Lurker Discussion Thread (NO PLAYERS)

[pocketbeetle]

I have to say, I've been really impressed by the map designing on display in all of the recently started PBEMs, and this is no exception.

Did you actually draw this by hand Kyan?
Did you start with an all sea base, or all land base and then drew in the water?

I like the central Uranium island, both the shape of it and the concept. Love the fact that everyone has visibility on it, should bring some really interesting alliance-shifts and diplo when one player claims it and the others all band together to bring him down.

I like the novel take on a water map, and the fact it's flat, so everyone stays on roughly equal terms for water movement.

Problems I see:

• Have to agree with Bob about the metal.
  It's great in concept, but as a recent Ruff Adventure showed, Iron is too central to Civ4, I do think it should be in.
  
• With no metal and only horses, the War Elephants from Ivory become too dominant.
  It's so hard to balance, but after Construction and WEs, the next competitive units is muskets?
  

Regarding Bob's last point about the Dutch East Indiamen: it comes down to whether you're trying to balance this map specifically for the civs selected, or just trying to balance it for general play.
Are you willing to say that, well, the person who chose a water UU chose wisely?

If you're trying to balance it for the civs selected, then yes the East Indiaman will be overpowered without metal, while Sumeria and Greece are getting a slightly harsh deal.
But equally, taking out horses to give iron/copper is also unfair on the Russian Cossacks (plus maybe Carthage), rewarding the Arabian horseless camels etc etc.
It's hard.

Suggestions:

• Suggest adding Iron, either as a replacement to the horses underneath the capital or to the expansion islands.
  No copper-enabled early axes or spears then, but they'll still be buildable once IW comes in/players expand.
  
• I notice no jungle on the map.
  Have you considered that you can deliberately slow down player expansion by jungling up some of the expansion islands?
  If you're happy with this setup, and think the lack of commerce is a sufficient check on player expansion, then feel free to ignore (remember it's a flat map, what difficulty?).
  
• Consider rewarding players who research Astro on a water map.
  There are no landmasses that cannot be colonised by galley.
  

Overall, a big thumbs up, and if you decide to stick to your guns and go no metal, it will certainly make interesting lurking.

[Krill]

I'll point out now that this is basically all Kyans' work; all I have done is answer a few questions and give my opinion on the map.

One extra comment though: if the map is flat with no wrap, then deleting the ice in the north should make it perfectly fine for late era naval warfare That would mean no need to resize the map.

[Kyan]

PB, i drew the entire thing by hand. Every bloomin tile. Has been stressing me out but i think it is complete. War Elephants are turned off but ivory is in as a happiness resource.

I agree about the iron. I therefore added 3 'iron islands'. One between each pair of civs that's big enough for 1 city yet has two iron. This allows one person to settle it and either be greedy or play nice and share with their unfortunate neighbour.



Example of Iron Island. They're fully jungled and i also jungled all the gems on the interim islands.

Tied up LoS issues once again after i broke them and also tied up rivers. Big thanks to Krill for looking at this and pointing out my mistakes all the way thru. If nobody notices anymore glaring problems, i'll send players their starting locations shortly.

[Kyan]

Oh and each iron island has a solitary clam only 'gettable' thru the island. These 3 clams are the only ones on the map.

[Kyan]

Ok ok greece start with wheat visible. My bad. All the others have it in their BFC also, i just hid it behind a hill.

[SevenSpirits]

Is it intentional that several players have a break in their river right at their capital?

[GrafvMonteDisco]

I thought russia and greece have hunting starts. Shouldnt they start with a scout?

[regoarrarr]

Interesting that only Serdoa noticed the extra tiles that were visible (or at least was the only one to comment on it), even though several of the other folks had it show up in their posted screenshots

[Adlain]

Umm, thats quite a spoiler i think - obviosly it wasnt his fault he knows about it but i does put him at an advantage as he now knows there is one hell of a commerce site just waiting to be founded!!!!

[MWIN]

How is it pretty clear? Would it be spoiler if I ask Cyneheard?

Oh, and it's pretty clear from the screenshot that I'm on an island, and the silver/FP region south and slightly west of me is on a separate island.