What sort of map are we on?

OK, in the light of this:



...it's time to start speculating about the specifications of our map.

The first thing to say is that our island is potato shaped. Given that this is a doctored map, I think it would be extremely risky to have anything other than very similar starts for every team, so what sort of map could this be?

• A star-shaped map with one central island and everyone starting on a little island just outside? We know we're in the northern hemisphere, because the arrows point down rather than up.
• Each team having two islands for themselves, and one-way trade routes all round? This is very possible, but a puzzling choice for a mapmaker...

I dunno. It's almost certain, based on team preferences, that every civ will be reachable by galley. I'd be very, very surprised if we were isolated.

Any more speculation?

I'm going to speculate that there are no major resources on starting islands and everyone has to fight over them in a race to the mainland!

At this point, my guess is that your first option is correct. Some sort of Hub-like map, without spokes.

As I said somewhere else, we only have 40 tiles eek2 here. Assuming the distribution is even among teams (240 total), that would leave something like 70% of land in some central land mass.

A third possibility is one or two islands in-between each starting island/continent or a large number of central islands. Either way, the Vikings got a lucky break. Their UB and UU will be really really useful for this kind of map.

I guess it also goes without saying that a team will probably have a monopoly on 2-4 resources. The rest of the resources might be just one or two and possibly on a small island (think whale).

Lastly, there just has to be an island to the south or else we're locked.

More importantly, How about we start thinking of dotmapping? We have 4 more food resources (all rice) How many cities should we build? Should we cram four more in or go for three better city sites?

bobbyboy29 said:

More importantly, How about we start thinking of dotmapping? We have 4 more food resources (all rice) How many cities should we build? Should we cram four more in or go for three better city sites?

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Dotmapping is very important too. However, this thread is for map speculation

NukeAJS said:

Lastly, there just has to be an island to the south or else we're locked.

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I wouldn't be suprised if we're locked - I'd expect everyone would be if we are - no eliminations before astronomy without some seriously unlucky barbarian activity.

No, there will be contact before optics. there is an island to our SE.

We must proritize a WB for scouting.

I guess a donut center island, agreed the majority of resources will be on the mainland, suspect we have a monolply on dyes and maybe gems. Will be interesting to see it play out if it applies to Rice also.

There was a similar map in one of the ISDG games, islands around a large center. That proved interesting. I would expect the same here.

v8_mark said:

We know we're in the northern hemisphere, because the arrows point down rather than up.

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IIRC this spoiler was fixed in one of the later BtS patches. So while I think based on the direction that seems to hold more land that we're in the northern hemisphere, we can't actually tell furshure.

KingMorgan said:

No, there will be contact before optics. there is an island to our SE.

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Agreed. I can only imagine the uproar in the main forum if Dave made a 4-city island for everyone as the only territory before Optics I think obsolete might explode with rage.

We must proritize a WB for scouting.

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Agreed.

I guess a donut center island, agreed the majority of resources will be on the mainland, suspect we have a monolply on dyes and maybe gems. Will be interesting to see it play out if it applies to Rice also.

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Interesting, and a very good thought. Just thinking aloud here, but could everyone have access to one (and only one) early food resource? Maybe someone has all corn, someone wheat, someone pigs, someone fish, someone cows? Obviously, they're not all equal (and if so, we certainly got the short straw with the only 5-yield tiles!) but that can be made up for with differences in terrain/other resources.

I definitely agree with your feeling that we have a monopoly on both dyes and gems, and these are two of the better luxury resources in the game. Again, I'd assume that everyone has at least one early happy (furs, gold, silver, gems, wine, ivory (though maybe not ivory because of elephants)).

It could even be that to make up for our poor early food resource (rice) we were given an excellent early commerce resource (gems). That would make a good deal of sense; it would provide some variety across the map, but relatively fairly.

