[SPOILERS - NO PLAYERS] The Final Clusterfuck: The PB38 Map and Lurker Thread

[Cornflakes]

And a screenshot of GJ's debug:

   

[Mardoc]

Looks generally good! My only concern is that the jungle line ended up going through the pentagons on the bends - makes it hard to convince those people to interact with each other instead of spreading apart. I suppose we can take a machete to the jungle in the pentagons themselves, replant with enough forest to make it look jungle-y, and call that good enough. Then leave the jungle in the spots where we want barriers.

It looks like you haven't placed the rivers? Presumably so that they can fit the BFC's?

[RefSteel]

I just noticed Y is missing Ivory. I'll have to fix that at a minimum. Also, thanks for the comments, everybody!

First, sorry for disappearing on you guys like that.  Work's been crazy this week.  Looking likely crazy next week too but I have a deadline of the 19th so I can at least see a light at the end of the tunnel now.

Good to see you back!

Ref, any chance you can take some of the least important tiles (maybe 3 per start?) and designate them for turning into [plains/tundra/desert/jungle] in order to make the BFC theme match the surroundings?  They all look pretty green to me.

Sure, in principle, though then we'd need to know where the starts will be placed before we can post them in the threads. I wanted them to be very green though; no one wants to see tundra/desert/jungle in their actual BFC.

You're a little stingy with hills, but you're stingy to everyone so it's ok ;).

Everyone has more than twice as many hills as in PB37! I can add more if you think that's desirable though.

- A 6 food, 0 hammer tile is generally considered more valuable than a 5-1 tile or a 4-2 tile, especially for a capital.

Definitely! But see Krill's and JR4's comments above: The cities with 4-2 yields all also have 6-0s, and the cities with 5-1s each have a second 5-1. I hoped that having two 6fh yields would ~compensate for having one less total food yield and vice-versa. I can just give everyone a 6 yield and a 5-yield but that significantly reduces variety.

A couple of the starts allow players to get all their resources if they move. We can make that fail, but I'd rather make that obviously a bad idea by rearranging resources.

I very much agree with making moves obviously unattractive rather than making them merely completely incorrect. I didn't think getting all the resources was possible without either settling in place, planting on a floodplain, or losing a turn and giving up the 2/2/2 plant for a 2/1/1. Some of the possible moves burn better tiles than others to do that though.

Looking at it again though, I might reconfigure C, F, G, K, P, V and Y to help with this a little. Also, W's cows should move SW (and the ivory NNE) and the separate river notch at X should be moved to the opposite corner (while also shifting a couple forests/plains around) to make moves less appealing.

Second...you don't want to constrain their choices too much.  A nudge in the direction of a more interesting game is one thing, but ultimately we want the story of the game to be the story of the players, not the reveal of the mapmakers' cleverness.

I mean, obviously. This is just a question of degree, but the point of making the interpentagonal areas unattractive is so that players don't lose on T0: Access to that area is highly unequal, so some players can claim a lot of it in relative peace once their other borders are secured, while others will get none of it and be cramped, and still others will have access but have more competition for what they can reach, such that they have more frontiers to defend. The more useful that land is, the more these differences matter. (Note not all the good territory should be in between the pentagonal civs; my idea was that there would be something like 5+ tiles of "back lines" for each civ abutting either the "badlands" or the sea.

(I also don't care about the illusion of agency; to the extent it's just an illusion, I think most of our players are smart enough to see through it.)

Third - well, what exactly is the problem with letting someone get a reward for picking India or Serfdom?  Particularly Serfdom - that's a legitimate strategic choice open to everyone.

They should and do get rewarded for this. The problem again is that access to the interpentagon lands is unequal, so this isn't an option for everybody.

I do like the idea of giving the players another reason to settle in place.

Me too - it was Krill's idea; I just added a little variety.

I'm talking myself out of that initial reaction, in the other direction - can you maybe add more of these?

Mmmf. That is probably the change (of those you've requested) that would take the longest to do right. If you think it's important, we can always throw out the worst of the starts I've made and mirror some of the rest, including ~all the mangrove ones. Or someone else could change the starts; I don't have a monopoly!

