The reasoning regarding K seems sound. For D, I would suggest the following:
The dot represents the addition of non-mountain land tile of some variety; the X is either a coast or mountain to block off C. I understand where you expect D to settle, and I agree that they could expand to large areas of the NE if they concentrated on it, but I also feel that they could use more assistance from the geography- as it is, they're too easily cut off.
If you block that off then it makes it very hard for D to expand more than one city towards C, hold the choke to E and still expand north because they have to cover three fronts. That opening allows D to settle 2 cities towards C (one to the south of the lake which is a sweet city spot and one as a typical front city) and be just as close towards the north so it is easier to defend, because the front city would be more northern.
Iâm very much looking forward to following this from the start. Some thoughts on the hot topics so far:
Lord Parkin:
Iâve got to go with general consensus of an uneasy feeling. Itâs pretty tough to start posting on a new forum, and heâs gone with the âact like youâve actually been here the whole timeâ approach. I get the impression that the long and storied history of RB means that established posters feel a little more deference is in order. Thatâs totally fair, as the wealth of shared experience is actually what makes the site so interesting, and newcomers should recognise that you canât share that experience just by ploughing through old threads.
LPâs put up some stuff that just niggles, and Iâll use two examples. There are a bunch of references to âthe mapmakerâ in his thread already, which looks like he is lining up an easy excuse. I also have a queasy feeling about his âprediction competitionâ. I can only see two motivations: fishing for spoilers or ideas; or looking for an ego stroke (at the very least because it gets people to post in his thread). Neither of these is especially endearing, and Iâm not surprised that nobody has responded.
Snake pick results:
I seem to be with the majority in being rather underwhelmed by most of the choices. This might actually come down to the ban list rather than people making really bad decisions. The fact that each of them have stated in their threads that they think theyâve got a good chance (bravado or not), suggests that as a group these picks are reasonably balanced - Iâd hope that if someone got a lemon then theyâd admit it. Sunrise picking a ârestrictedâ combination does demonstrate that the ban list has taken out any kind of superpower combo.
The Netherlands and Vikings picks did look especially weak. I believe thereâs a reason why the âwateryâ civs (Carthage, Dutch, Portugal and Viking) in the standard restricted game almost always come with Financial, and Joao has good trait synergy, and that reason is game balance. Take away a strong leader and youâre left with a fairly weak civ, especially early, and even more so in this context with Viking starting techs. The map does look like these guys will still have a chance, though.
If I had to pick any of these to play, it would probably be Catherine of China. That seems to be the general consensus as the best pairing, so not especially imaginative. The relative value of the other civs is actually highly dependant on the distribution of resources, so Krill may need a thick skin for the next little while.
And on that topic, I had a spare five minutes to look at the map. I didnât get much past giving myself an overview, so only two detailed comments: the southern hemisphere civs seemed to have much easier access to a gold tile than those in the north (I didnât have time to check if there was some other compensation); and the shape of the land means that H could go for a long time without making any contacts.
The map looks VERY interesting, and Iâm sure weâll have a whale of a time ( ). Sadly, the trade off for interestingness is obvious fairness. That will matter a lot more to the players than us in here, and it doesnât mean there is an actual unfairness when you take everything into consideration. Some feelings about what might be fun to watch:
⢠There seemed to be actually quite a bit of space. Iâd almost say that, without really aggressive settling, those with an early UU may find themselves disappointed.
⢠As Krill notes, there are a lot of really good city sites and this is overall a pretty lush map. Things should move along pretty quickly. At the same time, I couldnât spot anything immediately adjacent to the capitals that is worth settling, so those early decisions about how far to stretch will be intriguing, especially with so many choke points.
⢠The central region could be barbarian heaven, excepting the fact it will be full of scouting units ploughing through jungle one tile at a time.
⢠Expansion directions will be really interesting, as there is a potentially huge difference between moving towards the equator early and going east/west. The horse/copper placements often lead players in different directions as well.
Great map Krill, just a minor thing which i noticed , i don't know if was already pointed :
1. The south civs have faster access to gold.Few of those resource are near the river which connects to their capitol.And that spot with 2 gems and other goodies is very close to south(England )
2. The north civs : Babylon, dutch and Egypt have few river tiles if you compare with south, where i can see even flood plains. For example England has like 37 of those if you compare with Babylon(14) or Dutch(17), and that is not all England for example has very fast access to the cooper and horses, with great city spots , and gold is just nearby .You can say same thing about the vikings 37 tiles with great city spots along them. I don't find nothing on north which is making up for this. If i was playing in this game for sure i wanted to be England or Vikings, and no way Babylon , Dutch or Egipt(they have a fur resource nearby so not so bad) .
