PBEM 5D - Map and Lurker Thread

[scooter]

Okay some filler comics in case of accidental clicks:







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So I wrote up almost all of this earlier then accidentally hit "back" on my browser, which caused me to lose all of this. I was so annoyed that I set this aside all day long, and I'm finally just now getting back to it. This probably won't be as long as my original preview was, but it should still be fairly comprehensive.

TT told me that they wanted a Tiny Mirror with early contact, but not close enough that it was all about early choking. That sounded pretty much exactly the same as what I'm playing currently, so I shot for something similar to that. I'm going to give you a big overview shot, then I'll look at the start from the players perspective, then I'll take a closer look at a couple regions. I'll then wrap up with my leader/civ choice for them. Here we go:



Note that I'm only going to look at one side, since both sides are identical. I made various minor changes on the map, but I'll get to that later, so let's get straight to the start:



Mirror maps are not normalized, so I made a lot of changes to the start. I rolled a lot of maps, though I was mostly just looking for something that started the players in the middle of their section, and just about every start either put them in the tundra (no thanks) or on the far edge of the map, and I didn't feel like completely moving their starts. So when I rolled the map, I went with it. My goal with the changes here was to get them to start in place, and have a decent capital, so I made these changes:

1. Added the corn (I think? Pretty sure 0-food starts are possible on Mirror)
2. Added the rice
3. Removed 2 jungles and changed another into a forest
4. Changed starting tile from flat jungle grass to plains hill
5. Added a horse SW-SW of the capital. (obviously invisible here). It's an awkward position (something I'll mention it later) but I specifically wanted it two tiles diagonal from the capital, because it means it's not in the workable tiles for the capital, but it also prevents them from founding directly on top of the horse, which could end the game very quickly for someone. It also means they have to defend the horse from the other guy.
6. Put the scout 1SW of the capital, hinting at them to scout towards the center of the map. I went ahead and moved him 1NW for purposes of what they might see when they make their decision, although it's probably more likely for them to move SW-SW or something like that.

So that should get them to start in place if they are sane, though TT makes it sound like Mackoti might not have done that right away. Can't think of why he'd make a move, but perhaps he'll tell us. Also, I was going to remove the peaks in favor of better tiles, but WorldBuilder tended to distort these tiles into weird looking shaded tiles, which just looked horrible and screams that they were edited. Anyone know if this is fixable? Or is it just a WorldBuilder bug? Next let's look at the region just southwest of the capital:



TT also mentioned "nice amount of resources" so I tried to help out areas that were a bit barren. I also wanted to make sure both had pretty good access to strategic resources. I made these changes:

1. Added the horse + rice - you knew about this already, but I wanted to put it in perspective. It looks odd having three resources in a row (it's my most obvious edit), but coal won't be visible for a long time so they won't notice. In retrospect I should have moved coal to the backlines just to make this edit less obvious, but it's not that important. The reason I added the horse was because if you saw the overview, the only other reachable horse was way up north, and I want to see some Keshik action! I'll address Keshiks later.
2. Added iron - again, I wanted easy access to strategic resources. This kind of game is more fun when decided by tactics than by who has more guts to settle iron a mile away.
3. Added spices - purely because happy resources were lacking on this map, so I added it as a mild bonus. It also pushes them towards the center of the map for earlier action.
4. Boosted the big circled area. I'm doing this whole report by memory, so I don't remember exactly what changes, but this area was really barren when I first saw it. Tons of desert and a few plains, maybe 1-2 grass tiles apiece. I do know that the grassland hills used to be desert - I added it so someone had the option of settling right on the border to get a defense boost. It's a riskier move to settle right on the center, but the payoff is a hill defense boost AND possibly snagging both Wheats. An interesting strategic decision I hope. Boosting this whole area will also (hopefully) push them to settler closer to the middle again, which would make for more fighting - and hopefully some razings like has happened in the southern middle of my game - where there's been a combined 6 razes!

It's possible I did a few other things, but I can't think of anything else. Here's the north:



I left this area mostly alone, though I made two minor changes:

1. Added copper - Again, wanted all resources to be available. Also needed to be in the vicinity so that spears were buildable to repel Keshiks, but I didn't want the Spears to be automatic either. This way the player gets to decide if they want to settle a weak 2nd city (no food) and get Spears or if they want to fight fire with fire and build more Keshiks.
2. Added a food - I can't remember which I added, but I added one of those two food resources. This map in general was really food poor, so I made a couple additions like that just to keep it from being too bad.

That about wraps it up, as the rest of the map I left pretty much untouched. I think I added a random corn and/or cow wayyy up against the edge of the map just because the area was pretty barren again, but I mostly left it alone. I made one other addition just for the fun of it. Way down in the icy corner of the map, I left each of them a DVD copy of the movie "The Departed," which their citizens will hopefully enjoy:




Finally, the leader/civ choice. They wanted to be the same leader/civ, but TT wanted "nothing too crazy" which I'm guessing means Shaka of Zulu is out. First off, I wanted them to be Mongolia, mostly because I think the Keshiks are one of the most fun units to play with in the game. Definitely not the best UU ever or anything, but being able to ignore movement costs opens up a lot. This is partially why I didn't remove some of the jungle from the very center of the map - because I figured it let Keshiks have an advantage for awhile.

