Small maps

Hey all,

Started a game as the Maya, Immortal, Pangea, small map (6 AIs ), standard speed. Decided to go peaceful and focused on tech and culture. I spawned on a peninsula and my closest neighbors were Alexander and Monty. I managed to avoid war for pretty much all the game (diplo, getting Alex to DOW other civs). I had a very small army until Freedom's foreign legions. Then Monty and Alex dog piled me. Alex had a lot of the city states so he voted in world ideology of autocracy, embargoed the Maya (me!!) and kept warring.

Question: does a small map make things more difficult to stop an AI like this? I mean, I thought a smaller map would make for a quicker game, but I found I ran out of options and allies quickly. Am I right? I figured less AIs meant less competition for wonders and that was the case as on immortal I got all the key culture wonders. If I don't get DOWed I win easily. I built the manhattan project to nuke Alex into peace but there was no uranium on the map except for, of course, in Greece's territory and the CS he owned.

Man I am frustrated right now. I really hate Alex. He seems to be popping up in all my games lately.

Smaller maps make domination games faster, but not other game types. You get fewer allies, and closer neighbors, so war is definitely something you have to watch for. For Alex to be content with his land is being pretty optimistic. From my experience, he will always try to expand until he can't, then he just wars. He's also a pain in the butt before he wars, because it's extremely hard to gain CS allies with him around. Many people feel the best strategy when dealing with Alex, is simply to eliminate him early.

It is also a very good idea to always build some army if you have neighbors near by. They will almost always look towards your land after they run out of room to expand, and if your army looks weak, they pounce.

Small maps severely limit the options you have. Less trading partners, less opponents to bribe into war with each other, less Civs to ally against a warmonger, less cities to conquer - less of everything.

Those maps are okay for warmonger-games, but I'd avoid them if you want to play a normal game - especially in bnw, where trading and diplomacy are so much more important.

Known effects:

1. Science is actually cheaper compared to standard. (On small and below, the Science modifier is 100 while on standard it is 110)

2. Default number of major opponents is 6 compared to 8 -> Somewhat easier to build World Wonders, fewer RA partners

3. Max number of religions is 4 compared to 5. (2/3rds of civs will found religions instead of 5/8ths) -> so on average slightly easier to found one, countered by more competition to spread your religion to other lands.

4. Somewhat closer neighbors but perhaps not as much as you might think since there are two fewer AIs and 4 fewer city states.

5. Diplomatic victory: The fall patch only increased the requirement by 1 compared to pre-patch as opposed to standard map size where the requirement for diplomatic victory was increased by 3.

6. One less natural wonder.

7. "EstimatedNumCities" is 39 on Small instead of 52 that's on standard, but I don't know what impact that has.

8. "FogTilesPerBarbarianCamp" is 23 on Small instead of 27 that's on standard; this basically means that if you had the same number of tiles within fog of war on a Small Map that you do on a standard size map, that there would be a few more barb camps on the Small map.

Thanks for the good info. I apologize if my post was a rant as well. Nothing worst than everything blowing up in your face after 75% of the game up to that point went without a hitch.

I play small maps a lot (also thought they would be quicker, gonna try more standard). I don't think the issue that you have in your game is map size. When you have Alexander and Monte as neighbors, you are rolling the dice by having a small military. Keep an eye on the demographics and make sure you are not falling too far behind. If you do, they will attack.