How many more people's votes do we need before we are certain on our pick?
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.
I agree with the Vikings (or at least don't disagree enough to upset the consensus), but I have a couple questions/concerns:
1. Based on the start, it seems like we would want either Hunting or Fishing, not necessarily both--unfortunately, there's no good pairing with either of those and Wheel
2. How good is the Navigation I promo if we're not going to do much conquering with galleys? Is the difference between 4 and 5 as big as the difference between 2 and 3? (since you can already attack out of the fog)
Cheater Hater Wrote:1. Based on the start, it seems like we would want either Hunting or Fishing, not necessarily both--unfortunately, there's no good pairing with either of those and Wheel
So you know, it's not necessarily true that those two techs can't be taken together here. There are benefits too in what those techs unlock. Testing has shown that opening for the Fish is not a great idea. However, Fishing is still valuable in that it (along with Wheel) unlocks Pottery, which is a REALLY key tech for Pacal (cottages and granaries!).
Cheater Hater Wrote:2. How good is the Navigation I promo if we're not going to do much conquering with galleys? Is the difference between 4 and 5 as big as the difference between 2 and 3? (since you can already attack out of the fog)
Still pretty valuable. As Kyan mentioned, it can give us a huge advantage in the race for circumnavigation. If we also lock down circumnavigation, we're looking at 4 move galleys or 6 move galleons for example! That's really valuable. On top of that, the ability to upgrade Amphibious Berserks means we could do some extremely evil things in the late game . Imagine transports with +2 movement and amphibious City Raider infantry on them! That's incredibly dangerous, and makes defending island cities against us a nightmare. We do know there will be galley and non-galley islands, so there's enough water that it will be a factor. We also would have the advantage on island settling races. What if there's valuable resources on an island and we get there first by virtue of our faster ships? Basically, you don't necessarily need to do conquering for that UB to be powerful. HOwever, if you ever do want to bash some heads, well....
I've posted our selection. Good work everyone with the debate and simming.
Next steps are a) wait and b) decide our first move. Here is my idea about how to scout on turn 0. Remember here is our start:
Our priority is to determine if there is a better place to settle than 1NW. I believe the scout has the best chance of finding such a spot, as there is deer and river to the north. Therefore I suggest we first move the scout NW-W onto the plains hill next to the deer, to see if there is another food resource nearby. This will also reveal some of the BFC tiles for 1NW which we haven't seen yet.
I would actually suggest warrior goes south in case there's something down there. We have Fishing, so if we find more food by the fish we might have a decision to make.
Also, both of the unfogged tiles in SIP's BFC are also in the BFC of 1NW, so they would be in the city no matter what and therefore not affect a NW vs SIP decision.
Should we consider how we're going to organize the forum? Might want a "move discussion" thread and a "turn reported" thread and a "worker orders" thread or something like that. I've seen that kind of division in past demogames and it seems to work well.
scooter Wrote:I would actually suggest warrior goes south in case there's something down there. We have Fishing, so if we find more food by the fish we might have a decision to make.
Also, both of the unfogged tiles in SIP's BFC are also in the BFC of 1NW, so they would be in the city no matter what and therefore not affect a NW vs SIP decision.
There is a fogged riverside tile 2W of the warrior that would be in the BFC if we SIP, but not if we move 1NW. We would be able to unfog it if we move the warrior SW, but not if we move him S. It appears to be grassland and could potentially contain a resource.
Moving him S would reveal more tiles around a potential lakeside capital, so it's a tough choice...
. Imagine transports with +2 movement and amphibious City Raider infantry on them! That's incredibly dangerous, and makes defending island cities against us a nightmare. We do know there will be galley and non-galley islands, so there's enough water that it will be a factor. We also would have the advantage on island settling races. What if there's valuable resources on an island and we get there first by virtue of our faster ships? Basically, you don't necessarily 
![[Image: Civ4ScreenShot0492.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/28594063/Maps/Demo/Civ4ScreenShot0492.JPG)