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.
(October 11th, 2019, 22:41)Krill Wrote: Hmmm, shall we name the boat after you?
I'll take it!
I haven't used it since, but back in my school days, I passed a boating license test and can legally drive a boat up to 64ft. in length for non-commercial purposes, iat least in U.S. waters. Weirdly, it never expires.
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.
Nobody says anything, I'm just going to bungle along on my own. Looks like a nice little area. I'll note this is the first river we've uncovered (although there was a mouth of a river in the far south, but we've not actually seen that river, it may only be two tiles long). We could go on a further two tile, NW - SW onto another hill if we want, or we can retreat and scout up the coast.
That land can't be ours, we would have over 200.land tiles. There has to be a neighbour there.
If we return with Cavendish, we have time to scout a bit more in the area across from the north western peaks, and up the west coast with him. We can scout this area later, before it affects settling plans. Or we can start scouting out our western neighbours and never return with Cavendish. If we do that, we can't send Gilbert to the far north. It's an either or, we can scout the north, or scout the west, or we can scout neither, fill out the nearby area then scout deep.
The advantages of staying close are we can keep both scouts as fog busters and possibly save some hammers. I don't think this is worth it. So...focus north, or focus west?
Is that a rhetorical question? I mean, I've said like five hundred thousand times that I want to bring our scout back. You disagree and that's fine, but why do you keep asking where to send the scout if you're just going to send it wherever you want anyways?
But why bring Cavendish back? We aren't going to keep both scouts on fogbusting duty, are we? That just seems stupid when we then have to send more expensive units out to scout later, and knowing who our neighbours are is valuable, right?
I moved Cavendish back. By my reckoning we have 5 turns not moving east, that we can use to scout out the coastal areas, which should be enough to get most of the area scouted.
Gilbert will be on the marker tile on T26. Given Cavendish can move NE - N next turn (T23) I think we follow the coast for a bit before then heading back through the FoW to city 2 location. Gilbert clears up what Cavendish misses and then goes north. Ultimately, keeping two scouts for fogbusting purposes is stupid, because we need to keep them in locations were barbs are not going to wander into, and we don't have two such locations. The only location we do have that fits that description, is the copper area. We can dump one scout there and barbs shouldn't even approach that scout. So one of them is going to wander off into the distance, one tile at a time. Gilbert is going to have to rush to find barb animals though, without G2 the scouting is much riskier.
Another point: the land area from the column of tiles the scout is in, to our capital, and from the row that has copper up to the ivory is roughly 200 tiles. Either there is a player 13 tiles or so to our west that we have somehow miraculously avoided finding, or we have a shit load of land and are isolated (which is another rerun of PB42 for me). We need to find where the choke points are, because I don't want a rerun of the standoff with OH I had, that was horrible to play.
