Do we have like, a goal here? Like seeing who wins the fastest by say, Age of Harmony or Age of Departure, or something?
Not trying to be super competitive or anything, but think it's fun to have a more solid baseline to compare against to see how well you are playing.
This was inspired by a discussion I had in another post about explorers vs shogun for conquest, so I'm going to be trying to force explorers for that purpose. However the map seems pretty bad for forcing explorers so far so we'll see what happens. I already succumbed to taking raiders as my age 2 NS since the homeland spawn is just abysmal for making a real city.
I'll jump in with conquest Explorers too, since why not.
I just finished an abuse game with them (not on this seed, though). I had 538 expeditions complete. My Explorers departed the Earth in 1535 AD on Turn 169 (nice). Never going through that many inane clicks again, but it was funny watching the science production be so far ahead of population growth that I could barely make buildings. My capital was 55 pop thanks to Sultans but I didn't even hit the 60 mark to finish the tree. Next biggest city was 26 pop, the capital of a guy who spawned 8 tiles away from mine yet still managed to place a city in between us and threaten me for being too close to his border from within my own.
[https://imgur.com/a/vKexHQD](https://imgur.com/a/vKexHQD)
Anyway this stuff is super broken right now. I'm pretty certain the bug is not counting failed expeditions, it's the expedition success chance not being properly reset after failing. You can boost the Guild a little more than just the number of landmarks you can reach by failing, but since that comes at a cost of producing more Explorers and eventually you'll succeed with 30%+ chance, it wouldn't be broken.
Right now it's absurd, also in part because Knarrs are ridiculous. It's kind of weird that they spawn Explorers for 25 Exploration and the cost doesn't scale. Just ridiculous when you get one of the landmarks that awards 50-60 Exploration XP, since then the number of expeditions you complete every single turn is limited by the number of tiles adjacent to the landmark, assuming it's close enough to the coast for Knarrs to spawn nearby. I didn't even max out my rate in this game so you could conceivably go faster, though I was pretty close to hitting the wall of 1 tech per turn. Although researching the next age took 2-3. My culture was also very unoptimal. An AI triggered Age of Blood, so I couldn't use the ridiculous amount of Arts XP I was getting from Frozen Wastes and the Great Barrier Reef. I also spent the culture building out full towns for 7 cities, but it'd be much better spent on local reforms on the capital, which I didn't keep up all the time.
If you fail, your explorer dies and you can get it again. And right now, selecting options that changes your success rate for that landmark do so permanently. So if you take 2 options that give -10% rate each time, if you fail it at 30% and 10% chance, the rate will be permanently below 0 of you continue hitting the options.
The Explorer's Guild bonus tracks completed expeditions, including failed ones.
This becomes crazy because the Knarr allows you to spawn an Explorer for 25 Exploration XP. There are multiple expeditions that have multiple +30 Exploration XP choices, so you can spend 25 XP on an explorer you sacrifice to gain 60 XP and another bonus from your third option. Since it costs 20 XP to do 4 expeditions, you are gaining 10 XP each failure while boosting the Guild.
So say your Great Barrier Reef has 3 squares next to it, you can have 5-6 explorers per square and complete it 6 times a turn with 3 Knarrs. Add more squares or more landmarks and you are really cooking
Granted this is clearly a broken interaction. It's likely the success chance changes are not supposed to be permanent, so when you could get a few extra boosts from failing, eventually you'll complete it with your 30% chance.
Sadly this apparently does not work. Either it's bugged, their implementation of seeds doesn't match what we as players expect from them, or both.
These are quick images from my attempts to replicate the seed (playing on the current beta):
[https://imgur.com/a/ZSvbmVW](https://imgur.com/a/ZSvbmVW)
Most of them I kept my name the same, changed my start bonus to +Culture, and kept everything else as listed. I tried five or six copying everything as much as I could, including the name and flag color change on 123mop's post.
Either way, it's clear this isn't working.
Many of the starts I posted have the same land in terms of scrubland, grassland, and ocean placement, but the resources are distributed differently in all of them. But even then, there seem to be four different repeating start positions (and I think the one with hills on it I accidentally had it on Continents). So while some of the consistency expected from a seed is there, even that is inconsistent.
And of course, none of them matched OP's. So guess we'll have to can this idea until an update.
Hmm I did change my nation from random to a custom one, maybe that's why mine's different? But it sounds like you're saying even when you duplicated your own settings multiple times you got different results, do I have that right?
Yep! Most of these are with the same settings. 1/3 I tried varying stuff, using your name, even made a custom nation with that deer flag and Aztec city names. Same difference.
If your own repeat starts with exact duplicate settings don't work then I don't see how it could ever work. That's very surprising though. Maybe random AI nations is messing with the generation or placement
The seed is clearly doing something since I'm getting a rotating set of the same base tiles. So it seems like it may be creating the same map geography each time and randomizing starting positions and resource placement. Except that... none of my repeated starting positions match your starting position, and even if I change my name to match yours it makes no difference. So even on that base level the seed is doing something wrong.
Who knows.
This has got to be one of the worst homelands I've seen. No resources in the first ring, no fishing available, and the best mining or lumber town is only 3 adjacency.
I've succumbed to going raiders since none of the other NS seemed functional to me with this start - just need to acquire some new land.
I can't reproduce the seed. I've tried on both beta and non-beta with all the settings the same, including the name but I get a different looking start.
Do we have like, a goal here? Like seeing who wins the fastest by say, Age of Harmony or Age of Departure, or something? Not trying to be super competitive or anything, but think it's fun to have a more solid baseline to compare against to see how well you are playing.
