[PB72 SPOILERS] Aetryn learns humility

[Mjmd]

Ok so Highlands map is interesting. It isn't a bad script for 4, but it has some implications.

I rolled a few maps with the most water (I think in the seas setting) and there still isn't a lot. It decreases things like great lighthouse and colossus, the later especially being relevant for industrious usually you want to beeline MC (or go through Oracle). Although cheap early forges are hardly a bad thing ever. Also, again Stonehenge while it can be built by anyone is easier.

Less water means maybe more use out of Inca UB??? Not sure how much it maters, but just chucking stuff out there. In maps I rolled there weren't that many , but there were some areas without rivers or freshwater lakes, so just being able to build farms at all early isn't nothing.

Its very hilly (duh), not everywhere mind, but still a lot. Skirms go well on hills. I'm also curious on if we will have world warp, with 4probably not, but? If not, I'll also mention its a very rectangular map, so being able to defend one border while expanding to middle might be important, but mind Krill didn't seem to want to move capitals and there were some interesting distributions in there.

Hills also mean I want to point out the CtH serfdom economy. I've never run it, I LOVE cottages, but we actually have the 1 leader that can do both land dependent in Mansa. Switching back to slavery when needed is nice. I imagine there will be some cities we want to concentrate cottages at, but depending on food I think a lot will be farm windmills. You can put cottages on grassland hills, but again food dependent. Krill said he would add food to blank patches, but that doesn't mean you can cottage 4 hills or plains tiles and feel good about it. I know neither of us mentioned Mansa in the initial rounds, but highlands maps are pretty big and Mansa not only would help with serfdom but also is one of the better late game leaders we have in the pool. Again, I love Vicky, I think Stalin is still valid, but wanted to add in Mansa for your consideration.

Speaking city specializing, one of the biggest jumps from single player to multiple player I faced was not trying to make every city (or nearly every city) be everything. One of my many green game mistakes was building unnecessary / marginal infrastructure. You want a lot of commerce cities, production / whip cities, and then very few in between.

[aetryn]

Ok so Highlands map is interesting. It isn't a bad script for 4, but it has some implications.

I rolled a few maps with the most water (I think in the seas setting) and there still isn't a lot. It decreases things like great lighthouse and colossus, the later especially being relevant for industrious usually you want to beeline MC (or go through Oracle). Although cheap early forges are hardly a bad thing ever. Also, again Stonehenge while it can be built by anyone is easier.

Less water means maybe more use out of Inca UB??? Not sure how much it maters, but just chucking stuff out there. In maps I rolled there weren't that many , but there were some areas without rivers or freshwater lakes, so just being able to build farms at all early isn't nothing.

Its very hilly (duh), not everywhere mind, but still a lot. Skirms go well on hills. I'm also curious on if we will have world warp, with 4probably not, but? If not, I'll also mention its a very rectangular map, so being able to defend one border while expanding to middle might be important, but mind Krill didn't seem to want to move capitals and there were some interesting distributions in there.

Hills also mean I want to point out the CtH serfdom economy. I've never run it, I LOVE cottages, but we actually have the 1 leader that can do both land dependent in Mansa. Switching back to slavery when needed is nice. I imagine there will be some cities we want to concentrate cottages at, but depending on food I think a lot will be farm windmills. You can put cottages on grassland hills, but again food dependent. Krill said he would add food to blank patches, but that doesn't mean you can cottage 4 hills or plains tiles and feel good about it. I know neither of us mentioned Mansa in the initial rounds, but highlands maps are pretty big and Mansa not only would help with serfdom but also is one of the better late game leaders we have in the pool. Again, I love Vicky, I think Stalin is still valid, but wanted to add in Mansa for your consideration.

Speaking city specializing, one of the biggest jumps from single player to multiple player I faced was not trying to make every city (or nearly every city) be everything. One of my many green game mistakes was building unnecessary / marginal infrastructure. You want a lot of commerce cities, production / whip cities, and then very few in between.

I MIGHT have got fresh water in Civ 4 confused with fresh water in Civ 6 and forgotten it could help with farm layout. Thanks for calling my attention to this. I was thinking it was just like a free aqueduct with +2 health, but obviously that's not what fresh water in Civ 4 does. Oops!

That is an interesting point about Spiritual and being able to freely use Serfdom without worrying about compromising whipping when needed. Might also help with OR/Theocracy swaps as needed, assuming I even get a religion and those civics (like to in single player, but obviously don't want to chase early religions in multiplayer... but maybe don't need to?). Value of religion in recent PB games seems complicated to value. Spiritual does also fit my criteria of "one thing to just completely throw out of my mind" in worrying about timing GAs around civic swaps. I'll add Mansa to the short list.

