[PB73 SPOILERS] scooter's Oracle

[Tarkeel]

Just thought it was interesting to put the pieces together.

I know that the completely revealed map in PB68 made exploring less interesting, so how does it feel to play with a semi-revealed map?

[Zed-F]

Personally I kinda like it. Feels like it rewards clever analysis with extra info without eliminating all the mystery.

[scooter]

I love it, though I am the resident gimmick-lover as evidenced by my push to make this game happen. I’m bad at map-making, but I was fiddling around with a concept at one point that revolved around a couple interesting map things being defogged from the start (for example, a juicy city location, a barb city, marble/stone, etc) while the rest of the map being hidden like normal. The idea of some given info that would affect choices/scouting in either a straightforward OR red herring sort of way sticks in my brain as an interesting setup.

In this case, yeah totally pre-explored would be a bit anti-climactic, but mixing in a little bit of teaser info is way more interesting. It was satisfying to see those Luddite cities and map them back to what little bit I knew. It’s also interesting to know I likely won’t meet Oxy anytime soon, because his screenshot is clearly far north, and my scouting has almost exclusively been along the south just because I keep finding more islands there as I chase circumnav. That said, I played a PBEM on a known map awhile back, and even that was fairly fun because I could think about exactly what that map wanted rather than go for all-around good choices. So I wouldn’t even mind that in the right situation.

[scooter]

Had some great news greeting me this turn.





Luddite accepted OB! He hasn't actually lost a city yet which is somewhat surprising. I'm getting tantalizingly close to circumnav. You know what else this means.





Five brand new 3c routes in some of my cities. This was worth 10c total, an enormous windfall. Now the bad news is uh, if he starts losing these cities, I lose the routes . Also I don't want him to collapse anyway. So here's literally all I can offer as it's now hooked.





Hope it helps?





Yuris is laying down an impressive amount of cottage spam this early. This sort of suggests to me that he's having a hard time scraping together the commerce for IW + HBR, honestly. He doesn't have the population here to actually work all of it I don't think, so if he wasn't worried about tech rate, I think he would have gotten a settler out instead of one of those workers. Also looks like he's skipped Hunting. That sort of makes some sense given that it's not strictly on the beeline, but hoo boy is it painful to not be able to improve those Furs this entire time. Surely the happy would help too?

[scooter]

Also looks like he's skipped Hunting.

Would be really interesting if this was still the case when peace expires, right?

[Tarkeel]

I love it, though I am the resident gimmick-lover as evidenced by my push to make this game happen. I’m bad at map-making, but I was fiddling around with a concept at one point that revolved around a couple interesting map things being defogged from the start (for example, a juicy city location, a barb city, marble/stone, etc) while the rest of the map being hidden like normal. The idea of some given info that would affect choices/scouting in either a straightforward OR red herring sort of way sticks in my brain as an interesting setup.

I'm thinking more games could benefit from selecting starting locations, possibly even with some information about how they relate to each other.

[greenline]

I'm thinking more games could benefit from selecting starting locations, possibly even with some information about how they relate to each other.

I have a couple hesitations about this idea. As a lurker for this game, I feel like it made it harder to judge the value in the tech / leader picks. As a potential player, I also think that letting you pick the land would overshadow Civ / Leader picks in any game running a balance mod. The gap between a good civ and a bad one is much lower outside of the base game, but the value of the land is mostly unchanged.

[scooter]

I love it, though I am the resident gimmick-lover as evidenced by my push to make this game happen. I’m bad at map-making, but I was fiddling around with a concept at one point that revolved around a couple interesting map things being defogged from the start (for example, a juicy city location, a barb city, marble/stone, etc) while the rest of the map being hidden like normal. The idea of some given info that would affect choices/scouting in either a straightforward OR red herring sort of way sticks in my brain as an interesting setup.

I'm thinking more games could benefit from selecting starting locations, possibly even with some information about how they relate to each other.

I like any excuse for more drafting. It also gets at the real balance issue - that neighbor luck is the biggest factor in any game. If you had some degree of control over that as a player at a cost (in this case, less priority over other value picks), that would be interesting.

I'm thinking more games could benefit from selecting starting locations, possibly even with some information about how they relate to each other.

I have a couple hesitations about this idea. As a lurker for this game, I feel like it made it harder to judge the value in the tech / leader picks. As a potential player, I also think that letting you pick the land would overshadow Civ / Leader picks in any game running a balance mod. The gap between a good civ and a bad one is much lower outside of the base game, but the value of the land is mostly unchanged.

I think this could be smoothed out in a different game. In this game the request was intentionally for there to be a pretty wide gulf between the starts, but it would not necessarily need to be that way in the future. It just worked best in this game given all the variables at play.

[Zed-F]

Also looks like he's skipped Hunting.

Would be really interesting if this was still the case when peace expires, right? 

I detect some thoughts of using a chariot counter attack to punish a lack of spears… just because you think you are the aggressor doesn’t mean you can neglect your own defenses!

[scooter]

Also looks like he's skipped Hunting.

Would be really interesting if this was still the case when peace expires, right? 

I detect some thoughts of using a chariot counter attack to punish a lack of spears… just because you think you are the aggressor doesn’t mean you can neglect your own defenses!

Yeah, although I realized there's a much simpler explanation for why he hasn't camped the Fur. He only just got a capital border pop to get it in his borders, and only Adrianople could even work it, and it's size 1 so it's going to work the Wheat. So instead I'll keep an eye over the next few turns to see if he improves it or not.