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[SPOILERS] WillPlunder as Mehmed of Arabia: Noobs meet world

Does overflow show in the demographics? I don't think that it does.
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.
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could be, I also don't think our bonus hammer for the worker shows. But how can you get 7 hammers? only one person grew to size 2 I think, and that was last turn, so they can't micro their city without loosing a population (I think).
But maybe someone got a mine up?
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True, it doesn't seem like our bonus hammer shows. Good point. So I guess the 7 couldn't be something like IND stonehenge or IMP settler.

I don't think it's possible to have a mine on turn 9. You can get a worker out T10 if you're EXP, start on a PH, and have two more hammers to work.

I guess it has to be something like retep (size 2 on T8) working 5 or 6 extra hammers, which seems like he'd have to starve to do, but he has at least a +3 food surplus to start. Otherwise he couldn't have grown on turn 8. So maybe he had either a food overflow from growth or his capital is a 3F tile.
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Anyway, an economic crossroads is coming on T12 when the worker comes out. My two best options on this sheet are SIP-2B (settler turn 40, 2 workers, size 3, warrior T16) or SIP-3 (Settler turn 39, 2 workers, size 3, warrior T25)

The more economic plan:
+ We work the better tile earlier, corn 3F vs plains hill 3H
+ All econ is faster. We grow to size 2, 4 turns earlier, size 3, 2 turns earlier, both work boats are a turn earlier so beakers are ahead. The second worker is 1 turn faster.
- We lose 9 turns of warrior scouting.
- We have a dilemma if Kuro pull shenanigans by moving a warrior over to us.
- We lose an intimidation factor to kuro, who might get scared seeing our power rise on T16, and slow their play down.

Now, my gut is to pick the more economic plan, and react if Kuro shows signs of aggression. Because: I don't think they'll do this. They need a warrior to guard their first settler as much as we do, and by scooting it over they risk getting it eaten by an animal. They should know that a warrior rush won't work, but will just slow us both down. They should also know that they can expand faster than we can (because of IMP and better techs), so they should prefer to do it instead.

They also look like they're starting with BW first, and they have a WB of their own to build. So where to squeeze in their warrior is probably an issue for them too, and I doubt they'll have one much before turn 25, if not after.

I could be wrongsmile But I think we can also react in time to save the game, and we wouldn't be in that much worse of a place than with the earlier warrior.
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Turn 20 the barbs show up right (I tried to find your post, but couldn't find it anymore) If a barb warrior shows up on our border we won't have time to react. How much time does it take to build the warrior? We should keep at least our scout close to our capital to prevent spawning and to seem them coming in advance.

I am a bit worried they'll send over an early axeman. Maybe if we don't locate early bronze we might consider to research early hunting.

The thing is, that maybe it's better for them, in the sense of using theirs civ's abilities, to expand fast. But if they are locked to a tiny peninsula, then early aggression and wiping us out before we can defend ourselves, might be more rewarding?

How easy is it to get out an emergency warrior in the eco-build? (edit: 4 turns in our other spread sheet)

I've been a but busy this weekend, so I couldn't contribute that much, sorry!
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No worries.

According to my research, human barbs can't show up until. 1. After turn 25 on Monarch / normal. 2. After there are 15 cities on the map (1.5 per player or more). So in practice it's only going to be animals until sometime in a mid-30s I think.

I was worried about the axeman too. To get one over they'll have to hook up copper, which means researching wheel, which we may be able to see through score / power. In practice that won't be that early, and yeah, any number of warriors isn't really going to help there. I also think it's really unlikely they have copper in the capital... If they do it's "blame the mapmaker" maybesmile

It's somewhat consoling that it will take 12 turns to walk something over after building it.
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Their scout is back by their capital. So apparently when they saw our capital location they turned around:

[Image: 11-scout.JPG]

I think that means their scout must have "double moved" on top of ours. lol At any rate our scout moved back with no animal sightings, which is good news.

Demos:

[Image: 11-demos.JPG]

No power changes or score changes. I think Kuro is probably researching BW, which would come out on turn 16 if they aren't working commerce tiles. We should find out shortly.

I realize we missed a chance for a dubious counter C&D play. lol We could have delayed mining until turn 13 while part-researching fishing, and possibly confused someone who's paying attention, oh well.

This is your last chance to convince me we can't wait until turn 25 to have a warrior...
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Oh, about Kuro being cramped, I learned this reasoning from another PB game. There are 2059 land tiles, which means 206 per civ. That is quite a bit of land! Enough for 10 full 21 tile cities, or in practice more like 12+ I think. So given that the mapmaker tried to be fair, I think we can be absolutely sure they have a decent amount of land to their N.
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Next turn, worker finished, moving to the pig to the SE to mine. 2/3/0 really is the best tile we can get this early, I think, and the hammers are good for producing workboats while still growing. I'm working the rice tile, which means earlier growth and no warrior until turn 25.

[Image: 12-capital.JPG]

Scout move. I think we have enough time for the next move to be the red arrow, and he can take the wider circle E to uncover more land in a long run. You could convince me on SE-SE or SE-E as well. The blue arrow is the warrior's move on T25, so we really don't need to scout that part. The aim is still to see if there's a better 2nd city site than 3N1W. I hope there is, but we have time to see.

[Image: 12-scout.JPG]

Demos:

[Image: 12-demos.JPG]

No change in power or scores.
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SE hold much better land than north I think. There is for sure a river down there, starting from the two hills. Also some decent chopping can be down.
But what could be the reason they turned around their scout?

What about getting a Moai on the western peninsula?

I had a busy weekend, parents visiting and a civ IV MP (which I messed up in several ways), so I couldn't add so much to the game.
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