[No Players!] PBEM14 Mapmaking & Lurking Thread

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Keep out you sneaky players!  You'll spoil the surprise! 

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Okay, so I've combed through the exhaustive archive of 200 maps Cornflakes sent me, and I have narrowed the field down to 5 candidates for further editing. I'm going to be pretty transparent about my process, since I'm new at this and welcome community input.

I flipped through screenshots of the maps, looking at the minimap first to see if the continent shape seemed appropriate and interesting. With a 3/2 split, a lot of maps I could toss straight out the airlock since they made two equal size continents - I want a slight imbalance. I also tossed a bunch out for just looking plain weird and wrong. So here are our finalists:

H8:

A really strong, easy to balance candidate. To the west sits a continent shaped like a lotus flower, with 3 petals - perfect for our triple start continent. In the east is a long, narrower continent, with room for a start at either end - 2 players. In between are small to medium islands for some naval play. I like this one.

H22:

More unorthodox - a long, wide continent with a lake in the middle is in the east. I would start players in a triangle with the lake in the center, giving each triple player two fronts. The western continent features players at north and south. The land isn't as balanced in this map, though - I fear the 2-player continent would see two stronger civs, and whoever won there would ultimately dominate the game. Could be overblown, though - not all land is used in most games. 

H47:

Similar to H8. A western lotus for three players, and in the east a narrow continent. The narrow continent is oriented east-west, however. Lots of small islands and narrow straits mean that all civs would interact with each other early, with no deep ocean travel required. That appeals to me. Land is less balanced than in H8 and favors the 2-player continent again. 

H75:

This one is really intriguing. A huge blob continent in the west gives lots of room for 3 players. In the east are two small continents separated by a narrow channel, good for one player each. There's deep ocean in the center with small islands. I might edit the two-player islands to have a connection in the east, and I'd want shallow water connecting most of the globe, but everyone gets about an equal amount of land in this one, while at the same time the starts are pretty asymmetrical so we could see some imbalances happen. I think this is the most interesting option, personally. 

H83:

A big blobby continent for the three players, and a smaller blobby continent for the two players, with some large unsettled islands in between (1 large island in each ocean). This one has deep water keeping people off the outlying islands. A more conventional choice - probably the one I'm least enthused about. 

Right now I'm leaning towards H8 or H75, but I could see arguments for H47 and H22 as well. H83 is my least favorite. If anyone has any thoughts, be sure to speak up now, I'm going to look at starts more closely in 75 and 8.

[MJW (ya that one)]

200-->5 maps? They weren't joking about how bad it is.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I would go with H75 with no connecting tiles.

[Ituralde]

I'm leaning towards H8.

H75 makes it really easy for the 2 person continent to avoid conflict altogether.

I'm a big fan of rewarding exploration and making all continents accessible withouth ocean faring.
Should also give the players more option, when they can interact early on.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Okay, after some thought, I've decided to go with H8. While MJW and I agree that H75 is the more unique and interesting map, it's just a little bit too radical, I think. Experimentation tends to upset players unless they've explicitly agreed to it, and I sure as hell don't know enough about balancing a map to try and get tricky. So, we'll load up H8.

I only intend to make the following edits:

1)Coastal connections between continents and small islands. Otherwise the game will be locked into two separate games, much like PBEM11 was, until ocean tech is reached, at which point whoever has conquered their continent just wins. Rho conquered his continent before Archduke did, and so had a better navy (the game was of course more complicated than this, but it's the basic thrust of events). This way, exploration is rewarded and players can influence the other continent, with effort. 

2)Ensuring there is at least one copy of each strategic resource near every player's capital.

3)Try and make sure there's a roughly even amount of luxuries. 

Things I will not attempt: Balancing for number of choppables, fresh water (beyond a reasonable amount, at least), other terrain. Mucking about with that too much will tend to spoil things more than it helps, I think. 

When placing players, I aim to split the city states 5-3-2 over the 3 player continent/2 player continent/outlying islands. Going to try to place things so each player is closest to 1 city state, with the ability to reach 2 more if they're quicker than the other guys. 

I aim to place city-states, within the above constraints, with two more priorities (in order).
1)Off fresh water, so they're not just morsels for quick expansion. Even though they'll be eaten anyway, at least this way it takes a little bit of investment to make them truly great.
2)Avoid invalidating all nearby fresh water locations. 

That doesn't leave a whole lot of places, but I'll do my best. 

Then it's just a matter of figuring out how to get all the finicky stuff set up properly (yes, this start belongs to a random player, THAT start is a city-state, etc) and run Cornflakes' program to initialize it. Hopefully we'll have a preliminary result up by lunch time.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Okay, so here's a look at H8 in more detail. I've only made a few alterations, as I said: 

1)I added a few small islands and coastal connections.
2)I added strategics around each starting area.
3)I sprinked a very few small rivers, mountains, and lakes to fill in dry areas and allow for aqueducts. 

First, I added a few coastal connections. I built a small island here:

Connecting the 3-player continent with a large island off the coast of the 2-player continent.

To the north of that, I added another small island:

Giving access to the northern island for both continents. Then I added a few connections:

So you can get anywhere in the world with a galley. This way players won't be totally helpless if, say, the Aztecs totally overrun one continent. Only mostly helpless. It should create earlier connections between the two groups and create a more interesting and dynamic game. 

Now let's look at starts. I set them all to random player, so we have no idea who will end up with which start. 

Player 1:

Player 2:

Player 3:

That completes the first continent. Luxuries I left as is, since the map was already looking lush with the strategics added in. Player 2's start seems devoid of any bonus resources, but they also have more jungles for chopping (which, er, is getting nerfed). Perhaps not 100% balanced but any changes I make will probably worsen things, and this way they can just blame RNGesus instead of me. 

Two player continent:

Player 4:

Player 5:

This continent has a neat chain of mountains that divides the continent into roughly 3 sectors: South, northeast, and northwest. 

Wider views of everything, same player order, with city states labelled a bit more clearly (the # is an artifact of the process and means nothing). City-states I tried to roughly place so that each player is more or less guaranteed 1, with up to 2 more available depending on how lucky their scouting is:

There are 5 city states on the 3-player continent, 3 on the 2-player continent, and 2 on the modest islands for early explorers. I now stand open for comment.

[Alhambram]

I would add some food tile for start 5, maybe a wheat tile 2 tiles north of city or replace upper aluminium desert tile with wheat flood tile in case player 5 settle upon mercury.

All other starts seem ok, start 2 lack food in first 2 ring but at 3rd ring there is wheat flood plain tile which can be bought.
Start 4 also lack directly farmable tiles but it got powerful surrondings as start including natural wonder.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Okay, I'll add some wheat to Starts 5 and 2. That early snowball is important, so I don't want to force Player 2 to purchase something to make them competitive. Start 4 has the natural wonder which seems to roughly balance out.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Also, if no one else has anything, I'll send the map to the players in a few hours.