Map Speculation Thread

[YossarianLives]

Current Map Overview (Turn 54)

Spoiler :

It’s probably a good idea to keep all our thoughts on the map in one thread for easier reference. I’m going to put a lot of links and quotes in this thread about our map and map speculation in general.

So here’s the most important quote; Plako’s stated Map Settings.

It seems that things are converging so here are the final settings that somehow could affect to the map:
Map - MAPMAKER'S CHOICE, something random/special, decent amount of land, not archipelago
Wrap - TOROIDAL
Mirrored starts - NO (capital locations are very similar though)
Fair/balanced starts - YES
Corporations - ON
Barbs - ON
Speed - NORMAL
Huts - OFF
Allow all teams pre-optics contact - YES
Size - Huge (game setting) - In reality something between 80-100 x 40-60
Difficulty - Emperor

I won't say anything else about the map until the pick up process is finalized.

The most significant thing in here that adds to our discussion is that the Size is “Huge (game setting) – In reality something between 80-100 x 40-60.” That means the entire map has a total of between 3,200 – 6,000 tiles, probably somewhere in the middle. We know from the score mouseover that there are 2,868 land tiles in the map, meaning that there are between 332-3132 water tiles.

Here are some maps Plako has done in the past:

Spoiler :

PBEM (BTS)
PBEM8 (plako)
PBEM14 (plako) - SPOILER
PBEM15 (plako) - SPOILER
PBEM16 (plako)
PBEM17 (plako) – SPOILER

I don’t think Plako put a spiral in our map, but interesting he did it for PB 8 and 17.

This is what we had said before about our assumed layout:

Spoiler :

Basically, we're now thinking that the teams are spread in a 3 x 3 grid on this map, with teams approximately 18 tiles from us to our West (RB), East, North, and possibly South beyond all that tundra. That would look something like this:

.x....x....x.
.x....x....x.
RB..Us...x.

If our map guess is correct (and I have no idea how accurate it might be), then RB's Western neighbor is our Eastern neighbor, making it very important that we find them quickly and start establishing good relations with them. It would be devestating if RB and our Eastern neighbor partner up, leaving us out in the cold (or similarly, if our Southern and Northern neighbors partner up).

I'm not sure that's correct anymore, but I don't really have any better ideas right now. One thing we need to strongly consider is that we are on a continent and there are not necessarily land connections through all the wraps, but maybe we can sail south from a city in the tundra to get to the top row of cities.

...

And to finish off, I’m going to quote some long posts about possible map layouts from RB’s PB 4 game. Lord Parkin and Irgy did some pretty intensive map speculation in that thread, starting with Post #48:

Spoiler :

Just having a think about the possible logical ways to arrange ten starting points "fairly" on a map (assuming the X axis is longer than the Y axis, as is standard).

The options that I've come up with so far are:

* * * * * * * * * * (needs to be cylindrical or toroidal to be fair)

* * * * *
* * * * * (cylindrical/toroidal for fairness)

* * * * *
.* * * * * (cylindrical/toroidal for fairness)

....*
..*...*
*.......*
*.......*
..*...* (flat/toroidal for fairness, could be donut or any 3+ sided layout
....* - possible but already done before by Krill)

*...........*
...*.....*
*....*....*
...*....* (probably cylindrical with sea around the main landmass for fairness
......* - similar variants of 5x2 or 10x1 with other "wiggles" possible too)

* * * *
*.......* (only really close to fair on a flat script, and even then dubious
* * * * - probably necessary to be an inland sea map type)

.* * *
* * * * (possible, but dubious whether it could be made fair for the middle two
.* * * - would have to be archipelago, lakes, or mountain ranges)

......*
*.........*
......*
*.........*
......*
*.........*
......* (similar issues to above, and probably too cramped in the Y axis)

Any other possibilities anyone can think of for arranging 10 starts semi-fairly? Any more than 4 players along a line in the Y axis would be too cramped, I think (assuming X>Y dimensions), so rotations of the 5x2 and 10x1 layouts probably wouldn't work.

What does this tell us? Personally, I think the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th layouts are the easiest to balance. Krill's already made a map like the 4th option for a previous Pitboss here, so I think that's less likely to pop up than the other map arrangements. That leaves us with three possibilities, all of which suggesting that we should almost certainly have neighbours in the East and West directions (not necessarily reachable by land though). If the map is flat or cylindrical and we find a top or bottom edge, that'll probably scratch out either the NW/N/NE or SW/S/SE directions for meeting people. Assuming one of those is knocked out, XW/X/XE (X being N or S) seem about equally likely to host nearby civs depending on the map layout, but less likely than the almost-certain W and E directions.

