My Proposal with only two short neighboring borders, shown in bold.
Only two steps up or down are to made for each civilization at maximum.
This holds the balance on the AST, with having at least on the 18 player
map always groups of 4 players moving simultanously if desired.

Once I replied to this, you already posted a new reply, so this might seem strange.

I've finally took a moment to have a closer look at your last proposal.

I've spend a lot of time puzzling on my proposal and I can see you have done the same on yours. (difficult ey?!)

Great work!


I always try to visualize things, otherwise it's just a list of names.

MerlokDD's proposal for 10-18 players:


MerlokDD's proposal divided in East and West:




I think this is one of the best options possible.

Regarding:
1. you have to stay close (max range of 2) to the current ASt that is based on difficulty in AST requirements.

2. You have to switch from east to west alternately

3. You have to switch to either side of the board alternately on each seperate board.



Ofcourse, you still might have neighbouring areas adjacent on the AST, but point 1 makes it nescesary to keep it that way.

You mentioned: Ibera-Rome & Indus-Parthia
I think Kushan-Persia may be regarded as well in this as no civilization sticks to the areas ascosiated. Apart from any sea-travel, civil war, treachery or whatever occors during a regular game.



I see no reason to go for another option than your last proposal, accepting the 2-3 pairs of AST-adjacent civilizations.

If Velusion gives approval, let's do so.

Thanks for visualizing that!

Indeed, it was hard to get this two things together,
but maybe the last proposal is a balanced one.

So let's wait for Velusion.

The change looks good to me! Lets beta it.

We want to have no neighbours in each subsequent A.S.T. numbers, so I believe it can be better than the last proposal. And in addition, I try to give lower numbers to harder-to-play nations. By coincidence I did some research of the areas of the nations, looking at the associated areas. This givees the following result:

1 Celt. Expected: 4 City sites, 23½ support, low population limits on city sites.
2 Indus. Expected: 5½ City sites, 12½ support, large flood plain.
3 Minoa. Expected: 8½ City sites, 7 support, very slow start.
4 Saba. Expected: 5½ City sites, 21 support, slower start.
5 Iberia. Expected: 6 City sites, 13½ support, on edge of map.
6 Maurya. Expected: 6 City sites, 15½ support, on edge of map.
7 Hatti. Expected: 6½ City sites, 14 support, all city sites on 2-areas.
8 Nubia. Expected: 6 City sites, 13½ support of which some closer near Egypt.
9 Carthage. Expected: 6½ City sites, 13½ support.
10 Babylon. Expected: 6 City sites, 19 support, large flood plain.
11 Hellas. Expected: 6 City sites, 20 support, low population limits on city sites.
12 Dravidia. Expected: 6 City sites, 15 support.
13 Assyria. Expected: 6½ City sites, 16½ support.
14 Parthia. Expected: 5½ City sites, 18 support.
15 Rome. Expected: 6 City sites, 19 support.
16 Kushan. Expected: 6 City sites, 14 support.
17 Egypt. Expected: Expected: 7½ City sites, 8½ support, large flood plain but close to more areas.
18 Persia. Expected: 5½ City sites, 20 support, but only one accociated area is shared.

Now I have given it a numbering which are my proposal for the A.S.T. ordening. Each pair of neighbours are not subsequent numbered, even when playing on only east or west.

Ok, I will create an image of it tonight, to see it more clearly

OK,

I've worked it out to visualize things:

This is the map version of Johannes' proposal:
(both 18 and EW versions)




These are the actual AST's:




And here you can see how things have changed:




What you can see, that the current AST makes no regards of moving from East to West, so that's what we are changing.

- We have to regard the rules as mentioned in this topic.

- Merlokk puts the focus on AST requirements and tries to stick as close as possible to that.

- Johannes puts the focus on map circumstances and tries to stick as close as possible to that.



You can see that the proposal of Johannes automaticly shows some more random scheme in AST-requirements, where Merloks proposal keeps more track of equalizing things.

On the other hand, Merlok did not regard the map conditions, but purely based in on the AST requirements.




Now, I did not check the details of what Johannes has counted,

But like I mentioned in an earlier post, I believe map circumstances have more influence on AST order than the actual AST requirements in deciding the order.