So Mongolia was an easy decision, but picking the leader was harder. I decided I wanted them to have Creative, just because it's fun to not have to worry about borders and instead get straight to the killing. This also discourages them from going for a religion, when really the more interesting decision is how quickly to run for HBR. If one guy sprints for HBR and the other fools around with religions and then heads to Iron Working, it's game over for him. So I settled on Creative as the must-have trait.

From there I wanted Charismatic to be the second trait, since it's fun to have more promotions available in this kind of game. Unfortunately there is no Cre/Cha trait. I thought long and hard about swapping to Exp/Cha, but decided against it. Briefly considered Agg/Cre, but Kublai of Mongolia is a bit boring for obvious reasons, so I skipped that. I then thought of using Philosophical, which in the end I went with. This adds another dimension to the game, and I just felt it would make for an interesting situation, since GP are more important in this kind of game. Is someone going to churn out tons of Artists and try to culturally dominate the middle? We going to see some lightbulbing to get an advantage to get a player back into the game? I figured Philosophical allowed a lot for someone to get themselves back into the game by out-thinking and out-planning the other player.

So I think I covered anything. Any questions? Any criticisms/suggestions?

[Cyneheard]

Creative Mongolia: Like. Keshiks are going to cause all sorts of havoc with coming out of the fog to hit units. And Creative means larger borders to counter that...should be fascinating.

Philo: When I first heard that it was Pericles of Mongolia, I thought "huh"? But you're very right: Philosophical is a high-leverage and very flexible trait, which makes it a great one for these mirrored games.

We'll see what happens with the copper. It's really, really, really far out there, so a player's going to have a tough time covering it. A city 1E of the copper is 6 tiles away from the capital. That's a lot of road segments. The peak 1NE of the copper means that you basically have to settle 1E of the copper to have any food res at all and the copper in instant range. I think we'll see a Dazed situation here, where whoever pushes here too early could see themselves getting that front city chopped down again and again and again. But surviving to Iron Working may work, since the iron is in a good spot.

From what I can see, a 2nd city for the north corn, and a 3rd city for the sheep/copper is probably the best way to go. The horses are already in range of their culture if they settled in place (50 culture at 4cpt).

Non-sequitur: Financial should be avoided for these games unless they're on a water map simply because it isn't a trait that requires a lot of thinking: MORE COTTAGES. And, wait for it, MORE COTTAGES. Although there's basically no rivers on this map, so Fin wouldn't be quite as strong as it usually is.

The Hit Movies is an ice touch.

(That was a typo, then I realized that it's better left this way)

[scooter]

We'll see what happens with the copper. It's really, really, really far out there, so a player's going to have a tough time covering it. A city 1E of the copper is 6 tiles away from the capital. That's a lot of road segments. The peak 1NE of the copper means that you basically have to settle 1E of the copper to have any food res at all and the copper in instant range. I think we'll see a Dazed situation here, where whoever pushes here too early could see themselves getting that front city chopped down again and again and again. But surviving to Iron Working may work, since the iron is in a good spot.

There's actually two coppers, there's one much closer to the capital - northeast. I even made a note about why I added it.

Thanks for the comments - though with the added knowledge of where the other copper is, do you revise your opinion on the third city or would you still go for the slightly aggressive sheep/copper city?

[Cyneheard]

Hm. Probably still settle the sheep/copper. And here's why:

The eastern copper requires settling across the lake to get a decent city (or get just an oasis...yuck. At least sheep/copper gets 4-food and the extra hammer), so it wouldn't be all that productive either, and take about as long to get connected, as the sheep/copper.

Both cities would get settled as high-priority sites, though, since I wouldn't trust the sheep/copper city to hold (at least the copper, if not the city).

And Pig Iron in the SE will be nice when that gets settled in the desert.

[T-hawk]

Also, I was going to remove the peaks in favor of better tiles, but WorldBuilder tended to distort these tiles into weird looking shaded tiles, which just looked horrible and screams that they were edited. Anyone know if this is fixable? Or is it just a WorldBuilder bug?

The weird shaded tiles get fixed automatically the next time the game is loaded for any reason. It happens to ocean tiles too, and sometimes hills. Odd worldbuilder bug, something to do with the 3D geometry calculations, but it's harmless.

5. Added a horse SW-SW of the capital. (obviously invisible here). It's an awkward position (something I'll mention it later) but I specifically wanted it two tiles diagonal from the capital, because it means it's not in the workable tiles for the capital, but it also prevents them from founding directly on top of the horse, which could end the game very quickly for someone. It also means they have to defend the horse from the other guy.

This was pretty much exactly my thinking for the copper placement in the previous Scooter-Dazed PBEM5C game (Sumeria.) Put the UU resource 2 diagonal from the capital so it's accessible but you can't work it or settle on it. And that turned into a blowout - the first guy to grab and hold the resource for a few turns won. We'll see how it goes here; are Keshiks as swingy as vultures?

