(October 14th, 2019, 11:33)Krill Wrote: All games need speed bumps.
Ooof, I think that I just witnessed a crime.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
Some thoughts to bounce of anyone ded lurking (and Joey)
This map is huge, I don't see a sword rush of any sort being effective. a naval attack, or a full on SoD with cats and HA, sure, but not a rush. So I don't think I'm terrified that we're next to AGG Rome, just wary.
We finish Sailing around eot54 or 55 with no Archery but with Writing. Barbs start spawning T40, and archers aren't good enough if the barbs that are spawning are axes. We need to know where horses are. I suspect/hope they are on the tile south of City 2, but if they aren't we may need to adjust the dot map and order somewhat drastically.
Barb-busting is going to be our best line of defense, but we are going to struggle to build any units by T40 just because of the amount of work boats we have to build. We can have the scout and 2 warriors, and two of these units will be SW and S of the capital giving perfect vision by the time the settler moves out (scout and warrior1).
We don't actually need a single unit to keep the capital happy at any point of the whip cycle until after we whip settler2 (I've tested it, I know this is true). This means we can just about get every single tile within 5 tiles of the capital fog busted, including the approach to city 2 with warrior1 and Gilbert.
Weirdly enough, in the sim the game spawns archers. We have no counter to that. We don't even have the production to 2v1 with warriors. But as barbs research techs dependent on how many players have researched a tech, I don't think this is going to occur in game.
We're probably fucked if the game spawns barb axes. But then, I imagine most players would be unless they are on a true snaky continent with no land for barbs to spawn in.
(October 14th, 2019, 14:02)Krill Wrote: Some thoughts to bounce of anyone ded lurking (and Joey)
Barb-busting is going to be our best line of defense, but we are going to struggle to build any units by T40 just because of the amount of work boats we have to build. We can have the scout and 2 warriors, and two of these units will be SW and S of the capital giving perfect vision by the time the settler moves out (scout and warrior1).
This is a big concern of mine as well. My experience playing on these types of expansive maps is that barbs can be a huge pain in the ass. For an example, look at plako's PB22 game. Like us, he had a huge expanse of relatively food-barren land with a relatively slow leader, and as a result had a very production-slow early game. He ended up needing to kill some ridiculous number of barbs, IIRC something like 50+, and basically wasn't a contender at all until right at the very end of the game when he figured out how to break the espionage system.
We're going to have a similar problem here, but made worse by needing to build lots of workboats too. This is a big reason why I want to bring the scout back... anything to keep barbs from spawning near us (and better yet, it makes them spawn closer to our neighbors.)
(October 14th, 2019, 14:02)Krill Wrote: Some thoughts to bounce of anyone ded lurking (and Joey)
We're probably fucked if the game spawns barb axes. But then, I imagine most players would be unless they are on a true snaky continent with no land for barbs to spawn in.
IIRC barb axes won't come for awhile (at least T70 or whatever), and, at any rate, we'll be revealing horses on turn 40. We should be OK here.
The two other reasons I wanted to pull back our scout would be:
1. To avoid meeting our neighbors... if we're close we want to know about it, of course, but the downside is the worry that they'll go "omg i'm next to Krill, he's gonna either kill me or lock me into a forever-war, better just rush him now and go down swinging."
2. To get full visibility on our surrounding lands in order to sim more accurately when we actually have free time to sim. IMHO, besides just mechanically optimizing one's first 40 or so turns, sims are still very useful after that at figuring out logistics. "When do I want my 5th settler out?" "When do I have time to make a galley for an island city, and how do I get a settler out to coincide with it?" "How hard can I whip my third or fourth cities now if I need them to do XXX around T70?", etc. Broader stuff like that.
(October 14th, 2019, 17:37)GermanJoey Wrote: The two other reasons I wanted to pull back our scout would be:
1. To avoid meeting our neighbors... if we're close we want to know about it, of course, but the downside is the worry that they'll go "omg i'm next to Krill, he's gonna either kill me or lock me into a forever-war, better just rush him now and go down swinging."
2. To get full visibility on our surrounding lands in order to sim more accurately when we actually have free time to sim. IMHO, besides just mechanically optimizing one's first 40 or so turns, sims are still very useful after that at figuring out logistics. "When do I want my 5th settler out?" "When do I have time to make a galley for an island city, and how do I get a settler out to coincide with it?" "How hard can I whip my third or fourth cities now if I need them to do XXX around T70?", etc. Broader stuff like that.
Not got much time, have to run to work. I'll explain more later when I get a chance. 1) ignores the fact that opponents will find us, so we handicap ourselves, and 2) we will have all that inform by T35 anyway.
Counterpoint: we are on the bleeding edge of what we can achieve with the current aim, a barb in the wrong place breaks everything. How valuable is a sim produced now that predicts 50 turns in the future?
I'll still do micro, I will be doing it in an area by area basis and not all at once.
