[NO PLAYERS] EitB PbeM LVI Map and Lurker thread

[RefSteel]

Attachments seem to be broken again, so I'll have to host the WBSave elsewhere and post a link if someone wants a look at it.  (Let me know!)  In the meantime, here are pictures of the starts as currently constituted, in case anyone has comments or suggestions:

Player 0:

Player 1:

Player 2:

Player 3:

Player 4:

[Tarkeel]

With the caveat that I don't know this mod at all, isn't player 0 slightly inferior to the others? I really hate crab/clam starts, and would bump it to a fish for the workboat to be worthwhile. It also has slightly more coast than the other starts. Lastly, the cow for player 4 is slightly more isolated than other resources; probably not a big problem.

[xist10]

The fish for player 2 is placed suboptimal too. 5 tiles from the city ?

Another thing: player 4 has/sees mana ? If I recall my small FFH experience right, this is not that important during the start, but later ?

[Quagma Blast]

I notice that everybody has a Hunting luxury except P3, who has a Wine instead. Are they all intended to be early-game luxes? Because if so, Hunting in FFH2 is much later than in vanilla, and Calendar resources would be better in that role. If not, Wine is the first unlockable luxury in the game, which would accelerate P3 faster than the other starts.

[RefSteel]

Thanks for the comments and observations! I changed Player 0's clam to a fish and reduced its water approach to a single tile, removed a couple of forests from Player 4 to make its cow less isolated, and shifted Player 2's coast around to allow faster access to the fish. I also gave everyone a Wine resource (the only luxury every civ will definitely be able to use from T0 with these settings) except Player 3, who already had one and got a Sugar instead. (I'm not happy about that last solution, but haven't come up with a better one yet.) Everyone already has a mana node within their capital's third ring; most just aren't visible in the starting screenshot.

Maybe of more concern is the map as a whole. I made a stitch of the main continent (there are a couple of others that are small and not accessible without ocean-crossing) so you can see what I mean. Here's a link to the full-sized monstrosity in case you want to zoom in more than the spoilered version might allow:

I like the Erebus-script-like feel of it in a big continent (I used Global Highlands to generate it, not Erebus Continent) and it was fun to play from all five positions when I played an earlier version with EitB LV's settings, but removing all the second-column techs (Fishing, Hunting, Animal Husbandry, Mining, Masonry, Calendar, Cartography, Mysticism, and Education, if I remember correctly) while still keeping the free Worker, combined with EitB's tech costs (Hunting is 300 beakers with these settings, Masonry the cheapest at 140!) and everyone getting exactly one civ-dependent free second-column tech (or none if Doviello!) together with the changes I've made as a result, might mean that's no longer valid. Plus the players won't necessarily find fun in the same places I do! Any thoughts would be appreciated. (Including whether the distant continents should be included....)

[Tarkeel]

I really like the central mountain ranges and valleys, but player 3 seems very isolated by it. I would make two or three passes through that mountainrange. Eyeballing it, it seems like there is decent amount of land between all players, so that looks good.

[RefSteel]

Thanks, Tarkeel. I didn't want to give that player too-direct access to the center, so the passes I added are a bit involved; hopefully this helps.

Also, I decided what to do about the wines: I moved the extra wine I had added (sugar for palyer 3) to their respective capitals' third rings. That way, they'll be an early luxury for everyone accessible by the time of their second border pop (T25-6 without CRE on Quick speed) without changing the capital tile yields. On consideration, I'll probably also swap Player 3's Sugar with the nearby Ivory since Calendar is almost half as cheap a tech as Hunting. Hopefully that'll work! Here's an updated stitch, linked here for the full-size version:

[xist10]

The mountain range for P3 is still not good, but I don't think there is a easy way to make it better.

And if I look at the typed mana, the accces is not even. Every player can lose "his" typed mana if he isn't fast enough, but the difference between the distance isn't the same.

7/9 between P1/P2
7/11 between P2/P3
6/11 between P3/P4
7/9 between P4/P5
6/9 between P5/P1

Nothing drastic, but still a point to consider.

[RefSteel]

Thanks for looking at that. I swapped a couple of the mana-providing uniques around so everything is either at 6/9, 7/9, or 7/10 distance from the nearest players as the warrior walks (I think that's the measure you were using?) and also opened out the passes a little more, and changed the luxury distribution some. I have two versions now, with different takes on the passes:

Version A:

Version B:

I'm not sure if either one is better than say version A with the pass in the south center of the map switched back to something more like the previous version; any thoughts on that would be welcome! Just looking at it now, I'm realizing the mountains tend to (relatively) isolate 3's and 0's start positions from barb animals in particular. I'll have to think about whether I can or should change that. Any other thoughts?

[Kaiser]

I do not have enough experience to comment on balancing the start positions here, but I remember that the first settler has a crazy moving range so this is probably worth checking as well before the game starts.