[PB63] Map-making thread

[Tarkeel]

Is this the time when Tarkeel succumbs to the dark side and rolls a donut? Stay tuned to find out...

[Tarkeel]

While we're waiting for the players to decide on which kind of map they want, here's some starts to consider. The principles I've used are that each start should have the following resources:

• One primary food, inner ring: wet plains-wheat, grassforest deer or lakeside fish. (5f1h vs 6f2c)
  
• One secondary food, outer ring: dry plains-wheat, plains deer or lakeside crabs/clams. (4f1h vs 4f2c)
  
• One bananaforest, inner ring (3f1h)
  
• One oasis, outer ring (3f2c)
  
• One grasshill pig, outer ring (5f1h)
  

This should result that everyone has two 5f and one 1f tile; one of which will be 2c and the others 1h.

Terrain-wise I aim for the starts to have:

• 9 river-side tiles, of which 5 are flat grasslands, 3 hills and the bananaforest.
  
• 6 forests, atleast one of which is a plainshill
  
• 6 hills, with atleast one each of plains and grass that isn't forested, including the pigs.
  

This comes in addition to the capital site itself, which will be a river-adjacent plainshill.

Below are three sample starts, one with each of the primary resources:







If the map is water-heavy I will make sure each capital has equal access to the ocean, similar to how start C is. The existing lake will be the ocean, and the seafood will be moved to a new outer-ring lake.

[Commodore]

Well, I think my biggest piece of advice is to go with a map that you are passionate about. I should have held out for one extra person in 62, that original candidate was awesome and I think everybody would have been much happier.

[civac2]

I'm gonna have a look at the starts. But that will take a while

[Tarkeel]

I think I'll go with the lakes, but with more water than I first intended. Will write something more detailed about the process later on.

Start C's deer probably will become a wheat instead.

[civac2]

Start C appears to be more powerful than the others. Building a workboat with a 4yield tile is very efficient. I'm not sure yet. Maybe there are better ways to play starts A and B then I tried so far.

[Miguelito]

Start C's deer probably will become a wheat instead.

And remain wet? Then you have 1 start with 6/5/5 food,  while the others have 5/5/4. I would already consider C the strongest as is,  although I'll admit I'm not well versed in workboat vs worker theory. 

Also you might want to move the wheat/ fish to second ring,  to make up for the turn that the deer players lose moving onto the forest

[Tarkeel]

Start C's deer probably will become a wheat instead.

And remain wet? Then you have 1 start with 6/5/5 food,  while the others have 5/5/4. I would already consider C the strongest as is,  although I'll admit I'm not well versed in workboat vs worker theory. 

Good catch; I shouldn't be making decisions so early. I think part of what makes C so strong is the possibility of a lighthouse for the lake, so I might remove that option.

Also you might want to move the wheat/ fish to second ring,  to make up for the turn that the deer players lose moving onto the forest

With the inner ring banana-forest and forested plainshill I think it's better to have all the other resources in the outer ring, both for equal worker move and easier sharing with secondary cities.

[civac2]

The strongest start for C is build a workboat using the banana tile. You get the wb turn 9 at size 2 with 3 stored food. Worker follows in a mere 6 turns. The 4 yield tile enables a more efficient workboat and also makies growing to 2 with the extra food you gain over the worker start better.

[Tarkeel]

I actually liked a lot of what Commodore did with the 62 map, which together with 57 was my main inspiration for the first draft I had. With 90 players and the strict requirement of 12 tiles between them, I figured it would be good to go for a a 12x12 "block" for each player, arranged in a 3x3 grid for map dimension of 36x36 and 144 total tiles per player. With the extra focus they want on water and larger lakes, I might go to 12x16 blocks for 192 total tiles per player.

I wanted to take the middle part (without all the tundra) and turn it into a map. This was done by:
1. Roll a huge lakes map, dimensions 84x52
2. Use a perl script to shift every Y down 8. (52 = 36 + 8 + 8)
3. Edit the file to add in signs to indicate starts
4. Move all starting units to the indicated starts
5. Load the map in civ and save it again (*)
6. Edit the file, search for x=36 and remove all tiles from there untill the end. Remember to update the grid width/height and num plots written attributes.
7. Transpose the rows and columns using regex replace in Notepad++, search for "x=(\d+),y=(\d+)" and replace with "x=$2,y=$1"
8. Load the map in civ and save it again (*)
9. Edit the file, search for x=36 and remove all tiles from there untill the end. Remember to update the grid width/height and num plots written attributes.
10. Transpose the rows and columns using regex replace in Notepad++, search for "x=(\d+),y=(\d+)" and replace with "x=$2,y=$1"

I could have spent some more time writing a perl script that extracted just a range of tiles, and I might even do that at some point.

(*) This step is so that civ will re-order the tiles.

I'll redo this later today with a less-jungley and more watery map.