Strat Forum PBEM: Game 4 - Thread II

[alexman]

Great news!

I also PM'ed Nor Me. Perhaps he will join if we tell the map maker to place him as far as possible from DaveMcW!

[Nor Me]

I'll join .

A bit incestuous though isn't it?

I'm not sure that unmodded or any AU mod makes that much difference when you adjust. AP does and I don't know how to play with it. If the consensus is to slightly handicap Industrious civs, I'd go with that.

Originally posted by alexman
Perhaps he will join if we tell the map maker to place him as far as possible from DaveMcW!

No, no, as close as possible to DaveMcW. At least if the rest of you want a better chance of winning.

[Harovan]

So we have 6 players together, excellent! What about getting this thing started?

I would vote for these settings:

- Small map (80x80), Pangea, 70% water
- Normal humidity, temperate (to avoid extrema like large tundras or jungles)
- World age 4 billion years. 3 would favor industrious. May be we make it 5, devaluating industrious, and don't steal them Masonry? This makes for very detailed maps with many different tiles around the cities and without vast hills, mountain ranges and jungles (where industrious would shine)
- Raging barbarians (at least restless)
- Emperor difficulty, for happiness and barbarian combat

[Harovan]

I just ran a test with the editor. Argh! In 75% of all cases I got continents, once even an archipelago, although the setting always was pangea. We surely need one to check the map for a true pangea and to balance it out, without making luxuries and resources too abundant like in the ex-game 4.

[alexman]

Sir Ralph, I think they fixed the editor in 1.21f to *always* generate pangea if you want that setting. It's in the readme.

Either way, we really should find someone to balance the map though. I would say that the map should be 100% generated (but with the map maker allowed to generate as many as he wants until he finds a good one), but with all the resources manually and carefully placed.

As for Industrious, unless we take away Masonry *and* play at 5 billion, I wouldn't be inclined to choose anything besides an Industrious civ. And even then I would probably choose Industrious, actually.

Otherwise this game sounds great. I'm excited!

[DaveMcW]

I'd like to echo the need for scarce luxuries. Please leave only one per player on the map - this will help balance Republic too.

I vote for 5 billion years and let industrious civs keep Masonry.

[Harovan]

Well, we can't play 1.21f if Nor Me participates. Other than that, you're right, I just checked it with my dual installation.

[alexman]

We can still generate the map with 1.21f. The BIC file format is the same, it's only the SAV that differs.

As for luxuries, perhaps we could place the 7th and 8th on small islands outside the pangea (an exeption to the generated map), just to make a navy a bit more tempting.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by alexman
As for luxuries, perhaps we could place the 7th and 8th on small islands outside the pangea (an exeption to the generated map), just to make a navy a bit more tempting.

Yea, we should artifically add a lot of small (2-3 tiles) islands around the pangea, for military bases and rapid reaction forces .

[Dominae]

This game looks like it's shaping up, but it is also getting a little contrived for my tastes: with 6 players and a map maker to ensure the starts are "balanced", I see no reason to start creating Luxury islands (because you just know it's going to snowball into Strategic resource distribution, etc.). Other than the settings offered by the game and the requirement that each player has a "fair chance", I think only the map maker should know anything about the map.

Also, pardon my ignorance, but why does AP make the end-game more interesting?


Dominae

[DaveMcW]

Originally posted by Dominae
Also, pardon my ignorance, but why does AP make the end-game more interesting?

Because you get within reach of space and culture victories twice as fast. Two players can research to the modern age in 150 turns. As players realize they can't win with the status quo, they are forced to end the staring contests.

The downside is you can't pull off a successful invasion without a good road network (no early rushes).

[jshelr]

"The downside is you can't pull off a successful invasion without a good road network (no early rushes)."

I beg your pardon? The only AP game I ever played I started in a junk position, but upgraded to MWs who ate all of Spain for breakfast. It took so little time to create the small MW stack that its early arrival caught 'em by surprise. A little lucky hut popping on the tech front helped, as I recall. I would agree that you need at least horses for AP rushes.

[jshelr]

By the way, it seems like it is virtually guaranteed that PBEM games will bomb sometime after the middle ages on the patch we were playing. The "help desk" tells me that the new patch out soon will fix the problem that one of our games bombed on last week. But even 1.21 is far from bug free. Can we set this up to move to the latest patch when it comes out?? Otherwise, it's a bit futile to expect to play to a conclusion.

[Nor Me]

Originally posted by jshelr
But even 1.21 is far from bug free. Can we set this up to move to the latest patch when it comes out?? Otherwise, it's a bit futile to expect to play to a conclusion.

I suspect it might be some time before I can use at least the official version of the next patch.

[alexman]

No worries. The good thing is that we are setting this game up to have lots of action before we get past the middle ages. 1.14f it is!

I just PM'ed Catt to see if we wants to make a map for us.