Coward with new map types...

[Nestorius]

Only played Great Plains once, but noticed:
1. The Civ in the middle of the map has it really tough.
2. The Civ's on the other end of the map from you, whom you ally with to protect yourself from immediate neighbors, get very powerful near the end of the game.

One neat thing I noticed on the map was that the Eastern side was forested grasslands with a long N/S river and a bay to the SE, like the Mississipi region, while the Western side ended with deserts and mountains, like the Rockies.

 

[sydhe]

I would think the civilizations in the corners would have the advantage in Great Plains and Inland Sea scenarios because they would have smaller defensive needs. Or are there ice caps there?

 

[uncarved block]

Just a few notes from someone who's played the odder maps in SP:
Hub and Ring can be a lot of fun if you don't want early war. Hub especially, since you're guaranteed a starting spot of your own; in order to get to the AI starting cities, you'd have to traverse well over a third of the map length, if not well over half. Your army might turn obsolete halfway there! In fact, the Hub map seems to inspire peaceful play-- I'm just wrapping up a game with Aggressive AIs turned on, and if there's been more than one war I'll be surprised. Computers don't like ships, who'da thunk it?
The Balanced map is a Pangaea map that's actually a lot harder. Sure, you've got all the resources at hand-- but so does each of the AIs. No weak neighbors without Copper to blitz= less chance to get strong early.
Tilted Axis messed with my head too much, man.
Mirror seems like something you'd only want to do MP, so I haven't. Maze may well be my next map, though the restrictiveness may make me abandon it in the midgame.
Mongols and Oasis maps don't mix!
sydhe, the great thing about the Inland Sea map is that it simplifies diplomacy a lot; you can keep one neighbor happy, war with the other, and disregard most of the rest of the AI until later.

 

[Entrinzikyl]

I really like Highlands maps with a good amount of lakes. The lakes + mountain ranges create a lot of choke points and the terrain becomes a much bigger factor during war. And partly because of this, and the fact that the map doesn't wrap, I don't meet some civs until much later than I would on a pangea.

 

[Pantastic]

Civs in the middle have it great IMO, you just have to go for early war. You lack a number of resources for big cities and have little grasslands/flood plains for cottage spam or a specialist extravaganza. But you have tons and tons of easily accessed production, it's not that rare to have a city with half a dozen cows to work. Build up an early army fast and expand into the more workable lands.

 

[smjjames]

/bumping this because I want to preserve the info on here plus to make it stay on the board for another month and to keep it from getting wiped.

 

[The Tyrant]

It won't get wiped, just buried in the old pages. I e-mailed an administrator once asking what happened to old pages, whether they were deleted or archived. He pointed out that old threads just get bumped further down the list by newer / more active threads but that you can always still find them. They only seem to disappear because the default display options for the forums show only the recently active threads.

Near the top of each forum page is a section for display options. Each forum has a different default. I think the default for this forum is to show all threads that have seen activity within the last month. You can set the display options to show you *all* threads from the beginning of the forum. Old threads are not deleted/wiped, just bumped.

 

[smjjames]

oh, ok... didn't know that

 

[Lord Chambers]

When they say "Terra" is like Earth, it really is. You typically have one especially large continent to the east (where most if not all Civs spawn), and a totally empty "new world" continent.

Could you be more Euro-centric?

 

[NuWorld]

Hub and Ring can be a lot of fun if you don't want early war. Hub especially, since you're guaranteed a starting spot of your own; in order to get to the AI starting cities, you'd have to traverse well over a third of the map length, if not well over half. Your army might turn obsolete halfway there! In fact, the Hub map seems to inspire peaceful play-- I'm just wrapping up a game with Aggressive AIs turned on, and if there's been more than one war I'll be surprised. Computers don't like ships, who'da thunk it?

Just discovered hub map, I like it allot. You need solid navy to protect your coast, but it's not PITA like archipelago/island maps. Getting sailing early is high on priority list.