I missed whether you put any strategic resources at the initial BFC; can't tell because you posted in-game screenshots instead of WB screenshots.  Which, granted, is more useful for the moment, since that's what the players will need and resources can be edited later.  I generally think that copper and horses should not be available at the capital but most/all of the other resources should be.  By the time coal/oil/etc are unlocked, every contender should have access to them.

I agree about copper and horses. I'd rather also not include the rest, but I can certainly add them to make things easier on the other mapmakers. Would it be enough to add say iron, coal, and aluminum for everybody?

Other possible problems:

Most of these relate to 6/0 + 5/0 vs. 5/1 + 5/1 tiles. If I'm off-base with that, let me know, and I'll try to compensate.

Start L isn't as good at pinning the player in place as others - player could move north without giving up anything but the plains hill.

? I'll look at it, but I feel like moving anywhere northward either loses an FP (by planting on it) or loses a turn and a grass river forest (by settling on it) along with either the ivory (too far W) or takes the 6f corn out of the first ring (important for worker moves).

some of the starts have 2 x 6 food tiles

Wait, which ones? I didn't think I had any!

W: Moving northeast is tempting; maybe move the cows SW across the river?

Sure, that's doable.

Y: Tempting to move north. Maybe shove the rice 1 SW, and add a mangrove lake to irrigate it?

I don't think I can fit in a mangrove lake that I like here, but this start needs an elephant anyway and the rice and western floodplain can certainly move (and take part of the river with them). If nobody else beats me to it (I attached the WB files with all these starts to the posts) I'll make at least this change tonight.

[RefSteel]

Some players have a 6 and 5 yield resource tiles as opposed to two 6 yield tiles.

I suggest those players get a forest on their ivory to make up the imbalance.

I hoped that a pair of 5/1s would be ~equal to a 6/0 and a 5/0 (Mardoc seemed to think the 6 and 5 were stronger because they're all food instead of hammers!) I would have thought that a forest on the ivory would be too strong, speeding the Worker by a turn (plus a little overflow) and continuing to provide benefits for the whole game at starts that already have more net food until size 18 or something besides. Am I wrong about this?

Also putting a forest on the lake is irrelevant really, flavour it thing that is fine if you want to do it.

I agree, although with 25 civs, some people will be stuck with Fishing, and maybe this will make otherwise-decent Fishing civs a little more viable for players who get the lakes. The effect is small at best though.

[RefSteel]

Thought it through and did some quick mentalsims. Unsurprising conclusion: Krill is correct.

In detail:

Basically, food > hammers at the start only if it speeds growth onto improved tiles or if a super-early BW allows you to abuse Slavery. Even in the latter case, 1 food < 2 hammers until you have a granary, which is a virtual eternity away at T0. Since 5f is good enough to outgrow your worker's tile improvements at game start even if you work max hammers until the first improvement, a pair of 5/1s (or a 6/0 and a 4/2) will beat a 6/0 and a 5/0 over the early turns (e.g. you can get a slightly faster first settler) and then the 1 extra food never catches up because it's competing with a snowball and 2 extra hammers. It only barely and temporarily beats the hammers alone, even with a granary: Only until the capital permanently grows past size 4.

Will Krill's proposed solution work? I would say no, a forest on the ivory for the 6+5 yield starts causes more problems than it solves.

In detail:

A second-ring 4-yield tile saves 1 turn on the Worker (except for non-Sury Exp, which just gets some overflow) which is enough to make up for the 6/5 difference by itself. Then it also provides additional yields whenever the capital grows past its improved tiles, and forever after the Ivory is improved, which will be sooner than otherwise because it's a much better tile. It also pushes research toward AH. If first ring, the advantage is even greater, and if second ring, it risks making the player more likely to move to get it into first ring.

