All verified, except that the "mangrove lakes" have been stripped of their forests somewhere along the way. Seeing as the _correct_civs map itself includes them, I've edited them back in for the five players that have them (and double-checked, afterwards, that I didn't overwrite the wrong save at any point).
Problem is that these sims don't work with RtR 2.0.8.4 (because they are 18-player saves). I'll edit them so that they do -- give me another 15 minutes. EDIT: Actually, no, the problem is that I edited in the mangrove lakes without having loaded RtR, so those players (and only them) had 18-player saves.
EDIT: Obviously I renamed the saves to "pb38 [player name]", then zipped them, and I'm just going to go through the threads by latest post.
Moved Y's gems way to the south to make a forward plant toward W less of a one right move. Removed a pig that was driving R toward Q and shifted a rice nearby away toward P. R still has a ridiculous food+production site down there, but at least it's slow-growing and no longer quite so off-the-charts insane. Also turned two of P's deer tiles into grass forest deer because it had practically no strong food tiles outside its capital.
Moved L's dyes 1NW onto a grassland, out of its starting 5x5 square, but ended up leaving its (unforested) deer: Moving it would have been too consequential for the strategic resources in the area, and it won't play a huge role early as a 2/1/1 that needs AH to become 4/1/1. Deleted the pig 2SW of N and replaced it with a sheep 2W of that tile (then swapped that with the cow 1S of it for aesthetic reasons as much as anything else). Also moved the nearest oasis to a slightly more-inland desert to allow better coastal access. Moved B's corner wine over to its west near the horses (still 3rd ring, but on the far side and not in the 5x5). Moved Q's corner wine a bit further SW.
None of the corner jungles or lakes are intentional on my part. Also, no one will confuse a freshwater lake with coast; lots of ways to check it. I left the lakes alone, but went through and got rid of all the corner jungles. I also cut down some more jungle west of E and T (replacing some of it with forests) so their strategic resources aren't surrounded by the stuff.
I swapped W's horses and copper after putting both in the fourth ring, added another land tile to its SE, tried to figure out how to give it more southern food without also giving it (or Y) a forward-planted supercity, and finally settled on swapping the grass pigs with the plains 1W and making the new land tile a plains deer.
Then I finally gave some actual thought to the Hawaiian-esque astro island chain I created, redesigned it significantly, and am now quite happy with it.
(I think the out-of-latitude forests are all intentional, as higher-altitude forests, but I'd have to check again. They can be changed if you like.)
I'd like some more eyes on the map to make sure there's nothing egregious, and there are a couple of checks I haven't done yet, but we may have passed the point of diiminishing returns. If you guys release the map as-is (er, after copy-pasting the right civs/leaders in) I'm happy with that.
I should specify: The tests I wanted to run are basically just a balance check post-changes and looking over the BFC heatmap GJ's tool generates to make sure there isn't anything too ridiculous outside the capitals. Both are more complicated than just running the balance check and looking at it at this point though; for instance, I don't care if someone has a post-IW supercity if it needs iron and jungle chopping to make it that strong.
Also wanted to mention: Cornflakes, your ice floes and astro island tundra looks great!
I'm done distributing your work. In case you haven't noticed, I even somehow managed to fuck up there because I had mistaken BGN's chat thread, whose existence I had forgotten about, for his spoiler thread at a glance, but Savant caught my error near-instantly. No harm done, as nobody had downloaded BGN's starting sim during those two minutes, but still.
I verified that all the archives have different md5 hashes, and I've looked at everyone's starts half a dozen times now, "just to make sure", and yet...
Anyway, I inserted the players' names into the header of the _correct_civs draft and changed TBS' colour to PLAYERCOLOR_BLUE (used for the Americans by default) by his request. Result attached.
Erwin, if you're around and can run novice's tool on the latest map, I'd like to see if we improved and/or broke anything since the last check, especially as this may end up being the final result.
Likewise, Krill, BRick, and/or Mardoc, would any of you have a chance to look over the map with a veteran's eye and see if there are any major problems that still need adressing? Would it help if one of us uploaded screenshots or Map Cad's debug view?
There are changes I plan to make if we don't package and ship this by tonight, but that would be true every night indefinitely; I never really stop editing my work until a deadline (self-imposed or otherwise) takes it away.
I'd say that more or less the same issues as prevalent, nothing particular was broken, but according to this tool, there are still some weaker starts in the tails (173 vs 128 usable mainland tiles etc.). Judging from the land quality scores and the unfairness score, the balance is on a level similar to other late iterations.
Thanks, Erwin! It's good to see nothing got worse, and if we don't send the map out before I work on it tonight, I'll probably boost the civs toward the end of the eastern leg - some combination of adding forests and expanding islands. I'm still thinking about H and Q too (the civs with five neighbors and poor access to the astro islands) but I'm hoping we've done enough for them that we can ship without any (further) major changes there.
It would be really helpful if a veteran mapmaker would comment too - whether that means telling us to just send the thing out or telling me I'm an idiot and need to fix [Giant Problem That I Missed Or Underestimated] - even if you don't propose an actual solution to the GPTIMOU. If we haven't declared the map finished (or even if we have and somebody just wants to see them) I'll post a bunch of screenshots from WorldBuilder within about 24 hours.
Tried a few more things, making the changes that seemed most pressing to me. (I don't actually know if any changes are really pressing at this point.) So, I raised a couple more peaks and a few more hills around them between H and K, added a couple more forests near W and moved or added a couple hills at Y, and expanded the two islands closest to W. I haven't forgotten the pictures but don't have time just now; I still plan to post some within the next 12-15 hours as mentioned above.
