August 22nd, 2022, 13:28
(This post was last modified: August 22nd, 2022, 15:47 by Kaiser.)
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yes it can, you can quite accurately guess from the top right ribbon if a player has Pingala with science/culture promotions as it will show a significant difference in yields. Outside of that, you need to have a high espionage level which you typically only get in the renaissance era, to get information on which governors are present in the cities.
@suboptimal
Your map looks very similar with better spread out large islands for the teams. I slightly prefer my map due to it being a bit less perfect distributed though, but am open to work on any of the two for the island balance. There absolutely is no bias in regard to the effort I have invested into rolling my map ...
I would have guessed that our two maps have roughly similar ocean levels. I think in general this map type makes Japan a bit stronger as they have more places where they can benefit from their +5 bonus. But it is still a positional game for them vs. Norway and Phoenicia and these two already benefit from this being such a water dominant map with only minor islands on it.
Any preference on either suboptimals or my map from the other lurkers?
As soon as we have decided on the base map, I will work on the starting islands.
I had an idea for the CS, what do you guys think of placing 2 CS within 4 tiles of each player island but as defensible as possible without manipulating the map. That should rarely result in a non-coastal CS (if at all) and otherwise be open for naval conquering in differing degrees. It would certainly bring a more random degree into the game, but I feel this was already the case in PBEM20 (there were even backline cultural CS near Suboptimal) which was the reference for this game.
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I like both layouts. Kaiser's is perhaps a bit less "regular" in the layout, but the blue area would need some work.
So a slight vote in favor if Kaiser from me.
August 22nd, 2022, 15:51
(This post was last modified: August 22nd, 2022, 15:52 by Kaiser.)
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Just to be perfectly clear, I encourage all of you to help and support where you can and want in getting a nice map for the guys to play. With my background, I expect you guys to criticize and optimize whereever you see something to be approved on and I will not take it negative.
I promise I also will try to pick up the more subtle hints :D but it is possible I might overlook them
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You should just ignore thrawn, Kaiser. He just wants a faster-playing map to make his longboats better.
Being serious, I think the best idea is to ask the players if they want "Got lakes?" or "Detailed worlds". I think that the other players would pick the script that would hurt thrawn. I would guess they would pick "Got Lakes?" to slow the pace of the game down. But it's his fault for mixing them up. I think in the ideal world map would come before civ selection because map-maker can be influenced, but too late for that now.
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I agree, I fear the other players might not know the difference between the generation of these maps, heck even I have never seen a "detailed worlds" map
Do you think I should roll some sample maps and post them so they can decide based on a map comparison?
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Would they really be able to tell the difference in the map scripts while in-game, exploring and defogging? If not I don't think sample maps are necessary. We need to create a map that is fair and gives the impression that it wasn't too heavily edited and how it actually gets done in terms of map script is secondary.
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(August 23rd, 2022, 07:19)suboptimal Wrote: Would they really be able to tell the difference in the map scripts while in-game, exploring and defogging? If not I don't think sample maps are necessary. We need to create a map that is fair and gives the impression that it wasn't too heavily edited and how it actually gets done in terms of map script is secondary.
I'm sure thrawn would. Map generation leaves tell-tale signs.
I would have suggested to make a slow-playing map to hurt thrawn for getting two uber-civs, but CMF"s post and the fact he will get dogpilled changed my mind. I would stick to the first plain of having 4 private islands with partners reasonably spaced away.
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My one suggestion for the map would be to avoid a situation where one team can simply capture every city state and then snowball to victory off nothing but military unit builds. That was the problem with PBEM19: thrawn's rush strategy wouldn't have worked except that every city state was clustered together in the center of the map and suddenly he jumped from 2 cities to 7 cities to leapfrog past every other player in one stroke. Players should need to build some kind of empire to be successful in a big game like this, not simply vulture their way across the landscape by abusing the terrible AI city state defenses and pillage rewards. I realize that this is putting a thumb on the scale to some degree but otherwise this is not going to be a very interesting game for anyone involved.
What if half the city states were situated on the water and the other half were at least one tile off the coast so that randomly passing-by galleys couldn't capture them? Even better would be if city walls could be added to the city states but I don't know if that's possible in the map setup process.
August 24th, 2022, 06:58
(This post was last modified: August 24th, 2022, 07:16 by Kaiser.)
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I agree, CIV6 with its current implementation of CS does not present a conundrum between development and military, as the best course of action is always building enough military to conquer CS as much as possible. That is why I made them more defensible in the past so it is a little less the best strategy.
I was thinking on placing every 2nd one tile off as well, but they asked for minimal editing, so it will depend on the map if this possible or not.
Curious that Ljubljana mentions specifically that some CS in PBEM20 were very defended/unreachable and that no team should suffer that fate, while it is to be expected that Norway will controll nearly all CS. Thrawn is even mentioning that one of the main challenges is finding the CS which is mostly hindered by movement on coastal areas only, which is one of the key advantages Norway has.
I remember playing against Norway and this is one of their biggest strengths, that the Norway team can establish way more surface area/attack angles while being safe from melee counterattack until navigation. The healing is the icing on the cake.
I am not sure if I should point thrawn onto this or if I/we should interpret it like this
Quote:- City states: 2 per person so 16 total. Not on the starting landmasses (just off the coast is ok). Make them normal like in PBEM 20, and not overly secure like in 21 or the islands in 19. This way people can fight over them like for Akkad, otherwise whoever captures first will easily hold it against the others. Also there is no need to avoid cultural or other CSs [...]
Quote:Suboptimal's team got screwed badly in PBEM20 iirc, with one CS locked behind the ice and another in an inland sea that both survived all game long while every other team's CS could be taken easily with galley builds from the first few cities.
Quote:[...] I chose Norway was that CSs were not going to be overly defended, and I certainly would have chosen someone else otherwise.
It looks like Thrawn either overlooked that there were two very defensible CS in PBEM20 or he was not very precise in the map requirement section. It definetively exlcudes my castle type CS (deservedly, as he is correct that once in the hands of players they become to defensive), but not off-shore settlements or hypotetical ice-enclosed ones (which I want to avoid) are still on the table in my opinion.
One of my deliverate basic map ideas was to provide more chokes and coastal areas while reducing the safety oceans for Norway so Phoenicia and Japan are a little closer to even footing while still having to defend against superior numbers. I might be overstepping the expactions set into the map by trying to equalize the balance here, so please rein me in if you think a map with 4 major islands (with a small separation between the players) and only ocean would be more in line with the players expectations.
It seems it definetively is more in line with Thrawns expectation
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I'll need to check but it might be possible to hand-edit in walls directly into the map file. The .civ6map file format is nothing more than a DBLite formatted database and it should be possible to add walls to the city-states by making entries in the Buildings table.
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