how many extra Civs do you guys add on a large map? (if any)

The last Pangea game I play, on Large, there was no war until past the renissance era. Way too peaceful.

No way for me anyway, Genghis Khan was north of me so he had multiple Civ's DoW'ing on him. I would like my game to be not so peaceful, for each Civ's not to have loads of room to expand. How many more Civ's should I add?

What I do for large maps when I want war:
Add 4-5 civs, make at least 3-4 civs warmonger civs, my go-tos are Attila, Genghis, Monty, Cathy, Lizzy, & Shaka
It leads to war spreading like the plague…

I add at least 50% more Civs than the default number for that size map, and decrease the number of City-States by about 25% - 50% as well (so at least 15 Civs on a Large size map, and between 10 and 15 City-States). Of course, if your computer can handle it, you really ought to just play with 22 Civs...
Also, if you're looking for more violence, you may want to consider seeding in some of the more hostile AIs to give yourself a challenge.

Do you think decreasing the number of city states unbalances the game a bit? Less city states makes the game harder for Civ's like Siam, Alexander who get special bonuses with city states.

On my last large map game, I put it all the way to 22 civs. This was on a map where about 60% of the tiles were land tiles (instead of the typical 30-40%), so there was enough room for everyone to have a few cities. I bumped up the number of city-states a bit as well.

I also hand-picked 11 of the civs. France, the Huns, the Zulus, Greece, etc.

It was much less peaceful, which was my goal. The "lovefest-until-Ideologies" games get really old, really quick.

On large, 13/26 I believe gives the same ratio of civs per #map tiles. I like to go with something like 16/16 though. I don't play larger maps often, but when I do the larger number of CS's feel a bit unbalanced. They are nearly always in favor of the human player so it essentially just gives more food, faith, and culture than would normally be available on a standard map.

Also, additional Civs instead of CS's is more entertaining for gameplay.

I add as many as the game will allow. Large maps are indeed boring when you have just a few Civs on them.

Leathaface said:

Do you think decreasing the number of city states unbalances the game a bit? Less city states makes the game harder for Civ's like Siam, Alexander who get special bonuses with city states.

Click to expand...

I think that is a valid point. On the other hand, the CS dependent civs are handicapped if they have competition with each other e.g. if Alex, Rammy, Rico and MT are all in the game. So perhaps random luck of the draw can be just as harmful.

I tend to add two civs to large maps and three civs to huge maps. I think it is balanced, while also adding a bit of pressure to stimulate war.

I also tend to DoW early. I am not sure if it encourages other civs to act more aggressively, but I like to think it breaks up the fireside sing-along of Kumbaya.