I recently started the "Planet" scenario from the scenarios menu in vanilla. I can't figure out what this is supposed to be about. To avoid spoiling it for anyone, my observations are under the spoiler cover:

It seems to be essentially a large continents map. The only somewhat strange thing is that the resources seem to be highly separated. I had about a million cows, but no stone, marble or oil on the large continent I shared with another civ. I did manage to get oil from an offshore platform, after a long time of being forced to fight without tanks. Also I had to do without a lot of luxuries until I could establish contact with people from other continents and trade for them.

I'm up to about 1650, and presumably about to trigger a domination win. I'm just wondering if anybody else has played this, and if I'm missing anything.

"Planet" was the default map in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri so the Civ "Planet" is a loose copy of that. I don't know why the resoures are so split up, they were not that way in SMAC.

I used to play the map a lot before I got Warlords. It sounds like your on the L shaped continent on the left. This is the "power" continent but it is split by a mountain on a narrow strait. As you have already seen, the key to the map is to expand down the L asap so you can grab the offshore oil at the bottom tip of the L.

Thanks for the insight.

Actually, I was on the other contingent, the next biggest one to the left of the "L." I found oil a good distance offshore from my original continent, after my cultural borders expanded over it.

I've since conquered the two civs on the upper part of the "L," basicly up to the point of the mountains (the civ on the other side of the mountains managed to get one city to the left of the mountains).

I'm now way over what I would normally need for domination victory. So presumably I can't get victory that way. I now could vote myself a diplomatic victory at the UN anytime I want, assuming that works. Or I could start churning out the spaceship.