Lurking the Seven Seas

[williams482]

I still like the western continent most and the southern continent least, but I guess it's probably okay. Would love to hear a third voice on this, but I guess there aren't a lot of people left to look things over.

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, the problem of having everybody in one game!

If I had to pick, the northern continent being weak would be my worry. I'll give it another day if anyone else wants to look at it, then do one final pass and send it on.

[williams482]

Can we sticky this thread just to get it separated from the team threads?

Tech shuffle is already encouraging some different research strategies. I'm looking forward to seeing how the teams adapt to that, although we'll have to see if anyone gets really screwed over by an oddly placed tech.

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, the tech shuffle option is really interesting for mixing up the game, I'm very curious to see how it goes.

Looks like marco is the only person to move his capital, I don't think I'm convinced by it. Long term it's a better site, but the cost to the short term snowball - losing a turn and your only two 4 yield first ring tiles, seems pretty high.

I made a few more slight changes before shipping the map btw. A few more minor buffs to the north and south continents and moving any 4f tiles in the capital's 1st rings into the 2nd ring.

[williams482]

I read a trick that I am not sure no much we want to use it. It seems the designers, when developing the hidden tech/civic trees, still allow you to search them by theme. For instance, if I search for units on the civic tree, I see...


That would be Foreign Trade, the only ancient civic that provides a unit, the trader. If you search for wonders, the only one highlighted is the one after Code of Laws, which is Mysticism and the Oracle. Same goes for the tech tree. If I search for faith, I get...


Which would be Astrology. I haven't worked out many of the techs/civics because multiple techs/civic show up for many of the other filters but I think we can figure out the tree through the use of the filters. Problem is that I don't know if we should. I don't think this is a bug to be exploited, I just think it is an oversight by the developers. Using it kind of defeats the whole point of the hidden techs and gives us an advantage that might spoil any victory.

So, questions for the lurkers: 
Has anybody else mentioned this? I saw it at CivFanatics and I know suboptimal frequents there. 
Do you consider it a bug and exploit?
Is it fair to use?

I dunno about the rest of you, but this seems like a hard "not okay" to me. I'm willing to bet Firaxis did not consider this interaction between the search mechanic and the randomized tree mode, and it does provide answers to what are supposed to be mysteries.

[Jabah]

Agree.

[The Black Sword]

I think you have to bring it up in the tech thread either way, and then they can decide themselves whether to allow it or not. I don't really see how it helps/hurts any team in particular once they all know about it, so they should be fine to make the decision themselves. I'd go with banning it also though, just seems to introduce a lot of busywork.

[williams482]

Should one of us raise the issue in the tech thread, or should we take Woden up on his offer to do it himself? I don't see any harm in that, personally, and I assume he'll be careful to only reveal an appropriate amount of information.

[Azoth]

Following along with interest.

I like how the map is shaking up "standard plays": you have people opening all of Warrior, Slinger, Builder and Monument, and second-guessing their choices, because the map isn't so lush that you're guaranteed to be happy with a fast Setter/second city site if you have only one unit out exploring.

It's good that the players agreed not to use the search trick. I don't know how many units are in the medieval civics tree, but it can't be many, and it would have let Indonesia beeline their Jongs at Mercenaries. Though I suppose that's a pretty easy civic to inspire anyway.

[williams482]

I just noticed that marcopolothefraud is using a UI mod of some sort, possibly CQUI? I mentioned agreeing on some UI mods in the tech thread, but that discussion petered out with no conclusion. Is this worth bringing up?