Also some people use large high-resolution images that won’t display on mobile devices due to bandwidth requirements, so I don’t see them unless I am browsing from my PC.
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[PB59 NO PLAYERS] - Jungle All The Way!
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Anyone want to volunteer for the pb89 lurker turn pace maintenance team? You just need to install the mod and subscribe to the tech thread, then every now and then you get to play a random turn. Possibly with instructions, possibly without. Hey presto the game doesn't die!
Completed: RB Demogame - Gillette, PBEM46, Pitboss 13, Pitboss 18, Pitboss 30, Pitboss 31, Pitboss 38, Pitboss 42, Pitboss 46, Pitboss 52 (Pindicator's game), Pitboss 57
In progress: Rimworld (March 11th, 2021, 14:16)Lewwyn Wrote: I'm so drunk I'd say yes, but I made the map so no. (March 10th, 2021, 17:05)The Black Sword Wrote: In previous big games, if the timer was running out and you didn't give any notice, a spoiled lurker would play your turn for you. Even if they don't do what you wanted, it's better than a skipped turn. If you did have notice that you'd be late you could give instructions so the lurker would know what to do. Being spoiled isn't a problem...
Completed: RB Demogame - Gillette, PBEM46, Pitboss 13, Pitboss 18, Pitboss 30, Pitboss 31, Pitboss 38, Pitboss 42, Pitboss 46, Pitboss 52 (Pindicator's game), Pitboss 57
In progress: Rimworld
So now that we're a little over 30 turns into the game and we're seeing the first second cities built, I have some thoughts on how the game is going and the map so far.
Overall it seems like the players are pretty happy or neutral about the map, I think only a few nitpicks. I think in part I went pretty safe with the map in the end, but also it is facilitating the type of game I envisioned, which is great. The capital spacing and the jungled land bridges are leading to less ancient aggressiveness overall and more focused empire building I think. For me this is part of what I was hoping for. I didn't want anyone to be TOO early rushed and give anyone too big of an advantage and throw the balance of the game. This way I think we'll see a lot less of total conquest early on and more later conquest. Everyone will have a chance to build up their core mostly unmolested to start with. Also navy does appear to be factoring into the players thinking and will be important on the map, another plus IMO. Resource distribution has done mostly what I hoped in providing players with interesting choices. The first choice being the capital and then the next choices being generated by rivers, possible super cities vs many compact cities. AH resource balance has seemed pretty good to me and presented some challenges to players that didn't have an AH resource in their capital BFC. I think we've seen very different starts from different players in the same starting positions as well which is great. I'm pretty happy about that. We're also seeing some real deliberation on whether to settle on the gems or not. SD and Rusten/Mig have the same starting area and have ended up with completely different starts. One on PH one on Sugar. One settling next to gems one settling on the gems. Cornflakes in the same position also has settled cap on sugar and his 2nd city off the gems. He went AH before BW while Rusten/Mig farmed their sheep and went BW first. I'm really glad that people are feeling like there's a lot of options for how they are settling the land. Commodore still doesn't know his southern neighbor is TBS, which is hilarious. I wonder if he would be trying to settle southerly if he had scouted in that direction first? Going to be a super interesting reaction. I'm slightly worried about Mack eating nauf. He's got his second city for the copper, but at least the river network is such that even though the copper is on the river it doesn't connect to his cap on the sugar. I do wish we had a little more reporting but maybe it will pick up now that people are settling their second cities.
“The wind went mute and the trees in the forest stood still. It was time for the last tale.”
 (March 30th, 2021, 09:49)pindicator Wrote: So Animal Husbandry is a bit of a bottleneck with this start, and moreso waiting to pop borders in the capital to get those pigs viable. Mnn happy to hear this. Pin of course has all 3 food in his cap improved since he has deer instead of an AH food, so I think the balance between the starts that have AH food in cap and those that don't was achieved. Also that neighbor that Mjmd can see but hasn't made contact with is Ram. That city for Ram is his stone and gold city. This means he sent his settler 6 tiles away from his cap. It gets gold, stone and grass cows first ring and grass pigs, wet rice and jungled gems in the second ring. Nice city, but far from the cap, pretty aggressive. I wonder if his primary target is the stone or the gold. In any case very interesting.
“The wind went mute and the trees in the forest stood still. It was time for the last tale.”
From Amica's update it looks like Cairo may have done the same as Ram and settled that same stone gold gems spot. I wonder if he settled his cap on sugar or PH. Sad we don't have updates from half the field.
“The wind went mute and the trees in the forest stood still. It was time for the last tale.”
"agressive" settlement might come from feeling safe.
Everyone has a good chunk of land and those jungle bridges are pretty obvious borders, I would have less paranoia on this map than on others  ALso, thanks for your comments Lewwyn, interesting to have an additional point of view from the mapmaking observer 
Some thoughts on how things are going from our omni view:
TBS has discovered Josh to his south. He has already evaluated him as conquest food tier. On the other side, Commodore is aware of the situation and is getting into a duel mindset. He might feel the need to to lock down TBS in a protracted war to prevent TBS from having resources to conquer Josh. This might end up being the game. It's very fraught. I like what civac is doing in that NW starting position. He's settled Ur on the stone hill and got a 3H city tile, which is very nice. AT least 2 others in that same start have opted to settle next to the gold and stone and gems for a super city with many resources. I think this StoneHill placement might end up being a better snowball bet, particularly for this emperor difficulty map. Charriu has gotten Hinduism so that means Buddhism and Hinduism are on continents next to each other. The 3rd Continent is the furthest from either religion. I'm actually very interested to see how spreads end up working. Which brings us to another point. A few players have woken up to the fact that this map is WIDE. I think its a little under 260 tiles wide. Circumnav is going to be a BITCH. If anyone does circumnav they will have a big advantage in this game. A) they will have more trade partners and international trade routes than others and when they get circumnav they will have extra TRs available that most players will never get. I don't think many players have started WB exploring. I'm VERY interested to see if any players decided to screw some WB players and try to sink their exploring WBs to deny circumnav. ANyone who realizes how wide the map is should invest in 2 WBs, 1 for each direction. ANother map factor was always that I didn't want anyone getting eliminated early. That has been successful, in fact no one has really seriously entertained attaching anyone else yet so far as we can see. I think that's great. Also I think the inflection point is going to be sailing. This tech will allow for settling the flash point contest islands. Whoever gets sailign first is going to be ahead of the game. Also the wine islands are going to be huge. Who is going to have cities on the inland sea? Who is going to have mainland culture cover the wine island to prevent settling there?? CRE is hugely powerful on this map. Myst is so backlogged and culture is just hugely valuable and rare now. CRE civs are going to have a huge edge on the islands and Cornflakes is already realizing this. His plans against Jowy are the first of many we are goign to see play out across the game and the different civ interactions. I"m pretty excited to see what happens. Some people are going to be pisssssed. All in all this has been fairly interesting to me even without any early war. Reporting has been fair for the most part. I do think we could use a bit more from a few people namely our off site visitors. ETA: AH I found both the civ.de forum threads and will have a look at gow they are doing too hahaha
“The wind went mute and the trees in the forest stood still. It was time for the last tale.”
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