Man Sareln better win this thing. Free techs if 4 other Factions know them, in a game with AI? And his civ has like no city distance costs (or like no city # costs, one of the two). The Consciousness should spread across the world like a plague. He just has to get more proactive about holding it
So, some notes about what happened during map making. I do not claim balance at all in this map. Just less crazy starts.
Nothing in here spoils the way the map is laid out (i.e. # of continents and such) but just to be safe it's all spoiler tagged.
Make sure Oceans were intelligent. While the large expanse of the oceans typically holds a nice bounty, making sure the Pirates have at least 3 decent cities to start is difficult. Luckily, being able to convert coasts into cash cows and kelp+ocean = food helps. The hardest part is getting the mineral production. But, since no one else should be contesting the waters, they should be able to pump out a few cities for free. This took several regens.
Related to 1, trying to get the right blend of contiguous landmass but also let the Pirates sweep deep into enemy regions is interesting. I think overall the script does a darn good job of this.
Make sure chokes aren't everywhere. The map script seems to enjoy making chokes sometimes. Like 1-tile chokes. I tried to clean some of these up. It also seems to enjoy placing land masses 1 water tile apart. I know you can pass it with any unit once culture pops, but a chain of archipelagos is hard to keep hopping to get to the good stuff on the next island. The map I settled on only had 1 or 2 of these fixes.
Unique locations. All piled in one spot. Well, I guess the random number generator is legit and allows for clumping. These were spread around the world.
Sometimes the spawns were weird. Like a triangular landmass except all three were squished towards one corner. I moved the AI to the other side, turned down their original start (it had been buffed with like 5-6 resources in 1 BFC) and tuned up their new start in the wastelands. Not sure how the start script is picking these. Perhaps seed evenly, but if land in water move to nearest land? Would make some sense. Will have to ask someone about it. Also, sometimes people would end up with their back to the peninsula and very little growth room on the other side before running into an opponent.
Mostly the players and AIs were already well mixed. So they should border at least 1 AI.
AIs in Emperor start with 3 Impact Troopers, 2 Rovers, 2 Colony, 2 Supply, and a Former. Players get 1 Impact Trooper, 1 Rover, and the Colony/Supply/Former. Just FYI.
In general, I erred on the side of let them have extra stuffs instead of starve everyone. Since that's how most of the starts were to begin with. Some spectacularly so (3 tropical DNAS and a Nutrient Bonus????)
Quote:In general, I erred on the side of let them have extra stuffs instead of starve everyone. Since that's how most of the starts were to begin with. Some spectacularly so (3 tropical DNAS and a Nutrient Bonus????)
Honestly, I've seen some absolutely crazy starts from this map scrip. That sounds relatively tame.
The absolute craziest one I've seen gave me 3 Grenade Fruits, 1 land mineral resource, 1 energy resource, radiotropic fungus, an alien artifact, 2 DNA and 2 water minerals. Even before I researched Xenobiology the start looked insanely good. Afterwards? Yowza.
Selrahc Wrote:Honestly, I've seen some absolutely crazy starts from this map scrip. That sounds relatively tame.
Well, those 3 were in addition to an algae, nutrient, energy bonus, and some other shenanigans. This is comparison to another player's start where the pod's BFC started in all basic terrain. 4 tiles south was nice and lush...
Hopefully everyone is moderately pleased with their start. It's when they spread out things are gonna get interesting.
Are you still working on the map? It might be cool if one AI were sort of stuck off on their own island, also means they'll be less likely to immediately die, since the AI here are just going to be free cities and exp for most players.
Edit- oh apparently it's already done, never mind.
Is this game for no city razing? That's going to make eliminating distant civs a huge pain if so. Also it's a giant boost to the Pirates, who can afford to lose cities to the Planet and just casually capture them back a turn or two later. As far as I can tell, losing cities to Planet and then recapturing them doesn't even destroy your structures, so really all you lose are a couple population and whatever hammers you had invested at the moment.
I'm quite interested in the effects of the AI on this game. I would bet they'll just be rush bait. Whoever executes a good early rush quickest can rip the AI to pieces. But I might be thinking in terms of arrival era rather than expansion... maybe the AI are harder to dismember here.
That's part of why I think the Consciousness' free tech bonus might not be so great. With all the baseline economy techs already available, the human players are probably going to be quite diverse in their tech selections. While the AI are probably going to be removed as an effective force sooner rather than later.
AI in multiplayer games does seem like quite a dodgy concept to me. But really, it's not one we've experimented with too much on RB. Maybe it'll work out well. I'd like that.
So, AI start with extra troops. So super early rushes will be stopped. Mid-tier siege lines? Not so much, so we'll see. And with no city razing you have to live with what others planted, including the idiotic AI choices. So, I agree, this will be itneresting to see how AIs affect this game.
I will have to admit I think a few players are moderately worse off based on the map. A few got unlucky and even with some serious repairs they're a bit cutoff with not as much land to expand. Hopefully they take to the seas. One though is relatively secure and surrounded by AIs. Om nom time perhaps?
