Pitboss Diplomacy Game

[Heraclitus]

But this does not mean we are rolling back on what we agreed on... spicing up does not mean "make a higland map"

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by OzzyKP

Personally I'm with Toni, lets not try to recreate Earth. If we ever want to do an Earth based map, then lets do it right and use an actual Earth map. .

I'm a bit confused, who ever said anything about this before Toni mentioned it?

[Heraclitus]

I never advocated a map similar to Earth, if anyone actually bothered to read the thread they would see I advocated a world divided into two hemispheres with a third empty continent.

[Pinchak]

This will be alot easier once I know the civs.

Ideally, I would like to keep like civs together (orient, europe, new world, etc...) as well as keep them in historic climates (ie. although the mongol would fall into the orient pool, they would also get a cool tempature start).

Unfortunately, the only way for me to achieve both would be to hand place each and every civ. Hence, no random starting locations.

I think keeping the locations random is important. First off because I will be both making the map and playing the game. Secondly, the more random the placements the less people can whine about their particular start.

Not that their should be any whining. I am going to go to great lengths to ensure balance and fairness.

Really though, I need to know all the civs before going further with the map. From there I MIGHT be able to sub-divide "race" pools into "terrain" pools. This largely depends on the civs that are chosen. If only one can be done however I lean toward using terrain pools exclusively.

Cyber, anyway you could leak me the 17 civs that have been chosen thus far? For instance, if 6 arid civs were chosen the map needs to made quite different then if only 2 were chosen. I want to make sure eveyone gets roughly the same amount of elbow room.

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Heraclitus


I'm a bit confused, who ever said anything about this before Toni mentioned it?

What Toni and I were referring to was the terrain linked starts and to a lesser extent the culturally linked starts. I think if used sparingly it can be good (i.e. putting Mongolia on a plain and putting England on an island) but more generally we should stay away from it. Or things will feel rather prescribed and feel like we are acting out earth history.

For some civs their culture is tied to their geography (Arabs, Egyptians, Vikings perhaps) but for most civs I think they can and should be mixed around a lot.

So if we had to vote my vote would be:

No culturally linked civs.
Only limited terrain linked civs.

In this game we create our own cultures and story lines and allegencies. You can't culturally link our civs when we create our own culture. To do otherwise would be encouraging civs to ally with their neighbors. It would give a subtle "us against them" mindset. "Oh we're China, Japan and Korea we need to keep out those European outsiders".

IF people really wanted to do terrain linked starts or culturally linked starts I strongly recommend we do one or the other. Doing both is simply too much predestination. But my votes are above.

[Rasputin]

I am totally at a loss as to why certain civs need to start in certain climatic areas.

I did not choose my civ based on where on earth they cam from. I chose them as out of all the civs left when i came to choose they were the only one i had ever played with before.

Now i found i am locked into a different starting location to what i normally get with a SP Civ 4 game due ot selecting a civ that has been deemed to start in a certain location.

I was hoping to totaly rename my civ anyway not use the civ name in the list. I tohught this waspossible. I will be playing as a civ of my own creation and style, nothing like the civ i have chosen.

This unfortunatly could drastically reduce my fun in this game.

Why cant all civs start on a similar area, then have the outlaying areas different, make a map that is not like the world at all, do we really need ice and tundra?

[Robert]

Originally posted by Blackdragon921
russians netherlands vickings and northern germany all started in tundra

We, the dutch, started in the tundra?
Dude, there's no tundra in no 10000 miles from here

[Robert]

Ok, time's up, we play with 17 players.
Here's the table of civs! Good luck Pinchack, we have faith in you! (We just all want to give some input )

(sorted alphabetical)

Ps. I don't know any of the player/civ combination!! Except that player/civ combination of that certain player who told me by PM

[Robert]

Rasputin, pinchak will put many deers, crabs and beavers in the tundra, it won't be worse then a grassland start. I think we can trust him!

[Robert]

I am going to create apolyton logins for everyone! Don't make them yourselves!!!! Don't post info about your civ with your own ID!!!!

[MMC]

In order to protect Pinchak from any accusations of sheating with the map, I recommend using the SmartMap script. It can be used on a pre-made map to 'spice' it up. So we take Pinchak's map, and run it once through SmartMap, and then you get the advantages of a well-designed (hopefully) pre-made map, coupled with the advantages of an unknown random map.

[MMC]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
What Toni and I were referring to was the terrain linked starts and to a lesser extent the culturally linked starts. I think if used sparingly it can be good (i.e. putting Mongolia on a plain and putting England on an island) but more generally we should stay away from it.

I would definitely have to agree... As an Englishman in RL (a Londoner to be precise ), I must admit to feeling at home playing an island start...

[Vampgelus]

FIN_:_6
SPI_:_4
EXP_:_3
IMP_:_3
ORG_:_3
PHI_:_3
PRO_:_3
IND_:_3
AGR_:_2
CHA_:_2
CRE_:_2

FIN is a little overpresent, but seems to be a list of great diversity. Only 3 IND, and no trait-monopoly. Nice pick everyone !

[Heraclitus]

From what I can see we have an interesting bounch of civs. Lots of way to divide these groups into 8 and 10 hemispheres. We should watch for Fin, to be equally distributed, since good players seem to overestimate it. Also didn't someone say they where tired of seeing Incas every single game? I guess the temptation was too strong...

Also I think Ozzy is overstating the them vs. us mentality, I think culturaly linked starts will not do this, since civs in those groups are very different and most groups are too small. An example of this could be Americans and the NA. The only way I could see such mentality to arise would be between the two inhabited continetns, and even then it would remain in healthy limits, I mean no one will have a problem with their annonyin neighbour becoming a colony.


This way we have America and England on different continents (it may be too big a temptation for them to ally in the early game) as well as it is just more fun story wise to have a na ancient unknown origion or legends of Britannia.


It also has civs that will interact interestingly with each other together, but does not make a continent into a "Europe" (since Russia and Vikings are elsewhere). Story wise (Greece vs. Rome vs. Persia vs. Celts, England vs. France vs. Spain, England vs. Celts, Korea vs. Japan, ect.), there are a lot of historical and contradicitng ways these civs have interacted giving the players lots of freedom to make his world history his own, but still giving him more than enough material to make stories.

I think perhaps two groups for random starts on hemisphere two:

One temperate but a bit north. With perhaps a island/penisula start or two (Japan, Korea, England, France, Celts?)

One in the general vicinity of a "mediteranean sea" with
a few "warm" starts and a few temperate starts. This sea would be too small for a reasonable island start, but perhaps a penisula or two is again possible?
(Greece, Persia, Rome, Celts?)

These two groups would not really be seperated but evenly spaced over the entire continet they would only be used to make it more likley that each civ will wind up in similar land to what it had. There is no reason why Greece and France or England and Persia couldn't start near each other despite being from "different" groups, is this clear?

Ozzy can you now see why this isn't such harsh "culture grouping"? Since mediteranean civs will probably sorrunded by group one civs to the east & west and north or south, a them vs. us mentality will not form. This is more a tool to help P make climate zones withot resorting to monocluture terrain.

[Robert]

I've never felt the urge in any diplo-game to let real history intervene with my own story or diplomatic decisions.

To me a civ is a civ, and if I'm America, then I won't allie with England only because it's England.

I honestly like Pinchaks original idea more. He just numbers the starting-spots and then makes a random list with civs from 1-17.
That way we get semi-random starting positions, and he can't pick his own starting position.

It's phantasy, not history.