I said I would declare a "winner", so here you go. Greatest plan of the potluck was submitted by:
The Black Sword!
I guess if you've been following along you won't be surprised by this. What really struck me though was two things:
1) The large number of plans that had something special going for them compared to other plans.
2) The large number of plans which could easily be improved.
I was talking with Krill yesterday and he commented that he expected I had some trouble telling the plans apart after a while when I played through them. But no, I didn't at all. Each one had its own personality. I was really pleasantly surprised by this - that it wasn't just a question of how many mistakes each plan had. What I think it demonstrates, though, is that it's much easier to refine and perfect a plan if there's more than one person working on it. Each person will have some really brilliant ideas but also some blind spots. I know this already, from playing both on teams and solo in the past, and I think anyone who's played on a team which did some micro planning knows this too. I never saw it so clearly demonstrated, though.
Anyway, I considered giving out 3 awards, e.g. gold, silver, and bronze. But other than TBS's plan I had a really hard time deciding between the rest, as they all had different and hard-to-compare strong points. Thank you all for submitting plans and thoughts - I enjoyed checking out every one!
I've heard there's interest in more of these. I'm happy to provide more challenges, but I'm not planning to give feedback on them like this time. It took a looooot of time and I'm not up to doing it again. Of course if anyone else wants to give that job a try they are welcome. (Similarly if anyone wants to run another round of this (i.e. creating a thread and providing a starting save) that would be great!)
If anyone has thoughts about the scenario or any kind of feedback on the event I'd love to hear it. And if anyone has something they'd like to see for the next one, this is now the place to post it!
Seven - thanks for the game and for the feedback. I agree that I probably had some transcription errors - I felt kind of rushed. I guess with the "competition" over, no reason to spoiler my comments any more
As for going for the Wheel early - my thinking there was to speed up the settlers. The initial road sped up the movement of the settler to the coal hill by 1t, which I thought was worthwhile. You are correct that I did not realize that the coal hill was on the trade network already - that might have adjusted my thinking.
I swear I'll get around to finishing this eventually...
(I'm keeping myself unspoiled, too).
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.
Thanks for running it Seven, it was very interesting.
Quote:I was talking with Krill yesterday and he commented that he expected I had some trouble telling the plans apart after a while when I played through them. But no, I didn't at all. Each one had its own personality. I was really pleasantly surprised by this - that it wasn't just a question of how many mistakes each plan had. What I think it demonstrates, though, is that it's much easier to refine and perfect a plan if there's more than one person working on it. Each person will have some really brilliant ideas but also some blind spots.
I was really surprised by this too, I thought I spent a fair amount of time trying things out but there were some ideas that I didn't even consider(like 3rd city for horse+copper for example or the sheep+corn 3rd city also for that matter.).
Went for the plainshill plant in my first attempt, planning for a banana farm together with the corn to get into doublewhips asap. The extra hammers were less useful than I thought as I spent a lot of turns growing on warriors. Banana plant is much better since you grow faster and conserve a wooded plains hill and gets wooded which means fast imperialist settlers with few worker turns --> more chops. I'm not convinced about Pottery before AH as there so many good sheep and pig tiles to improve. My attempt at an AH strategy below:
Tech: BW, Hunt, AH, Wheel, Pottery (turn 30). Switched to slavery while moving first settler.
Build order Beijing: Worker, grow on warrior till size 4, Settler for Shanghai 5 N, Worker, Settler (2-popWhipped), Worker, rest of warrior while grow to 3, Settler - 1 turn.
Worker 1: Corn farm, Grass Mine N of Beijing, Chop3 N of Beijing for worker 2, Chop 4N1E for Shanghai worker, improve sheep, Chop for Beijing
Shanghai: worker (improves pigs), Grow on warrior
Of course if anyone else wants to give that job a try they are welcome. (Similarly if anyone wants to run another round of this (i.e. creating a thread and providing a starting save) that would be great!)
![[Image: Civ4ScreenShot0076.JPG]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25117426/Screenshots/Civ4ScreenShot0076.JPG)