 12:52
(This post was last modified: May 12th, 2013, 12:54 by Oxyphenbutazone.)
To what extent were these starts balanced? Seems like Slow's start is far superior to say, Serdoa's. BaII has wet corn+PH+forested deer+2 FP as a capital!
Also, is the map going to be revealed this game?  (May 12th, 2013, 12:52)Oxyphenbutazone Wrote: To what extent were these starts balanced? Seems like Slow's start is far superior to say, Serdoa's. BaII has wet corn+PH+forested deer+2 FP as a capital! I'll but the tl;dr at the top. It's balanced according to my game knowledge. I don't know how other people like Plako and Commodore balance maps, so my explanation applies only to how my own rules of balancing, and the requirements from the players. First of all the players asked for a none mirror map and to me that means the starts can't be mirrored. There are two options here, I design 10 starting locations (all 21 tiles) prior to rolling the map and then randomise who gets what start, or I roll a map, and then try to balance each start afterwards to be playable or balanced. Now, the former option has problems, and that is not knowing if a starting location is going to be coastal, what other starting resources are nearby, or even where second and third city locations are likely to go. This can be be seen in the PB4 map, where everyone had an identical start, but the surrounding lands affected players T0 choices and actually lead to the game breaking down on T0 (Thanks rego and sunrise). The latter option has at least 2 levels of "balance", an ideal balance and "playable" balance. Ideal balance where each start has almost identical starting resources, say one 5 food resource and one 4 food resource, 3 hills..the only real difference the the original concept is that I'm taking into account the surrounding land. But if I do this it's still close to a mirror starting location. "Playable" balance on the other hand is best described as an holistic approach, where I try to understand how a player will expand, what happiness resources they have, the location of their strat resources, early tech choices. I basically try to figure out how a start can be played from T0 for the first 50 turns, and how each civ will interact with it's neighbours and the likely consequences. I'm using information that isn't visible from starting screenshots to make these judgements. For example, I know the Slowcheetah has to move his settler for 2 turns to get both gold into his capital, and I know exactly how many food resources he'll have if he does that. So I'm confident that given my level of ability playing each start, there is no single start that I expect to run away with this game from T0. There are no players that I think are at risk of getting chariot rushed if they take appropriate precautions, no civ that has no room for expansion if they choose to expand quickly. That doesn't mean that a player can't make a decision that in hindsight means they probably lose the game. And to be entirely honest, that's one reason why I'm happy they want this map type and look: it means that we can compare RB mod and base game on the same map set up. 
Gav will hang himself one way or the other, it appears, but at least Korea isn't BtS Portugal*.
*RBmod Portugal might in fact be my first choice if I was assuming this would be a continents or islands style map.
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.
I write RPG adventures, and blog about it, check it out.
Also, I hate HC, I would (and, heh, did) pick Darius or Izzy over him in a heartbeat.
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.
I write RPG adventures, and blog about it, check it out. |
