I think it was a combination of both the leader make up and how hyper isolated the civs are from each other with this new map. I'd really like to see what the results would have been on the "normal" championship map that doesn't keep everyone away from each other until the mid-late game. Any aggressive militaristic civ is never going to prosper on this new map because how are they going to be able to even reach anyone to early which the militaristic civs need to do to be reliably successful.
Yeah, the map is absolutely beautiful but I fear using it for future championships will make it where warmongers ala Caesar and Stalin will never be able to win because an Econ focused leader will always be able to settle a bunch a cities, get economically set up before any wars break out (isolated starts prevent early wars), and then it’ll be really hard to conquer enough to win
It was the map. When financial leaders can 1 or 2 turn every tech up to composites with only their starting land, they have too much fertile land. There is no way any other leader can ever catch up, even if they successfully conquer half the map. Less food and a lot more bad terrain like tundra/desert might help there.
I just love that testing is going into the map design. Love the design. If anything maybe shrink the size by about 15% and see if that allows conquest to compete with cultural and spaceship?
I think the shape of the map "protected" the available resources of each player from the other players. Of course financial leaders made better use of them. It's not the only reason, but I would suggest to use a donut next season (filled in the center or not).
I think the map is potentially fine - I'd be really interested to see what happens with more aggressive leaders. The consensus in these comments seems to be that any econ leader will inevitably win this map whatever else happens, but I'm not so sure, and I do like the postponement of the wars caused by relatively late contact between the civs - early wars on the normal blobby maps are just so random and destroy the chances of 2 civs from turn 80. A bit of adjustment to the actual size and placement of the capitals might also be in order.
9:22, I think Mansa also lost a settler in that game, not just city. I remember you wondering that didn't Mansa had a settler which was nowhere to be seen, and for a second I saw an injured barb archer near Mansa territory while you were looking for that missing settler. I need to recheck from YT video to make sure that he had settler (either done or almost done) and it mysteriously disappears.
It's no surprise that a symmetrical map like that led to homogenous results. I appreciate that you're trying to be fair to all contestants, but that's not what actually occurs. I suggest a normally randomized map will give a more interesting final.