A big question at this point is: might the same apply for early strategic resources? Might we have to make do with only one of either copper, iron and horses, but multiple sources of it? I would doubt it, as that would significantly unbalance things early on, but I wouldn't rule it out. And given that we're all on islands, and early security is not an enormous problem, it might just be the case.

There was a similar map in one of the ISDG games, islands around a large center. That proved interesting. I would expect the same here.

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Very interesting I bet. There's a donut-shaped map with a central island in Realms Beyond Pitboss 2 (but don't comment on that game here, because at least a couple of forum members are in it, and don't want to be spoilered!) Though that too was kind of different, because everyone had a bit more breathing space (and land contact with each other).

Niklas - thanks for that info, I didn't know that.

One thing I just noticed is that the map script shows up as Continents on civstats... Wonder if they started editing from a Continents map then.

babybluepants said:

One thing I just noticed is that the map script shows up as Continents on civstats... Wonder if they started editing from a Continents map then.

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Maybe, however the game admin sets the map script manually on civ stats, you can pick any map you like using the drop down menu.

Ok, shows how much I know about pitboss games.

Ok so in thinking about our island and trying to get into the map makers head I've come up with another few guesses about the map.

1) Each team gets multiple sources of exactly 1 food resource on their starting island.

2) Each team gets multiple sources of exactly 1 early(i.e gold, silver,gems,ivory,furs) happiness resource on their island

3) Each team gets multiple sources of exactly 1 post calendar happiness resource

4) (Probably, this is just a guess) Each team gets access to 1 of: copper, horses, iron on their starting island.

5) All other resources (and importantly, probably late game strategic resources) are located on other landmass(es) (I personally think there'll be 1 big landmass and a few small ones).

Ok so why do I think this is the case? (Of course there's a good chance that I may be wrong in many of my postulations).

Firstly, the layout of our island lends me to this belief. Clearly if we have multiple sources of 1 type of resource the others must too.

But furthermore, it seems to be the easiest way for the mapmaker to balance out the starts. The mapmaker also realises that it would strongly encourage mass resource trading and make diplomacy much more complicated (note that we don't have enough sources of rice or gems to trade to every Civ, if we want to trade, the map forces us to choose allies!).

So how do I think the map will be balanced? From our map the formula looks pretty clear. We have what one would call one of the "weaker" food resources. Corn and lighthouse fish give more food, even lighthouse with crabs or clams gives extra commerce. So, to compensate we have been given gems and dyes, two very strong tiles once improved (probably not so strong for our intended strategy, but strong nonetheless).

I would suggest that the team that starts with corn would find that either it can't be irrigated until CS. Or that they have less desirable luxury tiles (i.e furs and incense or some similar combination).

What this would mean is that we're probably not going to get too much complaining about unbalanced starts. But more importantly, settling other landmasses is gonna be really important. There's resource monopolies to be had and one team is going to be the first to hook up stone or marble... look out!

I have to agree with bobbyboy's predictions on #'s 1,2,3, and 5 (4 will have to wait until we finish Bronze Working and Animal Husnabndry).

We better expand to the main (?) island (s?) fast after our Metal Casting/Oracle plan. Hopefully, if we get the Pyramids, that will help fuel our research even if Monarch maintenance costs hit us hard.

Yep - I agree with pretty much everything you've said, bobby, apart from a big question mark over the strategic resources. Honestly, I would think everyone has at least iron and horses in some kind of reach, whether that's short or medium term.

Good to see support of my hypothesis, I agree that number four is a big question mark as we have no evidence at all to suggest that it's right or wrong. Just a note, and I think it's one that everyone should already be realising. CoL is going to be SUPERIMPORTANT!!! Not just because caste system helps so much with running more specialists but also because courthouses are going to be key as well with big maintenance costs on other landmasses. But here's the big one: If there is one other big continent that all teams have access to pre-astro, the team that is first to put the Forbidden Palace on that continent will be (potentially) able to grab much much more land there at a far reduced cost. It's a good thing that there's no Org leader out there...