Any point in non-pangaea maps?

[Jim Bro]

i always play small continents.

 

[grandad1982]

I was playing a perfect world 3 (a mod map script in the browser) the other day. It has a great combination of continents/snaky continents/large islands/small islands. I was very fun to play and when I left the AIs to each other they did a fairly good job of warring it out. That was mainly to the continents with narrow chock points and connections. I did see Persia building a small navy but it was a pretty poor effort (they had an aircraft carrier with no planes for a many many turns).

I guess in answer to your general query. No AI suck at naval war but that doesn't mean other maps aren't fun.

 

[RD-BH]

Ring games are quite good, all civs seperated by a 2 - 4 tile wide isthmus (your choice), you can choose the type of terrain eg mostly forrest, jungle etc. Each civ starts with a similar size land mass, if you want to go conquering, the hardest choice you have to make is clockwise or anticlockwise for your start.

This.
I play random maps, but ring map is the cat's whiskers.

 

[kamex]

I'm not keen on Pangaea, due to the absence of any naval activity. So many techs give benefits to water based activities, and these techs are still essential whether there is water or not. So if there is no water to use, a feel as though a section of the game has been taken away.

Prefer Terra, as you get the best of two worlds: The old world for AI tactical issues, and the new world for exploration / fun!

 

[Spatzimaus]

As others have said, Continents and Small Continents maps are nice in that the game basically has two phases: the fight for control of your continent, and then the expansion from there. It makes it much harder to roll over everyone in the medieval eras, which means in the late-game you'll often have a seriously strong opponent on another continent.
Small Continents, and maps like Fractal, are nice in that they don't really try to keep things that even. You might see one civ on a decent-sized landmass while a slightly larger mass has three civs; this makes things a lot less predictable.

Pangaea is dangerous in the short term, because more civs have the ability to attack you with ease, but it's also easier for you to utterly dominate since there's no impediment to moving onto the next civ after you finish a previous one off.

 

[aimlessgun]

Pangea is an awful map that is only the standard because of bad AI, which really sucks Unless I'm playing a game with some objective beyond just having fun, I never play it.

 

[jojorah]

I always play random map type and random map size, I rarely, if ever, play Pangaea maps.

Well said i was scrolling down to say the same thing, also i put on a random civ aswell, it makes exploring a little more fun in the first 10 turns (if not archipelago)

 

[GrayingGamer]

I guess I have a different idea of fun from many of you. If the AI can't put up a fight, I feel like I'm just playing sim city or something, which isn't why I play this game.

 

[void_genesis]

I love playing on small continents but only if the sea level is set to low. It means oceans become narrow channels that adds extra diversity to your game-play. It seems to make it easier for the AI to path-find to opponents over water when the distances are shorter.

Ring games are great as well- it makes deciding when to hold a choke point and when to push forward really exciting, and naval forces still have an important support role.

 

[Becomedeath]

In the relatively few games I have played, it seems like civs just don't handle any amount of water very well. Archipelago maps are pretty much a joke, and continent maps just feel like 'pangaea lite.' Pangaea seems like the only map that is remotely competitive, militarily, and even then you're still dealing with the sub-par overland AI.

Does anyone play non-pangaea maps and not feel like they're basically cheating?

Actually I find pangea maps to be facerolling easy for military and science games. I think a lot of it depends on your play-style.