newbie here .... sorry do open a thread just for a question :p

You are in the wrong thread, you should be in Civ3 Creation & Customization for all of your questions, this forum is for completed Maps, but to answer your question (I think is your title)
I make all my maps at 256x256.

sorry ... for posting here :)

you make them 256x256 but it's there a limit?

what makes me ask this question is... all earth maps are fine... and Marla's is very good... but i think that if the map had *real dimesions* for example... u actually could build your civ in british grounds ... (not just one city) it would be more funnier... just a thought :)

The maximum size on PTW is 362 X 362. That's twice the size of a 256 X 256. Although I'd love to test-drive an earth map that someone makes of that size, I'm sure the game would quickly crawl.

Greater maps are more beautiful, but when you arrive in 1300 they collapse

Originally posted by bartdanr
The maximum size on PTW is 362 X 362. That's twice the size of a 256 X 256. Although I'd love to test-drive an earth map that someone makes of that size, I'm sure the game would quickly crawl.

I didn't know the limit was 362x362.
I thought the limit was 256x256, but that is for the regular CIV3.

I use this tool for making my maps, I hope they make one for that size because it only goes up to 256x256.
And I also think the bigger the map the better it is.

Originally posted by Rhye
Greater maps are more beautiful, but when you arrive in 1300 they collapse

I don't understand what you mean.
I've never had a map collapse because it was to big. (to my knowledge)

The "collapse" means that always comes an age of great expansion for all AI civs, and the number of cities increases very quickly. And with such a huge map there are hundreds of cities, which means very long loading times

You are correct.
The larger the map the more time it is to load.

ok ... but like i said a post in a post before... each nation was like hundreds of city... so the game could became more realistic aka more fun :)

since i gave the example of england already ... don't u agree with me when i say that it's more fun ... defending the all english territory with all the cities, or just defending it with just one? [the space given to england] :)

I agree, The more cities you have the stronger you are.
Putting the cities in thier right places makes the game more realistic.

The biggest problem with a huge map is that by early middle ages the number of cities limit will be reached - there is a hard-coded maximum of 512 cities on a map. And after that the game is quite boring - cities can only be built after some have been destroyed. This even happened to me on a 256x256 map with 16civs by about 800AD. With 31 civs on a 362x362 map, I imagine the limit would be reached even quicker.

Originally posted by sgrig
The biggest problem with a huge map is that by early middle ages the number of cities limit will be reached - there is a hard-coded maximum of 512 cities on a map. And after that the game is quite boring - cities can only be built after some have been destroyed. This even happened to me on a 256x256 map with 16civs by about 800AD. With 31 civs on a 362x362 map, I imagine the limit would be reached even quicker.

that could not be re-coded? :p

Originally posted by EnyGmaTiK


that could not be re-coded? :p

I imagine Firaxis could change this, and probably should, from the perspective that it makes no sense to make such huge maps that are going to be mostly empty space...unless you want an asthetically pleasing map only.

Consider on a 362 X 362 map: there are 131,044 squares. Each city has an area of 18 squares. For 512 squares, that's 9,216 squares.

Even with the earth having 70% water, that means that there are (on a "real-earth" map) 39,313 squares of land. That means that less than 25% of the map's land area is utilized.

Of course, there *are* still vast tracks of land that aren't terribly well-settled...does anyone know approximately how much of Earth's land area is developed? Obviously, Antarctica, the Sahara, the Gobi, Siberia, and many other regions are largely empty.

But maybe a smaller map *is* more realistic...say a 175 X 175 would give you a 70% water map with the 30% remaining land 100% covered in city radii with 512 cities....though to be honest, it would be a boring map with all cities "perfectly" placed. Larger maps would let you place cities more accurately and have less city radii overlap.

Currently, there are are 408 cities (actually, "Agglomerations") in excess of 1 million inhabitents (see http://www.citypopulation.de/Country.html?E+World ). The 512 limit is large enough to show all of these, but those 408 cities only account for a total of 1.3 billion people. Where do we stick the other 4.7 billion?

Of course, all of this is fairly acedemic, in that my machine would die trying to process all of this!

You guys are all right. I recently tried out a 362x362 map with 28 civs and the 512 city limit was reached fairly quickly, not to mention the minutes in-between moves around 800AD was what I would get on a 256x256 map in the year 1900. It also got very boring indeed, as it usually is when the entire game is an expand as fast as you can race. Needless to say I quit and redid my huge map size down to 274x274.

A higher city limit would be correct, but I don't know if I could dedicate myself to 5 minute breaks between every move in the year 1000BC.