4. Boosted the big circled area. I'm doing this whole report by memory, so I don't remember exactly what changes, but this area was really barren when I first saw it.

Although there's basically no rivers on this map, so Fin wouldn't be quite as strong as it usually is.

Those concerns feed into each other. Mirror generates very few rivers; I added most of them to the current PBEM5C map. Rivers in turn create flood plains (if the map designer is alert), which can flip a large area from barren to highly desirable.

Mirror also tends to leave out a lot of resources. I wonder what the history of the Mirror script is? No start normalization and such swingy chunks of good or bad terrain... that doesn't feel like it had Sirian's map hand in it at all. ?

[Ilios]

Scooter, in all the cases I've pressed "back" accidently, I could just press "forward" in the browser, and my post was still there.

[Cyneheard]

Well, since Makoti moved to an Oasis/Copper/Corn spot, the question of "who gets horses first" isn't the correct one: We're going to see Keshiks versus Spears instead.

I think this early, the mobility of the Keshiks are going to give Makoti trouble, but we shall see. Keshik-for-worker trades could get ugly real fast for Makoti.

And re: Script: I think the problems with the Mirror script feed into why Fastmoves had a Mirror Inland Sea script. Keeps it even between the two teams, but IS is much better about normalizing the game for the players.

[scooter]

The weird shaded tiles get fixed automatically the next time the game is loaded for any reason. It happens to ocean tiles too, and sometimes hills. Odd worldbuilder bug, something to do with the 3D geometry calculations, but it's harmless.

What's odd though is I thought I've seen it in-game - thought for sure I saw it in Timmy's land in PBEM3. That might be the weird coastal tiles that weren't actually coast that I was thinking about though.

This was pretty much exactly my thinking for the copper placement in the previous Scooter-Dazed PBEM5C game (Sumeria.) Put the UU resource 2 diagonal from the capital so it's accessible but you can't work it or settle on it. And that turned into a blowout - the first guy to grab and hold the resource for a few turns won. We'll see how it goes here; are Keshiks as swingy as vultures?

I'm thinking (hoping) that the difference in this case will be the sheer distance between the two players. The amount of tiles between capitals is probably 3x greater, though 2x is more realistic given we're talking Keshiks here. The other part is that Keshiks are easy to counter with spears, and both players have access to copper. The best way to counter the Vultures was with more vultures... Chariots would have worked, but I don't think horses were very close. In the other game if you managed to get a couple Vultures on the other guy's copper it was GG, because all you had was archers. In this case if you lose your horse, simply whip out a spear or two and you can get your mine back.

Those concerns feed into each other. Mirror generates very few rivers; I added most of them to the current PBEM5C map. Rivers in turn create flood plains (if the map designer is alert), which can flip a large area from barren to highly desirable.

I didn't notice that actually - the lack of rivers. I should have added one towards the back. BTW, on my floodplains I have one tile that is a desert river - is that why it's not floodplains?

Mirror also tends to leave out a lot of resources. I wonder what the history of the Mirror script is? No start normalization and such swingy chunks of good or bad terrain... that doesn't feel like it had Sirian's map hand in it at all. ?

Mirror feels like a map script that someone started on and never finished, but was released anyways. I need to check out CFC and see if someone's written a better Mirror script (surely it wouldn't be too hard), it would be really really nice.

[scooter]

Scooter, in all the cases I've pressed "back" accidently, I could just press "forward" in the browser, and my post was still there.

Me too usually, though in this case I hit backspace which is what caused it to go back, and I'm wondering if I hit it twice, as this time when I went forward the post was gone. But yeah, usually it hangs on to the text. This is why I usually write up reports in Notepad/Word first. Ah well.

Well, since Makoti moved to an Oasis/Copper/Corn spot, the question of "who gets horses first" isn't the correct one: We're going to see Keshiks versus Spears instead.

Maybe I'm just dense, but I cannot figure out why Mackoti would look at the start and think to move his settler... But in the end I think it's going to work out nicely for him. He has a fantastic second city as a result, and I think if he leverages it correctly he'll be in great shape.

I'm also interested by the extremely aggressive second city placement by Twinkletoes... He went for the middle copper first(!), but not only that, he went for 2x banana + ivory + copper, rather than sheep/copper. Two VERY different starts, as Mackoti kept his settler close to home.

And re: Script: I think the problems with the Mirror script feed into why Fastmoves had a Mirror Inland Sea script. Keeps it even between the two teams, but IS is much better about normalizing the game for the players.

They did? I need to check that out. Mirror just doesn't work great, I've seen it start both players on the same side before... Just does some weird stuff.

[Cyneheard]

Found it:

Mirror Inland Sea Mapscript

Haven't tried it all, but it can't be any worse.

You'd think it wouldn't be that difficult to do a mirror map right: Build half the map normally, using an existing script. Put half the players on that side (checking for teams, as needed). Normalize their starting locations. Copy over to the other side of the mirror. Done. But maybe they didn't spend the time to do it properly? Unknown.