Now you see me... [spoilers]

[Mr. Cairo]

Oof. That's nasty. What will be the consequences?

Well, that was the closest unit to becoming a shade. But otherwise, nothing. I never venture outside my borders with less than two Warriors. I'm surrounded by Polar Bears and Giants.

I really have no idea what's gone wrong this game, or how the hell mackoti managed to get shades so early last game. My main goal for this game from now on is not to just be food.

[Mr. Cairo]

It would be nice to play one of these games where the winner is not a foregone conclusion before it even starts. I do want to play another eitb pbem after this, but not with mackoti. Also, I have some things to say about the map, but that can wait until I'm home and can take some screenshots.

[Mr. Cairo]

Well, the end is coming, mack's declared war on me.

So, on to the map:


There's one very, very serious problem with my start compared to the other's visible here: happiness.


See how my cap is size 11 and Auro's is 14? Well, I only got it to that size through a lot of effort. Most everyone else had caps that size 30-40 turns ago.

Looking at the luxury resources, I only had Gold available to me at the start, and even that was pretty far away. There is 1 Sugar to the north of my cap, but it was under a jungle so required a lot more teching to get to. There were NO luxury resources within range of my capital.

Miguelito had Dyes, Wine, Gems, and Gold, all near his cap (those last two in his caps BFC), and Cotton and Ivory available further away. Auro had Ivory, Cotton, Gold and Silks (last two not visible in the screenshot) all near his cap.

I was basically screwed from the start. My cities were all stuck several pops behind everyone else's. And so As the turns passed I fell further and further behind. I expanded slower, I teched slower, I built fewer units.

I doubt that the outcome would have been any different had the map been more balanced, I'm not an expert at this mod, and that is especially true of the Sidar. But it would have been nice to at least feel as though I was on an even footing with everyone else.

[naufragar]

I feel petty arguing with a player that the map was good or bad, because y'all are the arbiters at the end of the day.

But on your invitation, I'm here. When making the map, I eyeballed what I thought each player's area would be and then added resources. I looked back over the map, and here's what I added:

Dave: Gems, Incense, (And I expected him to grab his southern ivory)
Mackoti:Wine, Furs, (and then I apparently had a brain fart because he needed a third luxury. He got a bit shafter.)
Cairo: Gold, Incense, Sugar (and yeah, you're right. This shouldn't have been under jungle. That was bad.)
Auro: Cotton, Ivory, Gold, Silk (I don't know if I talked about it in the lurker thread, but I gave Auro slightly better land because I thought he had the smallest natural area. He wasn't supposed to get those islands south of Mack so easily.)
Miguelito: Gems, Gold, Cotton, Wine (Mig is the big outlier. I added a mining lux, I forget which, late in development because I was worried about his unirrigated desert. There were luxuries in the jungle band throughout the map that I hadn't placed. Sugar and Ivory in the west, and dyes in the east. The sugar and ivory ended up not mattering, but the dyes ended up too close to Miguelito when he moved his settler south (even if the dyes were jungled.) So yeah, there was a big discrepancy between Miguelito's luxuries and everyone else's, but non-Miguelito players seemed roughly comparable.)

I did read your above post when you made it, but I certainly wasn't going to argue with your perception in game. Two things I quibble with now: my balance generally got screwed by people moving their settlers turn 0. Dave moved straight towards Mack; Auro and Miguelito moved into luxuries. I wasn't taking into account how much vision you can get with a 4-move settler. Still not sure how to solve that. But nobody started with luxuries at their capitol. The second thing is the Ivory. That ivory is closer to you than Mig, and while it certainly isn't in your immediate sphere of influence, it can't be laid at my door as (yet another) surplus luxury for Miguelito.

I don't think the map was especially tightly balanced, but I don't think (barring Miguelito's area) anybody was completely dead on turn 0. But again, don't make me argue too hard. I really like the map  but it's only as good as its outcomes.

[Mr. Cairo]

I feel petty arguing with a player that the map was good or bad, because y'all are the arbiters at the end of the day.

