Dhoomstriker
Girlie Builder
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2006
- Messages
- 13,474
Hi BLubz,
You sound bitter for some reason. I thought that we had a fun and enjoyable game and it's not over yet!
Religious Strategy
Why else were we leaving our Cities "religionless" for so long? It was to try to catch Buddhism. Don't you remember?
So, our strategy in this regard actually played out really well and went according to the plan!
Teching
We used nearly every Great Person in an effective manner to help us along our beeline, and we got a reasonable amount of Great People.
I'm not sure that I really buy your argument at all about contact with the AIs. What techs would we have been able to get that we didn't take from Zara and Saladin?
On the opposite side of things, which techs would we have been denied at a crucial time, thanks to WFYABTA from having met other AIs before getting techs like Iron Working in trade?
No, I think that we did an awesome job with our teching and Great People.
Our biggest sacrifice was due to the placement of the initial Resources, forcing us to settle a marginal City (Silverado) just to keep up with the tech pace that other teams would experience, but I'll talk about that point shortly.
Map Design, Forests, and Starting Location
We made excellent use out of our Forests, netting us all of the Wonders that we sought. How often do you get ALL of the Wonders that you try for? Well, we did so!
Another team may have chopped out some Workers and Settlers. Well, we had the unfortunate situation of being unable to do so. We couldn't do so as our economy wouldn't have supported it, mostly because we didn't have a capitol with a PHRiv Silver and we did have another City that was stuck at Size 1.
If I had one major issue with this game, it would be that the map's placement of Resources near the starting location could have been improved. An Iron is a fair trade for a Copper. But an Iron and a PHRiv Silver are not a fair trade for a Copper.
In addition, by settling on the PHRiv, a team would get the Whale "for free," with a cultural border expansion, while that same possibility was not available to those settling in place. We ended up not settling Whales City, which would have been a terrible location, but other teams would not have even had to consider the possibility and were given a free +1 Happiness from the Whale Resource earlier in the game.
What would have made the Plains Hills River Silver placement fair would have been a secondary reasonably-good location that used the PHRiv Silver. Provide an extra Fish, or even better, a Fish and a Whale, to go with the PHRiv Silver. Perhaps a few more Grassland squares, or even a Grassland Deer with a Forest on it. Maybe even some Forests on the Tundra, too, so that a team that chose to settle there could get more Hammers from the chops than a team that didn't.
A good map takes into account the preferences and potential choices of players of multiple backgrounds. Having Erkon provide feedback means that your major source of direct feedback is from someone who loves to settle on Plains Hills, so there will be no complaints reported based on the starting location. However, as a game designer, it helps to think of how others might think or play.
Basically, we got shafted for settling in place compared to a team that moved to the "other obvious but guessing on Resource-availability" location.
An alternative approach for such a situation is to GIVE THE PLAYERS THE CHOICE. Make it so that the Silver is visible due to the Warrior's initial placement or can be easily scouted by the initial Warrior. As it was, the initial Warrior couldn't be used to help us get the relevant information on Turn 0 of play.
Yet another alternative, which is not as great, but is an alternative, is not to start the initial Settler on a Forest. It was TOO COSTLY to move to the Plains Hills square if that square turned out to be a poor choice. Our team might not have moved anyway, since we chased after a Religion, so this 2nd alternative is not necessarily taking all players into account, but it would have been slightly better; we might have decided to move to the Plains Hills square, as the risk of going back to our starting location would have been reduced to a loss of just ONE turn, not TWO turns.
As yet another alternative, the Plains Hills River location 1SE of the start WOULD HAVE BEEN GREAT WITHOUT the PHRiv Silver square. Get rid of the PHRiv Silver from the capitol altogether, and put it somewhere else so that it's accessible for a second City. Then it becomes a fair choice for teams--go for an early Great Person Farm location or go for an early Silver City location as the team's second City. That way, you get comparisons based on team's logic and decisions, instead of based on luck.
As a final alternative, the Silver could have been placed so that one would get it regardless of whether one settled in place or 1SE on the PHRiv, although it would have been nice if the initial Warrior could also have spotted it, so that a team that wanted to move in yet a different direction wouldn't feel left out of the Silver-fest.
