[SPOILERS] Lurkers Rooting for More Destruction

[scooter]

I'll have some thoughts on the setup later.

[Amicalola]

where map

[civac2]

Is the forest in the lake next to Thrawn's capital intentional?

[Zed-F]

Probably. Every player seems to have a hammer-lake tile.

[scooter]

where map

Secret! A couple folks have helped with balancing/feedback, but I don't plan to post the map until it's well-explored. I think it would be fun for lurkers to discover it as the players do and develop their own feelings based off that on how it will unfold. Hopefully players report - that's the one bit I'm a little nervous about. In general I persoonally think it's more fun to lurk games where I don't know the map, so I'm hoping that will be the case here.


I'll post a write-up on my general thinking on the setup with more detail later tonight.

Is the forest in the lake next to Thrawn's capital intentional?

Yeah, they all have one. In part because it's fun, and I'm also hoping it will make Fishing less useless. If you have Fishing, you can pickup +2c pre-Worker on everyone else, but of course it's a little bit of a wash considering that commerce will simply go into techs that are more immediately useful that you could have simply started with. No idea what players will decide.

[El Grillo]

I am expecting a secret subterranean layer populated by mutated giant rats, who emerge in a skittering horde from tunnels on moonless nights to snatch a tasty morsel.

Also, barbarian gunships programmed not to attack unless provoked, circling silently and inscrutably. Maybe the players can try to befriend one.

[greenline]

if this is supposed to be a unique and crazy map, give people a desert floodplain hills sugar for their food or something, not a RB Standard Approved Forest Ivory Dry Corn combo burger

[scooter]

if this is supposed to be a unique and crazy map, give people a desert floodplain hills sugar for their food or something, not a RB Standard Approved Forest Ivory Dry Corn combo burger

I wouldn't call the map "crazy" by any means, though it is a fair bit more adventurous than normal. I do want the players to still be able to have a competitive game of Civ4. Just straying outside the bounds of normal here while adding a theme. But there are impossible tiles aplenty in the fog. That said, these screenshots contain a forested lake, multiple roads, and visible ruins, so there's some teases at least. Also, a subtle easter egg that I am really curious if anyone will discover before T0. A couple of them will find it easier to spot than the others.



As for the game, well I'm really hoping this will be reported well enough that lurkers can follow along with the players. I'll post the map once it's been well-explored. Thanks to the map reviewers for helping a great deal here. It's not quite done, but it is getting close. I will comment on the general setup in a light-spoilers manner though.

* Barbarians: Raging

* Tribal Villages: Technically disabled

* Difficulty: Monarch

* Map Size: Small

* I recommend good scouting.

* No Spies

* Close to Home: I'm assuming this. It's not strictly necessary though, so if players would prefer something else, I might tweak a minor rule or two

The Barbarian thing might qualify as a very mild red herring. The setting is indeed set to Raging, and there will be a real Barbarian component here. However, I suspect the early Barbarian "feel" may be closer to normal Barbarians for Reasons. I think the immediate vicinity spawn will be somewhat more limited than it might normally be. However, there really is a heavy Barbarian component to the game, so I think it works out. There should be sufficient incentives to build military early and have to balance that with land claiming.


I also considered bumping difficulty to Emperor, but my concern was not letting Barbs get TOO out of control, and I was also concerned it would make Organized a must-pick, particularly because this map will have quite a few cities. Finally, the Tribal Villages teaser I think is pretty clear. There will be some, but they will be rare, exclusively hand-placed, and require a tiny bit more effort to claim. It's generally unlikely they will have a big impact on the game, but I'm sayin there's a chance.

1) No pillaging tiles in neutral territory allowed.

Obviously this implies there will be some amount of pillageable things on the map. Previously when this happened, the meta turned into just converting these into gold via pillaging, so this simply blocks that choice off. Once they're in your territory, do whatever you want as you don't receive gold for that. And if you want to pillage another player's stuff, you do have to take the diplo hit to declare war first. (I'm curious if anyone will adopt this as a strategy.)

2) After leaders/civs are selected and locked in, you are allowed to select a third starting technology. It must be one of the normal starting technologies. This should be done privately (PM to me or in-thread) so as not to reveal this info directly to other players.

This game felt like a good excuse to take this idea I've had for a spin. I wish starting techs were less important. Many games I've wanted to pick a Civ and backed off because their techs just did not fit the foods the mapmaker selected. My thinking is that this will greatly increase the number of viable Civs. I also wonder if this will increase competition for religion, which is normally a luxury for whoever has good starting techs and therefore spare beakers. I would sort of like to use this option in the future, but this game will be a nice test case for whether it works out in practice or not.

3) The following civs are banned: Vikings, America, Rome, China, and Byzantium. The Imperialistic trait is also banned. I will likely not elaborate.

The map is roomy, but I haven't explicitly revealed that to the players, though the sharp players will take the hint I think. I really believe IMP would be OP here due to this roominess + map lushness/rewards. Even if I'm wrong about it being OP, it would be distorting for sure. So I either needed to reveal the roominess and watch everyone pick it, or say nothing and watch whoever guessed correctly OR got lucky reap the benefits. 5p game, so banning a trait felt like no big deal. As for civs, this is mostly just banning CtH favorites that are over-represented in small games. Byzantines are a unique case though. The 3rd starting tech dramatically softens their primary weakness, and I also think this is a game where player conflict will not ramp up until the Med/Ren era, which is when Byzantium power spikes. So I really felt strongly that they had to go. Overall I also thought that banning several common civs provided me some cover for my biggest concern which was Byzantium.

4) Your capitals will be placed for you on T0 rather than starting with a settler.

There will be a few obscenely good cities in this game. A few areas I know about, and almost certainly a few that are not entirely intentional. I just wanted to make sure nobody stumbled on one I hadn't considered for their capital and/or first ring and blew away the field as a result.



Finally, there were a couple ideas left on the cutting room floor.


* An earlier draft of this had everyone starting with a Great Spy rather than a Scout, with the condition that they were not allowed to use it for anything other than scouting, and they were not allowed to enter enemy territory with it. The rationale was to reduce variance from getting your scout killed. It felt like adding one too many curveballs for limited upside. Also considered Explorer, but then you can do some nasty chokes fast with them, so I stuck with the normal Scout.


* I considered placing fallout on the map. I thought this be really cool for the game. Problem of course is that they'd be untouchable for ages and as a result be super annoying. I wondered about letting players have Ecology or some weird mod compromise, and ultimately decided to drop it. It seemed more fun to find and look at than fun to actually play with. There's still time to add this in if I can think of a way to make it not suck.

[El Grillo]

It might be possible with just xml edits to make fallout variants that only slightly reduce yields or can be cleaned up more easily. I don’t remember if fallout increases global warming odds, or if that’s even still a thing in CtH.

[RefSteel]

Is fallout any worse than a flat desert or ice tile? I feel like it's okay to have some unusable tiles on the map just for the cool/story factor. (And you could put it on desert or I think Peaks anyway, couldn't you?) Unless fallout does something else I'm forgetting about ... or spreads?