Pitboss 9 Organizing Thread

[Qgqqqqq]

Yeah thought so.
What do you think about my earlier points re:diplo ?

[Twinkletoes89]

I don't think a message a day limit is really practical tbh especially when we get to talking to everyone.

I'm thinking about perhaps going for AI diplo in game plus a public diplo thread as our set up. That could be a good balance. Thoughts?

[BRickAstley]

I agree with all of Commodore's votes for game settings for our team.

[2metraninja]

What is a public diplo thread?

[Qgqqqqq]

See PB7.

Hmm I have to disagree with you on that, quite apart from any true dog pile/teching agreement being shut out (I'm not saying this is good or bad, just stating it) I actually feel a public diplo threa would be MORE work.
At a message a day thats a maximum of 6 meessages to send or recieve, you're also edged more into it slowly (while public is all out from D1) and I doubt that 6 will ever be reached due to eliminations, factions etc.
It also puts less focus on scouting.
Due to the difference in setup between this and '9 I don't think it would work so well, as AW and the 18 players worked to stand in the way of any deals.

That said, I'd generally prefer public to CTON/full.

[scooter]

Okay guys, I have your civs/leaders ready. Out of the interest of transparency, here is the exact process I did:

1) Rolled a new PBEM with 18 unrestricted players (used PBEM so I could see all 18 on the side immediately without opening WB), and I wrote down all of the combos in notepad
2) Copied them all into the lurker thread. The roll overall was pretty weak - no Pacals, Willems, Indias, and a lot of lousy civs. I literally rolled Toku/Russia as one of them, which was promptly removed.
3) Eliminated things that sounded bland, then picked the final 7 with the input of about 5 lurkers, several of which are pretty experienced.

In the end, the choices we went with were on the strong side of a weak roll, if that makes sense. The roll gave a lot of bad combos, so we mostly just eliminated those and went with combos that are solid, though mostly not top-tier. End result is these combos are all fairly good - there's something to like with all of them which should increase the fun factor. The balance is of course not perfect (which is not the mandate we were given), but we believe the gap between them is small and reasonable enough that the map and player choices will decide things rather than the traits. The way I assigned them was to make a "left" list of the combos (copied from the lurker thread), a "right" list of the player (copied from this thread), then used the random.org list generator to re-order the numbers. The list here was the result of my first and only roll of these numbers (no adjustment for player skill or manually assigning leaders/civs).

One final caveat. I know you have war elephants disabled, but one of the rolls was Khmer. After talking it over, we have decided Khmer will be included and be allowed to use their UU. It's a strong UU sure, but 1) there are a lot of strong UUs in this game and 2) It's a random map, therefore no guarantee of ivory. And with all that, here you are:

Twinkletoes: Isabella of France
Commodore/Brick: Augustus of Inca
Jowy: Pericles of Khmer
AutomatedTeller: Hannibal of Native America
Cornflakes/Q: Huayna Capac of Zulu
2metraninja: Sury of Mongolia
Azza: Louis of Rome

That'll give you something to think about. I'm not really available to roll the map for you, so I suggest you get to recruiting somebody to do that with these leaders/civs.

[Commodore]

Cool. Although note for the map roller: Might want to switch a few colors. Zulu/Inca are both yellow, France splits the difference on Khmer and Rome, and Mongols and NA are simlar brownish.

[Qgqqqqq]

Thanks Scooter!

WE are not nessecarily disabled, though if they are I agree we should let them have their UU.

Out of interest, what was the full 18-player list?

[scooter]

Out of interest, what was the full 18-player list?

I'll tell you what, I'll copy in the full list after the game gets started. I figure I'll let the in-thread second guessing over if certain leaders/civs should have been removed run its course, and THEN I'll let you do extra second-guessing about what shouldn't have been cut.

[Qgqqqqq]

You WILL be judged!
Ok so I think we need to get this moving, so I've been looking at a bunch of maps under the current proposed settings (45% water, large Lakes, x1.5 resources done using the full_of_resources script) and here are my observations:
*It tends to produce interestingly varied landscapes, with pleanty of choke-points and only a few areas that are more blocky
* There are about ~1400 land tiles, however there is a ~7 tile band of mostly ice plus some tundra - I suggest that me remove this
*Resources are NOT on traditional tiles, I saw forested banana, plains forested pig, jungle cow, plains rice grass incense etc.

With that in mind, my suggestions are: reduce the amount of ice and tundra and maybe increase grass(?).
There is a lot of water (maybe enough to ban GLH?) but I think with the terrain quality being relatively high it should be good.
Plus less jungle.