Snake River
Map Creation Write Up

Snake Charm has fantastically good starting land (Floodplains over Grassland with a healthy helping of Cows and Clams)!

While Snake Dream is a Wonder Builder's paradise... well, sort of, coming as it does equipped with easy access to Marble and Stone.

Snake Charm starts with the Palace.

Snake Dream has the Hidden Palace.



The rest of the map is not this luxurious. And no other Civilization starts with Mysticism, so founding a Religion (or two, but at least the one, if one makes a priority of it) is a certainty.

The map is intended to be played at a higher level than one normally plays. I am comfortable at Noble and find Monarch to provide a good challenge. So, I shall be playing on Emperor.

Difficulty Levels

Settler
Chieftain
Warlord
Noble
Prince
Monarch
Emperor
Immortal
Deity

This is the write up for the map creation. The play-through comes next. But before we get to either, let me make two quick recommendations about play.

First, with all that food, Slavery will be important (or at least, I would imagine that it would be).

Second, founding a City on those five food tiles is a waste, as the City Square, itself, will only produce the same two food as a City founded on a Desert Tile.

For those who want surprises, that is all I shall say.

Game Settings

Emperor Difficulty

Dutch
William van Oranje
a.k.a. Snake Master

Flat
Standard World Size
No Barbarians
No Technology Brokering
Require Complete Kills
No Vassal States
No Tribal Villages
No Random Events
No Espionage

However, there are twenty or so pre-placed wandering animals on the board.

Game Save Uses:
Beyond the Sword 3.19
BUG Mod 4.5 [Build 2221]
BULL 1.4 [Build 243]
BAT Mod 4.1

iPhone Notes

007-snake-river-design-notes.txt

The above notes were helpful for organizing my thoughts, but I did not reference these notes too terribly much while actually creating the map level.

Still, I am a wordy type guy. And I like writing things down. So, there you are.

iPhone Drawing One

The main purpose of this image was to figure out how the different Civilizations would be spatially oriented. That is to say, my perception of the way (and/or direction) in which they would expand.

Bold Black: Impassible Mountains
Bold Blue: Impassible Ocean
Thin Green: Southern Jungle
Stars: Starting Locations
Black: Ragnar of the Vikings
Red: Isabella of Spain
Blue: Huayna Capac of the Incans
Yellow: Gandhi of India
Gold: William van Oranje of the Netherlands Dutch

I cannot say (nor control) how the different Civilizations will behave, but each opponent was allotted roughly ⅙^th of the map (leaving ⅓^rd for the Human Player... even if most of that was Ocean).

Based on starting locations, I predict Ragnar and Isabella will fight over land (center top) more or less from the start (or at least, contest each other for it), while Huayna Capac (upper right) will have free reign for a long-long time. Gandhi on the other hand, will quickly come into contact with William van Oranje (the Human Player), but the two of them (along with the entire middle portion) are separated by jungle, so it should not be until the Middle Ages that crowding sets in.

iPhone Drawing Two

Blue Upper Left: Viking Ponds
Green Center Right: Massive Jungle
Blue Center Line: Snake River
Blue Right Line: A 'Waterfall' that passes through the Mountains
Black Thin Lines: Mountains
Lower Blue: Ocean Coast
Black Bottom Center: Islands
Gold Bottom Right: Desert

The top of the map has more plains, while the center is almost all grassland jungle.

Gandhi has some pretty nice land.

But William van Oranje's land is pretty freakin' awesome... basically, game breaking. But on that last, we shall see.

World Builder

There really is not much to say about the World Builder utility. It was easy to use. And I have no major complaints. I simply went through every tab, item by item, and when I was done, I had a map and understood the World Builder controls.

That said, I was unable to satisfactorily set up Buddhism as a Religion in Snake Charm (the City). In test play throughs, whenever someone else researched Meditation, they received a different Religion (not what I wanted, as Mysticism was already known by William van Oranje, so they were not the 'first' to discover). There are probably other work-arounds (starting everyone with Meditation, for instance). But I opted to remove Mysticism as a starting technology from everyone else. And that will effect the result I desire (allowing me to research Meditation for Buddhism, first). This was easiest to do with a word editor. But then, many things are.