Lurking - The Not-So-Silent Service

[suboptimal]

Figured everyone had a home except the lurkerati, so here we go.  Like some of the player threads, we can change the name here if we come up with something more waterfowl-like.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Does anyone know why thrawn would want to ban Byzantium?

[suboptimal]

He may be envisioning a scenario where a dromon fleet + horsemen launch an early invasion after founding a religion with Crusade. Killing units with the dromon (CS 35) could convert a non-religious city, resulting in a horseman that attacks at +3 and deals full damage.

[Kaiser]

thanks for making the thread. The scout discussion underlines again one of the issues of CIV6, the production scaling is out of bounds and thus scouts remain very cheap units which would excel at the mentioned strategy and make it borderline just because it is so easy to flood the map with scouts at a certain point.

@suboptimal:
Thanks for offering to help make the map, it looks like current consensus is:
- Naval map (likely archipelago or continents)
- Large size (huge if we come up with a great idea)
- at least some middle sized islands without players
- CS on small islands ?
- no Kaiser style map o_O (I read this as natural map with light edits for balance and ressource distribution)
- Teammates on same or different island? (seems there is a tendency for different island but close by.)
Idea: believe seperate island or even worse, big islands reduce the cooperation aspect. I thought about instead putting the 2 capitals direct next to each other (possibly land locked) so there should be instead a lot of coordination for scouting/settling decisions/map usage. What do you think?

That means we are rolling maps and hope for a better balance than PBEM20. Would you be up for rolling 5 maps (with the got lakes+ script) and then we compare here our results and decide on one as a base?
Was there an easy way to modify rolled maps after the fact?
I really need to refresh how map making worked xD

[Kaiser]

hm this is the first map I rolled, I do not think it is suitable due to being only two continents, but the general setup looks nice



I will go ahead and try to get a couple decent ones with 4 clear starting areas

[suboptimal]

I'll have to take a look at this tonight and plow through some maps. I have hacked scripts before (did that for the Ichabod/Thrawn duel map) when they haven't yielded good results on their own. I also coded my own half-assed java-based map generator quite a while ago and can see if that produces any interesting results.

For the map, what about a start area of limited size (say, 5-6 relatively close cities between the teammates) with nearby islands that can fit 1-2 cities each as the "home" territory, with larger islands further afield? I suppose another idea would be to provide start areas that can fit 3-4 cities but separate teammates by a 1-2 hex channel of coastal water. I know that there's a concensus against "constructed" maps but I think we can construct and still have it "look scripty" if need be.

For city-states small islands is probably the way to go. If we wanted to make them protected or otherwise challenging to take they could be sculpted so that the city center has only one tile of sea exposure and is protected by a cove made up of hills or mountains (limiting ranged fire access) and has terrain (hills/forests/jungles) blocking LoS from the rear. I suppose we could also cut them off for a while by giving no coastal lanes to reach them but keeping them close enough that they could be seen. If we really wanted to protect them (and take a page from the infamous barbarian submarine game) I'd give each city-state a battleship in a landlocked lake for coastal defense.

Is there a timetable to get the map done?

[suboptimal]

Clarify why Byzantium is banned?

Byzantium has 2 prophet points like lavras, so very good chance of first religion. Get crusade. Go fight near enemy and even a civ with a decent faith income would struggle to keep your religion out of their cities. Convert enemy cities to crusade for easy capture.

I'm starting to think like Thrawn even after not playing for a year. Maybe there's still hope for me.

[MJW (ya that one)]

To avoid map-spoilers. Byzantium might be okay on this map with private islands, because you might avoid having to fight in your own cites, but not anywhere else. This is because their cav can force you to fight like that with their speed. It doesn't make sense to unban them for one map type.

[MJW (ya that one)]

To avoid map-spoilers again : statue of Zeus is probably okay on this private islands map but not anywhere else.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I guess Germany or Russia for thrawn. Norway and thrawn are so good the only way it doesn't win is in the map is defensive; so you pick a late-blommer civ.