Pangea Players

For some of you out there, you play pangea like I did, because it is the largest map. I have however discovered that this is not true. I always play with low tide to have more land, but this week I tried playing continents with two of them on the map. I'm playing with what I thought was the ideal amount of civs for pangea, being 9 total, and it seems there is actually more landmass with 2 continents.

Now maybe I had a very fortunate spot to start with (havimg not played continents in Civ4 I don't know), but it's infantry time now and I can still expand 3-4 more cities without crowding anybody (probably around 10 total cities at the moment).

Now that the shores have been determined, looking at the whole map it does appear that the land mass is actually greater. The only catch to this different mapping is that probably half of your cities will end up having some pretty good amount of shores, which isn't that true with pangea. That of course will likely mean more naval battles if that is irritating for you.

It also appears to me that I would have to drop in at least 2 more civs to get something approaching the sort of other civ city consistency I saw regularly with a 9 civ pangea, so the additional space doesn't seem to be a mirage.

One last thing, if anyone would like to comment on greater land mass elsewhere, please do, but in my own case I would find any comments on multiple continents (over 2) of most interest since I haven't tried those yet. It seems when I first bought civ4 that I tried the 2 continent game and it seemed quite small compared to pangea (but then again I think the maps were all around smaller - at least the games were shorter). I can't say that I expect 'more' than two continents will see a greater land mass still, but who knows?

I think this thread answers your question:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/reference/map_scripts_guide.php

There are some maptypes that will produce more land tiles than pangaea. I think the bigger difference is if you want to have to deal with intercontinental invasions

Starting further away from your neighbor is a bad thing....

Priah said:

Starting further away from your neighbor is a bad thing....

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That depends. For one thing, you get used to it, and the only disadvantage I can see is there are more barbs, but since I'm used to it, it doesn't matter. I get quite a bit of experience fighting barbs and it does give more to do each turn.

shyuhe said:

I think this thread answers your question:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/reference/map_scripts_guide.php

There are some maptypes that will produce more land tiles than pangaea. I think the bigger difference is if you want to have to deal with intercontinental invasions

Click to expand...

So how would those sort of invasions be any different? I'm used to them, although having been pangea, they were usually not by sea. I am watching my ports closely, and also with my rail network running unbroken to almost every city, the response from inner cities is considerable.

As far as I can gather (thanks for the link), it looks as though my theory here was incorrect, but then I look at the 3 continent sample, in particular, and I can't believe that the stats are correct. In any event the continents (particularly the 3 one) seem to have less water. They speak of 'plots' whatever that is. I assume that means tiles. I do note, however, that they specify the plots for the oceans, but not for the lands. So maybe on continents you have both more ocean and more land? It just doesn't seem like that to me though. I admitted earlier that my cities are more waterbound than usual, so though the amount of land on screenshots may look larger, it's somewhat irrelevant if the amount of land isn't necessarily what I'm looking for, but more the amount of hospitable places for cities. I have noticed very easily though, and I haven't seen the whole map, that I also have a great deal less hills than with pangea (every thing other than map size being the same). So while I may be able to get more out of every city in general in useful tiles, I am suffering from lack of hammers in comparison. Ability to raise more money, generally, with generally less production

The biggest map in the game is Terra. Essentially, it generates a Pangaea map and, in addition, the New World continent with two subcontinents.

Maps like Great Plains, Lakes and Highlands will give you more land plots (tiles). Pangaea is one continent surrounded by water, the three maps mentioned above have fewer water.

And intercontinental invasions are absolutely different - you're invading another continent. The biggest difference, of course, is that reinforcements probably take longer to arrive, and you can only send so much at a time (Galleons hold 3 units). And you won't be able to produce troops on the continent you're fighting on for a while. I always find these invasions very fun, which is why I like multi-continent maps, but your mileage may, of course, vary.

Previously, I was under the impression that another continent would, for one thing, mean having to make do at that place with making lower tech units, but in a recent game that wasn't so, though I could be wrong. Perhaps the land I crossed was actually still connected to my mainland and I didn't realize it, but it looked tome at the time that any port city would be able to build the same sort of units your main continent was producing.

I do expect the distance differences to matter to some degree, but some of those maps shown on that link show how closely bunched those continents are anyway, and therefore in a number of foreseeable cases not too much trouble.

Yes, I had thought about terra, but I'm guessing the land area is actually smaller, that is, the land area of the continent you start on compared to the duo continent setup. It is worth noting however that no matter how much land the other continent may possess, for a good chunk of the game it is virtually inaccessible, and even if it were not there's little point iun going there if there si still attractive prospects in the more immediate vicinity. I'm not sure I like terra for thos ereasons, but also becuase it's nothign but a barb land, which basically means the AI will likely beat me soundly to getting there, meaning of course that it's not much of a bonus for me. I'm not exactly the type that's is big on sending a fleet to some far off place if the current place does well enough. There is the slight prospect however of it might be a good place to foil the AI civs, since their defenses are likely to be more suspect

Charles 22 said:

I do expect the distance differences to matter to some degree, but some of those maps shown on that link show how closely bunched those continents are anyway, and therefore in a number of foreseeable cases not too much trouble.

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It totally depends on the map settings. Try a huge map, those distances will be very large.

Charles 22 said:

Yes, I had thought about terra, but I'm guessing the land area is actually smaller, that is, the land area of the continent you start on compared to the duo continent setup. It is worth noting however that no matter how much land the other continent may possess, for a good chunk of the game it is virtually inaccessible, and even if it were not there's little point iun going there if there si still attractive prospects in the more immediate vicinity. I'm not sure I like terra for thos ereasons, but also becuase it's nothign but a barb land, which basically means the AI will likely beat me soundly to getting there, meaning of course that it's not much of a bonus for me. I'm not exactly the type that's is big on sending a fleet to some far off place if the current place does well enough. There is the slight prospect however of it might be a good place to foil the AI civs, since their defenses are likely to be more suspect

Click to expand...

Actually the continent you start on in terra is fairly decent sized, about the same amount of land as a pangaea I think. As for the 'new world' continent that you discover in the mid-game, you're correct that it usually doesn't have any majorly significant effect upon the outcome of the game... pretty much always the winner will be decided from the battles and struggles that take place in the 'old world'. However, it's a nice little 'extra' thing that you can have fun with, setting up a new empire at a time when on other maps you've entirely settled out all the land already.

The barbs aren't bad at all, and in fact they can even be quite helpful, building nice fat size 8 or 10 cities which you can go and capture (once you get a decent force of Cavalry or somesuch). Initially it can be quite a struggle against the hordes when you first arrive, but they soon start to calm down as you develop more and more of a presence in the 'new world'. In one of my 'fun' marathon games on Noble level (I usually play much higher, so it isn't tricky for me), I managed to settle out the entire new world before the AI even started to get there. This was no small map either - a huge terra, the biggest there is, and it was about 30 cities before I'd fully claimed the new world. (Of course, in that game I was just having fun, I'd already claimed 1/2 of the old world and could have won long ago, but wanted to enjoy building up a new empire. I think ended up winning by domination just after 1500 AD, but I was also very close to the space race victory, and could have also won diplomatically since I basically owned 60% of the world's population.)

By the way, the AI actually tend to defend their new world cities reasonably well (it's just that reinforcements aren't so easy for them to send, but then again the AI rarely sends reinforcements in most situations anyway). Human players, on the other hand, often tend to defend their new world cities poorly (and this is something which you can take advantage of if you play multiplayer).