I do not like their border proposal at all. Seven's is a lot more reasonable and intuitive to me, preferably with us getting the cow so we can feed a first-ring copper city.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
Hey, I'm drafting up a message right now, but are you guys opposed to me using this picture in the message? I blocked out most of our city radii, but I wanted to make sure you guys don't view this as giving up too much info:
I'd like to use it to make the case that the deal isn't very fair, and also to get them to offer up similar screenshots.
I think it's giving up too much info. If you can, maybe agree to a map exchange first and/or crop our more if possible? For example, maybe crop it off below the south border of our second city, to emphasize that we deserve a vertical slice between them and trolls.
I do want that sliver of Trolls culture to be in the shot if you notice that - it pretty nicely shows how hemmed in we are. One thing - their scout has floated around south of our capital so they ARE well aware of our surroundings, so it's best not to try to trick them into thinking we have less than we have.
I'm slightly hesitant to wait on them to agree only because they take soooo long to respond to emails. I'm planning on poking them to chat with me sometime to get this to be more timely. I'm also wanting them to spill the details on their apparent Pirates war.
Ok, how about this for a rough draft? Very interested in input/criticisms on this:
Draft to Menagerie Wrote:Menagerie,
Thanks for the message, and thanks for you willingness to talk through the deals. We've discussed your proposal with our team, but there is an issue we'd like to raise. Your proposal is mostly reasonable for the land between us, but the land towards the center is something that we'd like to avoid getting cut out of. Here's the issue, our understanding is that your border suggestion is like this:
I definitely understand your thinking on this, but the major issue is it totally cuts us out from the center of the map. If you look closely, you'll see just a shade of red culture to our northeast. Your suggestion would cut us off from that land strip where the cow/copper/silk/wheat is at. That would box us in pretty badly, so we're trying to avoid that . You guys would literally be direct neighbors with Trolls, and I hope you can understand how we would think that's a tough split for us. I would actually view that copper to be more in our sphere of influence, but more crucial to us is not getting shut out of the middle of the map. As you also have seen with your scout, we're pretty hemmed in down south by the water, so we're just trying not to get boxed in. Given that your capital is much further west than ours, a diagonal line is more logical than a horizontal line if you're wanting to use lines.
Would you guys be OK with sending us a screenshot of your surroundings too so we can understand the land split a little better? You can of course block out anything you'd like. We decided to go ahead and send this shot without guarantee of getting one in return as a sign of good faith in getting a deal done, so I hope you see we do want an agreement and we're not just haggling for the sake of it.
Also, the Trolls team met Pirates and told us that they're at war with you guys. Is everything ok? What's up with that? Hope you don't mind asking, but it seems that means every team in the game is at war with somebody right now, which was probably not something I would have predicted.
First, I would actually crop our second city a little more, as it shows that we don't have the gold mined if they look carefully (no big deal, and they can probably tell from the demos that we aren't working it, but still...). I have no problem with the content, although the third sentence ends in a preposition.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
Merovech Wrote:First, I would actually crop our second city a little more, as it shows that we don't have the gold mined if they look carefully (no big deal, and they can probably tell from the demos that we aren't working it, but still...). I have no problem with the content, although the third sentence ends in a preposition.
I can change the gold thing if others don't like that too. I figured they would definitely know we'd improve the cow/deer first, and we haven't really had it long enough to improve all 3. I mostly half-cropped that tile to keep the gold frame-of-reference in the shot.
As for the preposition thing, nice catch ... though I actually don't mind leaving in minor grammar errors as it looks a little more "human" or something. Maybe I'm crazy. Of course, maybe you'd consider that non-minor.
This and Trolls' placement of their copper city got me thinking paranoid thoughts though:
Trolls settled straight for copper rather than gold, does that mean that they want to make axes? Wouldn't they have gone for gold if they were just planning on building?
If those axes are for defence/attack against TEAM that's fine, but we're a nice juicy target - how much do we really trust their NAP?
If we do trust them then Ivory city is our next best move, but if we don't trust them should we:
1 settle the horse for chariot defence or
2 settle the southern copper for axes (terrible location) or
3 settle the northern copper for axes (upset Menagarie but get some good territory marked out)
My feeling is they wouldn't violate that NAP. I suspect that had more to do with TEAM than us, if you want to think a certain team influenced the settling of that location. My gut is to trust that they honor the NAP - with TEAM showing hostility, there's good reason for them to want a safe border on our side.
I could of course be wrong in which case things would get pretty rough for us, but that's my feeling right now.
![[Image: t44_menagerie_border_discussion.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5826112/RBDemo1/dotmapping/t44_menagerie_border_discussion.JPG)
![[Image: t44_menagerie_border_discussion2.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5826112/RBDemo1/dotmapping/t44_menagerie_border_discussion2.JPG)
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