Growth should continue rapidly over the next few turns, including the founding of the 5th city.
The GNP is inflated, I must admit, because we are researching Writing, but not by enough to drop us into second place (especially if that's Serdoa and his Stonehenge culture).
The production value is so low only because we have been prioritizing cottages over mines while making our pushes for religion; not a single mine in the empire is being worked this turn! In fact, every population point is either working a food resource or a riverside grassland cottage (or hamlet)! If the rival best crop yield and production are the same person, or something like that, that is a little scary, but I'm not too worried.
I have to recheck that trade route value; I forgot to take any city screenshots. It seems weird that the value would be 3, but my best guess is that all of the continental cities are just using trade routes with the island city, but the island city is getting a 3c trade route with Sian's cap (~1.1 + 100% different continent + 100% foreign trade route + 25% connection to the capital, rounded down)
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.
(July 20th, 2013, 19:11)Merovech Wrote: Great demos:
Growth should continue rapidly over the next few turns, including the founding of the 5th city.
Yep. I have nothing bad to say about our growth curve.
(July 20th, 2013, 19:11)Merovech Wrote: The GNP is inflated, I must admit, because we are researching Writing, but not by enough to drop us into second place (especially if that's Serdoa and his Stonehenge culture).
Well, yes our GNP is inflated by teching Writing (a tech everyone else we know already has, and have multiple pre-req's for), but we can probably match our rival best in GNP without those bonuses, not to mention that we have no wonders or religions inflating our gnp. Waiting to see what it's like after Writing will give us a better idea.
(July 20th, 2013, 19:11)Merovech Wrote: The production value is so low only because we have been prioritizing cottages over mines while making our pushes for religion; not a single mine in the empire is being worked this turn! In fact, every population point is either working a food resource or a riverside grassland cottage (or hamlet)! If the rival best crop yield and production are the same person, or something like that, that is a little scary, but I'm not too worried.
Simply knowing the reason why we suck in a particular category doesn't make it less important. Indeed MFG is quite powerful early on, and it's probably going to be the category we'll have the most trouble in. Slaving will be necessary for us to keep up the pace in everyone else's MFG.
(July 20th, 2013, 19:11)Merovech Wrote: I have to recheck that trade route value; I forgot to take any city screenshots. It seems weird that the value would be 3, but my best guess is that all of the continental cities are just using trade routes with the island city, but the island city is getting a 3c trade route with Sian's cap (~1.1 + 100% different continent + 100% foreign trade route + 25% connection to the capital, rounded down)
Your right, all our mainland cities have a trade route with our 4th city, and our 4th city has a 3cpt trade route with Sian's cap. Considering we're probably going to have multiple domestic intercontinental trade routes as a result, getting OB with Sian probably won't even amount to much difference in the long run. Ah well.
Seeing as I didn't consider trade routes before, this gives us a better reason to research currency early, as every city will benefit a huge amount from having another free intercontinental trade route. Sadly, it isn't really on the tech path we want to be pursuing since we want to be going down the religious line, but we do want/need currency sooner rather then later. Something we need to talk about, in any case.
Yeah, I'm thinking that after CoL and maybe Monotheism, Math and Currency will be great. A little later than I would want, but I think, for example, that we should definitely tech those before Aesthetics.
All in all, I think that we gained something like ~30c + 1c per turn from open borders with Sian.
(July 20th, 2013, 21:48)WarriorKnight Wrote:
(July 20th, 2013, 19:11)Merovech Wrote: The production value is so low only because we have been prioritizing cottages over mines while making our pushes for religion; not a single mine in the empire is being worked this turn! In fact, every population point is either working a food resource or a riverside grassland cottage (or hamlet)! If the rival best crop yield and production are the same person, or something like that, that is a little scary, but I'm not too worried.
Simply knowing the reason why we suck in a particular category doesn't make it less important. Indeed MFG is quite powerful early on, and it's probably going to be the category we'll have the most trouble in. Slaving will be necessary for us to keep up the pace in everyone else's MFG.
True, true, I meant more that we could switch to heavy production (not 26 production, but at least average production) if we wanted to do so (and we'll pick up a 1/5/0 copper mine in the fourth city soon, nearly doubling our mfg). But yeah, you're completely right that we need to actually use that high amount of food to cover the low amount of production.
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.
