[SPOILER] Krill rambles on

[GermanJoey]

Turns out there's enough food for each city with a true ICS grid.

Not an entirely stupid suggestion which itself suggest the map is entirely stupid.

the problem is that its TOO lush? that's a new one...

[Krill]

I'll play in about half an hour. Physio and back spasms aren't fun

I think I find out copper location tomorrow which is why I'm not writing much. Copper is critical for me due to agg and only having to defend in two directions. Horses less so. I only need about 5 warriors and scouts to fog bust my entire north and east. I'm quite excited really. There are only 4 valid locations that copper can spawn, and I look forward to the abomination of the spawn location with the sheer lush output it will provide when it pops up somewhere else.

[Haram]

Random question while we wait for the copper: did you consider creating some kind of RtR light, that would include the most important features of your mod and not be that far away from the oryginał civ?

[Krill]

No, because at what point do you stop making changes? Are the nuke changes the unnecessary changes? What about tile improvement changes? Slavery? Other civics? Someone is always going to say a change goes too far, so frankly I don't value each individuals opinions as an absolute.

Lots of people hate the AGG implementation with the barracks culture and city maintenance reduction, but most of them agree that AGG isn't a junk trait with said changes. So those changes stay until someone comes up with an AGG trait that is better balanced and people agree is more fun/thematically fitting.

[Krill]

Due to the lay of the land, I now have one scout next to no fog of war. I'm going to send hte northern scout back to the north, and scout out that little patch of FoW I'm missing by the clam and then scout up that route and see where the peninsula ends. The W2 scout is at 90hp, will keep on scouting until T25 at which point I'll dump it on a hill and heal it for a turn whilst I watch for barb warriors to spawn. I know enough of the map to decide on city locations once copper appears.

[Krill]

Turns out there's enough food for each city with a true ICS grid.

Not an entirely stupid suggestion which itself suggest the map is entirely stupid.

the problem is that its TOO lush? that's a new one...

It's not a problem per se; you'd be right that calling it a problem isn't even fair. It will have an effect on the game though, varying all map and game settings does. Defining what is and is not a problem is not something I want to try nad do right now.

But you have to admit that being able to ICS a map and it working isn't exactly ideal game balance.

[GermanJoey]

You eventually want to ICS a map anyways as the game gets late enough, whether or not the cities have food. (SEE MY EPIC COOL PB22 FILLER CITY POST) And I don't think its that unusual to be able to fill up your land with cities that all have food... IIRC I was able to squeeze in cities everywhere in PB18.

But, I think lusher maps are more interesting because it forces you to make tough decisions. If there's an obvious 2nd city spot, and then an obvious 3rd city spot, and then maybe you have to choose between two spots for city 4... well, that can be fine, but here you have many very different options for your first 4 cities each with their own tradeoffs. Some spots have better food, some are more towards your opponents, some grab that silver, some might grab copper or horses (genuinely don't remember where those are), etc. And yes, eventually all of your land tiles will be claimed and usable and yes this affects balance, but... DEAL WITH IT!

[Krill]

I don't know if it's fair to say that you want to ICS the whole map: You do need megacities for late game production tasks. I do agree that late game you want to cram cities into certain areas to make of per city bonuses, but here I'm talking about true ICS from T0.

I don't think this map is too lush, but I also think if you added many more resources to it, it would be. I'm constrained quite a lot by the coastlines affecting legal dotmaps. I don't know whom else is in a similar position to me: I may have unusual land compared to everyone else, I may not. I do know that most people have coastal capitals, but I don't know if a bunch of people are on the edges of some huge donut like continents, or dying snakemooses.

I have already identified 4 viable second city locations that have double inner ring food resources (north pig/cow, northern cow/sheep, north east double sheep and southern pig/sheep). I also have a fifth silver/pig city site that I could use if I wanted to focus on commerce over growth/hammers. I have 3 pre-IW happy resources and only one calendar resource. Decent capital city without an early granary and fast to T50 with an early granary.

There are plenty of options for how to play this start out, the map seems fair in an absolute measure in terms of viable expansion but I can't say for sure as I don't know where my opponents are, how far away and what they have available. I think the most interesting aspect is that there are no islands visible. I wonder if you've made that hte case for everyone, but Currency and GLH are looking less important. Calendar is too with only one happy. Ignoring that whole math line is looking tempting.

[GermanJoey]

Well, ICS is an exageration of course, and obviously you need to try to concentrate good tiles in some cities at the expense of others. What I meant is that you generally try to, one way or the other, try to maximize the number of tiles you work in the land you've claimed. Like, what I mean is, for example - how many unworked, improvable tiles did your PB18 empire have by the endgame? I can't imagine it was very many.

I still have no comment regarding about what other people other people have... you'll have to figure that out yourself.

[Krill]

Copper next turn. Maybe those four double food sites get singles out as one of them gets copper as well. Maybe I get copper at the capital. Maybe I don't get copper.

How this leads to the development of the PB29 map will be most intriguing.