[No Players] PBEM9 Lurker and Map making Thread

[Woden]

I have made the requested changes and made the game file but can make changes if anybody else sees any issues. I just had a little time and figure I would show the city states and changes to see if anybody see any other issues. The below screenshots won't see strategic resources as they are hiding but I did add coal for middle man. Two other changes were made: I moved the northwest player a little more west to give middle man a little more (and double checked that he had iron and horses in capital), and I added/subtracted a few mountains around middle man's spot to give him a little cover from the southwest player and open up east of middle man's start a little. 

Anyways, here is the list of city states for this save...




Lots of religious ones and they are spread out around the map. 

Here is Rome's spot...




He ended up in the southwest. Two military CS and a religious one to his northeast. He will be fighting over with Rowain...




This is the spot I moved a little west and north. The initial spot was on the river southeast of the city spot by the sheep, wines, and rice. Ichabod is to his southeast (middle man spot)...




I shave the mountains by the desert and added a few to his west. Japan is to his northeast...




and, finally Arabia is in the southeast...




I like the distribution of city states but if anybody sees issues, let me know. I can always re-roll it. I will probably give it 8 or so hours to hear form anybody and then will post the starts in the players threads. I need to wait because I have the starts on random and if I need to re-roll, they will change. Let me know what you think?

Edit: I did have to play through the first turn before the city states menu would show up, so that is why everybody is settled.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I like the changes made, it seems like Ichabod has a better chance now. I also like the distribution of city-states. In most cases, the back-line ones are an easy choice to conquer (which means no one can hoard a particularly good suzerain bonus), while the ones in the middle, like Kumasi or Carthage, offer a good choice of players wanting to either conquer or keep around.

[Japper007]

Should Russia be given some tundra to fit its civ ability? Russia without tundra is almost a Vanilla civ. You could turn the desert/Oasis south of St Petersburg into tundra with a lake, it wouldn't even be too much of a break with the "natural" flow of the map, since the actual Tundra starts 5 tiles below it anyway. Or we could of course leave it up to Ichabod's discretion whether or not he wants to settle his first expand in tundra to leverage Mother Russia.

[Woden]

Should Russia be given some tundra to fit its civ ability? Russia without tundra is almost a Vanilla civ. You could turn the desert/Oasis south of St Petersburg into tundra with a lake, it wouldn't even be too much of a break with the "natural" flow of the map, since the actual Tundra starts 5 tiles below it anyway. Or we could of course leave it up to Ichabod's discretion whether or not he wants to settle his first expand in tundra to leverage Mother Russia.

I was thinking this but with a custom map with equal randomized starts, it almost feels like favoring Russia over others. There really isn't a lot of tundra on this map, with most of it in the south.  He does have 2 decent city spots just south of his capital and a few more to the southeast and he probably is in the best location for tundra cities. I am also weary of giving him a tundra start and hearing Ichabod bitch about a weak start because even though Russia gets bonuses to tundra, good and warm locations are still better.  Of coarse, see all the jungle right next to his capital, he will probably bitch that he is near the equator. 

I think I might leave it because he can pick up tundra for his second city if he settles south of his capital and I think that is good enough without showing preferences.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Should Russia be given some tundra to fit its civ ability? Russia without tundra is almost a Vanilla civ. You could turn the desert/Oasis south of St Petersburg into tundra with a lake, it wouldn't even be too much of a break with the "natural" flow of the map, since the actual Tundra starts 5 tiles below it anyway. Or we could of course leave it up to Ichabod's discretion whether or not he wants to settle his first expand in tundra to leverage Mother Russia.

I was thinking this but with a custom map with equal randomized starts, it almost feels like favoring Russia over others. There really isn't a lot of tundra on this map, with most of it in the south.  He does have 2 decent city spots just south of his capital and a few more to the southeast and he probably is in the best location for tundra cities. I am also weary of giving him a tundra start and hearing Ichabod bitch about a weak start because even though Russia gets bonuses to tundra, good and warm locations are still better.  Of coarse, see all the jungle right next to his capital, he will probably bitch that he is near the equator. 

I think I might leave it because he can pick up tundra for his second city if he settles south of his capital and I think that is good enough without showing preferences.

I would leave it as is. Even without tundra, Russia still has expanded city tiles on settling and it still has the lavra available right from the start, with the grand embassies and cossacks to come later - in other words, Russia's still a really powerful civ, and the boosted tundra tiles are just the cherry on top that gives them a bit more flexibility in settlement later on. 

Plus, Ichabod took England to victory in PBEM3 with no harbors, no museums, and no foreign continents until the end of the game. He'll be fine without the minor benefit of tundra.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Ichabod gets knocked down for being the monkey in the middle. Everything else is just considering the players/Civs.

Worst to best.

Ichabod--Russia. Everyone here knows what he's doing. He won't be able to expand to use his position. He won't be able to reach is UU. He'll get a few extra great people due to his UD but that's just more stuff to conquer.

Everyone is strong enough that it's just the civ picks.
Krill--Japan. Not that good on Pangea
EMP-K/Cornflakes--Arabia. A good civ but not as good as the last two.
Archduke/Bacchus--Rome
Rowain--Germany

[Ituralde]

Not a single Scientific City State. Might make for a slower tech pace than we are used to and keeps the randomness down. Not opposed to it at all, just wanted to point it out. Otherwise I really like the map!

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Kind of interesting how little lurker activity there is in this game. Product of only Ichabod and Bacchus reporting?

[suboptimal]

I think so. It's very difficult to know what's going on when reporting is this sparse. Even Bacchus and Ichabod are not being consistent in their reporting. I guess the question to be asked is "why?". This could be a product of the early game having been so completely familiarized at this point the players don't feel that turn-by-turn reporting is worthwhile unless there's a significant development or they find an as-yet undiscovered shard of cleverness.

From what I can gather it looks like the game is going to come down to whether or not Krill can stomp Ichabod in a reasonable time frame and everyone else is just keeping the game moving along as a result.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Ichabod is in first place now but I don't think he'll last because he's a monkey-in-the-middle.