Small/tight always-war Civ 4 game

[Cornflakes]

Due to the corona-lockdown (and the slowly starting PB49) I've decided to proceed with tweaking of the Australia map for a 4 player game. Here are the settings proposed. I'm open to altering these, but in the interest of expediency and getting something off the ground I will make the final executive decisions on all settings.

- 4 players
- sequential PB or PBEM (to be decided)
- Turn order determined by play window/timezone. Once the play order is established, Player #1 will be randomly rolled.
- 3-round snake pick. You can chose starting location, leader, or civ in any order as you see fit. Pick order to be 432143211234 (give last player first pick).
- Bug-latest mod (PB48, including PBSpy fix) ... ivory is luxury only, no longer required to build any unit.
- start with settler, scout, and CG1/2/3 archer (or UU replacement) to prevent warrior rushes. Settle in place required and starting archer must remain fortified in the capital until T50.
- always war

- Difficulty: Monarch
- Speed: Normal
- Era: Ancient
- Spies: Allowed
- No tribal villages
- No barbs

Signups:
1. Cornflakes [6-8 am eastern time US]
2. Superdeath (I took the liberty of putting you down since you explicitly said you were in)
3. yuris
4. scooter

We are live! Thanks Ramkhamhaeng! I logged in, claimed my civ, and verified that settings look correct.

The PBSpy-Link is: civ.zulan.net/pbspy/game/92/
The Ingame-Url is: pb.zulan.net:2050

[GeneralKilCavalry]

I would trust the lurkers with balancing the starts, but a 3-round snakepick sounds interesting. This would be very interesting given the metagame, in terms of picking who to start next to (first player gets advantage of best start, players in the middle get advantage of picking someone nice to start next to, last player to pick location should've gotten a superior pick of civ/leader).

This should be a pitboss, but just take turns like you would in a PBEM. I think it would better to have civs have room to contest 1 border city with each of their neighbors, and some contested area in the middle. A perfect map for something like this is a filled in tiny donut with 6 players. (filled in donuts bridge the gap between map sizes - they have so much land that they are nearly what a pangea would be on the map of the size above).

However, a Europe map would also be interesting, especially if we can get a lot of players.

[superdeath]

However, a Europe map would also be interesting, especially if we can get a lot of players.

a decent small europe map would be interesting.

[scooter]

It sounds like what you're describing is the three iterations of PBEM34. I highly recommend checking that out as reference if any pictures survived. My PTSD from that game has almost recovered. The original 2 games (34V and 34G for vets and greens) were literally 3CC enforced via mods, while the shadow replay was with no city restrictions and resulted in more like 4-5 cities per player with tight settling.

If it's that you're thinking of, I'd almost sign up, but I'm not sure I could at the moment. Maybe. At minimum I'd consider dedlurking someone.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

It sounds like what you're describing is the three iterations of PBEM34. I highly recommend checking that out as reference if any pictures survived. My PTSD from that game has almost recovered. The original 2 games (34V and 34G for vets and greens) were literally 3CC enforced via mods, while the shadow replay was with no city restrictions and resulted in more like 4-5 cities per player with tight settling.

If it's that you're thinking of, I'd almost sign up, but I'm not sure I could at the moment. Maybe. At minimum I'd consider dedlurking someone.

I read thru Krill's 34V thread, which still has some blurry photobucket pictures. That sounds like a great variant to play.

The more I think about it, repeating it with a Europe or Middle Earth map or something like that would be really fun. A Middle Earth map would be especially interesting since there's not too much water (Most of Krill's rage at the first iteration of the map was directed at the fact ppl would need to settle by the sea).

There's plenty of interesting maps out there on the civfanatics forums.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Browsed civfanatics for a bit, here's what I came across:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/e...ll.141345/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/t...th.311839/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/m...vs.156190/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/d...ap.259627/

[yuris125]

I could play a game like this, but keep in mind that I haven't played Civ4 in about 2 years and my game history is not exactly full of stories of glory

[Cornflakes]

I could play a game like this, but keep in mind that I haven't played Civ4 in about 2 years and my game history is not exactly full of stories of glory

That’s fine, we can add “casual” to the description as well! The idea is to reduce the amount of micromanagement by reducing empire size. Also will change how leader/civs are valued and techs options are weighed given the very small number of cities in the empire.

[shallow_thought]

I'm looking forward to lurking this . The snake pick sholuld, at least, be different. Although I'm expecting the competition for certain leaders and civs to be fierce.

[Cornflakes]

Here are a couple of quick thoughts ... both of these are taken from the previous 52-player world map at the German civ forum:

__________________________________
Australia with 4 players:

   

Just enough room to squeeze in a couple filler cities, and some tiny offshore islands. Terrain and resources can be tweaked to give more balance to the starts.
___________________________________

Europe with 7 players

   

   

This could be adapted to 5 or 6 players with slightly more room, or 8 with slightly less room.