Or I'll search for anyone who already did it and published advanced metrics..
Boogaboo, you are in luck! Check out
Sirian's Map Info Reference.
The online version of the page (
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/reference/map_scripts_guide.php) no longer appears to work. HOWEVER,
the .zip file is still available!
It's actually a really cool and useful reference, since Sirian is the person who developed most of those map scripts!
Be certain to check out the "Sirian's Map Info Reference.txt" file inside of that .zip file for some incredibly-helpful summaries of the various map types. Note that the list of map types does not correspond exactly with the set of map types that are allowed for the HOF, so be sure to check out
the HOF Rules page for a definitive answer on which map types can be played.
Okay, so I did a cross-reference between the types of maps that are allowed by HOF play and the maps that are listed in that reference. The reference doesn't include some of the newer map types, so the information is incomplete in that regard. Perhaps someone has another reference that has info about the other map types. As a quick summary, here is a list of map types allowed by HOF play and the info from Sirian's .txt file about map sizes when playing on a Standard sized map. The entries that don't have a number are map types that we don't have info about in his reference.
Archipelago 84 * 52
Continents 84 * 52
Fractal
Great Plains 44 * 32
Highlands 64 * 40
Ice Age 84 * 36
Inland Sea 52 * 32
Lakes 52 * 32
Oasis 52 * 32
Pangaea 64 * 40
Shuffle
Terra 104 * 64
Big & Small
Boreal
Global Highlands
Hemispheres
Medium and Small
Rainforest
I remember a recent discussion on how it was unfortunate that "Balanced Resources" is not a valid option for HOF games. Looking at the sample-balanced.gif file inside of that .zip file seems to indicate that this setting would mean that near to your starting location, you would be guaranteed to get each of:
Copper, Iron, Horses, Coal, Oil, Uranium, and Aluminum
Now that I understand what that map setting does, I think that people made the right call in excluding that map setting from HOF games. My reasoning is due to the variance that is offered in each game that we play due to the unbalanced distribution of Resources. It's one of many factors that keep the game fresh, and the option being banned in HOF means that we're all compelled to play with maps that vary quite a bit, meaning that we keep coming back to play.
A thought I've been having - you can generally go for state property or corporations, but did anyone successfully combine them?
The route should be :
1. State property.
2. Fast expansion (with nearly no cost), build banks+wall st.
3. Establishing mining/sushi corporation and sending executives,
4. Free market.
It's a complex mission and I'm not sure it's worth it on Space, but I'm sharing!
It's a good thought and it can certainly work well!
Some challenges are:
a) Getting enough Worker turns, since Workshops, and particularly Watermills, require a lot of Worker turns.
b) You can't found a Corp or build Corporate Executives while running State Property. I'm not exactly sure of the mechanics around whether you can SPREAD a Corporate Executive while in State Property--some quick World-Builder testing might be in order here.
c) If you maximize Food efficiency by building a ton of Workshops, your Cities may need to temporarily build some Farms overtop of Workshops when you switch out of State Property before they get a Food Corp, or else you may want to keep some Farms and not focus on completely stagnating your Cities while in State Property since you know that you'll have a time period ahead of you where your Workshops and Watermills won't be providing that extra Food from State Property.
d) Communism requires Liberalism. You thus can't use Liberalism on Medicine (for Sid's Sushi) or on Railroad (for Mining Inc), since the goal is to unlock State Property via Communism early. Thus, you're almost certainly going to be using Liberalism on Communism itself.
e) You obsolete Monasteries early on. If you're running a Religious Wonder economy, then the impact can be big.
f) You'll be obsoleting The Great Library, The Parthenon, and The Temple of Artemis relatively early on. If you're relying on The Parthenon to get a Great Engineer for a Corporation, you could be in trouble. So, you'll probably need to target getting a Great Engineer with one of your earlier Great People and have the discipline to save that Great Engineer for a long time.
Possible solutions are:
For a), it can help if you can find a reliable way to steal a lot of Workers, such as disciplining yourself not to promote every Axeman/Swordsman/Maceman up the City Raider line and instead promoting a couple up the Woodsman line.
It's also worth trying to get The Hagia Sophia (perhaps via conquering it) to spead up your Workers' efficiency. I've even played around with running Serfdom when going for a State-Property economy, although you'll eventually want either Slavery to make use of the extra whipping production or Caste System for the extra Hammers from Workshops.
For b), you'll have to decide when the ideal time will be to switch out of State Property, probably after you've teched enough to found your first Corp, but maybe not even until after you're able to found both Corps at once, or perhaps just before you're able to found the first Corp so that you can get started spreading the first one while teching the last little bit to enable the second Corp. Free Market may not be the immediate choice and you might situationally decide to go into Mercantilism until your first Corp starts to get spread around a bit, depending upon whether you have Anarchy-free Civic-switching (being in a Golden Age or being Spiritual). You could in theory tech up to Radio and build The Christo Redentor, so that you can swap back and forth between Civics quite regularly and without Anarchy if you haven't saved your Great People for Golden Ages and if you aren't Spiritual.
I do like your idea of using State-Property-enhanced Workshops to build Wallstreet. Normally, I struggle in completing Wallstreet and I end up waiting until I get Mining Inc Hammers to complete it, which means that I run my economy into the ground for a short period of time. Your suggested approach sounds like it would be a lot more efficient in this regard.