Continents, do you like them?

[BARBEERIAN]

I hate continents because I find it generates really boring maps. Archipelago [Snaky continents, low sea level] is waaaaaaaaaaay more interesting. Lots of naval and land choke points, as opposed to a couple of roundish blobs of land plopped in the ocean at regular intervals. B&S / M&S is also vastly superior.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Lots of naval and land choke points, as opposed to a couple of roundish blobs of land plopped in the ocean at regular intervals.

I agree. That's the reason I started to break away from custom continents. They are generally just blobs of land at the same locations every time depending on the #. I liked it for the idea that you could war early for land and then (if you wanted domin/conquest) amphibious invasions were required. Used to do high sea level 18 civ huge custom 6 continents for that.

But it's just too predictable for my tastes now.

 

[Virtual Alex]

Virtual Alex, weren't you a highly respected figure back in the days of the Civ 3 community? Your screen name seems awfully familiar.

Haha I wouldn't say HIGHLY respected. But I did play Civ3 on emperor and I was very active on the Civ3 forums. I wrote a "story" in haiku that might be somewhat memorable. But thanks for remembering me!

Fractal seems to make more interesting looking landmasses than continents. I don't like how roundish continents always end up.

I found my story! and I re-read it, I did a pretty good job. I should try this again in Civ4.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=176202&page=2

 

[mariogreymist]

I used to play continents a lot, and still do now and again. My new favorite is tectonics, followed closely by terra and fractal (with continents in a close 4th). Tectonics offers everything you like about continents, and provides more interesting geography (more mountains, deserts) for your dotmapping pleasure.

 

[Bostock]

Yeah... the most amusing insulting nickname I've heard for Conts is the "potatoes" map.

 

[Cjreynol]

I voted Eh, sometimes. I would suggest that you try terra. I think you may like it.
All the civs start on a single pangea, but there is another undiscovered continent.
by the time you get there it will be infested with barbarians - musketmen, riflemen
and the like depending on difficulty. Give it a shot!

Thanks for the recommendation! I'll have to try out a game on it sometime. And I'm not much of an early warmonger so I won't have any "small pangea" maps I'm thinking the next game I start will be Terra, so hopefully I'll see the map this evening if I can finish up my current game

 

[TheEnforcer]

I like continents. I play that as well Big and Small, Hemispheres, Fractal, Lakes, and Inland Sea for the Standard Civ IV map scripts. I love to use The Planet generator map script as you can get some REALLY big maps (I like to play 172x108 with 15-18 civs) with it and it has some really good options. and just downloaded the Full Of Resources and Perfect World scripts to see what they are like but have heard good things about both.

 

[PreLynMax]

98% of my game is Contients or any other earth styled land map. I don't like water maps because it dosen't feel like I'm on earth, or it dosen't feel like I can expand enough to be a threat. I usually demand earth type maps in multiplayer games, so you can say I like it...

 

[mechaerik]

My favorite map script is Hemispheres. It's like continents.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

I don't know, but I get some really wacky looking continents sometimes. I play either continents or fractal, and the continents can get pretty bizarre. Nothing potato like about them, IMO.

I do have to say that I think the resource allocation is better on fractal, though.

 

[Cjreynol]

I don't know, but I get some really wacky looking continents sometimes. I play either continents or fractal, and the continents can get pretty bizarre. Nothing potato like about them, IMO.

I do have to say that I think the resource allocation is better on fractal, though.

I agree, I can't say I have ever ended up with potato shapes continents. A lot of crescent moons and stuff though.
And the game I'm on now seems to have given each third of the continent (top, bottom, and middle) either all the horses, copper, or iron. So you may be right about that resource allocation

 

[phoenix_sprite]

I used to play exclusively on continents (and custom continents) but now I prefer Fractal, sometimes Terra and Archipelego, I haven't tried Big and Small or Shuffle yet! I should do that.

 

[Glassfan]

Continents when I'm in the WarMonger mood. Islands if I want to trade and do science.

 

[Powerslave]

I'm a long-time fan of Tectonics. For a couple years, it was the only map script that I used. I like Hemispheres and Tectonics best now, but I use pretty much all of the map scripts. I don't usually use Oasis or Great Plains, though. The resource allocation is a bit too static and boring.

I used to like Archipelago maps a lot when I played Civ 2 and 3, but maybe I got burned out on that.

 

[samthedagger]

I voted "like it sometimes" but I prefer "Big and Small" for that type of game.

 

[NKVD]

Virtual Alex, weren't you a highly respected figure back in the days of the Civ 3 community? Your screen name seems awfully familiar.

Fractal creates weirdly shaped, highly random maps.

For a quick visual reference as to how typical outputs from all map scripts can look, see this thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=246788&highlight=map+types

the thread I was looking for since i got the game!!!

 

[davelisowski]

i'll play continents with a toroidal setting. otherwise, i like archipelago or fractal. maybe an snaky or island sometimes.

 

[NihilZero]

Nobody has mentioned Global Highlands? It's quite interesting, try it sometime.

I play pretty much all of them, although I generally prefer not to know what I'm dealing with beforehand, so Shuffle or Random Map Script do the job for me. It makes it a lot easier and more predicatble if you know at the start what you're going to be dealing with of the three broad types of map (massive continent/pangaea, snaky continent/archipelago or multiple continents). I tried a Terra once, got lucky and drew Joao, who seems to be unstoppable on that map type because of his massive advantage on colonisation.

Currently playing a map script I have never tried before, Balanced. It gave me a very simple disc-like pangaea. Boring, but the AIs are coping quite well rather than struggling as they do on a lot of map types.

 

[Afro Dictator]

i perfer hemispheres it more unpredictable

 

[CarlGustaffa]

Addon script (Planet Generator), but it will generate landmasses similar to custom continents. Except looking a whole lot better. And highly configurable. Tried regular CC for 5 continents? Yuck