My main target in this game is to have fun and play fairly casually. Once the corona situation eases I'm sure that RL stuff picks up in speed and I don't want to be too mentally committed so that I can't play fast and careless turns when busy. Or be too frustrated when this/my game eventually crashes. We'll see, I guess the longer the semi-lockdown in Finland continues, the better I will end up performing..
Hitru and OH are expected to make appearances here every now and then I've been lurking their team chat occasionally in PB42 and PB46, but nice to be around a bit more again!
For others out there, any preferences/ideas/wishes regarding reporting? Detailed turn-by-turn stuff is probably off the table, but I'll try to spam occasionally something of potential interest.
Settings for reference
1) Mod Changes (vs. 4.1.1.6 from PB46 + latest BUG)
- privateers ---> optics+engineering
- crossbows ---> back to vanilla
- trebuchets ---> back to engineering
- map trading ON at Paper
- Leave treaty length at 5 turns
2) In-game options
- Map size: Standard (technically a mapmaker setting)
- Difficulty: Monarch
- Speed: Normal
- Era: Ancient
- No tech trading
- Barbarians on
- Events on
- No tribal villages
3) House rules
- Standard no double moves / don't be a jerk / no clock games
- Spies allowed
- War/peace allowed
Provided map info
- All players start on the same landmass
- The map includes smaller landmasses of various sizes as well.
- There are starting spots for 8 players; I can probably edit the map to get this down to 7 or up to 9 if necessary; this would probably take a few more days than otherwise, but might still beat the settings discussion if we get a quick roll call now.
- Number of cities presumably depends on how densely people build, but to judge by GJ's Mapcad + my guesstimates, there will probably be about ~~60 total cities on the map, including all land masses, if the game goes long enough to settle them all. This number will probably go up or down by 5-6ish if I modify the map to add or subtract a player.
- No mapscript was used; when you find something about the map you hate (and if you play on it, there almost certainly will be something) you can safely blame me!
- I tried to make the map look natural and interesting (to me) - not freakish or gimmicky. It's designed with East-West cyllindrical wrap.
- When I made this map, I was trying to balance it pretty assymetrically: Different players on this map will have different map-based advantages and disadvantages from one another, so each player who loses will have a valid grievance against me. In theory, if the decisions of different neighbors aren't taken into account, the different advantages and disadvantages of different starts should hopefully more or less even out and leave everyone a chance to win from turn 0 though. Hopefully!
- The map is currently balanced on the assumption that Ivory is just a luxury resource, since the latest RtR makes Wellies available with Iron, with or without Ivory. This is reasonably easy to chang if I'm somehow mistaken about this rule.
(April 2nd, 2020, 13:11)Fintourist Wrote: For others out there, any preferences/ideas/wishes regarding reporting? Detailed turn-by-turn stuff is probably off the table, but I'll try to spam occasionally something of potential interest.
Any reporting is always good. If you could arrange for it to mostly horrifying violence, that would be awesome .
Actually, I quite like buildery reporting too ...
Good luck!
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
Thanks! My thread has dropped to the last place so I guess it's time to provide at least some content..
Competition
This might be the most even field that I have played at RB so far. Last pitbosses I have participated were so big that they just had to include significantly weaker players and thus neighbor luck played an essential role. In this game everyone should know what they are doing.
Commodore and Ruff are vets at RB
I think Cornflakes and Cairo have also played good games here
Elkad and superdeath have not impressed me maybe that much based on the little I have lurked, but I think they have kept playing since then and are stronger nowadays
I don't know much about Miguelito, but he has played here as well and has pindicator as a dedlurker/teammate
Raskolikov is new here and my knowledge is based on 1 minute peak at his PB48 thread. I don't want to give spoilers, so let's just say that it's turn 11 in that game and he is at 120+ posts. And it's not all just memes.. So I expect a good showing from him and Rusten-dedlurker as well
So the way this impacts the overall strategy is that unlike in bigger pitbosses you maybe aren't as forced into "eat a neighbor quickly and snowball" strategy as there might not be easy pickings available for anyone.
The fog and corner (i.e. non-BFC) tiles might possibly still change, but should actually be at least roughly accurate at this point.
Let me know in the tech thread if the image isn't visible or something. I won't be reading players' threads until I'm finished with the rest of the map: I actually asked a non-civ playing, non-forum member friend randomize the starting images and am posting them without looking at them to be sure knowledge of different players won't influence the way I try to balance things. That's probably more extreme than necessary, but I'll also enjoy the surprise when the map is fully finished and I finally find out which screens are whose!
Thank you Ref, I appreciate the measures to make everything as fair as possible.
(April 4th, 2020, 12:34)The Black Sword Wrote: If you don't know who the food is, maybe that means you're the food.
Totally.. As an example of how rusty I am: When I read through the mod notes and descriptions of various buildings I found myself wondering.. "Lighthouse: +1XP to naval units. +1 food from water domain tiles. Require Sailing. Cost 60 hammers." ...have they buffed lighthouse to provide food for water tiles..?
Quote:I always really enjoyed your 'big picture' reports in previous pitbosses, so just more of the same would be great.
Thanks. This is now the first pitboss I'm playing in which you are not one of the opponents (PB13, PB18 and PB38). We have never been neighbors, but in the last two you were a key opponent nevertheless.
So I'll use the opportunity: Looking back at those games, on general level, what would you consider as our team's strengths or things that we should definitely keep up? And on the other hand, what would be the weaknesses or areas where you have felt that we could do better?
What to play on a tight pangaea with some islands. Well, we ended up with Izzy (SPI/EXP) of Inca (Agri, Myst, Terrace, Quechua).
Civ selection
Maybe a somewhat boring choice, but the pick mostly comes down to the fact that we concluded with Hitru and OH that a 45-hammer granary is simply a useful thing. And even if we should grab an early-ish religion, culture from Terrace is surely going to be useful especially on a tight map.
With Monarch difficulty and current tech cost formula, starting techs have smaller value than in my previous pitbosses so temptation of e.g. Agri/Mining civs was not too high. There are some potentially impactful UUs in the game and Sacrificial Altar UB was also a consideration, but in the end we went with something that is guaranteed to provide value.
Leader selection
I had basically three different lenses that impacted the decision:
Fun. I have wanted to play SPI again since PB13 as it opens such unique strategies and tactics. AGG and to some extent CHA are in the 2nd tier of my fun category. Current mod has pretty much deleted surprise boat attacks from the game, but at least with enough promotions one can still organize something e.g. with commandos.
Casual. I expect to play this PB with less planning as previous ones and will have phases where I'm rushing turns. From that perspective SPI or AGG do not really fit me and more passive traits such as FIN or ORG could make life easier
Competitive. RtR has made pretty much every trait playable, but in most pitboss setups one does want an early trait to launch the snowball. Tight map and competent neighbors running with early UUs make this game no exception. With Inca, CRE and PRO are out of consideration leaving IMP and EXP as relevant early traits.
In the end I just decided that I want to play SPI regardless of other considerations and time will tell whether I can put it into reasonable use. I also considered taking two mid/late game traits and trying to just outmicro myself into a decent position, but that would not be casual and as winning is more fun than losing I should try to avoid shooting myself too early.. Therefore with SPI/IMP taken, it did not take many minutes to lock in SPI/EXP last night.
I've been lurking their team chat occasionally in PB42 and PB46, but nice to be around a bit more again!
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