I'm posting this as early as I can in the hope that there'll be time for other lurkers to comment at their liesure. First, a shot of what the map won't look like:
[EDIT: Added spoiler tags so it'll be easy to scroll past it and the relevant-to-this-game info isn't visible in a way that a misclick-and-glance will reveal it anyway.]
That was LVII, and I'm still kind of sad we didn't get to see it play out, although early map trading did already render some of the fun of exploration moot. I'm including it here partly because I want to create a map with a different feel and shape, but with some of the same advantages that one had. We'll see how it goes! Actual stuff for this game next!
So here's a first pass on the six starting positions. These are very rough: I basically just glanced at them to make sure I mostly liked what I saw, but there will certainly be changes needed. I expect I'll have missed some obvious and important stuff, and am hoping someone can point some of it out to me before I go too far with what I've got!
Note the starts are not all going to be equivalent, even when they're finished. The main things I'm aiming for are:
1) The player sees the start will be excited about playing it.
2) None of the starts will be clearly stronger or weaker than any of the others. If it's debatable, and there are enough compensating advantages and disadvantages, that's okay with me - but I'd appreciate hearing both sides (of the "debate" that makes it debatable) anyway, especially if you think the compensations don't add up to starts that are close enough in quality for fairness and fun.
(And again, at this stage, if these are close to balanced, I'll commend either my good fortune or my subconscious brain; I haven't yet run any numbers or looked at them in any depth at all!)
[EDIT: Superseded! See current start screenshots below.]
Okay, as expected, the mostly-random starts were ... not well balanced. I tried to make them "close enough" or at least fun and playable and not-too-overpowered while retaining their unique character. It's very possible I missed something though, especially as I still don't really know how to balance for EitB, so any opinions would be helpful! [EDIT: Start screens have been superseded; see below.]
What's the remit for the map? How much balance are they expecting?
My main feedback is that in FFH2, even with the slightly boosted starts, balancing commerce resources is pretty important, and A and B don't fit with the rest of the pack - Reagants are somewhat meh, but forest means you need two level 2 techs to get to them, Gems requiring moving. I also tend to think that Gems (/Furs) are inherently inferior because the Calendar line is so strong, and wines gives full flexibility to pick whichever second-tier tech you want. (Gold is an exception because the strength of the tile lets you catch up.)
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
(December 22nd, 2024, 23:35)Qgqqqqq Wrote: What's the remit for the map? How much balance are they expecting?
Well, this is what I posted with the settings that everyone said okay to in the sign-up thread:
(December 14th, 2024, 02:06)RefSteel Wrote: starts (and map in general) non-mirrored and with absolutely no promise of equality, but with attempts to at least balance things to the point where any start is hopefully fun to play!
So that leaves pretty broad lattitude, but I'd like to balance things as well as I can without making all of them feel too similar.
Good points on commerce and the consequences for starts A&B. So in those cases:
A: If I move the gems to the river grass hill NNW of the start (and say move the plains cow out to the easternmost plains tile shown, out of the BFC, to "compensate") do you think that would be enough, or is a gems tile too weak even on a river since Mining is needed? E.g. I could give the start a river dye instead if that would be better.
B: Would moving the forests off (both of) the reagents be enough to bring this start into line with the others? If not, I could change one or both to wines.
Thanks, Q! Here's a new set of updated starts with my attempt at changes as noted above, plus a couple other small changes dictated by other considerations on the map:
[EDIT: All but one of these has been superseded; see below! The only one left unchanged is...]
Plains wheat is a bit of a cursed tile because agri feels so bad with it (of course it's legit, just for you to weigh it in)
Start D's access to and return from the pig is really slow in comparison (unless dwarf/elf I guess), and you don't want to start out farming the FP either
Thanks for looking at the starts, Miguelito! Do you think start A needs a boost, or just making sure I'm aware that its river wheat in effect gets downgraded to a river rice as soon as the player adopts Agrarianism?
On start D, does it help to flatten out the hill NE of the start, to improve access to the pig hill?
I'll note I originally had floodplains at one or more of the starts for both LVI and LVII, and ended up removing all of them in favor of other compensation since I couldn't figure out a way to judge their value that I was happy with in light of Agrarianism and the presumed importance of cottages once Education eventually comes in. I still don't know how to evaluate them, and so far on this map, I've been sort of closing my eyes and hoping they'll be okay....
Also, in case anyone wants to look at (and perhaps make horrified comments about) the overall map, I'll attach it (with the small change to start D I mentioned) here. I'll try to post pictures of the map as a whole too, in "RefSteel hacked together a python script to get all this onto one screen, so some of the resource icons might be really hard to see" format later tonight.
Okay, this is a rare case (for me, at least) where the spoiler tags do in fact contain spoilers: If you want to discover the map along with the players, don't open these tags! If you want to see overview maps before the game starts and hopefully tell me what I did wrong on the other hand, here are:
The world of EitB LVIII, centered as it would be on e.g. the mini-map:
And the same map, centered on more or less the opposite side of the world, for ease of examining the starts near the world wrap.
The actual map file, zipped and attached one post up, will of course allow you to go over it in more depth. If you are guessing that I got carried away again and edite/balanced the map very extensively, you are correct, but the changes I made are more in line with (and mostly not even as extensive as) what I did for LVI, mostly preserving the overall shape of the land (a Global Highlands map, if I remember correctly) in spite of the major terraforming I did in places, rather than LVII, where I technically used a "Lakes" map as a base, and then modified it beyond all recognition, mostly using it as a canvas on which to draw the map I wanted. Here, I used my variation on the Tectonics script on 30% water settings for the base map, moved the starts around, added the two inland seas, connected the one huge, impassible mountain range into what it is, and then talked myself into a lonnnnnnnng laundry list of other comparatively minor changes. Hopefully the end result is a good one!