Basically, seeing how there are so many other possibilities, I feel disappointed about this aspect of the map. We managed to struggle through this challenge, but at the cost of stagnating our second City at Size 1--a very huge sacrifice--just to stay close to "on par" with other teams in terms of tech rate.
Overall Map Design
Overall, the map was well-designed, giving the players acceptable but not excellent 3 locations for Legendary Cities. It gave players a lot of Health Resources, which would have been useful for a Cultural game.
It gave players access to all other Civs, to the Barb Area, and to a possible circumnavigation bonus without requiring Astronomy--requiring Astronomy would have changed Cultural from a hard-to-beat-the-Diplo games' Victory type to an impossible-to-beat-the-Diplo games' Victory type.
It gave a good balance of AIs on either side of us, and it potentially "punished" players that rushed Zara, as there wasn't much land to be stolen from him, while doing so would have used up one of that team's war declarations.
Theocratic AIs
I still think that having 4 Theocratic AIs was a poor choice; if the goal was to avoid AIs switching into Free Religion, then 2 Theocratic ones and 2 Organized Religion ones would have been a better choice, so that a team would have had to pick their Diplo Allies and Enemies.
As it was, we did our best to please the AIs by getting them to share a Religion. However, it appears that they were TOO EASY to please, meaning that, as Mitchum would put it, pleasing the AIs was NOT on the critical path for a Diplo Victory, especially if one took the Military path and stuck with Theocracy.
Great General Last-minute Ruling
The other major flaw was allowing Great Generals to count as sacrificial Great People. They are all but inaccessible in a Cultural Game, while losing 4 other types of Great People in a Cultural Game can greatly affect your finishing date.
Even those that played a peaceful game and went for Diplo were adversely affected.
A team that chose a war-like path could have abused this last-minute ruling about Great Generals. I will be very disappointed if many teams have 2, 3, or even 4 Great Generals as part of their Final Four make-up, as it means that they would not have needed to make the sacrifices that the game's conditions appear to have been INTENDED to make upon players.
If one takes the war path, Great Generals can come easily, but their bonuses are generally not even needed, as you'll tend to be a tech level higher than the AIs or at tech parity, either situation not requiring Great Generals to beat the AIs in wars, so "not using them" is a very minor sacrifice compared to "not using" a different type of Great Person.
Basically, the ruling did not fit with the way that the game was designed (having to sacrifice GPP-generated Great People), so it created a potential loop-hole to be exploited.
Great Generals are so fundamentally different in how they are created from other Great People; no one can claim that they are "close enough" to be the same thing, nor can they claim that a Cultural Victory had a fair footing in this regard. Yes, we, too, could have attempted to exploit such a loophole, but that's not the point--the original intention appears to have been to make players "sacrifice" GPP-generated Great People while subtly encouraging teams to "try out" the Philosophical Trait--I think that this game condition was VERY WELL designed and VERY WELL thought-out. It just got ruined by the last-minute inclusion of Great Generals, which have nothing to do at all with encouraging weaker players to better leverage the Philosophical Trait.
Barb Area Cities
The Barb Area was a neat idea, and the Peaks appeared to be well-placed to reduce the chances of an AI beating us to those City locations. However, I believe that the Barb Cities there were a bit too good of a prize. A Cultural Game wouldn't have gone out conquesting them early on, which would mean that such a team would lose out.
I think that those Barb Area Cities could have been better were they a "drain" on one's economy, instead of coming with several nice Resources (far better than by the PHRiv Silver) and a lot of Grassland Cottages, making them actually HELP out the teams that were "ahead" of other teams, instead of making said teams "sacrifice" by taking on the economic burden for a longer period of time by capturing these Cities early on in the game.
Closing Comments on the Map Design
Yes, I enjoyed the map and the game. Yes, there was a lot of work put into it. Yes, there were some really great concepts thrown in there, so it is unfortunate that a few variations spoiled it from being a "great" map--I'd have to rank it only as a "pretty good" map.
I've given a few areas that could be improved upon, so that perhaps DynamicSpirit (and others) can get more of an appreciation of a lot of the factors that can go into designing a great map that the average person might not even think to consider when designing a map.
Trip
You sound bitter for some reason. I thought that we had a fun and enjoyable game and it's not over yet!
Religious Strategy
That was the plan from the start. If you recall the phrase "spread like wildfire," the intent was to avoid contact with the AIs and allow an AI-founded Religion to spread throughout the world.
