No, but you would need to get a worker to the island.
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.
Scouting revealed nothing, but score changes were the interesting part of the turn. Hydra teched Agriculture (99%) and Azza grew to size 2 after working 7 turns fish lake.
Rival best food grew to 8. Since it's impossible that anyone has WB built already that must be Azza. (Top production has been 4 and everyone except Azza has had only 7 turns capital settled before me so maximum progress should be 28/30. Or do you receive EXP bonus for work boats as well?
However, I am confused how Azza has reached his 8 food, since if starts are mirrored that would be only possible by working unimproved fish and rice, but since rice is riverside I should have been able to see an increase in his GNP as well. But, that was not the case.. So either the starts are not mirrored, he has changed his tech to something without pre-req bonus or I am missing something..
The game progresses slowly and scouting continues. My approach is to scout my surroundings as careful as possible and basically just go by the coast. I would love to meet someone and maybe get somewhere a beaker from known tech bonus, but I truly don't want to miss any seafood or nearby islands. E.g. if I would have chosen the "max amount of tiles revealed" approach, I would have missed the sheep resource in the NE.
In the darkness, Sareln researched most likely Agriculture and I assume that he started with BW. Hydra grew capital EOT 7 to size 2 so he and Azza are probably building workboats.
I have played my sandbox to around T80 (of course everything will change) and my hoping is that my opening will be at least somewhat competitive in the Greens game. It will be extremely interesting to see after the game is played how others have planned their start.
No big changes in the darkness, but my scout found gold! That plains hill between the pigs and gold is truly a great spot.
I have considered two different spots for my first city:
Sorry for screwing up the resource signs:
City A:
Gets fish, second ring corn, several forests and can do tile swapping games with the capital
City B:
Plains hill, Pig, Gold & second ring cows.
Obviously city B is stronger, but after having done couple of simulations I really feel that I should start with city A. I get the city 1 turn faster up, I get WB faster out than the pig pasture. I can support it better with my workers, co-operation with the capital is helpful for growing cottages and avoiding usage of unimproved tiles. Additionally the forests make an attempt at Stonehenge possible, which would be incredibly helpful (especially since I am CHA). For these reasons I believe City A will give me a faster start that is definitely needed in the race against EXP leaders.
Overall, my simulations are currently at this stage:
T34: City A
T49: City B
T57: Stonehenge (if Sareln does not beat me here by thousand years..)
I have no idea whether these results are good enough. First MP game etc.. Comments are welcome
Scout found clams, that pig-cows-gold-clams city will be awesome. This does not change my conclusion, this will still be my city number 3 and not 2. Capital will pop borders EOT49 and that enables improving the cows. That is one further reason why delaying this site makes sense.
Azza teched BW and started something without pre-req. Possibly Agriculture.
Scouting revealed another landmass/island that has to be further investigated. No changes in demos. Next turn I will have 2 units to move around! I expect Viqsi to complete BW next turn as well.
I will go with the Tennis theme. Capital was renamed to "Ace", suggestions are welcome regarding next sites. New Worker (Agassi) started farming the rice and scout discovered spices in the south.
Azza's capital shrunk back to size 1 and probably finished working boat. How is that possible? He is not SPI and there was no sign of anarchy in the demos last turn. Does the anarchy end immediately after he ends the turn and thus it's invisible to C&D?
Another option is that he did starve his capital down so that he was able to finish the build, but that does not make any kind of sense.
Scout found fish and I finished at the end of turn AH. Mining will come next. There are definitely several good city sites nearby, which should pretty much rule out ancient warfare. It simply makes too much sense to expand.
Hydra teched most likely Mining (theoretically it could be hunting) and Azza grew back to size 2. I think that Azza's opening is creative and probably working pretty okay. He should be able to build the worker fast (rival best food: 11, although that could be Hydra as well), I assume EOT 21 without whipping. He might finish a warrior before that however, because immediate regrowth should mean that he did not put his overflow hammers into worker but has almost finished warrior 13/15.
Well, probably Azza will finish the warrior, grow fast to size 3 and double whip a worker during T17
Obviously, I might be completely off with my speculations, time will tell.
Researching AH revealed horses in the northern part of the island:
I have to say, that is pretty much an useless tile for me. I hope my opponents have their horses in similar locations. I could settle 1S of the horse and borrow cows from the pigs-gold city, but I won't be able to reach clams. Or I could settle 2E of the horses, but then I cannot work any resource before the border pop and I can't settle a city on my main continent that can work the island gold. Anyways, I have to make some kind of trade-offs when I make my dot-map, which is of course interesting and well done from the mapmakers' perspective. Most likely the horse city will be some sort of a filler. Obviously if there is no copper anywhere the game will change..
In the south my scout found riverside sugar:
Next the scout will continue his way towards SE and my main goal is to find other civs. It looks like there is an passage that could lead to the center of the map. This gives more confidence to my previous guesses, that I am located in the NE corner of the map, civs have started in the ring formation and the nearby islands and the map centre will be contested.
I think I will have time to scout the possible city sites east of silks with my first warrior. I am not paranoid about galley invasions yet
I have ~10 turns time to meet a civ that has researched BW so that I can get my missing beaker that currently affects my micro plan (I am one beaker short of pottery and there is no sensible way to get it). From T22 onwards I will produce 17 base beakers, which is just enough for getting the extra beaker if I meet a civ with BW. Currently Azza & Viqsi qualify, but I expect at least Sareln to get it pretty soon too.
In the darkness there are no major changes. Rival best food and food average have been rising during the last couple of turns. It looks like there are at least 2 civs that have built working boats and are working the 6 food fish lake. Good for them. However, they have to build their worker too and I hope that it enables me to catch up their growth curve.
![[Image: PBEM%2045%20T70000.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/s/wabsphvf154o1s5/PBEM%2045%20T70000.JPG)
![[Image: PBEM%2045%20T80000.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/s/azo7n2wiarxr1kw/PBEM%2045%20T80000.JPG)
![[Image: PBEM%2045%20T90000.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/s/ml44p0onfcsxhcn/PBEM%2045%20T90000.JPG)
![[Image: PBEM%2045%20T100000.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/s/h7nyc0il7pqzgki/PBEM%2045%20T100000.JPG)
I expect Viqsi to complete BW next turn as well.![[Image: PBEM%2045%20T110000.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/s/2mftmxw46yqq5wu/PBEM%2045%20T110000.JPG)
![[Image: PBEM%2045%20T120000.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/s/0drov0y249axw2s/PBEM%2045%20T120000.JPG)
![[Image: PBEM%2045%20T130000.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/s/lqu8wsy9y71he7v/PBEM%2045%20T130000.JPG)
![[Image: PBEM%2045%20T14north0000.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/s/wkr9a0b18b8014t/PBEM%2045%20T14north0000.JPG)
![[Image: PBEM%2045%20T14south0000.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/s/tc56nh3ori39vp6/PBEM%2045%20T14south0000.JPG)