Map types and AI behaviour

[blackcatatonic]

Apologies if there's already a thread on this.

Until recently I only ever played on Continents/Continents Plus/Archipelago/Small Continents type maps, always on Standard size (my poor little laptop chokes late-game if the map is any bigger). I was getting bored, so decided to diversify a little by trying some different map types, and I've noticed that, unsurprisingly, the behaviour of the AI is strongly affected by the type of map it finds itself on. I've only tried one or two others, but so far:

Great Plains: dogpile. Every time. It's not the individual AIs, either; on three different maps with the same conditions (Mongolia, Emperor, Standard, 7 AIs), I was declared on by 3 different Civs within the first 100 turns. Crazy! The AI on this map also seems to really, really hate you for 'overexpanding'. That last point is common to other 'flat earth' map types I've played (Lakes, Inland Sea) but the dogpile thing seems, unless I was really unlucky, to be particular to Great Plains.

Highlands: despite more hills = more production, everything seems to happen more slowly. I'm still in the middle of this game, so I'm waiting to see how it pans out, but wonders aren't getting built as early as I'd expect on Emperor, nor is the AI quite as aggressive as usual - Rammy, my nearest neighbour, waited until Medieval to DoW. My guess is the hills and mountain chains are just slowing the AI down more than helping them. The Greeks seem to love it, though - Alexander is expanding like a boss; it's turn 100andsomething and he has 10-12 cities already, all built himself.

Map size: this one isn't my observation, as I can't handle big maps on my computer, but it was pointed out to me by someone who has recently started playing Large maps that the AI is more aggressive than usual, despite there being more space in which to expand. Of course, it also expands faster as well. I believe this is on King difficulty. I've never played a smaller map type than Standard except for an OCC, which was a special case anyway.

I'm sure much of what I've said will be obvious to players with more experience of these map types than I have, but I thought it was interesting to note how the AI responds to different conditions. Are there any other correlations between AI behaviour and map type that other people have noticed? And does any of the above strike you as weird/wrong/(un)lucky?

[strijder20]

Highlands: despite more hills = more production, everything seems to happen more slowly. I'm still in the middle of this game, so I'm waiting to see how it pans out, but wonders aren't getting built as early as I'd expect on Emperor, nor is the AI quite as aggressive as usual - Rammy, my nearest neighbour, waited until Medieval to DoW. My guess is the hills and mountain chains are just slowing the AI down more than helping them. The Greeks seem to love it, though - Alexander is expanding like a boss; it's turn 100andsomething and he has 10-12 cities already, all built himself.

How funny, I've played exactly one highlands game, and Alexander was expanding tremendously there too.

[The_Quasar]

I've found that although Alex tends to expand greatly in most map types, he often over-expands, and ends up with no happiness and no gold... when that happens, the AI doesn't know what to do, and he is wide open for the taking. This has happened with me several times now.