[SPOILERS - NO PLAYERS] The PB39 Map and Lurker Thread

[Erwin]

Any player looking at this: get out!



So here's the actual map. Note that it's done in base BTS, somebody (me) has to convert it to RTR at a later point.

Some notes:
- Toroidal, everybody starts on the same landmass.
- 64x40. 2560 tiles, of which around 1350 are land tiles. Should be 165-170 tiles per player in total.
- The distance between starts should be 16 tiles, so there shouldn't be very early wars.
- Everybody has very similar BFC's. PH riverside start, off-river PH copper, 2 corn/2 pig, 8 forests, plains ivory. However, everything else is very dissimilar apart from the basic geography. I tried to balance the map with novice's script.
- Relatively lush with food resources. However, happy cap will definitely be an issue early in the game. A difficult map to play in that sense.
- The map reminds of PB37, but there are fewer islands, which are larger, and an extra land bridge for each player

Questions:
- The map size at the moment is Standard. Should it be changed to Large?
- Do you think the BFCs are balanced at the moment? Are there other issues with BFCs? Are they boring?
- How about 9x9/11x11? Are they balanced? Has somebody OP 2nd and 3rd city locations? Has somebody really trouble finding competitive city sites?
- Should there be more islands? At the moment there only are 12 islands on the map, 4 of which are post-astro. Are the islands at all worth fighting for at the moment? Should I make every island available pre-astro?
- Is happiness too sparse at the moment? Every player only has access to early ivory. Gems are jungled, silver and gold are only on islands, furs are 8-9 tiles from capital. There are whales available at sailing, but they require a border pop. If you think more early game happiness is needed, I could add silver close to the starts or maybe make the whales coastal.
- Are there any other glaring balance issues that I have missed?

[Old Harry]

I won't have time to look until next week but standard-sized sounds good for this number of players and that amount of happiness sounds entirely reasonable.

[Rusten]

I've only glanced at the map.

The gold and silver islands are a nice touch. Some of them can be reached pre-Astro through culture though, if I'm not mistaken.

HRE and Arabia have an advantage compared to other starts in that they can settle on a PH 3 tiles away from capital while sharing initial BFC food and also gaining another river food resource in the process. Just a minor thing I noticed. None of the other starts have such a monster available as 2nd city. Might want to change this somehow.

3N of HRE start and 3S of Arabia respectively.

[Erwin]

I'm doing modifications to the map atm, posting the changed version shortly

[Erwin]

Here's the new version with some modifications.

- I think there were too many hills and plains tiles, I removed some of them
- I made the contested areas lusher to encourage early contact.
- I moved the whales to the coast so that they don't need border pops and added some more of them.
- I changed HRE's and Arabia's starts by making those PHs normal plains tiles so that the starts don't have those extremely good 2nd cities.

Silver islands are supposed to accessible pre-astro. I tried to make sure though that gold can only be accessed post astronomy.

[Erwin]

Some screenshots of the initial areas. Feedback on BFCs would be important to be able to start the picking phase.

A:

B:

C:

D:

E:

F:

G:

H:

And the slightly modified map (some players had way too many peaks in their territory)

[Mardoc]

Looks like a good start.  I like the overall landform, and the BFC's seem fair.  If you want to give out BFC screenshots, you're probably good to go with that.

A few comments:
- Start H has to reach a lot further than anyone else to get iron - chance of missing it entirely if he expands the wrong way.  On the other hand, his horses are maybe a little too easy.  I generally like the idea of making iron/horse not in the very core but still generally with a source that's probably yours.
- Many players are missing land oil.  Sea oil is at a significantly later tech, so they might be locked out of the naval game at destroyers if you don't give them land oil.  Starts A, B, C, E, F could all use some land oil added, if I'm not just skimming past it.
- Rest of the strategics look good.  Possible the game won't stretch into Aluminum/Uranium but it's good to see they have it if they get that far.
- Happy/healthy resources look fine.  Maybe not quite as generous as typical-RB...but then typical-RB is probably over generous and nerfs Cha, so I wouldn't change them.  One nitpick: start H's silks are right next to jungle, while none of the other players' calendar resources seem to be courting a jungle growth mid-game.  Might swap them with the plains tile to the south.
- I don't see any stone in your screenshots.  Is that a deliberate choice?  I don't think it necessarily needs to be added but just be aware it's not there.

[Old Harry]

I think b and g have stronger second cities than the others. Otherwise these look great (once you act on Mardoc's advice.)

[Erwin]

Thanks for the feedback, I'll respond to it and start modifying the map at a later point today.

The assigned starts
A: Dark Savant
B: Charriu
C: Ghostpants
D: wetbandit
E: yuris125
F: Superdeath
G: JR4
H: ipecac

[Erwin]

Looks like a good start.  I like the overall landform, and the BFC's seem fair.  If you want to give out BFC screenshots, you're probably good to go with that.

A few comments:
- Start H has to reach a lot further than anyone else to get iron - chance of missing it entirely if he expands the wrong way.  On the other hand, his horses are maybe a little too easy.  I generally like the idea of making iron/horse not in the very core but still generally with a source that's probably yours.
- Many players are missing land oil.  Sea oil is at a significantly later tech, so they might be locked out of the naval game at destroyers if you don't give them land oil.  Starts A, B, C, E, F could all use some land oil added, if I'm not just skimming past it.
- Rest of the strategics look good.  Possible the game won't stretch into Aluminum/Uranium but it's good to see they have it if they get that far.
- Happy/healthy resources look fine.  Maybe not quite as generous as typical-RB...but then typical-RB is probably over generous and nerfs Cha, so I wouldn't change them.  One nitpick: start H's silks are right next to jungle, while none of the other players' calendar resources seem to be courting a jungle growth mid-game.  Might swap them with the plains tile to the south.
- I don't see any stone in your screenshots.  Is that a deliberate choice?  I don't think it necessarily needs to be added but just be aware it's not there.

Unfortunately it's a question of my screenshots cropping out a few important details. Start H has iron just outside the screenshot to the north, in the 2nd ring of an obvious early city so I'm not worried about that. I moved the horses to a slightly more challenging location though. It's the same with land oil, everybody has it, but it's just not always visible in the screenshot. I thought anyway that 1 source of land oil isn't necessarily enough, so I gave each player an another source. I changed the silk location.

I generally think that having too much marble and stone is a nerf to industrious. There is stone on the map on the north-south-landbridges and players can have it in time for Oxford. Ind civs will however have an advantage for moai, stonehenge and mids.

I changed start b by moving the southern pig tile 1 tiles SW so that the southern city doesn't immediately have a connection to the capital. Regarding start g, I changed the corn to a rice tile. Was that a big enough nerf in your opinion or how would you change it? Moreover, I thought also that start H had a too strong 2nd city site to the north because of the pigs resource, so I changed the riverside PH into a normal plains tile.

What do you think about start D's plains hill tile 5W1S with wet corn and wheat in the first ring? I'd maybe want to change it into a normal plains tile.