[Mjmd]

So in civ4 multiplayer there are various "things I look for"

Mainly involving how are you managing economy. Obviously a shrine is AN option. I've done once, its good, but not required. I like cottages because they scale well not only with printing press, but also just amount of infrastructure built. You only need like 6-7 full on commerce cities to be relevant. Do you have wonders helping (or powering) your economy. Not technically required, but helps. Traits / civ adding value?. You don't have to have all these things, but you need some of them. There is a reason I like an economic trait on my leader and a economic or expansion focused civ (snowball focused). Lord knows GP planning for GAs / other uses is a HUGE part of civ4 I never really considered in single player that matters a lot.

Religion is nice and anytime I've played without I've felt the lack. I love having a religion (self founded or just randomly got), spreading it, and then popping org religion in first GA to boost all those sweet GA hammers. Again, its not required, but I would recommend doing SOMETHING with, but hardly means you have to rush it especially with only 4 players. Religions hang out a lot longer than single player. The happiness is also pretty nice economically and option of later on theocracy can be nice.

[Krill]

[Mjmd]

Its not 3.5 food, but it is 3 good food, which I will definitely take. I'm not sure if I'll have time for micro, but this is a pretty open start either way. Generally I know people only go workboat first when there is a fish and a plains hill forest to work, which we have, but two wet wheat and lots of forests also temps me towards worker first.

Point being, I think you can do whatever you want civ wise. Edit: Krill did confirm to not pick a "naval civ". What exactly that translate to as far as water will be interseting. I don't suppose Krill you would tell us if there is a global body of water?

[aetryn]

Starting position thoughts (before pulling up Civ 4 and actually trying out some starts)

This looks like a pretty normal food start. I don't think there's any call to start with fish over wheat but I suppose I'll figure that out definitely in a sandbox.
North pole start, as that appears to be tundra across the water and we have icy forests with conifers south.
The coastal lands plus the very cottageable river valley suggests FIN is going to be good for the capital at least. 
The capital doesn't need freshwater help for farms. But very good chance other sites do. I should roll the map script a few times before I make this decision.

I'm leaning increasingly toward Mansa here. When I went into this game I was thinking "I'd like to avoid dealing with border pops but I will learn civic swap timing with GAs". But my leader choices really made that hard to work with as I didn't really get the CRE leaders I was looking for. I could instead switch to "I will learn how to do good border pops in MP and avoid dealing with civic swap timing by taking SPI". I think it's probably a weaker strategy than the original plan because I won't use SPI to its potential, while CRE is pretty easy to use adequately. But I kind of like it better than "just take a good econ trait with IMP and have to worry about both". The capital looks good for FIN and I can't possibly know about other locations anyway, except perhaps by inference from the map script.

Given Krill's comments about not picking a Naval civ, I don't know how much value there is in building Lighthouse or Colossus. Stalin is still a possibility though.

Civ choice looks totally wide open. Can make use of any techs I imagine with this start, and we will want Hunting for happiness sooner or later. But I'd probably remove the Hunting starts from consideration since we won't need that for a few turns. My lean is toward Inca or Mali here.

Thoughts?

[Mjmd]

Krill what is the tile / player count? ( I don't think I actually expect a response on the global body of water IE are people connected, but can't blame me for fishing).

I do expect the tile / player count to be high, so we will see exactly how high. Again, PB 65 had a count of 144/player which was very high, but actually felt much smaller because it was all land, which mostly is probably what this one is.

[aetryn]

What is the world wrap setting? I assume not toroid, since the map script tends to place the north pole at the north edge and a jungle belt at the south edge, and that would be a painfully ugly map transition. But would like to know if we wrap east to west, if you can reveal that Krill?

[aetryn]

I did a little map generation with the script (should have done this earlier I imagine). Map size is 30 tiles high under Small settings, and there are 8-9 ice forest tiles at the top (then 8-9 confier forest tiles in the middle). So we're not quite as far north as I thought because this map script is only one hemisphere. So there are either 4 or 5 rows north outside of vision on the other side of that sea. There's likely to be a fair amount of tundra up there, but not likely to be a complete icecap like on a continental map and there can even been normal plains/grasslands. There are also likely to be a LOT of chokes on this map script. There's a lot of little bodies of water that don't connect, and a lot of peaks.




Imagine hiding your last city on the forest on the south edge of the map here to troll someone with war weariness:







Don't expand culture and you could pretty much never be found. Even if they do find you look at how hard it is to get to that square!?

So basically agreeing with your analysis here MJMD that there are lots of hills and also quite a few waterless areas. I don't know if that really helps me make a decision between Inca and Mali though (or do you have any other civs that I'm overlooking at this point based on the start)?

[aetryn]

Also, I'm perpetually terrible at posting images. How should I be posting them? I notice Krill's image starts small and then gets bigger when I click on it, whereas mine is just huge and ugly all the time. Help?