[NO PLAYERS] Seeding and ranking discussion

[GermanJoey]

Thanks for the thoughts, Fenn. Would you mind ranking each start with a number from 1 to 10?

Here's a reference with the player numbers on them:




And anyone else, please... only three people (Commodore, Bacchus, and myself) have ranked the map so far.

[Bacchus]

Speak up, men!

[AdrienIer]

I'll rank the map in a few hours

[AdrienIer]

The start 5-start 0-start 6 triangle favors start 5. He has some big islands to his south and west that he'll be able to settle even if he's boxed in by the others. Player 0 has many possibilities but very poor land. The area to his NW is really bad, and player 8 has an incentive to go there (because the land SSE of his capital are devoid of food) and should have time to take the good spots before player 8 can get there.

Player 3 has little good land as well, and shouldn't go to one of the newbies. Unlike spots 4 and 2 which have good expansion prospects, 4 being slightly easier to use due to not needing boats from the 4th city onwards. I would suggest deleting some of the jungle south of player 4 and deleting the mountain south of player 2 to get him access towards the ice lands (maybe tone the ice down a bit, replace the tundra with plains and some of the ice with tundra). Player 2 has no copper available without boats which is problematic.

Player 9's capital is dreadful, that player is really in a tough spot. At least he can build wonders. Player 7's start has less land but the land has better quality. Overall I'd rate them from best to worst 5>4>2>6>3>8=0=1>7=9. More or less.

[Fenn]

My map rankings. I didn't put a whole lot of thought into these but I think they make sense:
P0: 4
P1: 5 (not a great spot, but his closest neighbour has it worse)
P2: 7 (has several islands, isolation can be a boon. Biggest flaw is the land to the south is tundra junk)
P3: 5
P4: 7 (easier expansion than 2, but not as easy access to islands)
P5: 9 ( food-rich capital and good land overall, private island to the south, no immediate neighbours)
P6: 3 (don't give this to one of the newbies as-is)
P7: 5 (not much land, but the capital is good and has decent chances of expanding overseas)
P8: 4 (squeezed for good land, has to run up against 0 and 3)
P9: 3 (only a Sheep for food, not seeing any great spots for a second city. At least the massive desert/tundra keeps P1 away)

[GermanJoey]

Thank you very much, Fenn and Adrien. I added your ratings to the googledoc:



I think with 5 map ratings now, we can finally move ahead?

FOCUSING JUST ON NEIGHBORS, here's how I'd place 'em (islands and/or bulges for extra connections are green lines):

Alhazzard is the only one who screams "rougher than warranted" to me, and he does have best access to the Tasty Trio. Give him one of the more militaristic combo sets? Molach also would need some decent fighting leaders/civs, but I was impressed by his land-holding in PB18.

Edit: I could also see shifting Ipecac to his south coast.

Here's the ratings for this scheme, with REM and Dantski swapped, as Krill suggested.



The last column is the one you should be interested in. For this one, I subtracted the average error (-0.75) from each person and then rounded them to the nearest 0.5.

• Old Harry: 0
  
• Gavagai: 0
  
• 2metra + OT4E: -1
  
• REM: +2.5
  
• Alhazard: -2.5
  
• ipecac: +1
  
• Greywolf: -0.5
  
• TheWannabe: -0.5
  
• Dantski: -2.5
  
• Molach: +1
  

Remember, negative numbers mean "hard" while positive numbers mean "easy."

The three that stand out are REM (too easy), Alhazard (too hard), and Dantski (too hard). I think these guys are the ones who need their land adjusted. One easy way to get them all at once, with very minimal changes to the map geography, would be to go back to the floodplain suggestion I had earlier:

But just leave off the floodplains and crab on REM's side. That should adjust each of them by about 1.5 towards the center apiece or something; maybe toss Al an early luxury too.

For the rest, we can adjust them with combos. Maybe something like, if a player is at 0.0, they get middle-tier combos from the list, while a player at +1 gets good combos and a player at -1 gets bad combos. What do you guys think?

[Dreylin]

The problem I see with the chokepoint for player 8 is actually placing a pair of cities. Right now they have to decide which side they want to put the "good" (hilled) city, and which to put on the Floodplains themselves. Fine dilemma for a T1-2 player, but maybe not for a T3. Maybe turn the coast tile 1w of the Crab into another hill so they can plant there an 1SW of Wheat?

[Bacchus]

I'm fine with GJ's last, but could someone through up a map with the layout as suggested by me above? Just for the sakes of considering an alternative, especially as 2.5 points seems like a lot to fix through combos alone.

[GermanJoey]

I was hoping Commodore would say something, but if we don't hear from him by tomorrow afternoon I guess I could do it.

This game concept really fell apart; I am baffled at how little feedback this thread got, especially for a game set up by a guy as universally liked as Harry.

[Commodore]

Yeah, not a ton of feedback. Frankly, the ratings have issues too...OH is over Gav, but really only 20% better? And 50% better than Alhazard? Think that's a bit understated, and the mechanism above is majorly underrating the Neighbor Effect too. But if you want to plug in Bacchus' suggested set up into your grid that's fine. Honestly, nothing we do is stopping this from being an OH stomp.