So, things might be a bit more barren to the South than I thought. Still, we'll get at least 1 more good city down there (clams + horses + possible fog resources) and the current island city should be quite nice, eventually, with it's food and river. Lots of forests down there, too, so they'll be quickly up to par. We probably need to send a second worker down there soonish, though, and the workboat for the next city will be trailing a little behind the settler and 4/0/2 clams aren't great. I didn't micro that out very well (or, more accurately, I completed the settler more quickly that I though that I would). Still, I think it'll only go a turn or three at the most without an improved tile, depending on if the warrior reveals anything pretty. Heh, we had two workers and one city, and three workers and two cities, but now we have four cities and a settler en route with just three workers! Empires with lots of sea resources can get away with that, and a fourth worker will be completed in 4 turns.
Demos are solid. GNP is down and production is up compared to last turn because I want to get that workboat to the soon-to-be founded city ASAP. I probably should have ran this tile configuration last turn, actually.
Our score is still hilariously low, considering how decent our position is (remember, land area does not include sea tiles, of which we have plenty).
Any lurker questions/comments?
Edit: As a side note, we should probably not accept open borders with Yuri if he offers them. We will gain nothing, and he will gain at least 4c per turn. His GNP has collapsed, but his MFG and crop yield are still very good, plus he was very annoying with his warrior.
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.
Everything is more or less going as planned. We did gain 14 points over the last two turns, lol, which I find humorous, since that is just about 10% of our total score right now. I do have two questions for the next turn on which I'd like your opinion:
1) What should we build in Ravioli? I have it currently set to a library, since I imagine that we will eventually cottage most of those grassland tiles, and in the meantime, we have plenty of food to run a few scientists for an Academy without immediately using Caste (or to jumpstart a caste-driven specialist farm). I'm not sure if it's a great long-term GP farm, but it has plenty of food to do so in the short term. On the other hand, we could go for a lighthouse. That's an immediate +1food per turn, and eventually (although a long ways down the road) allows us to grow onto mediocre 2/0/2 tiles. (We should definitely build a lighthouse after the worker in Spaghetti, since it's perma-working two seafood resources).
(There are workers on the corn farming, for anyone curious, and one of the warriors has already moved North)
2) How should we settle the South? I see two main options. First, we could simply settle one great city 1SW of the settler, hoping that we don't strand any resources in the three fogged tiles that city wouldn't claim. Alternatively, we could settle two cities, the first 1E of the fish and the other 1S or 2S of the horses. One thing to keep in mind that isn't immediately obvious: Settling one super-city would strand many forests into the third-ring category, where we would get a bit less hammers from chopping them.
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.
Uhh, 2. Less than I thought at first glance, actually.
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.
Hey Merovech, nice thread. Things are looking good in game too. Good luck!
Have you been getting "screenshot failed" messages? That usually seems to happen if your window isn't entirely on screen, so a different resolution might help.
Raviolli could do a library. Even if we're heading to CoL right now, a head start on a GS could be useful. It's not great, but I don't think we really need a non-ORG lighthouse just yet. Are you planning that as the next serious building or just putting hammers into it while either recovering from a whip or in preparation for a worker/settler? Cause if the economy can support it I'd probably favor more growth.
Not sure about the island settling though. From pure guesswork, I don't think there's be any other seafood to the SW since we can see 3 already, but we have missed seafood before. Do you feel like waiting a turn to see if we find any to influence our decision? Otherwise, I'd probably favor the super city since we pick up most of the good tiles, skipping the junk ocean and leaves us with less cities to defend post-Astro. Even if forests aren't within the BFC, we can always use them later on if we need to.
Okay, I think that's the right call, but since we don't have a work boat or worker in place immediately, I don't think that it's too big of a deal to spend one turn moving the settler to just make sure that there is not seafood in the fog. The city should be a net positive even working an unimproved tile, but just barely, so it won't hurt the city or our push for CoL to delay for a turn, even in the worst-case scenario that all we did was waste a turn.
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.
I have nothing bad to say about our growth curve.
I didn't micro that out very well (or, more accurately, I completed the settler more quickly that I though that I would). Still, I think it'll only go a turn or three at the most without an improved tile, depending on if the warrior reveals anything pretty. Heh, we had two workers and one city, and three workers and two cities, but now we have four cities and a settler en route with just three workers! Empires with lots of sea resources can get away with that, and a fourth worker will be completed in 4 turns.
