I've been playing around with the tutorial just to get my feet wet. I'm comfortable with the game mechanics now however. I am wondering what you all recommend as far as game settings to play at. Seems like Pangaea is a pretty standard map..any other recommendations?

The 3 standard ones are Pangaea, Continents, and Archepello.

I play on a standard size map as my computer denounces Civ 5 on anything larger.

On this map size:

Archepello: You'll either have a semi-isolated start with a landmass to yourself or else have a major civ you need to kick off your landmass as soon as possible.

Continents: On this map size, usually but not always there will be at least one other major civ on the same landmass as you. But it's not as cramped as Archepello is. Sometimes there will be 3 major civs on this landmass, but your landmass is somewhat larger when that occurs.
On the uncommon situations that you do have the landmass all to yourself, it will be an isolated start.

Pangaea, almost all of the world's land all in one landmass with every civ with the possible exception of one or two city states. You will make contact with everybody quickly.

Earth: This is a somewhat imbalanced continent type map with badly located resources given the minimum city spacing rules. This also negates the civs that have starting biases. If you start in Europe, Africa, or Asia, it plays like something between continents and Pangaea.
(Africa in particular having some extremely badly located resources unless you reduce the number of city states)

Personally, I like peaceful starts when not cramped so I go with Archepello.

Continents can be good for separating two strong empires. Ie, if one Civ is taking over its continent, you don't necessarily have to worry.

It depends on what your looking for in a game really. Pangea is the map that most people seem
to play because its the one the AI seems to play best on. Continents ends up a science victory
once you've conquered your continent. If your looking for an easy game play Archipelago.

I've been playing around with the tutorial just to get my feet wet. I'm comfortable with the game mechanics now however. I am wondering what you all recommend as far as game settings to play at. Seems like Pangaea is a pretty standard map..any other recommendations?

First, good to see new faces here. Welcome!

Broad questions, like the one you asked, often get "It depends..." as the first few words of the answers. In this case, I'd say that it depends on what kind of game you want to play. If you're into war and conquest then Pangaea is a sure bet. If you prefer a peaceful victory then Continents or Archipelago maps will usually enable you to gain some momentum and Continents (In my experience) tends to be the most forgiving - especially if you tweak your settings or restart as necessary to be the only civ on your continent.

Me? I can only spare one to four hours a week these days for gaming. For a player of my modest ability that means playing at King level, Random Leaders and Random Maps to spice things up.

First, good to see new faces here. Welcome!

Broad questions, like the one you asked, often get "It depends..." as the first few words of the answers. In this case, I'd say that it depends on what kind of game you want to play. If you're into war and conquest then Pangaea is a sure bet. If you prefer a peaceful victory then Continents or Archipelago maps will usually enable you to gain some momentum and Continents (In my experience) tends to be the most forgiving - especially if you tweak your settings or restart as necessary to be the only civ on your continent.

Me? I can only spare one to four hours a week these days for gaming. For a player of my modest ability that means playing at King level, Random Leaders and Random Maps to spice things up.

Thanks for the answer. I know the question was pretty broad, I was just trying to figure out really if there is an "standard" game setup that people refer too. Incidentally, since you mentioned, difficulty, what is a good difficulty setting to start out at?

Thanks for the answer. I know the question was pretty broad, I was just trying to figure out really if there is an "standard" game setup that people refer too. Incidentally, since you mentioned, difficulty, what is a good difficulty setting to start out at?


I apologize if my reply seemed in any way critical. As for a difficulty level to begin with, start out on Settler. If you beat the heck out of your opponents for a couple of games then move up. Again, speaking strictly for myself, I keep moving up until my win/loss ratio is 50/50. I do occasionally venture up to the highest levels but, again for me, it seems that the choices of how to play the game successfully at those levels become very narrow. I'd rather have fun than to follow the only way to win at any given level.

For difficulty level i personally think settler is too easy to begin with unless you're really new to the genre.

If you consider yourself to be a reasonable gamer and not totally new to strategy games, start of with warlord. It will test you a bit more from the start and will let you learn the game a lot faster. When steamrolling a difficulty level move up a level quickly.