3. At first look there is clear more food in south, and great city spots for the second and the third city.
Same thing happened in Pitboss 2 game, where some civs got great land with lot of resource and rivers(see Sulla and speaker start) and others allot of plains and almost no rivers(Dmoc, Whosit).If i predict something is that : a civ from south will win this one,because they have option: river where to build cottages, great production sites, faster access to gold, gems, fur.I don't see others having to many options.
I think Zulu has a good start position too: lot of river, great cities site nearby, great food , lot of land just for them.So yeah i could be wrong Zulu looks like a south civ.
Man Behind the Mask Wrote:Iâm very much looking forward to following this from the start. Some thoughts on the hot topics so far:
Lord Parkin:
Iâve got to go with general consensus of an uneasy feeling. Itâs pretty tough to start posting on a new forum, and heâs gone with the âact like youâve actually been here the whole timeâ approach. I get the impression that the long and storied history of RB means that established posters feel a little more deference is in order. Thatâs totally fair, as the wealth of shared experience is actually what makes the site so interesting, and newcomers should recognise that you canât share that experience just by ploughing through old threads.
LPâs put up some stuff that just niggles, and Iâll use two examples. There are a bunch of references to âthe mapmakerâ in his thread already, which looks like he is lining up an easy excuse. I also have a queasy feeling about his âprediction competitionâ. I can only see two motivations: fishing for spoilers or ideas; or looking for an ego stroke (at the very least because it gets people to post in his thread). Neither of these is especially endearing, and Iâm not surprised that nobody has responded.
Snake pick results:
I seem to be with the majority in being rather underwhelmed by most of the choices. This might actually come down to the ban list rather than people making really bad decisions. The fact that each of them have stated in their threads that they think theyâve got a good chance (bravado or not), suggests that as a group these picks are reasonably balanced - Iâd hope that if someone got a lemon then theyâd admit it. Sunrise picking a ârestrictedâ combination does demonstrate that the ban list has taken out any kind of superpower combo.
The Netherlands and Vikings picks did look especially weak. I believe thereâs a reason why the âwateryâ civs (Carthage, Dutch, Portugal and Viking) in the standard restricted game almost always come with Financial, and Joao has good trait synergy, and that reason is game balance. Take away a strong leader and youâre left with a fairly weak civ, especially early, and even more so in this context with Viking starting techs. The map does look like these guys will still have a chance, though.
If I had to pick any of these to play, it would probably be Catherine of China. That seems to be the general consensus as the best pairing, so not especially imaginative. The relative value of the other civs is actually highly dependant on the distribution of resources, so Krill may need a thick skin for the next little while.
And on that topic, I had a spare five minutes to look at the map. I didnât get much past giving myself an overview, so only two detailed comments: the southern hemisphere civs seemed to have much easier access to a gold tile than those in the north (I didnât have time to check if there was some other compensation); and the shape of the land means that H could go for a long time without making any contacts.
The map looks VERY interesting, and Iâm sure weâll have a whale of a time ( ). Sadly, the trade off for interestingness is obvious fairness. That will matter a lot more to the players than us in here, and it doesnât mean there is an actual unfairness when you take everything into consideration. Some feelings about what might be fun to watch:
⢠There seemed to be actually quite a bit of space. Iâd almost say that, without really aggressive settling, those with an early UU may find themselves disappointed.
⢠As Krill notes, there are a lot of really good city sites and this is overall a pretty lush map. Things should move along pretty quickly. At the same time, I couldnât spot anything immediately adjacent to the capitals that is worth settling, so those early decisions about how far to stretch will be intriguing, especially with so many choke points.
⢠The central region could be barbarian heaven, excepting the fact it will be full of scouting units ploughing through jungle one tile at a time.
