[NO PLAYERS] Seeding and ranking discussion

[wetbandit]

Not really a balance comment, but: Do people like playing isolated starts in these pitbosses? I remember a comment from gawdzak in PB22, despite his performance in the game, that he found his isolated start to be boring or uninteresting because it removed player interaction for the first 100 or so turns.

I'm not sure I'd like to be player 2 or 4 regardless of what leader and civ I received.

Edit: And yes, Gawdzak's isolation in that game was much more pronounced than it is here.

[Ichabod]

I suggest we use Gaspar's tier list to base our choices.

...

Perhaps you people are too young to get this RB meme... (I thought we had an old man smiley)

[Commodore]

Discuss:

[GermanJoey]

Commodore I think we'd like to vote on player strength and discuss the map a bit more rather than having you just arbitrarily assign players and combos. That's sort of the whole idea of this game.

Can you tell us a little bit more about what Harry asked you regarding map settings?

[Mardoc]

Commodore I think we'd like to vote on player strength and discuss the map a bit more rather than having you just arbitrarily assign players and combos. That's sort of the whole idea of this game.

Discuss:

Where's the arbitrary assignment without room to talk? Looks to me like a proposed option, at most.

[Mardoc]

On a more topical note: Why separate Gavagai and OH so much? Then it become a race to see who can eat their neighbors faster, rather than a competition. Suppose you swapped Molach and Gavagai?

[GermanJoey]

Commodore I think we'd like to vote on player strength and discuss the map a bit more rather than having you just arbitrarily assign players and combos. That's sort of the whole idea of this game.

Discuss:

Where's the arbitrary assignment without room to talk? Looks to me like a proposed option, at most.

What? It's right there. Nobody's even said anything about the map yet nor have we tallied up votes on players yet, yet here's a proposed map. I don't think it's good, either. 2metra's position on the map is one of the best, if not the very best, yet he's ranked one of the highest, especially with the new addition of his dedlurker, while Dantski has a rather difficult area to manage despite being ranked one of the lowest. With a poor player like TW being in that isolated position he might as well be playing single-player. This proposed map doesn't reflect anything anyone else has been saying at all.

[Commodore]

Yeah, the discuss was just a spitball thought for discussion. OH's only ask was for imbalance.

[Bacchus]

I think it's actually useful to see a potential layout for the purposes of discussion, I didn't at all get a feeling that that's what we are going with.

I guess, at the end of the day, what we are going to have to do is take turns in nominating layouts and just taking a majority vote on them. But after a discussion of rankings and so on. The next reasonable step (given general agreement on the ranking of the players), is to rank the starts, for now without taking neighbours' aggressiveness into account. Albeit the extent each start is susceptible to aggression should be noted I think.

My take is this:

1. Player 6 (huge amounts of land, one real neighbour, beautiful central sea position for attacking out. the latter could also be a negative, but a coordinated naval dogpile in CTON is all but impossible, and uncoordinated navies just get ripped to shreds in turn).

2. Player 2 (almost like player 6, but less land for expansion, slower expansion via naval settlement, and all the other negatives of an archipelago empire. Also, less fun to play, as noted, but I don't think this should be a factor)

3. Player 4 (like player 2, but has to deal with attack prospects from two, opposing fronts. Player 2's core, by contrast, is completely safe pre-Astro)

4. Players 3 and 5. (slightly less land than above, but still lots, direction for long-term expansion. a bit more navally isolated)

5. Players 0 and 1 (what you would call "normal" starts, I guess, albeit now it's obvious they are worse than average for this map)

6. Player 9 (not so much land, has to content with a better-placed neighbour on one side, and with a bottlenecked cramped on the other)

7. Player 7 (just ouch)

I think the biggest problem with the map, actually, is that starlocs 9 and 7 are so close and in direct competition with each other. Of course, that might be an advantage for our purposes, but if we pile Gav and OH into these positions, we should at least make them lush to make them fun.

[GermanJoey]

I think it's actually useful to see a potential layout for the purposes of discussion, I didn't at all get a feeling that that's what we are going with.

I guess, at the end of the day, what we are going to have to do is take turns in nominating layouts and just taking a majority vote on them. But after a discussion of rankings and so on. The next reasonable step (given general agreement on the ranking of the players), is to rank the starts, for now without taking neighbours' aggressiveness into account. Albeit the extent each start is susceptible to aggression should be noted I think.

My take is this:

1. Player 6 (huge amounts of land, one real neighbour, beautiful central sea position for attacking out. the latter could also be a negative, but a coordinated naval dogpile in CTON is all but impossible, and uncoordinated navies just get ripped to shreds in turn).

2. Player 2 (almost like player 6, but less land for expansion, slower expansion via naval settlement, and all the other negatives of an archipelago empire. Also, less fun to play, as noted, but I don't think this should be a factor)

3. Player 4 (like player 2, but has to deal with attack prospects from two, opposing fronts. Player 2's core, by contrast, is completely safe pre-Astro)

4. Players 3 and 5. (slightly less land than above, but still lots, direction for long-term expansion. a bit more navally isolated)

5. Players 0 and 1 (what you would call "normal" starts, I guess, albeit now it's obvious they are worse than average for this map)

6. Player 9 (not so much land, has to content with a better-placed neighbour on one side, and with a bottlenecked cramped on the other)

7. Player 7 (just ouch)

I think the biggest problem with the map, actually, is that starlocs 9 and 7 are so close and in direct competition with each other. Of course, that might be an advantage for our purposes, but if we pile Gav and OH into these positions, we should at least make them lush to make them fun.

I agree with most of this. I think starts 8, 7, and 9 are just too crappy as-is. 7 and 9 definitely shouldn't be bridged to each other; 7 should be bridged towards 5 instead, or perhaps towards those islands to its southwest. There's also a lot more dead space than I initially realized. A city may be planted whose borders eventually stretch over a swath of desert, but that doesn't mean desert should really be counted as part of one's empire. Likewise, coast can be an ok tile with a lighthouse, but if there's very little food nearby, and its only land food, then the coast is worthless.

So, here's an updated view of the map's projected borders, with the big dead areas taken out and highlighted:




From this view, you can see the starts are pretty isolated. It had looked like players 0/3/8 would be in quite a bit of contention for that middle area between them on the last image I posted, but that's actually unlikely because that area is just a huge worthless desert. Similar deal for players 1 and 9; it's very likely that 9 will get pushed towards 7, which means that 7 will likely get locked out of the continent, despite having another wise decent chance to snag some land from 5. Players 3 and 5 look a lot worse once you cut out the desert near them. Player 3 isn't all bad though, as they're extremely well positioned to invade Player 7 by sea at Astro, since all their cities will be along their southern coast, and they can very easily ignore player 8. Player 5 has a lot of potential; they have chances to cut off player 7 from both the continent as well as an island chain to their south west, and have a chance to cut off player 0 from the southern part of the continent. Players 6, 4, and 2 are definitely the three best spots on the map, although they'll also have very little player interaction. Pseudo-Isolation is very good for winning games, but not so good for having fun.

These deserts also make land-invasions very unlikely; we'll probably have to wait for Galleons before any real conflict happens. In fact, I think there's only two spots where there's any chance of pre-galleon conflict happening at all... between 0 and 5 (I think whoever controls the choke with all that gold gets all that area below it; it seems less and less likely to me that 5 will be able to reasonably get and hold that southeastern area by galley) and between 9 and 7.

The Great Lighthouse 100% needs to be banned on this map.