[PB81] Lurkers from the Deep

[scooter]

One thing Scooter brought up earlier is adjusting the starts to the players. I think this map (10) could be the green continent, and if we give Dreylin the island start and slightly weaken start D (and possibly A) the rest can be randomized.

I still like map 7 for the veteran continent, and we can then put TBS in the small green start and SD on the isolated black start, and randomize the last two.

I like this the best. As long as folks think pre-placing the 3 players in question and randomizing the rest is not a problem, I vote this path. I think it's fair enough as I don't think any of the starts are auto-win or auto-lose - they're within a standard deviation of each other.


One open question is whether it's worth communicating this choice to the players at all. Not the specifics, but I wonder if it's worth giving a disclaimer. "Two players we felt were right on the cutoff, so we gave the borderline player on the vet continent the start we felt was marginally stronger than the rest, and we gave the borderline player on the green continent the start we felt was marginally weaker. However, they are still reasonably balanced."


Is that worth it or nah?

[Fintourist]

"Two players we felt were right on the cutoff, so we gave the borderline player on the vet continent the start we felt was marginally stronger than the rest, and we gave the borderline player on the green continent the start we felt was marginally weaker. However, they are still reasonably balanced."

I think from a player perspective I would appreciate this kind of a message, if the assumption otherwise is that starts are balanced. I think it's quite likely that everybody OK's that if you post it in the tech thread.

***

Just looking at the layout of the map 7, the black start is clearly the most attractive. Only one neighbor and access to two reasonably-sized backfill islands.

On the other hand I don't think the green start is terrible compared to blue and red. The green player only has one neighbor to contend, which means that he can push quite aggressively south and grab enough land. For that start, a lot will depend on how the more detailed land layout looks in the midpoint between green and red. If one player has strong defendable city sites on the row 4 tiles N/S of the capital, and the other one doesn't, that will have a big impact.

I think for TBS, the green start will be quite comfortable layout-wise. I don't think he can be rusty enough not to win the game from there. It might be a fun challenge though: First you have to beat your immediate red neighbor, then potentially a black player, who had a better start and in the best case you finally need to overcome somebody, who has played simcity for the past 50 turns on the other continent. I was thinking that the most realistic scenario for TBS to lose (or at least struggle) would be facing some kind of an early dogpile/multi-front pressure, but the green start avoids that. Forgive me, if I'm being ignorant and Mjmd & Co have improved in the recent years (my lurking has been quite sporadic).

Anyways, great preparation work ongoing! 

[Tarkeel]

"Two players we felt were right on the cutoff, so we gave the borderline player on the vet continent the start we felt was marginally stronger than the rest, and we gave the borderline player on the green continent the start we felt was marginally weaker. However, they are still reasonably balanced."

I think from a player perspective I would appreciate this kind of a message, if the assumption otherwise is that starts are balanced. I think it's quite likely that everybody OK's that if you post it in the tech thread.

Agreed.

I think for TBS, the green start will be quite comfortable layout-wise. I don't think he can be rusty enough not to win the game from there. It might be a fun challenge though: First you have to beat your immediate red neighbor, then potentially a black player, who had a better start and in the best case you finally need to overcome somebody, who has played simcity for the past 50 turns on the other continent. I was thinking that the most realistic scenario for TBS to lose (or at least struggle) would be facing some kind of an early dogpile/multi-front pressure, but the green start avoids that. Forgive me, if I'm being ignorant and Mjmd & Co have improved in the recent years (my lurking has been quite sporadic).

A case could be made for the central blue start to be slightly more challenging for that exact reason, which is why I'm only confident about pre-placing SD and Dreylin.

[scooter]

A case could be made for the central blue start to be slightly more challenging for that exact reason, which is why I'm only confident about pre-placing SD and Dreylin.

One caveat to this - the blue start gets better when you consider it's next to Superdeath, who is maybe an easier neighbor than the other two. Although maybe that's not true if he goes full Leroy Jenkins. I sort of doubt he would though - SD is generally content to be peaceful IF he has green-looking land to expand into. Also, SD getting placed on the "good start" becomes less of a good start if his only neighbor is TBS.


I don't have incredibly strong feelings on TBS's placement overall. I'm very open to simply randomizing the other 3 and letting it go with however it rolls if we don't feel like one of the others is a big advantage. Just pointing out there are ripple effects as to who is placed where.

[Tarkeel]

I'm planning on posting these starts tomorrow.

Green continent starts:

I changed start B/orange similar to what scooter suggested; changing the bay-angle and adding two riverside landtiles. Start C/blue also had two land tiles added, and added a plains tile to A/grey and D/green. Using random.org yielded:

There were 3 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

Gira
Xist
Greenline

Start A/grey (Gira):



Start B/orange (Dreylin):



Start C/blue (Xist):



Start D/green (Greenline):



Veteran continent starts:

These are all new, but should be on a similar powerlevel as the greens, but the animals have less foodvalue. I decided to randomize all three starts here as well:

There were 3 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

Mjmd
Naufragar
TBS

Start E/grey (Superdeath):



Start F/blue (Mjmd):



Start G/green (Naufragar):



Start H/orange (TBS):


I padded out the water S of start with a small river; this could be removed if we want to give TBS a handicap. Still think this is the worst start of the bunch, and he got it randomly.

[scooter]

Some random thoughts.


* Mjmd's start looks a bit down from the rest? Plains Cow is barely a food, dry Wheat, and the Fish is second ring. Whereas TBS can go worker first and immediately start a farm on a first-ring 6 yield tile. Mjmd has to either consider WB-first or eat a slower start. In fact, everyone else's Wheat is irrigated among the vets.


* The other vet starts all seem fine to me. Some minor variance, but small variance compared to other factors IMO. Nauf's start is just a 1T slower version of TBS's start with the second ring Wheat, fwiw. And his cows are very slightly worse. Not sure if it matters enough to move the needle, but thought I would mention it.


* Gira has a similar situation with dry wheat, but I think this one is probably OK given that he's got Fish and some lighthouseable lakes.


* Dreylin's start does look a notch weaker than the rest, but I think we've decided we are good with this. Just confirming it's intentional. It's certainly not bad - I think it's fine.


That's all that really jumps out to me. Looks good overall, and I don't think all my comments even really need to be actioned.

[Tarkeel]

Plains cow is intentional; the un-irrigated wheat is not, so will fix that.

Gira's start is intentional with the fish balancing out; Dreylin's start did get beefed but is still worse.

[Tarkeel]

I made some small tweaks to three of the veteran starts. It was originally my intention to give them either a fish or a wet wheat, but decided to give everyone something similar. That means, Mjmd's wheat got wet, and Nauf and TBS clams got fishy. Also swapped Nauf's wheat to a deer and moved it outer ring.

Start F/blue (Mjmd):



Start G/green (Naufragar):



Start H/orange (TBS):

[ljubljana]

dang it, i knew this would happen but i'm already lowkey regretting not signing up for this one

on the other hand, it already looks like we are going to have a TON of high-quality reporting, which is of course good for antsy genlurkers like me. mjmd, nauf, and a TBS with 2 dedlurkers all on the same island? i can't think of a time when we're ever had such a high density of great reporters on a single landmass

[Gavagai]

Boudica of Portugal is an insane pick for this game. No way in hell the idea of invading the new world early can even come close to success.