Why else were we leaving our Cities "religionless" for so long? It was to try to catch Buddhism. Don't you remember?
So, our strategy in this regard actually played out really well and went according to the plan!
Teching
Did we really? We Oracled and Lightbulbed Code of Laws and Civil Service, the two techs that you will normally beeline, whenever possible, in a tech-race game.
We used nearly every Great Person in an effective manner to help us along our beeline, and we got a reasonable amount of Great People.
I'm not sure that I really buy your argument at all about contact with the AIs. What techs would we have been able to get that we didn't take from Zara and Saladin?
On the opposite side of things, which techs would we have been denied at a crucial time, thanks to WFYABTA from having met other AIs before getting techs like Iron Working in trade?
No, I think that we did an awesome job with our teching and Great People.
Our biggest sacrifice was due to the placement of the initial Resources, forcing us to settle a marginal City (Silverado) just to keep up with the tech pace that other teams would experience, but I'll talk about that point shortly.
Map Design, Forests, and Starting Location
We made excellent use out of our Forests, netting us all of the Wonders that we sought. How often do you get ALL of the Wonders that you try for? Well, we did so!
Another team may have chopped out some Workers and Settlers. Well, we had the unfortunate situation of being unable to do so. We couldn't do so as our economy wouldn't have supported it, mostly because we didn't have a capitol with a PHRiv Silver and we did have another City that was stuck at Size 1.
If I had one major issue with this game, it would be that the map's placement of Resources near the starting location could have been improved. An Iron is a fair trade for a Copper. But an Iron and a PHRiv Silver are not a fair trade for a Copper.
In addition, by settling on the PHRiv, a team would get the Whale "for free," with a cultural border expansion, while that same possibility was not available to those settling in place. We ended up not settling Whales City, which would have been a terrible location, but other teams would not have even had to consider the possibility and were given a free +1 Happiness from the Whale Resource earlier in the game.
What would have made the Plains Hills River Silver placement fair would have been a secondary reasonably-good location that used the PHRiv Silver. Provide an extra Fish, or even better, a Fish and a Whale, to go with the PHRiv Silver. Perhaps a few more Grassland squares, or even a Grassland Deer with a Forest on it. Maybe even some Forests on the Tundra, too, so that a team that chose to settle there could get more Hammers from the chops than a team that didn't.
A good map takes into account the preferences and potential choices of players of multiple backgrounds. Having Erkon provide feedback means that your major source of direct feedback is from someone who loves to settle on Plains Hills, so there will be no complaints reported based on the starting location. However, as a game designer, it helps to think of how others might think or play.
Basically, we got shafted for settling in place compared to a team that moved to the "other obvious but guessing on Resource-availability" location.
An alternative approach for such a situation is to GIVE THE PLAYERS THE CHOICE. Make it so that the Silver is visible due to the Warrior's initial placement or can be easily scouted by the initial Warrior. As it was, the initial Warrior couldn't be used to help us get the relevant information on Turn 0 of play.
Yet another alternative, which is not as great, but is an alternative, is not to start the initial Settler on a Forest. It was TOO COSTLY to move to the Plains Hills square if that square turned out to be a poor choice. Our team might not have moved anyway, since we chased after a Religion, so this 2nd alternative is not necessarily taking all players into account, but it would have been slightly better; we might have decided to move to the Plains Hills square, as the risk of going back to our starting location would have been reduced to a loss of just ONE turn, not TWO turns.
As yet another alternative, the Plains Hills River location 1SE of the start WOULD HAVE BEEN GREAT WITHOUT the PHRiv Silver square. Get rid of the PHRiv Silver from the capitol altogether, and put it somewhere else so that it's accessible for a second City. Then it becomes a fair choice for teams--go for an early Great Person Farm location or go for an early Silver City location as the team's second City. That way, you get comparisons based on team's logic and decisions, instead of based on luck.
As a final alternative, the Silver could have been placed so that one would get it regardless of whether one settled in place or 1SE on the PHRiv, although it would have been nice if the initial Warrior could also have spotted it, so that a team that wanted to move in yet a different direction wouldn't feel left out of the Silver-fest.
Basically, seeing how there are so many other possibilities, I feel disappointed about this aspect of the map. We managed to struggle through this challenge, but at the cost of stagnating our second City at Size 1--a very huge sacrifice--just to stay close to "on par" with other teams in terms of tech rate.
