[SPOILERS - NO PLAYERS] The Final Clusterfuck: The PB38 Map and Lurker Thread

[Krill]

Any players looking at this, back and out now and forever hold your piece.

Added final starting map picture to first post by request. -Sullla

[Krill]

OK, so here we go.

25 players.

180 land tiles per person (total, including islands) is 4500 land tiles total. 3000 on a main continent. 1500 split between 12-14 islands, the remainder on blobs to connect islands to starting continent.

60% water. 4500/40*100=11250 tiles. So 112*100, or...


OK, fuck it, 26 players. call it 4700 land tiles. That'll be a 124*92 map size.

More to come in a bit.

[Mardoc]

Huh, you're going to manage everyone on one continent, without man-in-the-middle *and* with it being natural looking? How in the world?

That's a reason for me to want to look at the map even without caring about the players .

[Krill]

I'm probably going to have to massage the map dimensions TBH.

[Krill]

   

OK, so above there is a rough idea of the lay out. The circles are just to illustrate basic island locations.

The map can be split into 5 segments. Left vertical, left horizontal, right horizontal and right vertical. Each contains 5 players and roughly 600 tiles. The central area contains 6 players and takes up 720 ish tiles. The right horizontal and left horizontal areas have two civs on the inside of the curve and three outside. The vertical sections have a single player at the end of the continent and two pairs leading towards the centre of the continent.

Each player will start 5 tiles off the coast. The vertical sections will be 20ish tiles wide (with obvious bays and spurs to make it natural looking) and about 30 to 35 tiles tall. The player at the end will have a significant number of coastal city locations available but will also have a slightly larger distance to the two players further up the continent. The horizontal sections will be about more difficult to define in size, but I'm aiming for about 12 tiles between players so a bent rectangle, and the bay will length the distance between the players on the inside curve.

The central section is going to be roughly 20 tiles wide again and aiming for 12 tiles between players.

The islands are a work in progress, but once the central continent is built it is easier to see what the islands will need to be to fit in. Looking at maybe 55 tiles, possibly a bit more, from the end of the continent to the furthest curve. Width, probably 90ish tiles wide?

[Krill]

After looking at a rough map in game, I think the players can be offset slightly, so not a complete zig zag, but it will make the early game slightly less confrontational. 124*92 also seems about right, the extra space will help with naval issues late game.

[Krill]

And as a heads up, I intend to use the Torusworld mapscript to generate the full vertical sides of the map ,and most of hte horizontal and use a map editor to stitch them together, to then go and hjandcraft and balance teh starts.

This allows me to generate a map of specific height and width (so it will be the body of the continent) and afterwards place the players in the right spots. This means I will not be handcrafting from scratch but will be working from a premade canvas to make thigs seem slightly more natural. I will have to make/edit the coast by hand though.

As to starts, they will all contain a river flowing directly to the coast, be double food resources (either double animal or double grain). No seafood starts, everyone starts on a plains hill and will have incense on the starting tile.

[RefSteel]

Obviously the diagram above isn't precise, but it looks like there are a number of players with five potential early neighbors each, others with 3-4, and the guys at the ends of the snake with just two. Relatedly, civs near the inner bends look like they won't have real back lines, whereas the end civs and the civs at the outer edge of each curve have backfields that are likely safe until Astro.

Of course, making a balanced, natural-looking map for 26 players is a rather tall order. With a map shape like you indicated, I'd want to have two civs at each snake-end rather than just one, a few mountain ranges to separate civs, and maybe some "sea cliff" regions where coastal peaks drop straight off into ocean (instead of coast) to limit/lengthen sea access between some civs until Astro or 4th/5th ring borders.

[EDIT: I like your plan for the start locations. It might be a little difficult to get a Torusland base looking natural - it places tundra/jungle/whatever in weird locations - but that's fixable with editing obviously.]

[LATE EDIT AFTER THREAD RENAMING: The following worked better with Krill's original thread name about ignoring everyone again.]

I mean, we've gotta post stuff for you to ignore everyone, right?

[Krill]

With some minor offsetting and...careful management of coast and mountains, inner ring positions shouldn't be unreasonable

[Mardoc]

I think that could generally work.  The hard part will be making it natural looking.  A couple possible suggestions:

Your segment splits - I notice that with a little tweaking of the overall shape, they could be made out of constant latitude bands of low-value land.  Something like a desert/jungle band at the tropic of cancer/tropic of Capricorn, say?  Assuming that you mean them to be actual splits and not just there for counting up dots, of course.  But I think that could decrease some interaction, while looking realistic.  The other areas of the map that are at the same latitude but not meant as splits, you can just add floodplains and maybe make the plains:desert ratio higher; that would let them still look natural but play as useful land.

Similarly, a mix of jungle/forest looks like a jungle whether it's 30% jungle or 80% jungle, but it plays a lot differently.

I also think a good chunk of 'natural-looking' comes from latitude of resources.  The better you can do at giving tropical people tropical resources and temperate people temperate resources, the less Commodore will complain.  Hard to do that without affecting balance, though. Even a little of this should help, though.

Could you add a handful of insignificant islands to the north and south, just to have somewhere to put some tundra terrain?

Using a mapscript for base generation should help with the other thing that's easy to miss - putting in enough actually-random mountains and lakes and mixing grassland/plains tiles appropriately.

Edit: Copying summary view to an early post per Scooter's request to make it easy to find