In other words, the civilization that have a harder time, will have this because of the lack of city sites / lower poplimits / more islands. The civs, that might have some better circumstances, will more easily expand / build.
Hopefully this is represented by their requirements. Thus: Easier on the map, harder on the AST-requirements.


Whenever two civs have an equal census one should move before the other. It would be fair to have the easier civ go first so that more difficult civs have some benefit in reacting in movement and purchasing advances.

Most of the time, regarding movement, this is covered by the fact that the most units on board (best circumstances) make the civ move first. (so a map-thing, not a requirements-thing)

SO:
It's either looking at map circumstances or AST requirements

1. better map: move first, worse map: move last.
2. easier AST: move first, harder AST: move last.


Then another thing to look at, is how civs are neighbours or not.

Merlok had the following possible problems:
Iberia & Rome
Indus & Parthia
(Kushan & Persia)

Johannes shows the following possible problems:
(Indus & Saba)
(Nubia & Babylon)
Parthia & Kushan
Kushan & Persia

I put between brackets what are optional problem and withou are direct neigbouring civs.


Now is this a thing that can not be excluded when you ragard all of the above, but I just wanted to research that part.



Then for sticking to the original:

You can see Johannes' proposal move quite a bit from the original, but that's due he is not regarding AST-requirements where the current and Merlok's version did.




My result:

Both proposals are better than the current

I think the proposal of Johannes makes most sense, though it doesn't run far from Merlok's version, though in another way.

ONLY if the calculations Johannes made are right.

Johannes, you said, by coincedence you did this research. Did you double check it?


I provided you with the secondary calculations and images.
if things are right, it's up to Velusion to say which one will be the one to be playtested.

Unless some-one comes up with a better proposal, or when errors are noticed, or when some other complaint comes up.

No, I did not double check it. A proof of it is that I see I still have made a mistake in my calculations (it was I think a matter of names.) When I look at your visualizations I see Kushan (A.S.T. 16) and Parthia (A.S.T. 14) being neighbours.
However, a solution for this is to reverse Kushan and Maurya (6 and 16) and to reverse Parthia and Babylon (14 and 18 ): I discoverend Assyria (13) and Parthia (14) being semi-neighbours too.
Now this seems like a rigorious change according to my system, but making my scheme I discovered it was a hard puzzle to let nations being not each others neighbour give subsequent A.S.T. numbers or with a difference of 2. A corollary of this is that my scheme is not that good compared with the scheme from Advanced Civilization. However this is not a hard point because it wasn't easy to decide which east nation is harder to play than each other (with the exeption of Indus.) But the only solution to this part I think is to have more playtests on the east map.

Later I come with a double-chenk and new statistics, which are needed because for example I gave 9 nations an expected number of city sites of something and a half.

About the question whether hard-to-play nations should het low number or high numbers on the A.S.T. order, I should give them low numbers. That is because the more difficult-to-play nations expected to have fewer cities, so they must have a higher probability of drawing as many trade cards as possible. When they draw cards first, the probability that a stack runs out of cards is lower.

But in my scheme I see another problem. In another discussion namely on http://www.civproject.net/forum/viewtop ... c&start=75 the idea is stated that players holding Agriculture are not anymore allowed to replace a city with a number of tokens equal to the population limit of that area plus 1, but just the population limit. Whether this will be implemented or not in the rules makes a difference between difficulty-to-play of many nations. If this change will be implemented the game is much harder for the nations lacking city sites on a population limit 3+ area. So I believe I cannot give the last word of my A.S.T. scheme (idea) before we are agreed about Agriculture.

A second thing I didn't realize is:

While the map is being divided into an East and a West part, some slight adjustments shall have to be made to 6 of the border area's (I'm talking about, to which civilizations these applied)

These plans are not definetive yet (working on it), so some slight changes shall have to be made to you calculations.

This might change your system.


So I suggest to either wait for those changes before working out the AST order, or go for Merlok's option that isn't influenced by the map conditions.



