It no doubt depends on how picky you are, and I am probably more picky than most, but I am reminded of those evenings when every hand of cards you are dealt is worthless. This evening I must have rolled thirty maps without getting one that I thought was worth playing. Sorry, but if I am playing England, I do not want to spawn in the middle of a jungle, a desert, or tundra. Nor do I want to spawn on an inland sea that looks like an ordinary sea coast until you have explored a fair bit. Would it have been so much to ask of the developers that they could come up with BALANCED maps? But I get the impression they don't really play the game -- at least, not at the higher levels. No wonder I play some of my maps four or five times. Getting one that is decent is far too rare for me.
How many maps do you have to roll to get one that is playable?
- Thread starter mbbcam
- Start date
After rolling tens of thousands of maps, I would like to share some of my observations:
1. Being picky is a problem. However, it would not have been too hard to come up with some basic balance system for the maps. There must be something appealing for a map to be interesting. I mean, coastal starts should have one or two fish tiles and jungle starts need decent long term production (adding a few hills and a river wouldn´t be that hard) and so on. And there could have been some standard number of bonus resources, couldn´t it? This is why I sometimes play Hellblazer´s maps, because they are actually balanced.
2. The tile yield from luxury tiles is also too wide apart. Getting a three tile Salt start and getting a three tiles marsh/Truffles is not even nearly the same.
3. Some civs seem to get reasonable starts more often than others. Those with clearly defined starting locations like "tundra starts" (I think of Russia and Sweden) seem to get reasonable starts fairly regularly (not fantastic ones, but fair enough to have a go). Others, like Mongolia (plains start) usually gets a decent start within 3-5 rerolls.
4. The coastal civs are a pain. I don´t need overpowered starts but there needs to be something (Fish, River, some production capabilties) that makes a start worthwhile. England seems to be one of those that are almost impossible to get something going. Others that I have found almost impossible are Byzantium and Carthage as examples. In EDGE#59 I literally rolled over 100 maps to get something playable with Byzantium.
5. Then we have the special cases, India and Netherlands. They have a grassland bias, which sets them up for a game of bad production all the time and the Netherlands is extremely bad, since their UU is a naval unit. Rolling a hundred maps to get something playable is not at all uncommon.
6. Then we have the jokers, which have no starting bias at all. You all know I play Gemany a lot, so just imagine the number of maps I have rolled. I remember one occasion when I got 83 straight crap jungle starts! How bad is that. The good thing is that once in a while you actually get plains starts or something otherwise appealing, but it may take a day of rerolling...
7. On Pangaea maps there is the possibility to set Rainfall to Arid. This is a decent trick to reduce the number of rerolls required.
I would be happy to read about the experiences of others!
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I wholeheartedly agree. What you say about England is interesting. It certainly matches my experience. I also hate the tendency to have "regional luxes" -- areas with multiple copies of the same, instead of having different ones, which makes expanding less difficult. I would like to be able to settle at least three cities without trouble.
Yes I agree with the need to settle a few cities myself. There are a lot of starts that are okay, but when you scout around a little you realize that there is no room for expansions or that the only good location is taken before you can crank out a settler. I do think that adaptation is part of playing on Deity, but having no decent expansions takes away a lot of the fun of the whole game, at least for me.
Concur regarding adaptation. But I think that is easier (or possible) in certain circumstances and less in others. If you start on the coast you are automatically more limited (unless there are islands close by, which I find is quite rare on the maps I play) and in any case you cannot settle them until you have optics. So not having the room or the luxes to put down two or three cities pretty much makes the game not worth playing. Being on the coast can be an advantage, but much if the time I find it is more a challenge to be overcome.
Once again, here is another benefit of Hellblazer´s map pack: there are (even on Pangaea maps) habitable islands off the coast and almost always room to expand on the coast at least in one direction (CS might block the other direction but not both). This is the main theme in EDGE#20.
