Thanks to both of you for catching so many issues; I'm honestly kind of gratified that I haven't missed any more so far than I did!
I'm taking the save again, to finish the islands, start on the things you pointed out, and slowly try to get the luxuries, marble/stone, and maybe food under control. I've been (more or less) starting from A and working my way around so far, so I'll work backward from Y this time, especially since I think the biggest imbalances are Y, H, Q, and W, and I want to see if a simple(-ish) solution will work for Y.
First, a question: I'm not happy with the copper and horses both being in roughly the same spots for everybody, and it occurs to me that having back-line horses shouldn't be nearly as important as back-lines copper. So I'd like to move people's horses to a more "forward" location (still within 4th ring) as I go through balancing other stuff. Does this make actual sense, or should I just leave the horses where they are now?
Next, what I did this time through:
- All Astro-only islands should be really truly astro-only. (I.e. I fixed the two first-border-pop bridges Erwin pointed out, made sure the second-border-pop ones wouldn't make brridges acoss water, and tried not to accidentally add any new ones.)
- All civs should have theoretically contestable galley islands. Some of these might have to be moved or modified a bit before they're properly contested; we'll see.
- Fixed the missing or too-distant strategic resources Cornflakes pointed out.
- Rearranged the opposite-sides copper and horses also pointed out by Cornflakes. See above however.
- Started trying to balance All The Other Stuff. I may have overshot or not gone far enough or created new problems via unintended consequences - I haven't run a balance report on any of this yet - and so far I've only worked on starts Y, X, and W. I have a theory that one of marble or stone will be on every major border, but I'll probably revise that on consideration; we'll see.
- In a minor flavor change I turned the half dozen random desert tiles in the snowy-forest region to tundra.
- Sprinkled a couple food around D and O (about 2-3 each)
- I did not like the food around Start H. I cut down some jungle, added some early food, added a short river to make some desert into floodplains. Also turned a few desert tiles into plains.
- For the other starts on the edge of the jungle belts, cut some jungle off of rice/pigs and changed a few more jungle tiles to forests. In general I tried to think "would I be happy with my options for 2nd/3rd/4th cities playing from this start" and adjusted accordinly
- Similar to the above, for starts on the edge of the desert I changed a few desert tiles to plains.
- zooming out to 30,000 ft flyover in "food resource" view, I added a couple to some food-bare locations.
- copper was 3rd ring to K, so I moved it 1W into 4th ring.
I've attached the save for the changes described above. I'll start working on luxuries now.
What is the general theory behind luxuries on maps? How many should each civ be guaranteed?
Here's a rough count of the number of luxuries present (main continent only):
Ivory - present at every start, didn't count
Gems - numerous, didn't count. Most starts have multiple copies within reach, there are maybe 2-3 that are missing gems, just add a gems to those starts
Furs - 13
Silver - 19
Gold - 5
Spice - 16
Incense - 11 (mostly at starts)
Wine - 22
Dye - 14
Sugar - 6
Silk - 9
Whale - none ... add at some or all of the galley-islands??
On average this is 6.5 luxuries per player out of 12 possible. This seems about right, so it should be just a matter of shuffling things around a bit so they aren't as clustered. Here's what I'm thinking:
- Everyone already has 2 ancient luxuries in gems and ivory.
- Each player gets one more ancient luxury, either furs or silver
- Each player gets 2 unique calendar resources (including wines) ... their starting tile + 1 other
*This brings the total of 5 unique luxuries per player
- Each player gets an extra copy of 2 luxury types they can trade away for 6 + 7
I will start making the changes according to the above.
Out of time for now. Shifted resources to improve balance. Did not add any (I don't think), just moved around what was there from the higher-density to lower-density regions.
Brilliant! Thanks, Cornflakes! I think your luxury assessment makes a lot of sense. On whales, we could add them to some of the galley islands (perhaps to compensate for starts that are otherwise a little deficient on something) or we could leave them off the (accessible) map entirely. (Either way, when I do a final aesthetics pass, I want to scatter some impossible-to-net fish and whales in the trackless ocean.) I'll look at the results more closely when I have time later today. [EDIT: At the results after your current pass - cool!]
Any opinions on whether horses should be moved from back lines to Not Back Lines (and maybe more added where/if it helps with balance) so that everyone doesn't end up with Copper + Horses in more or less the same location?
I think leave the copper and horses where they currently are. I did add some horses to the galley islands and changed most of the galley-island-iron to copper so that there were a few more of these resources on the map.
We still need to add in ocean ice at the top and bottom couple of rows. I don't think GJ's program can extract it so it will have to be re-drawn in.
I counted up the stone and marble:
- Stone: 26
- Marble: 14
Haven't done anything with their distribution ... not sure yet what we want to do.
Latest iteration attached. Running the balance report now, will post later. I think the luxuries are pretty good now though.
I'm happy to add the ocean ice when I do my final aesthetics pass. I think I do like the idea of putting stone and/or marble somewhere along each significant border between two players. By my count, that would mean something like 22 stone and 22 marble - so not (quite) enough to go around except via trade (when one player has no immediate need for one they have). The players with two real neighbors would be able to contest one of each, while the 5-neighbor players could contest two of one and three of the other, and nobody would actually be guaranteed any. [EDIT: To be clearer, marble or stone that's currently clearly within a civ's land would be moved or swapped with a resource along a border, a few of the stone would be turned into marble, and a few more marble would be added. Or, stone being clearly more important than marble in this version of RtR, we could keep 26 stone on the map and just add a few more marble.]
