Anyone else really like Seven Seas?

Agreed with all the people saying there's too much land and water level should be adjustable. Played a game where I settled about 20 cities and had room for probably 10 more... And this was multiplayer, not AI, so it wasn't just the computer bring silly.
 
I don’t understand why people complain that there’s too much land. It’s called Seven Seas not Seven Oceans. If you were to make a map of the area encompassing the Black, Caspian, and (old) Aral seas, there would be much more land than water.

If it were called Seven Oceans, I would expect more water with less land (continents) breaking it up.

What?

The name Seven Seas originates from the water bodies that essentially comprised ancient civilizations' universe (at the time), namely the Mediterranean, Red, Black, Adriatic and Caspian Seas as well as the Persian and Arab Gulfs.

Spoiler :






As far as I've seen, there's rarely ever any "Mediterraneans". If this were a seven seas map, Greece and Italy would just be connected to Africa.
Just like 20% more water and a little more connections would go a long way, and that can and should be achieved with a "high sea level" option which is confusingly absent.
 
Last edited:
What?

The name Seven Seas originates from the water bodies that essentially comprised ancient civilizations' universe (at the time), namely the Mediterranean, Red, Black, Adriatic and Caspian Seas as well as the Persian and Arab Gulfs.

Spoiler :






As far as I've seen, there's rarely ever any "Mediterraneans". If this were a seven seas map, Greece and Italy would just be connected to Africa.
Just like 20% more water and a little more connections would go a long way, and that can and should be achieved with a "high sea level" option which is confusingly absent.

In my experience there actually usually is one pretty large sea connecting most of the civs, and then a couple of 10-15 tile mini seas
 
I don't know.I mean I played lately only on small continents standard size with 10 players .But when I saw this thread I changed to seven sees and was absolutely dominating the game without problem while this definetly was not the case on small continents.Maybe I just had a great start location or something.
 
I was really surprised when I saw it was a cylinder shaped map. I had been playing a lot of inland seas maps so I had forgotten, I guess.
I do think that the water level was a bit low, so I'll probably adopt the suggestions of some of the posters above next time I try this map type.
 
I would definitely like to see more water. I may have to try some of the mods. When I tried it there was way too much room to expand...
 
Seven Seas is my favorite map and now my default. Literally came to these boards to make a thread on this but found this. On the same page as you OP.

I love playing coastal but, when playing a coastal civ, I don't like getting hamstrung by not having enough land on a true ocean map, whereas I don't like being boxed in with little coast or too many city states (don't like taking them over) on land-heavy maps.

So Seven Seas is the perfect middle ground for me, though a sort of "Four Oceans" map, as other here have alluded to, would be intriguing
 
By the way, I also think Small Continents is pretty good. I think most of the people here saying Seven Seas is too dry would like it. I'm more into Seven Seas though
 
Do you have a link?

Sure: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1780010944. Note that this does not only increase sea level, it also adds more lakes, since these can make it more likely that there is some really cool Canal options.

Also note that there is still a lot of land. I ended up adding two more civs compared to the screenshot. It is not really viable to add more sea since many maps will then turn into Fractal / small continents instead of being individual seas.

There is comparison shots using my (as of writing) current map and game seed (1983178027, large).I'm having a blast, building navies and Canals. I have also added an annotated version. Red numbers is canal spots - canal 2 uses a natural wonder which does not show as a lake in the minimap. Yellow numbers are for the seas.
without mod.jpg

with mod.jpg

with mod annotated.jpg

I played as Dark red, and actually made a Canal "network" just above my capital to make a shortcut from one end of Sea 1 to the other using the lakes. This is not shown on the annotated screenshot.

Civs by sea list:
  • Sea 1: Dark red, Orange, Purple, Dark teal.
  • Sea 2: Purple, Teal, Light purple, Pink, Dark blue.
  • Sea 3: Orange, Teal, Dark blue.
  • Sea 4: -
  • Sea 5: Red, Dark blue.
  • Sea 6: Green, Red.
  • Sea 7: Dark teal, Pink (maybe Red)
Note that all except Sea 6 can be connected easily using canals.

In comparison to the same setup but without the mod:
  • Sea 4 and 7 cant be connected to the rest
  • Sea 5 and 3 is tricky to connect
  • Sea 2 and 3 cant be connected
  • Sea 1 and 3 is cut in half until the ice melt
Summed up, Sea 4, 5, 6 and 7 is pretty much just isolated lakes with very little significance, while sea 1-3 is still important but with less interesting geography and with only the possiblity to connect sea 1 and 2 (Panama Canal not withstanding).
 
Last edited:
Could people post more pics of the full map on Seven seas? I thought it was just lots of ocean and few small isle?
 
Could people post more pics of the full map on Seven seas? I thought it was just lots of ocean and few small isle?
Here's one I created. Description and map seeds at the bottom of the image. The Maori were floating around in the ocean but they started roughly where I put their Civ name.
My City States don't use black as a background colour, and my Science CS's are green.

 
Could people post more pics of the full map on Seven seas? I thought it was just lots of ocean and few small isle?

Here's another one. Same settings, different seeds.

 
I don’t understand why people complain that there’s too much land. It’s called Seven Seas not Seven Oceans.
Well, because it's called Seven Seas, not Gigantic Land Mass with Occasional Bodies of Water Here and There.

The seas should be the stars, not an ancillary component. Civ's with naval focus should get to really shine. Unlocking canals should be a major milestone for a civ. Sometimes these conditions are met by the map loadout, sometimes it's a big pangea with pointless seas that don't extend very far and can't be joined by canals.

But since they do seem to afford more breathing room between civ's, I do find it refreshing all the same even if the name is less apt.
 
I do agree the bodies of water should be larger, but I also agree that they (mostly) shouldn't be interconnected, shaglio has a point that it isn't called seven oceans.
But again, larger seas, or at least thinner strips of land between the seas here and there to make canals more useful (although I never understood the attractiveness of canals, but I'm not a navy man).

One thing that I do agree on, and which is easily mitigated, is that it's A LOT of land, I think it's more than pangaea.
I've noticed that adding 2 more civs (on a large map) evens it out.

But it's definitely my new favorite map (with the 2 extra civs).
 
I've been playing it pretty exclusively since the patch. I'll have to try adding more water as you guys have suggested.
 
"Sailing the seven seas" is an ancient and familiar phrase. It's what pirates did in romantic tales. "Sailing the seven oceans" is not. So "seven seas" it has to be. Not oceans.
 
The whole "Seven Seas not Seven Oceans" thing is borderline obtuse literalism.

Interconnection has nothing to do with whether they're seas or oceans.

At the end of the day, it's about what makes for interesting gameplay. Having bodies of water that encourage using navy and canals is more interesting than bodies of water where ships have nowhere to go.
 
It seems like YnAMP is working with the latest patch. The default setting allows for a lot more polar passages, which connects water even more. There's nothing like playing Kupe on an Enormous map, and just sailing Scouts everywhere, if you enjoy exploration like I do.
 
Outside of the large map of Australia in Civ V, this is my favourite. I haven't played on any other map for the last few weeks.
 
Top Bottom