In the CPP community they seem to use this map pack. Here is a link to the latest version (v8): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KiFTUkF8zxbRdN_AmQ-jIwdUAjnriO2wYNGBuqphcCM/edit#
Shark Diver
King
What is the CPP community?
As Nizef knows, I've recently been working on a Petra/CV strategy. Rolling for Petra maps can take a looooooong time with some Civs. My secret is that I have 4 screens and 2 operating systems working, so I can do other things while hitting Restart over and over again.
The fact that Netherlands don't really get a Polder or Coastal start bias is frustrating. Some of my most overpowered games have been with Netherlands, but it takes a ton of tries to get a good start.
I disagree with the comments about Luxuries being more varied. The fact that you have several of the same type forces you to explore and employ diplomacy. Having to time your settlers with happiness is one of the challenges I enjoy. Otherwise, why don't we just play Legendary Starts?
I had a stretch where I was playing a lot of Fractal maps. You have no idea what to expect when you are exploring and some of the unusual topographical features those maps come up with define a given game. Some are awful and some are great, and there's almost no way to know what you're getting without playing a bunch of turns. It's almost a totally different game sometimes. One of the most memorable of the old Deity Challenge series was the Rome game on a fractal map. I was a less skilled player back then and got beat twice on that map by 1 turn. It was a very enjoyable and memorable game.
I first heard of Hellblazer's maps when watching Filthy Robot videos playing multi-player 4-5 years ago. There seemed to be some pretty nice improvements, but the lack of long mountain ranges seriously curtailed my beloved Incas.
CPP=Community Patch Project or more commonly named Vox Populi. You can explore their world in the tree Creation & Customization. There are some interesting discussions and a load of really skilled players contributing.
I agree that Fractal maps are usually both interesting and entertaining. Unfortunately there are not many of them in the EDGE series. This is due to two reasons: feedback given roughly a year ago and it takes longer time to come up with sharable games (I shared about 100 games in 2020 including MIDGE and OECG series) and with that pace Pangaea is just more forgiving. I might try some Fractal maps soon though.
Hellblazer´s maps are indeed harsh on the Incas while the coastal civs really come alive.
Shark Diver
King
Do you have a link to CPP? I suppose I could Duck Duck Go it (I'm very much a boycotter of Google and its evil empire). Sounds like something I might enjoy.
I've read enough of the posts in the EDGE series to have a decent feel for the flavor you are going for here. I agree that Pangea makes sense. Fractal is for a different flavor.
Any map that penalized my beloved Incas is going to draw my ire. I'd be tempted to play about 100 games on Hellblazer maps as Inca and win anyways just to spite that anti-Inca rat bastard. Personally, I like a lot of what he's done, but a few more mountains and chokepoints would be good as I think he overcorrected. Still, my compliments to Mr. Hellblazer, as he's done something I'm not capable of doing and he did it well.
Here is a link to the forum for the Community Patch Project: https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/community-patch-project.497/
Shark Diver
King
Thank you Browd. I remember you from several years back. Hope all is well in your gaming and real life.
consentient
Domination!
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Recently came back to the game. With Hellblazer Map pack, almost every map is playable. I only play Pangaea, so that might alter things slightly. I only like to play Dom or wide, violent CV so nothing else really interests me.
In recent times I have played Hellblazer's maps almost exclusively. I concur that they are much, much better than the standard ones. I read somewhere that they were originally intended for six players, and I did find them a bit tight at times, until I started altering the x and y numbers (one of the options on the latest versions). I think a Standard map is 80 x 52 (4,160 tiles) whereas Hellblazer seems to default to 64 x 40 (2,560 tiles). I find that 72 x 48 on Hellblazer gives reasonable results.
When I roll a map that I plan to share, it only takes once or twice. @Nizef wants starts that he can submit to HoF, so my technique will not work for him.
I use Rotate Start Position. With just about any map, one or two are usually pretty good. Sometimes I will have something very specific in mind, and need to try a second time.
I use Rotate Start Position. With just about any map, one or two are usually pretty good. Sometimes I will have something very specific in mind, and need to try a second time.
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