⢠Expansion directions will be really interesting, as there is a potentially huge difference between moving towards the equator early and going east/west. The horse/copper placements often lead players in different directions as well.
dinamo Wrote:Great map Krill, just a minor thing which i noticed , i don't know if was already pointed :
1. The south civs have faster access to gold.Few of those resource are near the river which connects to their capitol.And that spot with 2 gems and other goodies is very close to south(England )
2. The north civs : Babylon, dutch and Egypt have few river tiles if you compare with south, where i can see even flood plains. For example England has like 37 of those if you compare with Babylon(14) or Dutch(17), and that is not all England for example has very fast access to the cooper and horses, with great city spots , and gold is just nearby .You can say same thing about the vikings 37 tiles with great city spots along them. I don't find nothing on north which is making up for this. If i was playing in this game for sure i wanted to be England or Vikings, and no way Babylon , Dutch or Egipt(they have a fur resource nearby so not so bad) .
3. At first look there is clear more food in south, and great city spots for the second and the third city.
Same thing happened in Pitboss 2 game, where some civs got great land with lot of resource and rivers(see Sulla and speaker start) and others allot of plains and almost no rivers(Dmoc, Whosit).If i predict something is that : a civ from south will win this one,because they have option: river where to build cottages, great production sites, faster access to gold, gems, fur.I don't see others having to many options.
I think Zulu has a good start position too: lot of river, great cities site nearby, great food , lot of land just for them.So yeah i could be wrong Zulu looks like a south civ.
Fair points, the north has been improved now, with more rivers, easier gold and a bit more food near by. I always intended to come back to the map, but I finished after midnight Wednesday and have to work long shifts. It's usually better to not do everything at once because you burn out, but do everything in little chunks.
Also, regarding LP you could compare his behaviour here to mine in RBPB1, after I first joined the community. He just needs to remember he needs to back up his words with skill and I think that'll be his major problem.
This looks like a very interesting map. It will be interesting to compare how the teams play this v some of the newer pbem games. I don't really want to be more explicit due to possible spoilers but someone flag this comment and remind us of it in 2-3 months.
I have finally decided to put down some cash and register a website. It is www.ruffhi.com. Now I remain free to move the hosting options without having to change the name of the site.
(October 22nd, 2014, 10:52)Caledorn Wrote: And ruff is officially banned from playing in my games as a reward for ruining my big surprise by posting silly and correct theories in the PB18 tech thread.
Gold is still noticeably closer (5-10 tiles v. 20+ tiles) in the south, but I am not sure if you have that balanced with some other tile distribution in the north.
A. Dutch
B. Arabia
C. Greece
D. China
E. Vikings
F. England
G. Egypt
H. Zulu
J. Babylon
K. Sumeria
Gold Ergo Sum Wrote:Gold is still noticeably closer (5-10 tiles v. 20+ tiles) in the south, but I am not sure if you have that balanced with some other tile distribution in the north.
A. Dutch - 8 tiles, north;
B. Arabia - 8 tiles, south;
C. Greece - 6 tiles south;
D. China - 4 tiles, south;
E. Vikings - 7tiles, south;
F. England - 6 tiles, south;
G. Egypt - 7 tiles, north;
H. Zulu - 10 tiles, ivory, 7 tiles, copper 3 tiles north;
J. Babylon - 9 tiles, north
K. Sumeria - 6 tiles, north
You should never balance purely on distance, you need to take into account other factorssuch as having to grab land before your opponents, location of food reourse, need for strat resources, late game city potential etc etc.
Zulu are the only team that don't really need a second city to grab copper, and so could leave that for a later, filler city, and Babylon can decide in which direction they want to settle to grab the gold with a third city, either south to grab horses first or east to grab copper first. Every other team can not make a strat resource/copper city so they either go with copper or horse for a bit to get the gold city first or they play safe and wait on the gold. The exception is China which can feasibly settle a copper/gold city on a choke point but that is balanced by the larger issue that it is both dangerous in the short term because it might piss off the Vikings and long term in that it might let Greece control the other flank with some aggressive city placements of their own. It's balanced about as well as one could reasonably expect a huge none symmetrical map to be IMO.
![[Image: pitboss4suggestededit.jpg]](http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/8633/pitboss4suggestededit.jpg)
![[Image: pitboss4suggestededit.jpg]](http://img42.imageshack.us/i/pitboss4suggestededit.jpg/)
). Sadly, the trade off for interestingness is 
![[Image: rbpb4_small.png]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15215428/pb4/rbpb4_small.png)