January 4th, 2015, 18:46
(This post was last modified: January 4th, 2015, 18:57 by Old Harry.)
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Had a quick look - for happy the Dutch have ivory and Greeks have fur at their starts, everyone else has at least one early happy nearby except Persia (jungle gems) and Turkey (wine).
The only strategic resources I couldn't find were Turkey and Persia's coal. I didn't look at the food.
Edit for civs instead of leaders.
Completed: RB Demogame - Gillette, PBEM46, Pitboss 13, Pitboss 18, Pitboss 30, Pitboss 31, Pitboss 38, Pitboss 42, Pitboss 46, Pitboss 52 (Pindicator's game), Pitboss 57
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(January 4th, 2015, 18:43)spacetyrantxenu Wrote: There is a spew of huts west of the Ethiopia start (middle of the map). Overall hut density seems pretty high. That leaves a lot to chance in terms of balance, but if they voted for huts they didn't say how many. 
Is the map supposed to be a cylinder or a toroid? Cylindrical for now, although that's an easy fix if needed. For balance a toroid would definitely be better, even if there's that narrow band of water between the "top" and "bottom" of the map along the Y wrap.
Happiness may need a second look to make sure each civ has access to approximately the same number of different types of early happiness, but I didn't look really close there. The map looks interesting, overall. May need to reduce the number of huts though.
The number of huts is actually correct, there are supposed to be 1 per 40 land tiles and there are. However I do want the distribution to be a little more even, and yeah I missed that clump.
PB1 was a cylinder so this is too.
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Making changes...
* Moved some huts around.
* Added coal for Ottomans and Persia.
* Unjungled gems for Persia.
* Left Ottomans' luxury situation unchanged. If they really want it they can stretch for silver to the south.
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One minor issue that I see is that some civs have food resource tiles on rivers while others do not.
- Japan - fish, non-river corn. 2 free commerce with food. 2 +5 food early game, both +6 with improvements.
- Spain - river forest deer (no commerce), non-river sheep. 0 free commerce with food. Both food +5 food.
- Dutch - non-river sheep, non-river pig. 0 free commerce with food. However, river Ivory. Most civs lack immediate BFC luxury. +5, +6 food resources.
- Mongols - river corn, grass pigs. 2 +6-food resources.
- Zulu - wet corn (non-river), grass sheep. 0 free commerce with food. +5, +6 food resources.
- Maya - wet rice (river!), grass pigs. 1 free commerce with food. +5, +6 food resources.
- Greek - lake corn, grass pigs. 0 free commerce with food. 2 +6 food resources. BFC furs for happy. Very strong start IMO, just based on these, but it does have lakes that some caps lack so it is ok.
- Ethiopia - fish, river rice. 3 free commerce with food. 2 +5 food resources. Also has BFC bananas, but can't chain irrigate for early game.
- Persia - river corn, grass pigs. 1 free commerce with food. 2 +6 food resources.
- Byzantium - lake corn, grass sheep. 0 free commerce with food. 2 +6 food resources.
- Turks - grass sheep, grass pig. 0 free commerce with food. +5, +6 food resources. Turks also seem to have a larger share of uncontested land on the peninsula immediately to their west. It's a long way to the Japanese civ. Maybe Spain will fill the gap.
- Germans - river wheat, hill pigs. 1 free commerce with food. +5, +6 food resources.
I did not check for strategic resources or luxuries away from the capital BFC areas.
I think generally that as far as food quality goes things look ok. There is some variation in value but I leave it for others to determine whether having two +6 food tiles is so much stronger than two +5 food tiles to merit reworking anything. This obviously does not take into consideration how strong the rest of the BFC is. I've left that alone because the script gives out 4 forests and 4 hills at minimum and a little variety is just fine. I will say that I think having free commerce from a tile that you are ALWAYS going to work because of a river is a decent cumulative advantage over an opponent who lacks the same in his capital. It isn't a HUGE advantage, but it is something that can be controlled for by the map design. That said, I wouldn't throw anything away because of it, just be aware of it maybe.
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Are there certain of those starts that you are worried are too weak or too strong?
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(January 4th, 2015, 21:51)SevenSpirits Wrote: Are there certain of those starts that you are worried are too weak or too strong?
Not really. There are some I'd prefer to play over others, and some that are obviously better long term (all land/no coast vs. coastal or with several lakes) but for getting a civ up and running through the expansion phase, they're all pretty close IMO. They all have food and hammers. Some that are stronger in the capital may be a bit weaker for city number 2 and so on.
Overall, I think it's fine. I don't know how much you want to add/subtract resources, but the area north of Byzantium's capital, particularly around the coast/marble is pretty bereft of food. The southern edge below Japan's start also could use a food resource someplace, otherwise there's just mostly plains down there. There are some other areas with some foodless gaps but players can settle smartly to share with some overlap in most cases.
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Seven, if you haven't sent the final map out, a quick edit here to relieve some orphaned seafood frustration for Greece:
I don't see any way to settle for both fish, so relocating one would be nice to whoever gets Greece. If the map has shipped, they can live with it.
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Should the players' full BFCs be revealed in their starting screenshots? I remember being yelled at about that in either PB17 or 19. I can also respect the urge to tell them to get stuffed and deal with the pictures they have now, on the grounds that you don't want to redo screenshots. Seems like a valid enough reason to me. 
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(January 5th, 2015, 17:20)spacetyrantxenu Wrote: Should the players' full BFCs be revealed in their starting screenshots? I remember being yelled at about that in either PB17 or 19. I can also respect the urge to tell them to get stuffed and deal with the pictures they have now, on the grounds that you don't want to redo screenshots. Seems like a valid enough reason to me.
I like to reveal tiles only by placing the settler/scout to see them. All players can see the important part of their BFCs, anyway. If the players had already asked me to defog the whole BFC I would go redo the screenshots, but barring that, I can only assume they left it up to my judgment.
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(January 5th, 2015, 17:13)Boldly Going Nowhere Wrote: Seven, if you haven't sent the final map out, a quick edit here to relieve some orphaned seafood frustration for Greece:
I don't see any way to settle for both fish, so relocating one would be nice to whoever gets Greece. If the map has shipped, they can live with it.
So, I saw that, and oddly enough I decided to leave it. The way I see it, the map generator gave them one fish, and it gave them a couple options of where to settle for it. If I move one fish so that it's accessible at the same time as the other one, then I actually narrow down their choices about how to dotmap the area. I also give them an extra fish, so they certainly couldn't complain, but because that area of the map looks to me like it has enough food anyway, I left it as is. Fish is a weird case because the XML specifies that it should only be placed on ocean tiles, which means that often ends up restricting your city placement. Arguably that's just a bad mechanic.
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