Overall Map Design
Overall, the map was well-designed, giving the players acceptable but not excellent 3 locations for Legendary Cities. It gave players a lot of Health Resources, which would have been useful for a Cultural game.
It gave players access to all other Civs, to the Barb Area, and to a possible circumnavigation bonus without requiring Astronomy--requiring Astronomy would have changed Cultural from a hard-to-beat-the-Diplo games' Victory type to an impossible-to-beat-the-Diplo games' Victory type.
It gave a good balance of AIs on either side of us, and it potentially "punished" players that rushed Zara, as there wasn't much land to be stolen from him, while doing so would have used up one of that team's war declarations.
Theocratic AIs
I still think that having 4 Theocratic AIs was a poor choice; if the goal was to avoid AIs switching into Free Religion, then 2 Theocratic ones and 2 Organized Religion ones would have been a better choice, so that a team would have had to pick their Diplo Allies and Enemies.
As it was, we did our best to please the AIs by getting them to share a Religion. However, it appears that they were TOO EASY to please, meaning that, as Mitchum would put it, pleasing the AIs was NOT on the critical path for a Diplo Victory, especially if one took the Military path and stuck with Theocracy.
Great General Last-minute Ruling
The other major flaw was allowing Great Generals to count as sacrificial Great People. They are all but inaccessible in a Cultural Game, while losing 4 other types of Great People in a Cultural Game can greatly affect your finishing date.
Even those that played a peaceful game and went for Diplo were adversely affected.
A team that chose a war-like path could have abused this last-minute ruling about Great Generals. I will be very disappointed if many teams have 2, 3, or even 4 Great Generals as part of their Final Four make-up, as it means that they would not have needed to make the sacrifices that the game's conditions appear to have been INTENDED to make upon players.
If one takes the war path, Great Generals can come easily, but their bonuses are generally not even needed, as you'll tend to be a tech level higher than the AIs or at tech parity, either situation not requiring Great Generals to beat the AIs in wars, so "not using them" is a very minor sacrifice compared to "not using" a different type of Great Person.
Basically, the ruling did not fit with the way that the game was designed (having to sacrifice GPP-generated Great People), so it created a potential loop-hole to be exploited.
Great Generals are so fundamentally different in how they are created from other Great People; no one can claim that they are "close enough" to be the same thing, nor can they claim that a Cultural Victory had a fair footing in this regard. Yes, we, too, could have attempted to exploit such a loophole, but that's not the point--the original intention appears to have been to make players "sacrifice" GPP-generated Great People while subtly encouraging teams to "try out" the Philosophical Trait--I think that this game condition was VERY WELL designed and VERY WELL thought-out. It just got ruined by the last-minute inclusion of Great Generals, which have nothing to do at all with encouraging weaker players to better leverage the Philosophical Trait.
Barb Area Cities
The Barb Area was a neat idea, and the Peaks appeared to be well-placed to reduce the chances of an AI beating us to those City locations. However, I believe that the Barb Cities there were a bit too good of a prize. A Cultural Game wouldn't have gone out conquesting them early on, which would mean that such a team would lose out.
I think that those Barb Area Cities could have been better were they a "drain" on one's economy, instead of coming with several nice Resources (far better than by the PHRiv Silver) and a lot of Grassland Cottages, making them actually HELP out the teams that were "ahead" of other teams, instead of making said teams "sacrifice" by taking on the economic burden for a longer period of time by capturing these Cities early on in the game.
Closing Comments on the Map Design
Yes, I enjoyed the map and the game. Yes, there was a lot of work put into it. Yes, there were some really great concepts thrown in there, so it is unfortunate that a few variations spoiled it from being a "great" map--I'd have to rank it only as a "pretty good" map.
I've given a few areas that could be improved upon, so that perhaps DynamicSpirit (and others) can get more of an appreciation of a lot of the factors that can go into designing a great map that the average person might not even think to consider when designing a map.
Trip
Wow, that sounds like a great trip! Enjoy yourself! Also, be sure to prepare well... bug repellant, sun screen, plenty of food, and things to do (books to read, etc). Nature isn't as safe as it used to be! Actually, people just aren't as good at living in it as we used to be.
).
EDIT: Note that my comments were made without looking at the saved game.
