Immersioneers discussion of potential game with TSL

[MaximusPlatypus]

Immersioneers concept/overview:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5yay9mbies9kqu1/Immersioneers Core Idea.rtf?dl=0

Immersioneers ruleset:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yc7ag4n9o3f8ze5/Immersioneers Rulesheet v.0.2..rtf?dl=0


Proposing a new potential game using Gedemon's excellent YNAMP TSL map Greatest Earth Map 104x64 (this is the smallest TSL map currently)
The map features an upscaled UK, Japan, Europe, downsized Asia, and very minimal oceans between EurAfrica/ the Americas and East Asia /N America.
I requested an image file of the map in the orig. thread, as far as I know none is online at the moment

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/ynamp-yet-not-another-maps-pack-for-civ6.25395/

Scythia and Germany (possibly others, depending on number of players) may be set to Emperor or Immortal AI as they will not be playable civs. Or they may simply be removed.
Sumeria is also banned (open to some discussion however). Also, only 1 of Arabia/Egypt are allowed as they spawn within 5 hexes of each other.


The settings I use are TSL spawn locations with following options:

Ruleset: Old World1 light: excludes America, Brazil and Aztec (spawns 2 camps per civ and raises minimum spawn distance from cities to 7 hexes)
Continents: Imported (real locations and names of continents)
Rivers: Imported (real word locations) CAN be set to random for balance reasons;
Features: Imported (places mountains and terrain types in real locations) CAN be randomized for balance;
Natural Wonders: Map Generator (randomizes placement of NW according to vanilla map generator rules) Balance reasons
Resource Placement: Map Generator - balance reasons
Resource Quantity: Standard (encourages more trading and warring and careful city placement)
Resource Exclusion Zones: Active (spawn resources in appropriate locations, i.e; tea in Asia and incense in Middle East, Ivory in Africa, etc.)
Civilization Resources: Active (can be turned off if Civ-specific resources turn out to be imbalanced. IMO they are fairly balanced.)

I recommend anyone interested in the Immersioneers group to fire up a single player on this map and settings to check out spawn locations and balance issues.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

I've tried to start some sp games on this map, but frankly there are a number of issues with it.

1. It's way too large (as we discussed online iirc). The only way to force some interactions between players would be to pick civs that are fairly close to each other. Even then, there is the potential issue of desyncs due to poor computer performance (the host would need a beast of a machine to not have any issues, I imagine).

2. Even if we ban Brazil and America, some starting positions are clearly superior to others on this map. For one thing, China's is the only one that I've found to have decent production (5+ plains hills). Combined with their ability, this means wonders galore for whoever picks China. Lack of fresh water is a serious issue in Siberia (although perhaps it's actually good for balancing out Russia...). (We might use random rivers, ofc, but then what is the point of choosing a world map? ) Some Civs have an abundance of Forest to chop, while others will be lacking behind on the open plains. Etc... Although I guess these issues are also present on random maps, so it's not the end of the world as long as people know what they're getting into (i.e., have tested the map).

Afaik, there is no other option for Resource Placement than randomly generated... Which sucks tbh, even with the biases of certain resources to appear in certain regions (I just got 2 Sugar in Finland! ).

There's also the issue that some of the continent shapes on this map leave a lot to be desired, imo (Finland, India, China, Japan, northern England, etc). Whoever made the map seems to have gone for realism where it could've been amended a little bit (India is so *narrow*! ), and conversely thrown it to the wind where a nice dose would've been appropriate (Japan's 'nether regions'!). These are just personal pet peeves, granted, and not a great hindrance to playing. But combined with the size issue, they remind me a bit too much about how pressing the need is for a better map (both for sp and mp). There is the main YnaEMP map, ofc, but its size makes it a non-option for mp (and, imo, sp as well, unless you mod the units' movement rates).

All this ado aside, I will still play if we decide to play on this map. As I said in the other thread, though, I will only have time to play on the Christmas holidays, so if you want to give the map a spin before that, maybe we can learn from your experience.

 

[MaximusPlatypus]

yeah on further reflection... these maps are just too big.