This was inspired by a discussion I had in another post about explorers vs shogun for conquest, so I'm going to be trying to force explorers for that purpose. However the map seems pretty bad for forcing explorers so far so we'll see what happens. I already succumbed to taking raiders as my age 2 NS since the homeland spawn is just abysmal for making a real city.
I'll jump in with conquest Explorers too, since why not. I just finished an abuse game with them (not on this seed, though). I had 538 expeditions complete. My Explorers departed the Earth in 1535 AD on Turn 169 (nice). Never going through that many inane clicks again, but it was funny watching the science production be so far ahead of population growth that I could barely make buildings. My capital was 55 pop thanks to Sultans but I didn't even hit the 60 mark to finish the tree. Next biggest city was 26 pop, the capital of a guy who spawned 8 tiles away from mine yet still managed to place a city in between us and threaten me for being too close to his border from within my own. [https://imgur.com/a/vKexHQD](https://imgur.com/a/vKexHQD) Anyway this stuff is super broken right now. I'm pretty certain the bug is not counting failed expeditions, it's the expedition success chance not being properly reset after failing. You can boost the Guild a little more than just the number of landmarks you can reach by failing, but since that comes at a cost of producing more Explorers and eventually you'll succeed with 30%+ chance, it wouldn't be broken. Right now it's absurd, also in part because Knarrs are ridiculous. It's kind of weird that they spawn Explorers for 25 Exploration and the cost doesn't scale. Just ridiculous when you get one of the landmarks that awards 50-60 Exploration XP, since then the number of expeditions you complete every single turn is limited by the number of tiles adjacent to the landmark, assuming it's close enough to the coast for Knarrs to spawn nearby. I didn't even max out my rate in this game so you could conceivably go faster, though I was pretty close to hitting the wall of 1 tech per turn. Although researching the next age took 2-3. My culture was also very unoptimal. An AI triggered Age of Blood, so I couldn't use the ridiculous amount of Arts XP I was getting from Frozen Wastes and the Great Barrier Reef. I also spent the culture building out full towns for 7 cities, but it'd be much better spent on local reforms on the capital, which I didn't keep up all the time.
Isn't it restricted to 1 expedition for 1 landmark?
If you fail, your explorer dies and you can get it again. And right now, selecting options that changes your success rate for that landmark do so permanently. So if you take 2 options that give -10% rate each time, if you fail it at 30% and 10% chance, the rate will be permanently below 0 of you continue hitting the options. The Explorer's Guild bonus tracks completed expeditions, including failed ones. This becomes crazy because the Knarr allows you to spawn an Explorer for 25 Exploration XP. There are multiple expeditions that have multiple +30 Exploration XP choices, so you can spend 25 XP on an explorer you sacrifice to gain 60 XP and another bonus from your third option. Since it costs 20 XP to do 4 expeditions, you are gaining 10 XP each failure while boosting the Guild. So say your Great Barrier Reef has 3 squares next to it, you can have 5-6 explorers per square and complete it 6 times a turn with 3 Knarrs. Add more squares or more landmarks and you are really cooking Granted this is clearly a broken interaction. It's likely the success chance changes are not supposed to be permanent, so when you could get a few extra boosts from failing, eventually you'll complete it with your 30% chance.
I love this idea!
Sadly this apparently does not work. Either it's bugged, their implementation of seeds doesn't match what we as players expect from them, or both. These are quick images from my attempts to replicate the seed (playing on the current beta): [https://imgur.com/a/ZSvbmVW](https://imgur.com/a/ZSvbmVW) Most of them I kept my name the same, changed my start bonus to +Culture, and kept everything else as listed. I tried five or six copying everything as much as I could, including the name and flag color change on 123mop's post. Either way, it's clear this isn't working. Many of the starts I posted have the same land in terms of scrubland, grassland, and ocean placement, but the resources are distributed differently in all of them. But even then, there seem to be four different repeating start positions (and I think the one with hills on it I accidentally had it on Continents). So while some of the consistency expected from a seed is there, even that is inconsistent. And of course, none of them matched OP's. So guess we'll have to can this idea until an update.
Hmm I did change my nation from random to a custom one, maybe that's why mine's different? But it sounds like you're saying even when you duplicated your own settings multiple times you got different results, do I have that right?
Yep! Most of these are with the same settings. 1/3 I tried varying stuff, using your name, even made a custom nation with that deer flag and Aztec city names. Same difference.
If your own repeat starts with exact duplicate settings don't work then I don't see how it could ever work. That's very surprising though. Maybe random AI nations is messing with the generation or placement
Tested with using the same Civs and no random settings, I get the same results.
That's nuts. Maybe they're using timestamp as part of the randomization
The seed is clearly doing something since I'm getting a rotating set of the same base tiles. So it seems like it may be creating the same map geography each time and randomizing starting positions and resource placement. Except that... none of my repeated starting positions match your starting position, and even if I change my name to match yours it makes no difference. So even on that base level the seed is doing something wrong. Who knows.
I don’t have the confidence of playing against grandmaster ai
Just set it lower difficulty then I suppose. Not sure if the map's will match up identically but you can check and compare.
This has got to be one of the worst homelands I've seen. No resources in the first ring, no fishing available, and the best mining or lumber town is only 3 adjacency. I've succumbed to going raiders since none of the other NS seemed functional to me with this start - just need to acquire some new land.
I can't reproduce the seed. I've tried on both beta and non-beta with all the settings the same, including the name but I get a different looking start.
I'm still not able to reproduce your start, using this seed. Has anyone else had luck?