I'm a long time civ 4 player, and I really loved the terra maps and played them a whole bunch in the previous incarnation. However, no matter how hard I try, it doesn't seem as fulfilling playing terra maps with this version. I was using large size, epic speed, as that seemed a good pairing of landmass and advancement. However, after watching a few games where war mongers would take over the whole world and basically run away with the game, I decided to try it on large map size, standard speed. That way if someone loses their army in a war they won't be steamrolled by all the other civs who notice their low power score as easily.
There are a few problems I have with the terra map and how the AI plays it. First is that many AI's play with small empires for a very long time. The old world is not even close to being filled up until the industrial era on a few games where I played that far. It would seem to me that the AI likes to play small empires most of the time regardless of the mapsize so they can get many social polices. In Civ 4 the old world would be pretty much filled up with cities often by the middle of the game just when optics and astronomy were being pursued.
The second problem is there are a lot of barbarians in the new world, and the cost to your empire in safeguarding them from barbarians and the hit to your social policy advancement is pretty steep. Given the low growth and build rate of cities, any city founded in the new world is going to take forever to get all of the buildings set up to make it viable.
It would seem the AI likes to run settlers halfway across the map sometimes to try and nab a different region's luxury resource. This happened sometimes in Civ 4, but not too often as the borders expanded a lot quicker in that game so territories could be well established pretty easily. On one game I started up, Bismark was about 20 hexes from my capitol. I had horse, silver and gem in my capitol for resources. My borders expanded first to the horse and was working on the silver in the next 15 turns. Just when my first settler is almost done all of the sudden Bismark plops his 2nd city right next to my two lux resources, nabbing them before I could get them (sure I could have bought the tiles I suppose). I didn't feel like a warrior rush on him though so I just rolled the dice again on a different game.
After about a week I think I finally got the hang of the diplomacy and not to crowd my neighbor with cities unless I plan on having some wars. It seems that even if you have been friendly with a civ for a very long time as soon as you two share a border all deals fall through and soon threats and war are soon to follow no matter who the leader is (Ghandi?? really?).
In short, it plays a lot less than a world builder and a lot more like a war game, which is okay I guess. I just miss having allies that I could develop good relations with without having them stab me in the back as soon as our cities start getting too close. Its far too easy to just steamroll the old world with an army than it is to worry about setting up new colonies, and of the few times I have fully explored the new world there are maybe 2-3 good sites that have luxury resources I lack and the rest is just filler to boost your econ and slow down your social agendas.
Just a rant about the script, any other Terra map players feel the same of different?
There are a few problems I have with the terra map and how the AI plays it. First is that many AI's play with small empires for a very long time. The old world is not even close to being filled up until the industrial era on a few games where I played that far. It would seem to me that the AI likes to play small empires most of the time regardless of the mapsize so they can get many social polices. In Civ 4 the old world would be pretty much filled up with cities often by the middle of the game just when optics and astronomy were being pursued.
The second problem is there are a lot of barbarians in the new world, and the cost to your empire in safeguarding them from barbarians and the hit to your social policy advancement is pretty steep. Given the low growth and build rate of cities, any city founded in the new world is going to take forever to get all of the buildings set up to make it viable.
It would seem the AI likes to run settlers halfway across the map sometimes to try and nab a different region's luxury resource. This happened sometimes in Civ 4, but not too often as the borders expanded a lot quicker in that game so territories could be well established pretty easily. On one game I started up, Bismark was about 20 hexes from my capitol. I had horse, silver and gem in my capitol for resources. My borders expanded first to the horse and was working on the silver in the next 15 turns. Just when my first settler is almost done all of the sudden Bismark plops his 2nd city right next to my two lux resources, nabbing them before I could get them (sure I could have bought the tiles I suppose). I didn't feel like a warrior rush on him though so I just rolled the dice again on a different game.
After about a week I think I finally got the hang of the diplomacy and not to crowd my neighbor with cities unless I plan on having some wars. It seems that even if you have been friendly with a civ for a very long time as soon as you two share a border all deals fall through and soon threats and war are soon to follow no matter who the leader is (Ghandi?? really?).
In short, it plays a lot less than a world builder and a lot more like a war game, which is okay I guess. I just miss having allies that I could develop good relations with without having them stab me in the back as soon as our cities start getting too close. Its far too easy to just steamroll the old world with an army than it is to worry about setting up new colonies, and of the few times I have fully explored the new world there are maybe 2-3 good sites that have luxury resources I lack and the rest is just filler to boost your econ and slow down your social agendas.
Just a rant about the script, any other Terra map players feel the same of different?
