[no players] The Hyborem Fan Club, a Lurker Thread

[DaveV]

Here are some first impressions: the map is pretty tight, with very few natural chokepoints. I'd expect very early conflict on this map.

Khazad have two ruins four tiles to the southeast of their capital.

There are no goblin forts.

Kurios have several very close neighbors (especially vampires), while there's a huge gap between Khazad and Calabim.

Same thing to a lesser extent with the Elves - Grigori and Elohim are much closer to them than to each other.

Copper placement is extremely unbalanced - Elves have two close by; Elohim and Kurios have a bit more of a reach; the other three are screwed. Calabim have horses, as do Khazad, but no one else.

The Ygg island can be claimed by the elves pretty easily.

[Ichabod]

Thanks for the help, DaveV. I'll take a look at most of these issues. I'm only worried about changing players placements in the map, since I used the ones the RNG gave me, no changes made. Changing them would be outside the things I've told the players I'd change.

Any opinions on what I should do?

Edit: regarding Yggdrasil, it'd only give the tile yield and the 1 happiness in a city. The Yggdrasil resource can't be claimed, unless a city is settled on top of it. It don't really need to be there, though. Guess I'll take it out.

[DaveV]

Without re-checking the map, I'd say the players should be able to live with the civ locations: as I recall, they all have reasonable expansion prospects, and this is essentially a full-diplo game. It's the old 90%/10% problem, where you spend 90% of your effort removing the last little bit of imbalance.

Maybe just warn them not to expect a completely "fair" map. You already have, to some extent, but it might be good to restate it.

With respect to Yggdrasil, the elves could get some nice food yield from it with their natural WotF beeline, and it would certainly pay them back in spades for a detour to Sailing (intercontinental trade routes + health + happy).

[Ichabod]

Any lurkers here? How are you finding the map so far?

[DaveV]

I'm waiting to see how much conflict there is in planting the first couple cities. Capitals are fine.

[Thoth]

, probably Warfare for Military State cash rushing. Then I can go Festivals/Writing and cash rush the economic buildings there. Problem is that I need to fit BW in there somewhere probably, and maybe Cartography as well

The problem with this plan isn't the extra techs. It's the awful use of resources.

A market costs 40h and produces 3g/-1b per turn.
Ignoring the -1 beaker, a market repays at 1h/turn when used for future cash rushing so a 40 turn payback time, which is garbage.
If the market is cash rushed it costs 120g - 3g/hammer invested which produces the same lousy 40 turn payback time simply considering the gold:gold exchange.

Factor in the -1b/turn into the equation, and it gets even worse.

Markets and Elder councils convert hammers into commerce. Which is great when you are in a low commerce, high hammer situation or need to perk up the economy a bit and have some extra hammers. But spending commerce (gold) to build them isn't a good idea (except under highly unusual conditions). The payback time is just far too long for it to be effective.

[Ichabod]

I rarely build Elder Councils and markets. I only do it if I need the specialist slot or I have the doubler bonus (or in rare cases that I want to grow a city while having the conquest civic). Otherwise, it's wasted hammers, in my opinion. Warriors, settlers and workers are way more effective.

[Ellimist]

Markets are also one of the best ways to pay for super-rapid expansion, as the new cities themselves can produce the hammers to build them while they're growing into a decent size. Being able to run a merchant can be handy as well if worker labor is tight.

[Thoth]

I rarely build Elder Councils and markets. I only do it if I need the specialist slot or I have the doubler bonus (or in rare cases that I want to grow a city while having the conquest civic). Otherwise, it's wasted hammers, in my opinion. Warriors, settlers and workers are way more effective.

Markets are also one of the best ways to pay for super-rapid expansion, as the new cities themselves can produce the hammers to build them while they're growing into a decent size. Being able to run a merchant can be handy as well if worker labor is tight.

I like Markets much better than ECs overall, as Ellimist noted they are damned handy for paying for expansion/unit costs.

ECs (even Philo ECs) I tend to only build for the Sage slot on most maps.


But that is based on playing on a lot of commerce rich/hammer poor maps (III, XI, XVI, EITB PB1 were all commerce heavy/hammer light).

On a commerce poor and/or hammer heavy map both Markets and ECs become relatively more valuable as the availability of hammers vs enabling techs grows. (ie on a commerce rich map, tech tends to outstrip production. On a hammer heavy map production tends to outstrip tech).

Low happy caps/high maintenance costs also tend to favour Markets/ECs over W/W/S once certain map/tech/civics dependent thresholds have been reached.

[Thoth]

But under no circumstances that I can think of, would I ever cash rush a Market or EC.