Favorite Basic Type of Map

For me it's easily Terra, because I love trying to go wide, & fighting wars over land & of course the quest for the new world.

 

For the longest time I used Fractal but have recently switched over the Shuffle. Shuffle seams more random. i like to not have any idea what to expect from the map. continents? Pangaea? small islands? who knows. go explore and find out.

 

Oops I forgot Fractal, I guess that goes in other oops

 

Archipelago, as I'm fond of playing as England.

 

Small Continents. Big enough to have some expansion, small enough to have early tension w.out having one giant blob continent.

 

Fractal if I'm not using map scripts from the workshop.

 

depends on my mood... continents is usually my default, but I'll switch over to Pangaea if I want more of a challenge (just because those games tend to have more warfare)

 

My common setting is Small Continents - Huge - Low water level. This allows for a lot of landmass spread out beautifully over the world. Sometimes you get one huge pangea connected by tons of tiny bridges, which makes for an interesting game.

 

Archipelago. Which gets complex given that my favourite Civ is Morocco .

 

For me, it's Pangea. You meet everyone early on, there is no real bad parts to start. Just seems balanced.

TBH I was put off with the AI starting on a different landmass from me, when I played the Bering Strait map. Alexander conquered his Mayan nextdoor neighbours very early, he almost eradicated the Dutch. Suleiman only had 1 or 2 cities on the south end of that landmass. (the west side)

I hope Continents prevents that a bit more than Bering Straight.

 

Also small continents, huge, low water. Creates the kind of map scripts fractal used to created in Civ4 and feels the most plausible as an alternate Earth.

Fractal now seems to produce landmasses that are too fat and end up making slightly more interesting pangaeas. Continents is too predictable. Pangaea is like playing on easy mode; I can't understand why this is considered "standard".

 

Lakes!

 

Small continents, huge, low water for me as well. Nice balance between number of civs and CS per continent as well as lots of space. Puts land and sea civs on reasonably the same level with no real bias against either

 

If you like naval battles, & archipelago try Polynesia/Indonesia/Carthage & the Dutch. The Dutch are WAY too fun. And Carthage ICS on archipelago is too great.

 

My favorite map is the Earth Map. I play it often. But I use random second most often, as the poster above said explore and find out what there is. Huge, Epic, Raging Barbs. It really feels like carving an empire out of an unforgiving world. Turn off a time victory and tough it out.
I'll also set up a 'real world' game, such as Asia with all the Asian civs, Americas with that side of the world.

 

Usually Continents, though sometimes I go for Small Continents (when playing seafaring civilizations like Carthage) or Fractal (when I want something slightly more surprising than two big landmasses)...
I get really happy when the Continents script decides to go for three continents instead of two!

I don't like Pangaea at all (I like the rush of exploring the seas and the new world, meeting new civilizations, etc...), and Archipelago is not bad (but I prefer to have some space on my own before having to settle the tiny little islands).

Other preferences include: Random is better than Pre-made, Cylindrical is better than Flat.

I still haven't tried Continents Plus! I kinda want to, as they make really interesting maps, but I fear they are just too big for the standard number of civilizations, which means lots of land to settle even in the modern era - which I would prefer it not to happen...

 

Shuffle!!

I used to play with starting bias off because I thought it made civs too powerful, but then I realized they actually needed the start bias to play properly. I still don't like cooking the map to benefit my own civ though, seems a little like cheating. It is fun though to get a map that favors your civ and not even realize it until astronomy.

 

What is Shuffle I've never heard of that map type

 

I like all of them . Every map is randomized, so you can always have a challenge.

 

CONTINENNNNNNNNNNNNNTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For me it's just because I like the idea of playing on a map that is formed like the real world, but not in the exact way as the real world. It's hard to wrap my mind around a "world" that consists of a single landmass or a bunch of islands. In gameplay terms it's good because you have to make use of both land and sea units and abilities.