But on your invitation, I'm here. When making the map, I eyeballed what I thought each player's area would be and then added resources. I looked back over the map, and here's what I added:

Dave: Gems, Incense, (And I expected him to grab his southern ivory)
Mackoti:Wine, Furs, (and then I apparently had a brain fart because he needed a third luxury. He got a bit shafter.)
Cairo: Gold, Incense, Sugar (and yeah, you're right. This shouldn't have been under jungle. That was bad.)
Auro: Cotton, Ivory, Gold, Silk (I don't know if I talked about it in the lurker thread, but I gave Auro slightly better land because I thought he had the smallest natural area. He wasn't supposed to get those islands south of Mack so easily.)
Miguelito: Gems, Gold, Cotton, Wine (Mig is the big outlier. I added a mining lux, I forget which, late in development because I was worried about his unirrigated desert. There were luxuries in the jungle band throughout the map that I hadn't placed. Sugar and Ivory in the west, and dyes in the east. The sugar and ivory ended up not mattering, but the dyes ended up too close to Miguelito when he moved his settler south (even if the dyes were jungled.) So yeah, there was a big discrepancy between Miguelito's luxuries and everyone else's, but non-Miguelito players seemed roughly comparable.)

I did read your above post when you made it, but I certainly wasn't going to argue with your perception in game. Two things I quibble with now: my balance generally got screwed by people moving their settlers turn 0. Dave moved straight towards Mack; Auro and Miguelito moved into luxuries. I wasn't taking into account how much vision you can get with a 4-move settler. Still not sure how to solve that. But nobody started with luxuries at their capitol. The second thing is the Ivory. That ivory is closer to you than Mig, and while it certainly isn't in your immediate sphere of influence, it can't be laid at my door as (yet another) surplus luxury for Miguelito.

I don't think the map was especially tightly balanced, but I don't think (barring Miguelito's area) anybody was completely dead on turn 0. But again, don't make me argue too hard. I really like the map  but it's only as good as its outcomes.

Well, as I said earlier, Incense isn't a real luxury. I guess the thing that I have an issue with is that even if I did move my capital, I had no luxuries available until Mining (the Gold) and Bronze Working (the Sugar). Nothing at Calendar or Crafting or even Hunting.

And while I suppose that Ivory was closer to my start than Miguelito's, there was a pretty hefty stretch of desert between it and me, while Mig had grasslands and plains leading from his area to it. Desert tiles take 2 movement points in this mod and give a -25% defensive bonus, so it's very slow and dangerous to cross and every unit I tried to send that way to explore got killed by animals. To get a city near that Ivory would have been a pretty major undertaking for me at that point in the game.

I mean, even if I had moved my capital, I don't think there's anywhere nearly as good to move it to as where Mig or Auro moved to. You say they moved their starting settler into luxuries, well, I didn't even have that opportunity unless I ran it blind past the mountains to the north towards that Gold, and that was a terrible place for a cap anyway.

And all those floodplains I got that you said in the lurker thread might be too strong, well they weren't nearly as useful as you might have thought. Food isn't important in the way it is in normal Civ 4. With the Agrarianism civic that everyone gets early on, any old riverside grassland becomes a 4-food tile, higher base food isn't as useful. And slavery isn't an early game civic and sucks besides, so I can't turn food into hammers with the whip. I honestly think I would have been better off if all those floodplains were just grasslands and the desert between were hills or plains. Well, unless I had picked the Malakim, which I should have in retrospect. But Decius just kinda sucks so I didn't.

[Mr. Cairo]

So after reading some of the other threads I just want to reiterate and expand upon this post of mine from a little while ago:

It would be nice to play one of these games where the winner is not a foregone conclusion before it even starts. I do want to play another eitb pbem after this, but not with mackoti.

I do think there are legitimate concerns about mack cheating, but I don't think there'll ever be satisfactory answers either way. But, to be honest, it's irrelevant to me. Either mack's cheating, or he's so good at this mod it seems like cheating. The outcome is the same no matter what: mackoti always wins. Which makes these PBEM's especially dull since there is a pretty small player pool so every game with mackoti in it ends up being the same. So, while I do want to keep playing EitB PBEMs, I wont play one with mackoti again.

And yes, I know that if mack isn't cheating, then he's getting punished for being good, which sucks. But I play this game for fun and frankly, it's just not that fun to play EitB PBEMs with him, so I won't.