Poll: desirable characteristics for Nobles' Club maps.

dalamb

dalamb

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I've created my first-ever Surveymonkey poll to find out what sort of edits are appropriate for Nobles' Club maps. This forum is for any discussion about the subject, but I'd appreciate your filling out the survey first. It's over there because it needs multiple choice answers to multiple questions, which I can't do with this site's polls. Since this is my first survey I may have goofed with some aspect of it; let me know if there are problems, especially if you know how to fix them!

There was a thread that helped construct this poll; I'll close it soon so further discussion will take place here. I could only ask 10 questions for the "basic" (free) poll service, so some stuff regarding desirable map types and what Emperor+ players would want would need a separate poll (which doesn't seem necessary at this point).
 
interesting...out of all options I wanted only 1 as highly desirable and another one as slightly desirable... other were mostly highly undesirable ;-)

looks like we have very different view on things mapmaker should do :-)
 
I had to remind myself to answer this poll with the question "What do I want in the nobles club series" in mind.

This question is different from "what do I want when I play."



First prio in NC games (imo) is to ensure a productive learning enviroment.
What constitutes a productive learning enviroment is very difficult to determine.

But it shouldn't be too easy, and not to hard either.


That said, I personally prefer as few edits as possible, since alot of players do want to play maps they just randomly generate, and in such maps there aren't any edits!
 
Don't worry about wanting as few of those edits as possible; I suspected going into this that my list of favourites was going to get pruned. And in fact not all of those listed were things I did often. For example, I rarely picked AIs so didn't balance different kinds of AI.

Ultimately it's going to be up to individual mapmakers; s/he might have a very good reason for an additional edit or two for a particular map.
 
I personally answered these questions with a mindset of looking at every game. I would like to play with cool UU's a lot, so I would certainly be OK with getting a resource necessary to make them. Yet there are certain things (as NobleZarkon mentioned) where I certainly wouldn't necessarily see a change of map being needed. Sometimes you might just have to deal with slightly tougher starts, i.e., near Monty or without a resource that fits your starting tech.
 
For balance I usually tend to think of terms like balanced averages. Take the Capital for instance. I think a nice balance for Commerce is a start (when working 5 tiles) that offers between 3-5C. For Hammers I like the range of 8-13. Food becomes more complicated but in general I don't wanna see 3 wet corns or 2 grassland pigs and 1 cow in the BFC. I tend to strive for a start that gives +5F - +6F through 2 tiles. Something like 1 dry or wet corn with a farmed FP, or 2 dry corns, etc.

@ dalamb

You could always post some screen shots of some random/edited starts and get some feedback that way too.
 
I decided to leave out the "it depends / no answer / don't know / not applicable" to make it easier to analyse the results, but maybe that was the wrong decision.

Phrasing in terms of "at 5 tiles worked, have 3-5:commerce: 8-13:hammers: +5-+6:food:" is a brilliant way to look at things; thanks, cseanny! It certainly is one interesting way to think about whether a start is too weak or too strong. I might want to go back and look at a few recent starts and evaluate them from that perspective.
 
I don't think that the presence or lack of any one of these things is a big deal, but we certainly don't need all of them in the same game.

I also think that guaranteeing a particular resource is largely bad because it greatly reduces the importance of opening strategy and decision making. Making sure that we have a resource or two around is fine, but ensuring that we always have copper is a bit much. Going after specific resources should always be a bit of a gamble.

Similarly, while i do like the idea of having the resource for our UU available, i don't think that it necessarily needs to be right near the capitol all of the time. Having it close enough to be obtainable, but not always close enough to help with immediate barb defense would be good.

TLDR: Just mix it up a bit so that these games play out more or less like normal games.
 
The results are in, for 51 respondents. Attached is the full analysis as a .pdf file. The column "Score" is a weighted average with 1=highly desirable, 4=highly undesirable, so low is good. The "%Positive" column is the sum of percentages for "highly desirable" and "somewhat desirable.

The conclusion I draw is that the majority of respondents like the following edits, in decreasing order:
  • Ensure some hills in the BFC
  • Ensure fresh water adjacent to the starting location.
  • Ensure the UU resource is reasonably nearby
  • Ensure each AI has a strategic resource reasonably nearby.
These all had 72-78% in favour, and there is a significant drop thereafter -- in fact most of the others had a majority that considered them undesirable. Every one of them (even the 4 listed above) had some people for whom they were highly undesirable.

So, potential mapmakers: these are the edits you should aim for. However, if in your judgement it's important to leave one of these out, you can do so (but be prepared for the reactions!)

I'll leave the survey open over the weekend and reanalyze on Monday or Tuesday, but I don't expect the ranking to change much.
 

Attachments

dalamb said:
The results are in, for 51 respondents. Attached is the full analysis as a .pdf file. The column "Score" is a weighted average with 1=highly desirable, 4=highly undesirable, so low is good. The "%Positive" column is the sum of percentages for "highly desirable" and "somewhat desirable.

The conclusion I draw is that the majority of respondents like the following edits, in decreasing order:
  • Ensure some hills in the BFC
  • Ensure fresh water adjacent to the starting location.
  • Ensure the UU resource is reasonably nearby
  • Ensure each AI has a strategic resource reasonably nearby.
These all had 72-78% in favour, and there is a significant drop thereafter -- in fact most of the others had a majority that considered them undesirable. Every one of them (even the 4 listed above) had some people for whom they were highly undesirable.

So, potential mapmakers: these are the edits you should aim for. However, if in your judgement it's important to leave one of these out, you can do so (but be prepared for the reactions!)

I'll leave the survey open over the weekend and reanalyze on Monday or Tuesday, but I don't expect the ranking to change much.
Click to expand...

'Move aggressive AI' has an 11.8% popularity rating. This suggests to me that 88.2% of Nobles' Club maps should be rerolled until the human starts next to Monty, Shaka, or Mehmed. Ideally without copper nearby. Or starting tech synergy.

-Doshin

(p.s. I'm joking)
 
Doshin said:
'Move aggressive AI' has an 11.8% popularity rating. This suggests to me that 88.2% of Nobles' Club maps should be rerolled until the human starts next to Monty, Shaka, or Mehmed. Ideally without copper nearby. Or starting tech synergy.

-Doshin

(p.s. I'm joking)
Click to expand...

hehe I know it is meant as joke...but interesting interpretation ;-)

more realistic would be that the mapmaker should go with just what he got and don't bother ;-)
 
I don't think there's anything wrong with having some of these options represent decisions to learn from.

For instance in the Genghis Khan game, there was a lot of talk about not being adjacent to fresh water. Nothing was stopping you from settling next to the river, but it might not have been optimal. That's the kind of choice that players (especially IMHO Noble-ish players) should have to consider.

For another example: ensuring all AIs have strategic resources. In some game recently, my decision on who to expand into was guided mostly by the fact that they had no metal. That basically opened the door for me to consider reasons other than "they're the closest" for who my war targets should be.

Making every start relatively similar removes some of those decisions, and it's precisely that sort of inflexibility (again, IMHO) that bottlenecks Noble-ish players, being one myself until very recently.
 
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