Alternate solutions:

a) Change up resources to make all starts 6 yield + 5 yield. Balancing 6/0 vs 5/1 vs 4/2 will be a bit challenging, because once the total yields are the same, food > hammers can play a role, but it's better than the existing situation.

b) Change up resources to give all starts a pair of 6 yield tiles. This excludes rice and sheep unless you put them on floodplains (which in turn would probably cause too many problems of its own) but it's the simplest solution and makes for the fastest fix. Everything would be 6/0 Pigs + 4/2 Cow or 5/1 grain x2 or 5/1 pigs x2. (Alternative: Allow a pair of 6/0 tiles OR two tiles that total 10/2, but in the latter case, turn a grassland into a third fp to compensate.)

c) Just ignore it. The players would rather have unequal starts than more delays. (But it may be a while before the map is ready anyway).

d) Make up the difference with worker efficiencies. Pig -> Sheep or even Capital -> Pig transit time could be reduced for Pig+Sheep starts, but I'm leery of putting corn+rice adjacent to each other and potentially encouraging a settler move, plus I don't think it will make up enough ground except for the cases where both paths are shortened for Pig + Sheep.

Anything else I'm missing?

I'll try the alternate version of b (with various 6-yields but an extra fp to compensate the high-hammer ones) if nobody suggests something better or can tell why it's a bad idea. (E.g. "WE WANT TO SEE GJ'S TIER LIST JUST DO #C!" - unfortunately, my proposed solution does require redoing literally all of the starts to a possibly-significant extent.) [EDIT: So in effect, I'm trying one of Mardoc's proposed solutions to solve a problem caused in turn by my proposed solution to the problem Krill pointed out. Hopefully you'll also tell me if I'm doing it wrong....]

[Cornflakes]

Regarding the jungle ... It is really only in the middle of the two bend pentagons. Even in the jungle areas the split is 50/50 between jungle/forest. I think turning some of those in the bend area into forests by hand to make it a bit more hospitable will be sufficient. And between the pentagons on the sides some of the some of the forests can be turned into jungle to make it a bit more dense there.

One other change I didn't document above is that I increased the plains/grassland ratio in the "plains" center region from 80/20 to 60/40.

Regarding the starts ... I'm not a good enough player to make the difference between what you currently have matter nearly as much as other decisions in the empire. The difference in terrain 1 tile beyond the BFC will probably have more impact on the game than implementing any further balancing of the starts. I vote for C.

Any other comments on the overall map? If not I'm going to make one last change to add about 2 rows of tiles to the outside of the bends and call the base map completed. I'll roll 3 times and post various screenshots with resource icons on so we can pick one to actually begin fine tuning.

[Krill]

Some players have a 6 and 5 yield resource tiles as opposed to two 6 yield tiles.

I suggest those players get a forest on their ivory to make up the imbalance.

I hoped that a pair of 5/1s would be ~equal to a 6/0 and a 5/0 (Mardoc seemed to think the 6 and 5 were stronger because they're all food instead of hammers!)  I would have thought that a forest on the ivory would be too strong, speeding the Worker by a turn (plus a little overflow) and continuing to provide benefits for the whole game at starts that already have more net food until size 18 or something besides.  Am I wrong about this?

Also putting a forest on the lake is irrelevant really, flavour it thing that is fine if you want to do it.

I agree, although with 25 civs, some people will be stuck with Fishing, and maybe this will make otherwise-decent Fishing civs a little more viable for players who get the lakes.  The effect is small at best though.

To be clear, yield means total of food plus hammers, so pigs, corn, wheat and cows are all 6 tiled tiles. I was only suggesting the change for those players that have rice and sheep starts, which would be a minority. The effect on the worker is negligible but makes up for the lack of hammer on the food tile, as the ivory would not be worked until size 3. The change manifests itself in helping the players without the extra hammers not be short on warriors in the first 50 turns.

[Krill]

Also, you make a very good point regarding fishing civs, definitely go with the lake forest in that case.

[Mardoc]

Sure, in principle, though then we'd need to know where the starts will be placed before we can post them in the threads.  I wanted them to be very green though; no one wants to see tundra/desert/jungle in their actual BFC.

Ok, fair enough, more cost than benefit, skip.

You're a little stingy with hills, but you're stingy to everyone so it's ok .

