[NO PLAYERS] PBEM 12 Map Making and lurkers

[Cornflakes]

So an Island Plates map it is. Last time I rolled an island Plates map for PBEM 4 it took a long time to find one that was split evenly between 5 continents. I may resort to massaging the base script a bit if I don’t find anything in a reasonable amount of time. I’m hopeful that I can spend a half hour of so rolling this evening and see what I come up with.

[Cornflakes]

Let's fill some additional space in case of a player mis-click 





And of course we want lot's of:

[Cornflakes]

I remembered that I had a stash of a couple dozen island plates maps rolled from some forgotten past! In looking through the screenshot library I found one that looks somewhat promising. What do you all think about this for overall geography? The starting continents are circled in RED, while the YELLOW indicates contested islands [note, I plan on chopping off the indicated portions of a couple of the larger landmasses].

   

The player starting continents make roughly a circle east/west. Nobody is directly north or south of anybody else. There are 4 large contested islands that nobody starts on, and each player has decent access to at least 2 of them. In addition there are a couple medium islands and a smattering of tiny islands.

I'm thinking about editing the "continents" to make each starting landmass its own "continent", and letting the rest stay as-is.

[Cornflakes]

Seeing no objections to the global-scale geography I plan on loading the map and taking a closer look

[Cornflakes]

Here are some photos of the starting areas. Number 1-5 west-to-east. Each has approximately the same number of workable land tiles (non-mountain non-tundra non-desert). Other than the starting 2-ring radius I did a cursory strategic resource pass and each starting continent should have at least 1 copy of each strategic. City states have not yet been placed.

   

   

   

   

   

[Cornflakes]

Looking through the photos I did the following checks:

• Double check that each starting island has at least one copy of all strategics - OK
  
• Each starting island has 5 luxury types (surprise! I didn't touch luxuries yet) - OK
  
• Fresh water sites ... each start has 6 fresh water sites, some have an additional marginal site (tundra/desert) ... except for #5 which only has 3 and a halfway marginal. I'm planning to add a few tiles to enclose a couple of coves on the north side of the island into lakes near the coal/whales and eastern desert/crab
  
• 3 starts are inland with a lake, 2 starts are coastal with a river. The coastal starts are both in an inlet at least 3 tiles deep where they can't be bombarded by frigates from the open ocean. Honestly not sure whether the coastal starts will have an advantage or a disadvantage in the long run.
  

Overall this was a very lightly edited map. I sunk a few tiles to split up some of the larger landmasses, added some land at start #5, and added a ton of strategic resources since those were woefully inadequate. Pretty much every start was missing either horse or iron. And coal, niter, oil, and uranium were almost non-existant.

[Ituralde]

Seems like all the usual lurkers are off Dedlurking and I have been busy getting used to having a second child.

Better late than never I like your initial idea and execution as well.

I'm curious to see what you can do with the continents, though? Can you post a screenshot on how the Continets will look?
Making each Starting Island its own continent is a good start, but what about the contested islands? Depending on the civ picks it can make a huge difference if those are already on a different continent or not.
I don't really have a solution for that, but just wanted to throw it out.

Thanks for the mapmaking efforts!

For what it's worth I didn't find any obvious errors in the posted map. So looks good to me!

[Cornflakes]

I ended up not addressing the continents at all, just leaving them as they spawned.

[Woden]

Took a look at the map before creating the save and nothing jumped out at me. Looks to be fun map and should be an interesting game. Good job Cornflakes!

Fun Fact: you can not longer use the debug command "reveal all" in multiplayer, so I couldn't check city states.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Took a look at the map before creating the save and nothing jumped out at me. Looks to be fun map and should be an interesting game. Good job Cornflakes!

Fun Fact: you can not longer use the debug command "reveal all" in multiplayer, so I couldn't check city states.

In before CMF gets Nan Madol again...