[SPOILERS] scooter's PB53

[scooter]

I also went back and corrected my PRO/FIN numbers. The last 3 turns and new total now look like this:


PRO: 3, 3, 3 (158)
FIN: 4, 5, 5 (88)


This wasn't actually any lost commerce of course. This just reflects the fact that I would have pulled even with non-PRO in trade routes in several of my cities.

[Charriu]

What gives higher base values than 1?

I believe it depends on if the city you're getting a trade route from has population greater than 10.  I've seen reference to distance between cities before but I don't think I've ever seen that affect a trade route in my games.

Distance to the the connecting city and the population of the city you connect to are relevant. Populations higher then 10 increase the base value. https://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strateg...de-routes/

[scooter]

Turn 42






We are now the owners of a shiny new Buddhism, and hey, the holy city popped in one of the most ideal cities. I did already sink 10h into a Monument in Fan Death, but I'm happy to light those on fire. That means I'll get a much needed border pop there next turn. Also got a free spread to Flat Earth, which is not really all that consequential for now. This may just all be culture for now, but I do think I'm going to try for Oracle.





Two Archers in this city. I would love to have this city, but it seems even harder to defend. I imagine someone else will get to it first? I'll have to see what's along the coast on the north. Might be enough to justify a raze and replace at some point.





My next city site, give or take a tile south. My galley is depositing the Archer next turn, and the settler gets double whipped at the same time. Should line up nicely to drop a settler/archer pair in a few turns and settle.





This is my current thought for the next two spots, though this may depend on if I contest anything around the barbarian city or not. Green Dot is a really awkward city, but I think it's a farm + coast + shared tiles city. It can also help grow a cottage for Flat Earth. It's a little awkward with regards to AT's city, so I'm not 100% on this. I may end up moving it 1E. I also fully expect I'll end up prioritizing something else in front of this at some point. It's just a weirdly barren stretch of map compared to everything else. Fully expecting iron or something hidden to be here.


Yellow Dot could be configured a few different ways. I'm defaulting to the hill for safety for now. The nice thing is the Clams should not be contested by Commodore due to how he had to settle his city, so I can use it here.





The #2 food and #1 production is Commodore I'm 90% sure. He's behind me by inches.


PRO: 3 (161)
FIN: 5 (93)

[superdeath]

Thoughts on the map so far? Things to improve, ect

[scooter]

Thoughts on the map so far? Things to improve, ect

I like it. The map is a bit gimmicky, but I'm honestly a big fan of gimmicky maps. I've played a million natural maps in this 15 year old game, show me something I haven't seen before. Making the middle worth pursuing was really important. If it was frozen tundra as is default, this map would be a boring slog to Astronomy, which is exactly what happened last time an RB game was played on Wheel. When you're in a game where you can't access most of the players, it can feel like you can't have any impact of one of the far-away players runs away, and the game feels decided by neighbor luck. In this case, everyone has access to a lucrative middle (both in terms of island trade and the luxury center).


If I were looking for something to critique, I'm not sure I'm wild about the clearly defined borders along the outside. This is obviously a feature of the underlying script, but it's another part of why I think unedited Wheel is actually a pretty bad script. Whenever you can narrow your border down with a neighbor into a one-city front, it's really difficult to have meaningful interactions with them. For example, my border with Cornflakes on the west:






It's going to be really difficult for there to be any action between us. Our cities are 5 tiles apart. How are we supposed to invade each other? The answer is by sea, but short of an early Galley surprise attack, it's going to be really hard for us to have any sort of conflict pre-Astronomy, especially as our borders pop. We can only threaten one city each, and they're far enough apart that we can't really do it from the fog. I'm guessing the only reason you saw TBS action is he got greedy and settled in the middle of these land bridges, but if both players take the conservative plants (and the resources are placed in a way that strongly suggests it), there will be very little action for quite a long time. It's even more stark on my other side.






I've got 7 cities, and 0 of them have gone even 1 tile east of my capital because there's just nothing over there compared to the rest of the map. Obviously it would be solid land on an average map. I think I would have placed a fish or crab + a river or something like that over here, which would have forced me to make a decision. As is, I'm getting incredibly safe borders on my east and west thanks to this, which has allowed me to push with abandon into the middle. AT can't possibly settle further towards me and support it, so I can just treat this as backfill, which is really weird. If these 2 tile land bridges were wider, that might not be true.


Of course, these two things have helped me tremendously, so I'm definitely not upset about them . I don't know if other players have similar setups or not. Obviously something weird happened with TBS. I don't know if that's a map difference or if that was aggression being punished or what. Just in general though, I don't think it's great for the map to provide easy one-city fronts with neighbors. It makes it too easy to defend cities in the mid-game when you only have one angle to defend pre-Astro.



These are minor notes though. I love the map overall. I know we joke about the absurdly lush maps we often play on, and this is definitely one of those, but the fact is that those maps are just more fun because they allow a great variety of options. More natural maps tend to make a lot of decisions for you out of necessity. Hope this helps!

[sunrise089]

Great thoughts Scooter. My only question is whether the ‘east of the capital’ point is somewhat an artifact of the starting spot not being centered on your landmass. If Area 51 is the cap then multiple cities are to the east. Is the eastern spoke actually worse than the western one? That said I could of course see a non-centered start on the landmass as problematic in and of itself.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

I'm pretty sure one of the players noted this, but the top of the map with the 1 tile water and the positioning of the land mass itself is extremely awkward.

[scooter]

I'm pretty sure one of the players noted this, but the top of the map with the 1 tile water and the positioning of the land mass itself is extremely awkward.

Yeah, I complained about that early on in this thread, and I thought about mentioning it again . I don't think this was intentional, but yeah, I kinda got screwed out of a backlines coastal city due to being up against the edge of the map. The only way to get it was to move off the plains hill tile, but clearly the whole start was designed around SIP. That's kind of a bummer, especially as Financial because that's a bunch of coast I can never work.

Great thoughts Scooter. My only question is whether the ‘east of the capital’ point is somewhat an artifact of the starting spot not being centered on your landmass. If Area 51 is the cap then multiple cities are to the east. Is the eastern spoke actually worse than the western one? That said I could of course see a non-centered start on the landmass as problematic in and of itself.

Well kind of, but compare the screenshot of the area around Green Dot to the area around Fan Death, which are roughly the equivalent spots on both sides of "my" landmass. In addition to the stone they both have, one has pigs, two floodplains, forested marble, and shareable sheep, while the other has Sugar and literally nothing else. If you want to compare it more to Area 51, well that has wet rice and a bunch of shareable riverside tiles in addition to the pre-Lighthouse 2/0/3 whales. It's just way weaker land.

[sunrise089]

Fair enough. I am helpless to parse out land quality without those beautiful beautiful resource icons toggled on

[scooter]

Fair enough. I am helpless to parse out land quality without those beautiful beautiful resource icons toggled on

The icons are actually on for the east side picture! You just didn't notice because there weren't any resources to have icons for.

Seriously I'm like 80% joking. Nobody should be complaining about resource scarcity on this map.

I normally have the icons on for like 90% of my pictures, but sometimes I take them off to mix things up when they frequently block the city size/growth/build detail numbers.


edit: also, one of you guys go tell AT he's not allowed to answer SD's map question he clearly asked us all when we're waiting on him to roll the turn. $1 says he forgot the turn rolled and doesn't know we're waiting on him.