Nah, just make them have rough borders with nothing breaking them up.
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[SPOILERS - NO PLAYERS] The Final Clusterfuck: The PB38 Map and Lurker Thread
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January 24th, 2018, 15:48
(This post was last modified: January 24th, 2018, 15:49 by RefSteel.)
 (January 24th, 2018, 13:00)Krill Wrote: Nah, just make them have rough borders with nothing breaking them up. Hmm ... I'm a bit dense this morning, but I don't get what this means. "rough" in the sense of "approximate" or "hilly/forested/jungled" or "not enforced by the map"? I agree with all three, and if we go with this map, I'll probably delete several of the peripheral lakes, peaks, and inlets from the base map that are present on all of these images regardless. I didn't add any "obstacles" except right in the middle of the images: Three big saltwater lakes in the first example, six freshwater lakes separated by peaks in the second - though I should have removed the smallest of these altogether - and one big sea in the third. The central "obstacles" were meant to ~equalize the number of borders each player can/must deal with in different ways, with the first two specifically being attempts (I don't know how effective) to allow border interactions with more-distant players in spite of the irregularity of the pentagon. Are you saying that we should just accept that some players (e.g. Start 01 in the images) will have two land neighbors while others (e.g. Start 02 in the images) will have as many as four? Should we make some attempt to compensate those who have to guard longer and more numerous borders? (E.g. PB27 gave players more space when they neighbored a larger number of players.)
Rough in the sense of difficult. Don't create long natural borders with lakes and peaks, they have a coast behind them.
January 24th, 2018, 19:56
(This post was last modified: January 24th, 2018, 19:58 by RefSteel.)
(January 24th, 2018, 16:30)Krill Wrote: Rough in the sense of difficult. Don't create long natural borders with lakes and peaks, they have a coast behind them. Right. The problem I'm trying to address is that the players on the ends of the continent have a coast behind them and coasts on both flanks, whereas a number of players will necessarily have coasts behind them but four different possible rivals arrayed around them, including one on each flank. In particular, the fact that the players on the ends have fewer opportunities for conquest seems to me to in no way solve the problem that they have fewer possible aggressors to whom they need to respond. I see both of those as problems, and the first two images are examples of an attempt (perhaps misguided) to address both. With the start layout as shown, but without the long lake/mountain areas, Start 01 can basically establish all its land borders with just two well-placed cities, while Start 02 needs four different widely-placed cities to do the same, and the two on its flanks can hardly support each other militarily. Then as the game progresses, the fact that Start 01's only routes of expansion are through Start 02 or Start 03 doesn't compensate for Start 01's easier opening; on the contrary, it makes Start 02's bad situation worse, while making Start 01's situation unbalanced in a whole different way. It's something like giving two players one less food tile at their capitals than everybody else and "compensating" by giving them a plains gold instead, except arguably worse because the players won't know which situation they're in until they're well into their gameplan and have long since made their leader/civ picks. (Of course, a "cleaner" way to do all this is to fatten and shorten the "legs" of the landmass so there's room for five full ~equilateral pentagons - Map C already allows one in the center region and one above the northeast curve - but I don't know if we can and want to do that at this stage.) All that said, I'm definitely biased: I really like the images above - especially the first and third - for aesthetic reasons alone. So if anyone/everyone thinks they're bad ideas for the actual game, please do tell me so. I can make pretty maps another time without subjecting 25 players to them; I'm just hoping there are some things like this that will work for both!
January 25th, 2018, 04:56
(This post was last modified: January 25th, 2018, 06:39 by RefSteel.)
So from my perspective, given Krill's point and my own concerns above, the question becomes: Can I distort the effective distances between civs such that (for instance) a squished pentagon plays more like an ~equilateral one without creating long "walls" of obstacles? Because whatever my argument may be, Krill is right that those lakes (or mountain ranges) restrict the ways in which players can plant their cities, and therefore also reduce the number of real decisions that they're making in the early game.
[EDIT: It looks like the answer to the question I posed in this post is, "Maybe a little, but not very well with these map dimensions. At best, I can make it a little less skewed and/or reduce the size of the lakes." Still...] I'm going to try that on one of my map C iterations now to see how it works.... [EDIT2: I mean ... it works about as well as I expected following that first edit - so not very. It's not really worth a picture, and I didn't bother saving what I did. The other arguments for big lakes and mountain ranges are: 1) We need to get rid of over 1000 usable land tiles somewhere; this is at least a start. 2) Without any major landforms apart from coast, exploration isn't as interesting and the map feels less natural. I dunno; lots of things to weigh, obviously, and only two of us have voiced opinions. Still, I'll have another look at it - or an alternate map if Cornflakes has a chance to roll one with different resource distribution - hopefully tomorrow night.]
January 26th, 2018, 18:14
(This post was last modified: January 26th, 2018, 19:41 by RefSteel.)