Everyone has more than twice as many hills as in PB37!  I can add more if you think that's desirable though.

Nah, the players would just complain about something else.  That was more a first reaction than a call for action.

- A 6 food, 0 hammer tile is generally considered more valuable than a 5-1 tile or a 4-2 tile, especially for a capital.

Definitely!  But see Krill's and JR4's comments above:  The cities with 4-2 yields all also have 6-0s, and the cities with 5-1s each have a second 5-1.  I hoped that having two 6fh yields would ~compensate for having one less total food yield and vice-versa.  I can just give everyone a 6 yield and a 5-yield but that significantly reduces variety.

Y'all have talked me out of worrying about it.  Realistically I shouldn't be panicking about an extra half-hammer of yield in limited situations, especially when realistic-looking is also a desire.

I very much agree with making moves obviously unattractive rather than making them merely completely incorrect.  I didn't think getting all the resources was possible without either settling in place, planting on a floodplain, or losing a turn and giving up the 2/2/2 plant for a 2/1/1.  Some of the possible moves burn better tiles than others to do that though.

Looking at it again though, I might reconfigure C, F, G, K, P, V and Y to help with this a little.  Also, W's cows should move SW (and the ivory NNE) and the separate river notch at X should be moved to the opposite corner (while also shifting a couple forests/plains around) to make moves less appealing.

That works.  It's a low probability risk, the players would be giving up the sure thing for 'whatever's in the fog'.  But, well, Krill has made me extra-paranoid about this risk, and with 25 players even low odds things may happen.

Third - well, what exactly is the problem with letting someone get a reward for picking India or Serfdom?  Particularly Serfdom - that's a legitimate strategic choice open to everyone.

They should and do get rewarded for this.  The problem again is that access to the interpentagon lands is unequal, so this isn't an option for everybody.

I think I see your perspective here.  It's probably partially a result of the decision to deemphasize islands.  I'll defer further comment until we have a final map we're working on; maybe part of our disagreement is in definitions and I'll agree with the actual tiles.

I'm talking myself out of that initial reaction, in the other direction - can you maybe add more of these?

Mmmf.  That is probably the change (of those you've requested) that would take the longest to do right.  If you think it's important, we can always throw out the worst of the starts I've made and mirror some of the rest, including ~all the mangrove ones.  Or someone else could change the starts; I don't have a monopoly!

If it's too much work, then don't worry about it.  Even having a few mangrove lakes will probably keep Fishing civs from being concentrated in the re-roll options, and Fishing civs are a minority to begin with.

I missed whether you put any strategic resources at the initial BFC; can't tell because you posted in-game screenshots instead of WB screenshots.  Which, granted, is more useful for the moment, since that's what the players will need and resources can be edited later.  I generally think that copper and horses should not be available at the capital but most/all of the other resources should be.  By the time coal/oil/etc are unlocked, every contender should have access to them.

I agree about copper and horses.  I'd rather also not include the rest, but I can certainly add them to make things easier on the other mapmakers.  Would it be enough to add say iron, coal, and aluminum for everybody?

In the end we have to guarantee all 7  (copper, horses, iron, coal, uranium, oil, aluminum) in accessible land to all 25 starts.  It's more important to be clear on what we're doing than any particular approach.  If you add three to the starts, then that leaves four to double-check when doing the rest of the map.  I'm fine with this - or with leaving them out of the capitals, if you want - it's just that I don't want any to slip through the cracks, especially since we're hot-potatoing this.

Maybe I just need to remember this as one of my priorities for when I do my pass on the map.

?  I'll look at it, but I feel like moving anywhere northward either loses an FP (by planting on it) or loses a turn and a grass river forest (by settling on it) along with either the ivory (too far W) or takes the 6f corn out of the first ring (important for worker moves).

Although those are costs, if a player can get an additional resource in the BFC (that's currently imagined/assumed to be in the northern fog) that might make up for the cost.  Where if they have to lose a resource, then an imaginary resource to be gained isn't worth as much.  Floodplain isn't as strong a deterrent, since they all have 3-4 tiles they want to work first, and additional floodplains - so a lost floodplain is only noticeable by city size 7-8ish.  By the time they're size 8, they might well have the ability to improve their calendar resource and get that tile yield in lieu of the lost floodplain.

