(May 21st, 2013, 02:48)Krill Wrote: I'm going to be a total bastard now and ask if every starting screen shot had the scout selected so the is no blue circle. If not...
Scout was selected on every screenshot.
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.
If some fucker chooses either Justinian or Lincoln I am going to be so pissed off. I want to go Meditation>Agri and I can waste a turn with the worker to ensure I can grow the capital to size 7 off hte fur and religion. I'll explain the pick (or rather why I think the original 6 I wanted aren't good enough with this start) later on.
I was hoping that I got a decent seafood start, but obviously that wasn't the case, so I had to ditch the Fishing civs. I wasn't sure that I wanted to play Asoka, I think the game will likely be called by T120 and maybe earlier so I don't think the traits will have a chance to shine, so Asoka was out. That left Louis and Augustus, and I don't really see much to suggest either is a good choice: Augustus doesn't have a good second city site that I can see to rush out to, and with Louis I think would have to rush the Mids but I don't trust myself to get it. Without the ability to get to 4h/turn on T0 I'm not sure I really wanted to play an EXP leader, especially with toroidal, so I didn't want to play Sury.
That didn't leave much for me to pick. I then looked at Zara for the following reasons:
I still need to pick a CRE leader on RB.
There are only 3 Myst civs, the other two being Justinian and Lincoln, so there is the chance I'm only the Myst civ.
With the furs I can settle the starting location and get a size 7 capital working 5 grass hills, furs and corn and hence no need to build a granary to pump out settlers (17hpt, 1fpt and 17 commerce/turn).
I could still get Agri within a turn of finishing the worker even if I went Meditation first, and the turns leeway means I can move the settler slightly further away from the corn without drastically affecting build times. The issue here is that all the forests really fuck up the scout moves.
Hunting isn't entirely wasted because I need it to hook up the furs, which gives a decent commerce bonus to speed up future tech and I want it hooked to work at size 2 at the latest (I don't want to move the worker to a second food resource and then back again to the furs, it'l hook the corn then the furs then the second food resource if it exists).
That means I'll have more time to get the second food tech which might be AH; if it is I'm going to have to get a settler out without slaving because I won't have any good tiles to work at size 4.
So I decided on Zara, risking someone else picking Justinian or Lincoln. If they do get picked, then I need to re-evaluate how to play out the start, but that is the gamble I've made and I think it's reasonably safe. I think out of the next 5 picks Sury might get taken by someone, at least 1 fishing civ will go that isn't Justinian, maybe someone takes Asoka.
FWIW, if the furs wasn't there I wouldn't have taken Zara, if there was a plain hill I'd likely have taken something else as well.
(May 20th, 2013, 19:59)NobleHelium Wrote: Krill, we've said several times that we don't play your mod because you make too many changes that we don't agree with. You make some changes that we do agree with, and swapping AH and Hunting is probably one of them, but I'm not interested in playing with the rest of your baggage just to get that fix.
I'll just say that I'm happy to have helped develop a mod and gametype that has been used for two PB games successfully with enough players to set up a third right now, when every PB before then had collapsed in ignominy and masochism. If there are enough people who think otherwise and are having fun playing with it, I couldn't care less about your opinion.
Ceil, if you do end up providing additional information, I'm gonna have to request you also reveal what if any second resource type I have and then potentially repick.
(May 20th, 2013, 19:59)NobleHelium Wrote: Krill, we've said several times that we don't play your mod because you make too many changes that we don't agree with. You make some changes that we do agree with, and swapping AH and Hunting is probably one of them, but I'm not interested in playing with the rest of your baggage just to get that fix.
I'll just say that I'm happy to have helped develop a mod and gametype that has been used for two PB games successfully with enough players to set up a third right now, when every PB before then had collapsed in ignominy and masochism. If there are enough people who think otherwise and are having fun playing with it, I couldn't care less about your opinion.
Why are you still trying to persuade us to play it then?
And what does the successfulness of the PBs have to do with anything? It's not like the mod has some quality that makes people less likely to get pissed off at each other or behave in a ridiculous manner like completely ignoring the spirit of the rules. The new PBs are played under AI diplo, and they don't have Lord Parkin in them. That is the difference.
There is a difference between explanation and persuasion. Pindicator has played in both RB mod PBs and I was explaining why it's difficult to balance civ picks; RB mod is a good example to contrast it to, and further developing the influence of food resources on the early game.