So basically, continuing to head W should be good. If we can head that way for long enough, we should be almost certain to either hit a barrier (sea/lake/mountain), or meet someone. Either of which is good, because it tells us (a) who we have as a neighbour and where they're located, or (b) that we're safe from attack in that direction at least for the early game. (That is unless the map's been designed to be hugely confusing to walk around.) Heading W is as good as E according to this analysis, but our Warrior's already going W at the moment so he may as well continue (a future Warrior exploring E would probably be a good idea though).

Thoughts?

Through Post #63:

Spoiler :

With apologies for derailing again...

I played with the stripe idea. It generated a lot of repeats. It also generated basically all of the original suggestions along the way (except of course the ones that weren't actually symmetric ). It came up with only one genuinely new arrangement, which might not look all that symmetric but is thanks to toroidal world wrap. There was another that looked new, but it was really only two stripes, but on an angle. It was noticably more symmetric on that angle though mind you.

I've also attached an arrangement for 5 that it came up with, because it's one I had no idea existed. You can take two copies of any arrangement for 5, and shift them by any amount you like relative to each other, and you'll get a new symmetric arrangement for 10. So there's infinitely many answers in that sense

I've realised though my crazy petersen graph is never going to work. The two lakes across the boundaries have 6 and 9 civs on them not 5, so even though the underlying graph is symmetric the arrangement is absolutely not. I don't think it can be fixed. A shame really.

With some pretty pictures in between:

Spoiler :

*....*
.*....*
..*....*
...*....*
....*....* (or mirror image - either way really needs to be toroidal to be fair)

..*......*.*
*...*..*....*
.*.*......* (cylindrical or more likely toroidal would be necessary here)

And this is what that map actually looked like (warning: BIG picture):

Spoiler :

Note: You can find the starts by looking for the Deer / Deer / Cow combinations

 

[YossarianLives]

And here's some of the recent discussion about the map:

If your analysis of the map is correct (it seems like a balanced/fair way to structure a Toroidal Map) then to me our enemy is clear. We have to establish a protected zone, that is a block of cities that is covered on both sides by another block of our own cities. This means going after the neighbor to the immediate East or West, and then going after the Northern and Southern neighbors of that civ. That creates a situation where we have at least one block that is protected on all sides.

So, anyway the 3x3 grid is surrounded by water, so there are corners. That is the assumption I am going by.

Ah we were going off of different assumptions then.

If the 3X3 was surronded by water it would mean unequal starts right? Some teams would have a greater defensive advantage while others would have a contact advantage.

On the other hand, if there are land bridges that provide routes around multiple inland seas then all the starts would be balanced and equal- everyone would have contact with everyone, at least diagonally.

So you are assuming that we are on a web-map. So assuming that is true, we should try to either ally or conquer the 8 neighbors so that we have a protected zone in the center.

 

[Caledorn]

And here is a zoomed out screenshot of the entire map as we know it now.

Spoiler :

 

[Sommerswerd]

Figuring out whether that body of water to our West is a series of lakes or an Ocean will shed some light on whether we are on a grid or a web.

 

[YossarianLives]

I drew in our mid-way points (the southern "midway point" would be where the first tile of fog is straight south from Indira) and some mountain and water boundaries on our overview map. We definitely do seem to have some natural choke points around the midway points.

Spoiler :

I also went back to some info that we've had since Turn 0. There are 2,868 land tiles on the map, and 9 teams to split them. 2868 / 9 = 318.67 land tiles per team. With the split we're now assuming, that means each team gets an 18 x 18 grid of land, which is 324 tiles. That actually works out pretty nicely. It's too bad we didn't do the math earlier, we might have had a much better idea where to find other teams!

Now, the only problem is that there are definitely more than 6 water tiles in our "grid". We can see 23 water tiles, and those salty bodies certainly mean more water hidden in the fog. This leads me to believe we must be on some sort of continent surrounded by water, where we'll find small islands to make up the difference of the missing land tiles in each team's "grid". If we were all on a solid land block with no surrounding ocean, then all the land tiles would need to be inside our "grid", meaning there would need to be more than 17 tiles between each team.

So, that does seem to be our southern coast down there. If Thunder Bay connects to it, a city there seems pretty important.