Okay, so I made sure the number of chosen civs and leaders added up with the number of rerolls for each, lined up the rerolling players in the order shown in this post above, then copy and pasted the list of remaining leaders from that same post into Random.org, gave the first two civs on the resulting randomized list to the first player shown and on down the line, skipping over players with "civ only," and finally copy and pasted the list of remaining civs, also from that post, into Random.org, and distributed one civ from the resulting random list to each player, skipping over the "leaders only" ones. The result:
All the civs were included; the Dutch were actually 9th on the list and would have been assigned if one more player had requested a civ reroll. India and Portugal were a bit further down. (10th was America.) I didn't have to do any rerolling because nobody got a duplicate from round 1. [EDIT: Added the following after posting and actually looking over everyone's new options.]
January 26th, 2018, 19:59
(This post was last modified: January 30th, 2018, 00:46 by RefSteel.)
And quadruple posting, updated still more from...
(January 20th, 2018, 09:11)Mardoc Wrote: Current state (will re-edit as I notice more responses)...above: Second round: Decision made: naufrager Mr. Cairo AdrienIer Old Harry + Fintourist + shallow_thought + TheHumanHydra Gavagai OT4E + chumchu The Black Sword GermanJoey dtay Still deciding: Mackoti To reroll: AdrienIer Old Harry + Fintourist + shallow_thought + TheHumanHydra (leaders only) OT4E + chumchu (civ only) First and second round options for players still on the board (to check for repeats upon re-roll)  Quote:(An observation for future mapmakers: if you do not want people to move away from pre-designed capital spots, ruining the map balance, you should give them decent starts. Because two food resources on the opposite sides of the capital, two spaces away each, is an utter shit.) Replying to this here because it's an interesting point, but it's more to do with the variance between players due to pic method than the start itself. The balance between double grain and double animal, without using the mod to change the length of time taken to improve each tile, animal starts will necessarily need to have the food tiles further apart. This has a secondary advantage that it enables double animal starts to dotmap more widely with second cities to share food, something double grain lacks. The greatest variance is going to be in start techs, which comes down to what civs you are lucky to roll. Some players will be able to go BW first, others will have to go food tech>Mining>BW and be stupidly late to Slavery in comparison. Is this a fault of the start? No, because the map has no control over who rolls Mining. If the starts were all split food, so one animal, one grain, then this would increase the tech cost and increase the profit in wander towards whichever food resource you have the tech to improve, and see if you luck into a second food resource of the same type you can settle for. This is exactly what happened in PB37. So, how should this problem be solved? It could be, that starts were balanced after the picks, to ensure that each player had double food res unlocked to their civ. This shafts those civs that don't start with any food res. Could give all players additional start techs, which also helps speed up the start. This would be my prefered method, but it was shot down in the sign up thread. What happens if you give triple food of the same type? Or two of one, one of a different type? In the former case, it can make the early game a little too straightforward as the right move becomes to split off a preimproved food resource, and it speeds up the game a bit more, but it's not necessarily a wrong decision. It does affect the balance of IMP though, because you can go worker>settler>settler, split of two food res and then stack whip anger in multiple cities, but it's not a one right more necessarily. But the correct comparison is, what do you find if you move? By moving, Gav gives up: up to 15 river tiles, 2 hammer, 2 commerce plant (so 1 extra commerce per turn in additional to ordinary cost of giving up ph plant), up to 9 forests and a 2/2 ivory to work after building the worker. Assuming he moves to the NW, he should keep the pig. He will lose the sheep and the ivory. Minimum two turns moving. Probably three. So instead of an eot9 worker he gets eot9 worker (with 4 hammers overflow), he would get at best eot11 with no overflow, probably eot12. So He gives up the EXP starting bonus to move. Realistically, unless he found a metal happy and a second 6 yield, the move wouldn't break even. EDIT: Personally, I think that if he chooses to wander, that's fine. The map is constructed in such a way that which ever direction he coses to wander, it shouldn't break the map. So long as their aren't chokepoints with stupidly high resource density, the move wouldn't be a no brainer, it's just a gamble in response to being shafted by the civ rolls. The problem he has is, if he doesn't roll a Hunting civ, and he moves, he runs the risk of then needing double food techs, whereas he only needs a single food tech if she stays in place. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't in that respect.
I finally have some free time so I'll work on the resource distribution. My goal today is to post a map with various degrees of resources. I'll roll a couple times to get a base map looking something like C, and then run the resource & terrain generation a couple of different times with various "lushness" factors and post the results.
My thoughts on the centers is do nothing or maybe just throw some jungle into the centers to make it less desirable and leave it at that. I'd rather not do anything artificial. Sure it's not going to be balanced, but they will have to adapt to the given situation. The more we try to edit the centers, the longer it will take us to get a finished map. Regarding the scattered peaks, I think it's OK that there are a bit more than normal. After all, they have more total land tiles than originally intended. And it gives players more options for settling with protected diagonals. |
