I hope that TBW is considering moving his capital one east of the the rice.
I agree that these starts are very interesting.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
I'm surprised India was picked so late. Maybe people felt it was strong in a boring way? Because it's certainly crazy strong. I know I'm an Imp apologist, but I think both Germany and India would work well with Imp. Extra happy goes well with maintaining a whip economy with fewer improved tiles because your workers aren't keeping up with expansion, and the city spam of Imp will get offset by the German forges.
I hadn't really looked at the new civ changes but 45h granaries sounds nuts to me, and that's without the bonus on top! You might be right though that the civs that allow you to play differently are more attractive, rather than simply a large snowball push.
Maybe ill try my hand at making a map one of these times.
I've said it before: mapmakers are the best kind of people.
TBS, yeah, anything that gets the granary closer to a 1-pop whip is nuts. Right at the beginning of the PB45 setup, Persia had a barracks that got the AGG discount and provided 1 happy. I thought that was a super interesting UB because it's a touch less automatic to build than a granary. Sad to see it go, would've liked to play it.
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
Maybe I'm just out of touch because I don't know a lot of the changes in recent versions of RtR super well, but the picks in general seemed kinda bonkers to me. 18 players and likely a fair amount of water, and none of them picked Vikings, Portugal, or Carthage? Babylon seems quite strong too. Meanwhile stuff like Ethiopia and HRE got snagged? Mongolia and Persia picked 2nd and 3rd?
(September 17th, 2019, 09:00)scooter Wrote: Maybe I'm just out of touch because I don't know a lot of the changes in recent versions of RtR super well, but the picks in general seemed kinda bonkers to me. 18 players and likely a fair amount of water, and none of them picked Vikings, Portugal, or Carthage? Babylon seems quite strong too. Meanwhile stuff like Ethiopia and HRE got snagged? Mongolia and Persia picked 2nd and 3rd?
Surely I'm missing something.
Seeing as this is the first game since the major civ overhaul, I'm guessing a lot of the picks were for novelty more than straight power, and a lot of metagame is also probably still biased toward the old favorites. Also, a number of them are still picking based on start techs rather than UU/UB, and this is also the first game with Krill's 3-move ocean tiles, which probably scares people from the naval civs.
Also, a lot of the players are from other communities, so I'm guessing some of the picks are based on alternative metagames.
![[Image: im-waiting-my-turn-me-irl-42240249.png]](https://pics.me.me/im-waiting-my-turn-me-irl-42240249.png)
I've said it before: mapmakers are the best kind of people.