This change in rules, will result indeed into things becoming a little harder for the civilizations that really benefit from Agriculture, but this was the idea behind it. It seemed to be to poweful that those civs actually took benefit rather than damage from city reduction.

We actually always played without this benefit when playing Advanced Civilization before the expansion.

OK, I didn't know this. What are these plans exactly and of which areas are you speaking about?So I wait since I plaaned to wait anyway because of the Agriculture discussion.
Yes, it becomes harder for all civilizations. But the difference in difficulties to play is the most for the civilization who needs Agriculture. Either because they always loose the benefit instead of eventually, or because they have all (or all but one) city sites on a population 1 area. When such a city must be reduced, the new Agriculture rule takes away two tokens after the pop-ex phase for them, while it takes only one token for other city sites and civilizations controlling them.
And the profit for city reduction on the right areas is less then one might think: Tokens on board cannot be put in treasury...

ok, please continue the discussion for agriculture in the appropriate topic:

http://www.civproject.net/forum/viewtop ... c&start=90

Playtest MerlokDD january 3rd:


In our game we often had players with equal census count. At least this mapboard switching is a good change to me. this can also be something for the movement playtest as described.

OK. Now I have checked my research on the westmap for mistakes, improved my results and checked it until at least the sum of the number of city sites and the sum of the support values are a whole number. (But in fact both sums are not a whole number according to the scenario handbook, because Damascus (City site) and Lesser Armenia (support value of 1) are shared by Assyria (west) and Babylon (east.) Same is true with Upper Egypt and Ptolemais, but both have support value 2.)
For each of the west civilizations, I write the expected region according to the scenario handbook, and according to my own expectations in practice.

1 Minoa (hard to play)
Scenario handbook: 8 1/2 city sites, 7 support.
Expected in practice: 9 1/3 city sites, 6 5/6 support.

2 Celts (hard to play)
Scenario handbook: 4 city sites, 23 1/2 support.
Expected in practice: 3 city sites, 28 support.

3 Carthage (hard to play)
Scenario handbook: 6 city sites, 13 1/2 support.
Expected in practice: 5 city sites, 12 1/2 support.

4 Hellas (medicore to play)
Scenario handbook: 6 city sites, 20 support.
Expected in practice: 5 1/2 city sites, 16 5/6 support.

5 Assyria (easy to play)
Scenario handbook: 6 1/2 city sites, 16 1/2 support.
Expected in practice: 7 1/3 city sites, 16 1/2 support.

6 Iberia (medicore to play)
Scenario handbook: 6 city sites, 13 1/2 support.
Expected in practice: 5 city sites, 14 support.

7 Egypt (easy to play)
Scenario handbook: 8 city sites, 8 1/2 support.
Expected in practice: 8 city sites, 9 1/2 support.

8 Hatti (medicore to play)
Scenario handbook: 6 1/2 city sites, 13 support.
Expected in practice: 6 5/6 city sites, 12 1/3 support.

9 Rome (easy to play)
Scenario handbook: 6 city sites, 19 support.
Expected in practice: 8 city sites, 17 1/2 support.

Now I also have given my proposed A.S.T. numbers for these civilizations, according to the following wishes:
- Each civilization is no neighbour of all civilizations whose A.S.T. number differ at most 2 of it. (So I have three groups of three civilizations each.)
- Hard-to-play civilizations have low A.S.T. numbers, easy-to-play civilizations have high A.S.T. numbers.
- When civilizations acquire Astronavigation, there still are no "neighbours" with subsequent A.S.T. numbers around the central and Eastern Mediterrian, for so far this is possible (this automatically hold for the other open sea areas, since civilizations bordering them already border each other.)

This makes my solution unique, up to a switch between Assyria and Hellas. I wish I could switch Assyria and Hatti, but Hatty borders Hellas and Assyria border Egypt.

Later I hope I can do something similar for the east map.

OK this means quite some differences.

Did you consider we are thinking about slightly changing the map, so that the harder civilization will have a little more ease to make the differnces between each civilization a little less?

And what IS your current AST order?

Does a high-AST number mean 'at the bottom' of the AST list?

I think Astronavigation is not to be considered for this purpose, because this make a civilization almost be adjacent to any other civilization.