 

[Aivoturso]

I just noticed that our initial assumption about the layout is at least a littel bit wrong. RB is 8 tiles north of us as well, meaning that they are approximately half way line with assumed positions of the northern neighbours. If we assume symmertic positioning, the layout would look like about this (not to scale):

x............x
.......x.......
x............x
.......x.......
RB.........x
.....CFC....

BTW, I think it is a good assumption that there is a land connection in the edges as well. Otherwise it would be very difficult to create a balanced map. And as it was already pointed out, this would make getting a contact with our east neighbour top priority.

 

[Aivoturso]

And as an aftertought, that is not a symmetric map either. Here is another thought:

x...........
....x.......
........x...
x...........
....x.......
........x...
R..........
....C......
........x...

Which seems quite a lot like what Yossarian posted earlier.

 

[YossarianLives]

New evidence suggests that this lion we spotted on Turn 32 was responsible for the Poly warrior lost on Turn 31.

Spoiler :

This would seem to imply that Poly is located south and / or east of RB on the map. South wouldn't make sense if the tundra below us is the southern edge of our continent, but who knows how this map might be shaped. With toroidal, there are no poles, so our tundra does not necessarily mean that there is tundra south of RB, too.

 

[RegentMan]

lol One turn away from meeting another team. What a chance!

 

[Bowsling]

If this is indeed the case, it could be a game-breaking bad roll of the dice for Apolyton. They would have met us and then RB within the next few turns, and possibly formed an enduring three-way alliance. Instead all we saw was a victorious lion...

 

[cav scout]

Let's not forget this is all speculation at this point. It is more probable that the lion in question is the one that munched RBs warrior.

 

[YossarianLives]

WPC has given us some good information about their lands, and since we might not be exploring around all of it, I figured I'd provide a very rough artist's rendition.

Spoiler :

Also, here's an image of the lands between RB and WPC. I may have miscounted, but I think their capitals are exactly 14 tiles in a straight diagonal from each other (or maybe 14 horizontal and 15 vertical).

Spoiler :

Here's an image of our southern lands, with all the visible water tiles outlined.

Spoiler :

I still think we're all probably on a single land mass. My hypothesis is that Plako put in inhospitable land between teams, whether that is jungle, forest, or tundra, and narrowed the paths with chokepoints made of lakes and mountains. In order to make the map size work, we're probably on a continent surrounded by water, with islands out in the ocean.

At any rate, here's an overview picture of all known lands (also in the OP).

Spoiler :

 

[1889]

There doesn't seem to be any choke point or inhospitable terrain to our east however. Could be that we are on one of the corners but if so that is would be very generous land allocation by Plako.

 

[talonschild]

I have faith that those mountains will multiply and fill the void.

 

[grant2004]

The mountains are in my opinion the most interesting feature on the map. Anything else that we've seen could've been created randomly. The mountains look too solid to be natural in anything but a tectonics script, but in that case I'd expect to see a lot more mountain ranges. There's either another team behind those mountains, or something of great importance. If we can find out what those mountains look like, and what's behind them, I think we'll have a much better idea of what this map is all about.

 

[YossarianLives]

Spanish Capital is 8N 16E of Indira. That means the true halfway line between us is 1W of the Gold tile. However, since they are so much farther north, the exact halfway mark is the FP 2N 1E from the Gold (2E from the Cow). I still think everything on our side of the mountains should be considered ours, but we've got to be careful how we present things to them.

    X                                 X

                    X

Germans                               X

                  WPC

 RB                            Spaniards
  
                   Us

 

[talonschild]

But - but - asymmetry. What gives?

 

[YossarianLives]

Updated map speculation.

Germans                             UCiv

                  WPC

 RB                               Spaniards
  
                   Us

  X                                   X

                   X

This time I shifted us up to the middle of the map to show where the toroidal wrap would put our southern neighbors, which are the northern-most X's in my previous post.

 

[YossarianLives]

me: Well, that's definitely something I'm sure the map theorizers will appreciate to hear. With the chessboard theory that seems likely, we only need to know whether SPAP is your western neighbors now and we have the map figured out I think?

realmsbeyondscooter: yeah that would be good. maybe between our teams we can plot out a rough placement of where everybody is in paint or something

me: I was thinking something along the same lines.

So here's my very crude drawing of our map.

Spoiler :

 

[Caledorn]

Very well done, Yossarian Now we just need to discuss whether to share it with them or not. If I have understood the rules correctly, we are only prohibited from sharing screenshots, and not drawings like this one.