[PB16 SPOILERS] SevenSpirits goes off the deep end and finds Krill

[SevenSpirits]

Just realized something. We only have vision to what looks like two of Gaspar's island cities, but we have trade routes to all of them. That implies that he has continuous culture between them, which is a little bit unlikely on its own. But the weirder part is that clearly the main point of the islands is they provide silver and gems, and Gaspar doesn't have either of those listed as tradeable resources. Could it be that there aren't any islands separating us? That would be truly bizarre, but it would also help justify retep starting farther inland and having claim to more than 50% of our continent, so I'm suspecting it might be true. If so that's great for us, that we happen to be on the side of our continent that gets silver and gems. In "exchange" it seems that retep gets the free mainland incense.

[WilliamLP]

> I'm interesting in having a metal loaned out, to support a future play of paying someone to take all our metals for 10 turns so we can build warriors.

I still claim the negative effect of warrior obsolescence is one of the dumbest mechanics in Civ IV but I think I'll always stand alone with this.

[Krill]

I had a look around. It looks like settling has slowed down, but looking through the cities, I think it's been done right; just need a few more workers...

I think the second island city is fine, we just need something that produces culture per turn there and pop borders quickly to 10, grow it, then pop it to 100 with caste artists and we'll get the fish.

[SevenSpirits]

Hmm, I wouldn't really say it has slowed down, even as a % rather than absolute rate. We produced 5 settlers during our last 5t in slavery and those cities are in the process of all being settled, even while the previous round of cities (whose settlers were produced near the end of the previous slavery time) are setting up. At no point in the past did we put out two large rounds of settlers so quickly after one another.

Regarding that city, 2-3 turns of an artist will be enough to get temporary control of the fish, and 1cpt permanently should be enough to keep it. It's in our first ring and his second.

I still claim the negative effect of warrior obsolescence is one of the dumbest mechanics in Civ IV but I think I'll always stand alone with this.

Yeah, I think it's a dumb mechanic but not in my list of top 20 things I'd want to be different, or even top 100 depending on how you count. BTW, I think the obsolescence itself is good, but the fact that you would WANT to build a warrior instead of a more modern unit is pretty dumb.

[SevenSpirits]

t107.

Met 2metraninja last turn and he's accepted OB. Also met Ad Hoc this turn and offered OB there too.




















Guesses for who is paired with whom are confirmed. Map appears to be laid out as follows:

Code:

[Mike?Bant][Wetb/Kuro][2met/Adho]
[Gava/Gasp][Retp/Sevn][Hash/Gore]

Don't know how Mikehendi and Bantams are oriented, but given we haven't met them and Mike's scouting is probably better than Bantams given they are doing best/worst in the game, I tentatively placed Mike in the spot that's farther from us.

There's also the issue of the possible lack of islands between retep and Gaspar, so I'm not sure if I'm missing something else about the layout.

[SevenSpirits]

Just noticed that our continent appears to be quite a bit worse than the Hashoosh/Goreripper continent, from what I can see so far. Main thing is they start with capitals a lot farther apart, which means less early conflict. Their capital centers are 14 apart compared to ours which are 9 apart. There are only 4 tiles of width between our capital BFCs, while there are 9 between theirs. That's a bit absurd. Then on top of that their capitals are half a tick better too. Hashoosh's is like ours except with a plains hill plant and furs instead of ivory. Gore's is like retep's but with the furs upgraded to ivory. It does seem like the capitals are fairly balanced within the continents but I find it disappointing that they are not balanced between them. I really dislike the mapmaking strategy of almost-mirroring but not making things balanced. The superficial mirroring promises balance that isn't there. If you're not going to give people similarly powerful capitals, I'd much rather the map be less mirrored. Having almost-identical caps with one player having an extra hammer every turn from t0 just feels like a slap in the face, even if e.g. the continent has 20% fewer resources overall or something like that.

[Ichabod]

Seven, what's your thoughts about the 2-hammer city center when settling on a plains hill feature? I think it severely imbalances the game and I don't hear much talk about this when people discuss balance. 2-hammer plants are what makes random maps very frustrating to play on most of the time for me, because there really is no way to overcome the fact that your opponent has one and you don't. Just see my 3 hammer plant on my Capital in PB13 - that made me be first in CY and MFG for most of the early game, while I'm nowhere as good as the other players on the game - and that's with a "slow" Capital other than that (2 clams, which are not a good seafood; unirrigated corn, which is also not that good; no rivers).

I really dislike this feature.

I'm asking this because you seem to have put a lot of thought into the balance of the game. I'm not sure if you talked about this already on the ToW Mod thread.

[SevenSpirits]

Well, I think it's strange to single out plains hill plants specifically. The more obvious issue is that someone might just have an extra corn or gold or whatever. And as far as random generation goes, the extra unfair resource only has to be anywhere in your BFC - the plains hill needs to be somewhere you're willing to move to, and often you give up a bit of value to get the plains hill. So although the plains hill can be just as strong as an extra resource moved into your BFC, in the random case you're probably not getting full value from it.

(An even worse problem on random maps, though it's harder to see just how impactful it is, is just the shape of the land.)

Ultimately I don't see any value in trying to remove the 2h start mechanic from the game to add balance. For multiplayer games, you should just get a mapmaker to make the map. If you're playing on a random map, it's because you want that random variation. Meanwhile I think the plains hill hammer bonus adds some interesting factors when planning out a dotmap, so it has some value.

[Ichabod]

Those are some very good points. It makes me think that I'm overreacting about it (just like you said, there's really no reason to single out the plains hill). It's probably just bias, but I often feel like a plains hill start gives such a huge boost compared to a no plains hill start (now that I think of it, probably because the effects of a plains hill start are easier to notice than that of an extra Capital corn, which will show a bit later and can be attributed to something else). Analysing things more rationally, I see that my observation doesn't stand.

Thanks for the answer.

[SevenSpirits]

t108

We were going to finish a worker in Going Postal which has 1 unhappiness. Unfortunately, we finished Calendar, instantly hooking up sugar and making the citizen happy. He produced nothing but reduced net foodhammers by 2, delaying the worker. Whoops.

Ad Hoc has accepted OB.

Offered Sugar to wetbandit for his (so far just singleton) calendar resource, I think it was spice. But he'd already played the turn so won't know until at least next turn. Someone else has Silk (ad hoc or 2metra, I think?) and Goreripper has a couple of Dyes. I don't feel the need to help Goreripper though, and we'll get our own silk from the island.