[No Players!] PBEM14 Mapmaking & Lurking Thread

[Grotsnot]

Holy shit, Yosemite is gonna be bonkers for Indonesia. I'm not 100% but it looks like Defender of the Faith is on the table this game so Woden is gonna have a hard time chewing on anybody.

Also Rowain will find plenty of poisonous critters in that gross jungle belt

[Ituralde]

Oh man, Woden has the War of Liberation casus belli completely wrong.
I'm itching to correct him and hope at least The Archduke understands it correctly.

To be fair, I didn't know how it worked either, when I wanted to use it in my recent Rise & Fall game.
For those, that don't know it, it works like this:

For the War of Liberation casus belli you need to have a Declared Friendship or an Alliance with the person, who just lost a city. You can then declare a War of Liberation on the conqueror of that city immediatelly, without any war mongering penalty for the declaration and for liberating any conquered cities.

Not that the warmongering thing matters outside of Single Player games.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that no PBEM can begin without the ritual Complaining About My Start. 

I wonder why I get a capital without a Luxury. It is always nice to have your capital unhappy in the early game. really why do we have people look at maps if such nonsense is the result.
Plusside lot of hills. 

Well, to be honest. This is a terrible starting position. Of course I would but check out where I end up after moving the settler 1 SE.

Tough starting position. On the plus side it is coastal and has 3 forests to chop ... but no resources in the first ring and no 4-yield tiles 1st ring is rough  

I don't take it personally, players (well, I do a little ;_; ). Everyone can only see what's in front of them. Cornflakes already found nearby Yosemite, Rowain has lots of hills and a natural wonder nearby (one that, uh, won't render outside strategic view - same thing happened in PBEM4), and Archduke has two different luxuries, lots of nearby mountains, one of the stronger first rings, and lots of city-states nearby. I could have tinkered more to balance these things, but it was enough of a headache just trying to find 5 roughly-balanced starts across 2 continents AND make sure everyone had the essential strategics AND access to freshwater settling locations AND placing city-states in a roughly balanced manner but also in such a way that they didn't grow quickly and become supercharged morsels for players to gobble up BUT ALSO in such a way that they didn't invalidate all settling locations nearby. 

So once your ritual is done, just play this out and see how it goes.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Actually, looking at Rowain's start, the natural wonder doesn't even show up in Strategic View.

Huh. Wonder what's going on there. I don't even know which one it is. No wonder (heh) I missed it.

[Sullla]

Don't pay any attention to the inevitable player griping about starting positions. All of those starting positions are perfectly fine; the players are just messing up the decision on where to settle.




TheArchduke's obvious play here is to move one tile west onto the tile where the warrior started. That offers a 3/1 horses tile to work at the start, with double wheat tiles also in the first ring, and then another cow and rice tile out in the second ring that borders will expand onto. Yes, production is a little low, but there's a 1/3 forested plains hill tile (the best non-resource tile in the game) right there in the second ring. Purchase that tile immediately and work it at size 3 and you've got a dynamite capital going with enough excess food resources later to harvest up to size 10 for the tricky Civil Service boost. Instead, TheArchduke moved southeast onto the plains hill tile - directly away from every visible resource tile! - and then seemed upset when he didn't find anything. He did the same thing in PBEM11 and once again ended up with a weaker capital by moving. But that's his own fault, not the mapmaker.




For Rowain, the best place to put his capital comes from moving two turns onto the tile northeast of the sheep. That spot gets the plains hill 2 production center tile, can work the 2/2 sheep tile immediately, and has massive potential as the borders expand. Rowain is close to the Torres del Paine natural wonder: doubles tile yield of adjacent tiles. That thing is disgusting and gives him some 4/0 grassland tiles out in the second ring, as good as a farmed rice tile. He can put a farm down on those tiles for 5 food yield and everything he'll ever need to grow. Then in the opposite direction there are TWO of those marvelous 1/3 forested plains hill tiles for production in the first ring that require no border expansion at all to use, and about a gazillion non-forested plains hill tiles out in the second ring to grow onto and mine. He can even place his second city north along the same river where there's a 4/0 wheat tile to use for initial growth and then rainforests galore to chop down.

Seriously though, GIVE ME THIS START. It's among the best that I've ever seen in Civ6. Anyone griping about this spot doesn't know what they're talking about.

[Alhambram]

Seems that Torres del Paine wonder got UI bug, I didn't notice it at first too. It do remind me of bugged natural wonder close Japper's start in PBEM 4. But it didn't screw up with game, so here too I think.
Lucky that Rowain's start just only got extra wheat, not more other bonuses because it would be overpowered with invisible Torres del Paine for map maker.

[The Black Sword]

Man, that natural wonder is nuts. I think I'd settle on the 4f tile for a total of 5f/3h tile yield at size 1. 

[MJW (ya that one)]

The infamous Nan Madol appears. Ban Nan Modal!

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Nan Madol is a dream meet for Indonesia. They get adjacency for coastal districts anyway, now they also get culture, how wonderful!

Too bad Alexander will almost certainly gobble them up on the way to conquer Indonesia - Carthage and Nan Madol sit more or less astride the only two passes in the massive mountain range that divides that continent.

[Sullla]

There has to be a better use for 160 gold than (temporarily) levying two warriors from a city state, right?