1. How are we on canals? 2. Custom map sizes?

1. I still have Civ 4, because I decided not to buy new games until I've completed all that I already have. Some games I haven't even opened yet! But I still wonder how we're doing on canals. Do we finally have them on Civ 5, expansion packs and later games? I wouldn't mind paying 500 gold per tile to build a megacanal across a continent. If we do have canals, how do we get them to work? And what are the longest canals you've seen?

2. Can we customize map sizes on Civ 5, expansions, BE, and etc.? I'd like a 1024x1024 map. (If you say that's too small, (is it?) then a 3072x3072 map.) What is gameplay like on humongous maps? Do you still run out of space? And the 512-city limit did NOT come back, did it? (That was the downfall of Civ 3 for me. The 512-city limit was INFURIATING.)

lol, no, no built in canal features yet.

Though their are mods like IGE that let you edit tiles ingame. Maybe you could donate 500 gold to an AI every time you do it!

Yes you can make custom maps though I think there is a max dimension though I don't know what that is. I don't make maps.

danaphanous said:

lol, no, no built in canal features yet.

Click to expand...

Not even in the expansions?

I've been needing canals since my first Civ game (Civ 2). Why do the devs have SUCH an aversion to making canals a feature in their games?

And do the devs ever read these forums? We need to petition them to add canals in a patch.

Max map size is like 180x100 tiles (huge terra map). Those are approximate numbers. Anything approaching this size of map gets pretty heavy in terms of turn-processing in the late-game. The processing-time issues to one side, I think you'll find a map that approaches filling a huge terra sized map full of land instead of water tiles will be quite busy enough for you to handle.

Not sure if the custom dll's used to allow the 43 major civs in one game (YNAEMP and the reddit AI Battle Royale) are using larger maps than that or not. But the scale of civ 5 is on the order of 200x200 and not anything like 1000x1000.

And in order for a human to get anywhere close to being able to fill even a large¹ map with cities requires either some pretty crazy mods to address the Civ5 happiness limits, or a lot of very carefully-paced empire-building. And even then this will generally result in 30-odd tiny little cities that don't accomplish a whole lot in terms of gains to your empire. The simple reality is that in Civ5 tall is really the one true religion for empire-building. What passes for 'wide' play in Civ5 would be generally considered a nice start on a tall Civ4 empire.

Canals are still 'Nope!' from Firaxis/2k. No matter how much we players beg and cry for it, it never gets implimented into the standard game. Beyond Earth is a completely different game from Civ5, though BE did borrow the hex-tile system and a few other things as a 'startingpoint'.

¹"large" is one size down from huge:
And like in Civ4, the Terra Maps are a bit larger than usual

the only game in the series that let you change the terrain dramatically (like land to water and water to land) that I remember was the old Alpha Centauri game. It came with one of the advanced techs later if I recall. That game was brilliant. BE would have been far better if they'd taken more inspiration from it. In my opinion it's one of the best games in the franchise.