Better? More or less civs?

[Antilogic]

I like switching it up. On Earth maps, I like to load the 24 civ mod because it's more realistic. But lately, I've been playing with the standard 12 civs on a Huge map (shuffled) or standard with 6 civs. I've found the game much easier when everyone has more room to breathe, but less war-like in the more fun (well, IMO) Classical and Medieval eras. I was able to slide up a difficulty level by giving a little more breathing room in the early game.

Easier? I hate the pressure to colonize more lands when I could be building my army and infrastructure. For some reason, I think the map scripts in BtS create larger maps by default, because I seem to have much more room to expand than I did in Warlords. An extra Civ or two isn't cutting it.

If all the capitals are more than 20 tiles apart, I just get bored with the game. It takes me far too long to fill in the space, and the diplomacy only really gets interesting once you share borders, are sending people across with more regularity, and your empire is already established.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Well, with more land to develop and earlier, there is less of a need to colonize another continent. Even if you choose to, you can grant the colony independence and that pressure is gone altogether and you have a pretty powerful vassal.

 

[Ethric]

I like to add at least 2 civs over the standard for the map size as I find the AI performs better then. Since the AI's don't know how to stop as long as there's room to expand, no thought for economy, if they HAVE to stop because the space is taken by others they either consolidate their gains or go to war. Either way is more exciting than having them build a huge empire which quickly crumbles.

 

[Robcore]

All Hail Lt. Bob and his 34 civ (plus 6 colonies) mod. I played this on a Huge earth map, 34 civs, most with historial start locations, some thrown into austrailia, america and asia for balance and it worked really, really good. Europe had 9 civs starting off and battling straight away for the land they were clinging on too, it gave them all a great tech lead. The asian civs did well too, except Korans, but Khmers and Mongols had most of the power. Africa had 5 civs, who all did moderately well.

I was america and since there was only 8 civs on north and south america, we got really left behind in the tech race. Until I made them all my vassels, we were constantly under threat of invasion from the other civs.

I have started a new game now as Persia, I want to be in the thick of the action this time.

No late game lag issues for me (30 seconds maybe?), but im running 2GB RAM and good quality graphics card.

 

[Emperor2]

I like as many civs as possible to be included in the game and like to play anywhere from 8-12

 

[joza]

i love to play large pangea marathon with 15 other civs... it's really hard no to get killed later on without a proper start, but usually thanks to close proximity to others you will be able to kill one civ with the first warrior as they leave their capitals undefended and later settle on the nice spot
ps. i'm talkin prince here, i think on monarch you won't see an undefended capital...

 

[Morgawr]

Yeah I like large maps with 14 players. Empires are still about the same size as on normal (on average), so it's not overly large and tedious, but there's more scope for trade and more complex diplomacy and stuff. Plus it's more likely an AI will dominate their near neighbours and grow into a rival powerhouse.

What type of map do you play? I find it very hard to play 14 civs on large Hemispheres map even on low sea level. Capitals are almost always extremely close together and I meet my neighbor on turn 3.

 

[Dominico]

I play with the max on a normal sized map which is 6 i think. Either 6 or 7.

I find it to be the perfect amount too and great fun I always feel a sense of loss when one of them dies off early on lol. Its like playing a game with your friends and then one has to sit out the whole game and watch tv or something.

 

[Antilogic]

For me, the early age is more of a proving ground...on a normal map, there will be 8 or 9 or so civilizations, but two will get knocked out completely, and typically there will be 6 remaining. Then, beyond the Middle Ages, you have the "natural" (Firaxian may be more appropriate) number for diplomacy and warfare, but you have a couple of larger powers from the conquest of the early two.

 

[SprudL]

I can't ever have enough civs in my games. Currently I'm playing with 34 civs on a fractal, low sea-level FX-Mammoth map (16,000 tiles), about 50% larger than the stock huge maps.

What kind of machine do you need to run that?

 

[Psyringe]

What kind of machine do you need to run that?

I'm running it on this one:

CPU: Athlon64 3500+ (Venice)
Video: nVidia 7600 GT, 256 MB
RAM: 1 GB
OS: Windows 2000 SP 4

It works quite well, although - as I said - I'm a slow player anyways, long inter-turn times don't bother me much as I just use them to make plans. I'm right before the modern era now (researching Industrialization), and still play with all settings maxed. There is some lag now sometimes when a leader contacts me, the screen is frozen for some seconds before the leaderhead starts moving. The RAM is the bottleneck in this case, adding another GB would solve that issue. The cheaper solution is to simple reduce the graphic detail (or even use a static leaderhead mod), but so far the lag hasn't annoyed me enough to do so.

I do take care to reboot before I play and run nothing in the background. Amazingly, the game is still very stable when (for example) alt-tabbing out of it, starting a browser, typing this post, closing Opera, and switching back to the game. Other games are *much* less stable in that regard.

One caveat: Reloads from within a running game do not work, the game crashes with a memory allocation error. People who reload frequently might find that very annoying. Personally, it doesn't bother me because loading the game from the main menu works perfectly, and I almost never reload a turn.

 

[Imrahil91]

I like it with as many civs as possible. More important and world wars, wonder race, important to have religions and friends etc. I also like to play on small maps, so much to defend and manage with many cities, especially in late game.
I played a tiny pangea map with 18 civs today Only one city per civ without war (except for Alexander that had space to build two more..) Luckily I had copper near my capital, so I conquered 20% of the land area and killed 4 civs early in the game, so I was superior in production. I didn't war before I build an army of riflemen and cannons to take out the rest. Just before I won a domination victory, I became a religious leader and won diplomatic (~77/90 votes from apolistic castle) it was monarch difficulty with aggressive AI.

 

[KMadCandy]

Ive started playing games with 17 civs (including myself) so im able to build colonies if i want. I've never seen the AI building colonies, and i dont expect them to be doing so either.

this post is a couple weeks old but i've definitely seen them make colonies! i use patch 3.02, not 3.03.

hmmz, i later started using Solver's unofficial patch, maybe i've only seen it after i installed that...

 

[alvan]

I can't ever have enough civs in my games. Currently I'm playing with 34 civs on a fractal, low sea-level FX-Mammoth map (16,000 tiles), about 50% larger than the stock huge maps.

Having so many civs means that the world isn't centered around me. There may arise powerful contenders who vassalize several other civs. There may emerge a peaceful, cooperative tech club with excessive research while I'm waging wars. There may be whole continents with backwards civilizations that can be conquered. There may be an industrial powerhouse on the other side of this more-than-huge world, giving me the challenge to somehow stop it from building a spaceship. There may arise blocks of civs with a religion other than BudHindJewism. There may be whole world wars with dozens of civs involved.

I always try to maximize the number of civs in my games.

Mmm.. I like! How do I get 34 civs? Some mod?

Fractal+18civs+low sea = But 34 civs (all civs?) that would be even sweeter!

 

[Psyringe]

Mmm.. I like! How do I get 34 civs? Some mod?

Fractal+18civs+low sea = But 34 civs (all civs?) that would be even sweeter!

Get FexFX Bigger-etc. mod for map size and game speed, and Lt. Bobs unlocked dll for playing with 34 civs (+6 possible colonies). No time topost links right now (sorry), but should be easy to find.