Still, it's mostly down to player psychology, and a 2/2/2 city tile ought to make it clear that we want them to stay if anything does!  My perspective is just trying to be belt-and-suspenders about nailing their feet to the floor.  The more maps I make, the more tempted I am to just pre-found all the capitals...

some of the starts have 2 x 6 food tiles

Wait, which ones?  I didn't think I had any!

I think I was misremembering Sheep, but that's actually a 5 food tile, not 6.

Start F - we'll just have to remember not to irrigate the dry corn when we merge the starts and the overall map.

So: False alarm, mostly!

Some players have a 6 and 5 yield resource tiles as opposed to two 6 yield tiles.

I suggest those players get a forest on their ivory to make up the imbalance.

I hoped that a pair of 5/1s would be ~equal to a 6/0 and a 5/0 (Mardoc seemed to think the 6 and 5 were stronger because they're all food instead of hammers!)  I would have thought that a forest on the ivory would be too strong, speeding the Worker by a turn (plus a little overflow) and continuing to provide benefits for the whole game at starts that already have more net food until size 18 or something besides.  Am I wrong about this?

To be clear, yield means total of food plus hammers, so pigs, corn, wheat and cows are all 6 tiled tiles. I was only suggesting the change for those players that have rice and sheep starts, which would be a minority. The effect on the worker is negligible but makes up for the lack of hammer on the food tile, as the ivory would not be worked until size 3. The change manifests itself in helping the players without the extra hammers not be short on warriors in the first 50 turns.

I'm convinced by the discussion.  I vote for no major changes, except possibly foresting the ivory for players with rice or sheep.  Definitely don't re-do all your work, Ref!

Regarding the jungle ... It is really only in the middle of the two bend pentagons. Even in the jungle areas the split is 50/50 between jungle/forest. I think turning some of those in the bend area into forests by hand to make it a bit more hospitable will be sufficient. And between the pentagons on the sides some of the some of the forests can be turned into jungle to make it a bit more dense there.

That works.  We're pretty much at the point where the gross landform is as good as it can be anyway, hand-tuning the remainder just should include this step.

If you're in the mood to do more work, I would try to change the corner islands appearance so they are less obviously corner islands (break up some of the straight lines and the 90 degree corner).  Purely an aesthetic preference, though, it won't affect balance.

One other change I didn't document above is that I increased the plains/grassland ratio in the "plains" center region from 80/20 to 60/40.

It looks good!  

Any other comments on the overall map? If not I'm going to make one last change to add about 2 rows of tiles to the outside of the bends and call the base map completed. I'll roll 3 times and post various screenshots with resource icons on so we can pick one to actually begin fine tuning.

Sounds good to me.

Are you able to cut/paste Ref's starts into the chosen map file, or will we need to re-create them by hand?  Joey's manual made it look easy, but I remember running into a bunch of false paths when I did this before.  But then you've already done things with his tool that seemed out of reach to me...

[Cornflakes]

If you're in the mood to do more work, I would try to change the corner islands appearance so they are less obviously corner islands (break up some of the straight lines and the 90 degree corner).  Purely an aesthetic preference, though, it won't affect balance.

I'll put two more erosion/expansion passes on the islands which will roughen it up a bit.

But then you've already done things with his tool that seemed out of reach to me...

I have not yet attempted layering in starts with GJ's tool. I will first focus on posting the 3 "working maps" before I go out of town this weekend. That will allow you guys pick one as the final base map and to get started on things outside the BFC's. Place signs to locate starts, add a few land tiles as needed to keeps the starts 5 tiles off the coast, look at general luxury resource balance, access to strategics, etc., etc.

Next week/weekend I can fiddle with layering the starts and see if I can figure that part out. It did look easy from the tutorials, and I have a general understanding of the layering system so it shouldn't be that much of a stretch   right?