Cooking Maps - Your Fav's

[Brimstone]

What I'm looking for here are ideas to cook maps to make them more fun to play, or more interesting anyway. I find most of the standard maps lacking, and plus maps are the same, just with the CS's move to the edges. Completely not worth buying btw, but that's a different rant.

I find a great many of the maps types just giant blobs with very few interesting features or choke points. I mostly play Domination, with a fall back of a Science victory if I find a nut too tedious to crack. Culture, Time & Diplomatic victories are fun....once.

For a while, I found that small continents, with low sea-level worked out pretty good, and got the idea from watching one of the Youtube peeps videos' a year ago or so. But I find that the map doesn't always generate in an interesting way, and sometimes just end up with the 'continents' map model, of two big blobs next to each other.

So, here is what I hit upon a few weeks ago.

Standard Size (I would prefer large/huge, but we all know how that plays out on Civ V)
Ice Age (I know, sounds horrible)
Narrow Continents
Raging Barbs
CS's dropped to about 5 or 6 on Standard Size, or none! (completely un-fun mechanic and mostly worthless, but again, that's a different rant)
AI's up by 2 or 3 to cover lost ground to less CS's

That's it. Looks simple, but it creates some very 'strategic' maps. Loads of choke points, ocean/seas with maybe one only one entrance, or maybe none (landlocked by ice). Hard scrabble land, very few 'lush' grasslands, but lots of hills and mining opportunities.

Short portages during war and 'island' hoping. Large portions of straight up ice that will continually need to be barb swept. Also puts good pressure on AI's and all the free units they get. Helps keep them from running away by mass expansion; they will have to do it the hard way by conquering.

I've attached my last game a few turns before win as an example. This map was slightly different in that it mostly worked out as a Pangaea, but that is not typical. It's also not uncommon for an AI to be conquered in the ancient era by another AI like France did to umm, I forget, the guy next to him before I had my 2nd city up, that I used to block France with. Makes for very exciting Ancient era fights, and land grabbing.

Anyway, that's what I have found as fun as a conquering bastard. How do you cook your maps for fun?

Specifics please, examples a plus. No tiny island/Polynesia suggestions, I'm not cooking for ease.

 

[Pouakai]

I normally play Huge Fractal, but otherwise it's Continents, High Sea Level, Hot, Wet and 3 Billion Years old. This normally results in lots of jungles and Chokepoints, which I absolutely love

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

i havent tried this, but has anyone tried something like an Indian Nations kind of setup?

Small or Standard, pangaea, hot, wet, raging barbarians, all Iroquois Civs. victory conditions up to you, but the challenge would certainly be non-domination.

its on my to-do list.

 

[joncnunn]

For an ocean colonization game:

Large map
Tiny Islands
Cut number of City states in half
Remove two major AIs

For a choke point game with lots of resources:
Large map
Ring
2 tile connections
Plains
keep the default number of opponents
(This one locks the city states to 5 all on islands in the middle of the map)

 

[Lay_Lay]

Cooking it to make it easier, no doubt.
The AI doesn't understand how dangerous the choke point is.
Somewhere between Civ3 and now, we lost our ability to easily create maps. I loves me a good choke map.

 

[NotSure]

I often do wet and cold because I like forests better than jungle and tundra better than desert. I prefer Pangaea because I want to meet the other AI fast but my last 3 Pangaea games have all had a 1-tile land bridge that makes the game play more or less like a continents map.

Ice Age is a fun map, and trimming down the city states is a great idea for that map (and every other small map).

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

geez, i just read my post. "hot, wet, raging barbarians" sounds ... just awful.

 

[Derpy Hooves]

Since I had my old videocard replaced by a 3 fan chrome behemoth I've been upping the map sizes and never looked back, since a few months I've pretty much only been playing

Earth
Huge
12 Civ's
12-18 CS
Abundant resources
No Diplo or Time VC
Quick Combat
Occasionally disabled start bias, if for instance I play Harun and don't feel like spawning in a desert
Epic or Standard speed

I just find the earth map to be able to create a lot of engaging situations, there are some very interesting chokes, a lot of different climates and because of the continents you can have those wonderful runaway civ's give the lategame some added drama.
If I spawn on Eurasia or Africa I'll tend to go balls out warmonger, if your on America on the other hand you can try to do some interesting turtle things and get a massive tech or culture lead to crush the old continent civ's with when the time is right.
Also, I just find the vibe of actually playing on earth to give the best immersion, and very useful for reference points.

Only bad part is that in the 300+ turns range the waiting time between them will be relatively high, but once I tried playing with 12 civ's I havn't been able to go back.

 

[The_Quasar]

For an ocean colonization game:

For a choke point game with lots of resources:
Large map
Ring
2 tile connections
Plains
keep the default number of opponents
(This one locks the city states to 5 all on islands in the middle of the map)

That sounds like a lot of fun, I've found the ring map to be very versatile, almost invariably giving a good game, it's probably worth the DLC cost on it's own. There is some interesting maps there, the four corners map (is that the name?) can be very interesting too...

 

[joncnunn]

There is some interesting maps there, the four corners map (is that the name?) can be very interesting too...

I think that's the name; but I haven't gotten to that one yet.

 

[Haig]

Just started a game with Brimstone's suggestet setup, random Civ gave me Persia.
I'll see how it goes.

My fave is simply Continents, or Continents with low sealevel, or Small continents with low sealevel.
I like the mixture of big and small landmasses.

Also I love to play the New World scenario, nice imperialistic landgrabbing, allying and backstabbint as an European empire.