Favorite Game Setups

[sonihi]

What are your favorite Game Setups? I would appreciate it if you included age of the planet, Starting Era, Victory types, Civ and maybe some strategies how to win.

My favorite setup is a Huge world with small to normal continents and a Planet age of 4 Billion. I also like to start in the Industrial to Atomic Eras cause I like modern units more and I dont really have any particular Civ.

 

[Shashka]

Civ: Random (unless I get to play with a civ I just recently played with I re-roll)

Map: Terra (I like the fact that it's similar to Earth yet you don't know the terrain lay-out beforehand)

Size: usually 8 or 10 civs (I don't mess with number of City States that go with number of civs)

Speed: normal

Difficulty: recently moved up to Immortal but can't say I'm feeling comfortable at this level yet

I always start in the ancient era and I include all victory types. My strategy depends solely on the civ I'm playing, I consider myself to be a roleplayer more than anything else. Also age of the planet is always set at 4 billion years. I can't say I've ever changed that. Now that you mention it, it does make me wonder what it changes for the game when you alter age of the planet...

 

[stormtrooper412]

yeah I'm gonna go out and say it:

No god damned barbs. That's what I'd like to see, they pillage my farms, they rob my caravans, they steal workers from CS that I should be stealing.

Everything else default standard Deity settings w/e

 

[den1998]

so far i have played 2 games on 'donut' and 1 pangea in current game.

i play standard size, standard speed, default number of civs, but put assyria and napoleon in as two default civs to make sure there are two agressive civs

I really want to play 'large islands' or tiny islands as i want to have naval wars but everyone says the AI is so bad with ships that it is like cheating so its put me off

 

[chuckh89]

I love games in which the ocean can be connected to larger inland lakes by placing your cities on the single tile gap in between them...

-You can run Cargo Ships to your inland cities.
-Bring Naval Units deep inland.
-Put a strong hold on bottle necks
-Create shortcuts between Oceans.
-Less Plundering (Pillaging) since you only have to monitor your lake shores for camps.

I Really wish the Civ 6 would include include a Panama Canal wonder that allows you to create connections between waterways (One tile per Era, and have the Wonder available in Industrial)

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I have been playing Gauntlets almost exclusively lately: My Favorite in the last year was probably,....


Victory Condition: Domination (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
Difficulty: Immortal
Map Size: Standard
Map Type: Boreal
Speed: Standard
Leader: Poland (Casimir III)
Opponents: Any

Another map may have been better, but I liked playing Poland with:
-"Raging Barbarians"
-"5 billion years"
-"Promotion Saving"
- All the rest are Standard, or in Alignment with HoF rules

Casimir rips through Social Policies very quickly, and if you have a major source of you can quickly take advantage "Reformation" on the Piety tree, and select "Heathen Conversion". Makes for a interesting game because most Domination Victories have players forming 2 armies preferably in a central location. With "Heathen Conversion" your army is already on the other side of the map,.....All you need to do is get a Missionary there ASAP (to convert them), or better yet just steal a opponents already half way around the world. Fun Stuff!


_

 

[Lord Alexander]

Map: Continents, Pangea or Fractal
Speed: Standard
Map Size: Standard with only 12 CS instead of 16.
Civ's: 8, I always choose who I want to play. Random opposition except sometimes I'll add like Shaka or Attila to make things more interesting.
Victory: Everything but time (not that anyone wins time on higher difficulties)
Era: Ancient Era
World Age: 4 billion years


Sometimes I mess with the resources a bit if it's not Fractal but that's pretty much the setup every time

 

[Sedwick]

Victory Condition: All enabled
Difficulty: Prince (incremented after desired victory)
Map Size: Large or Huge
Map Type: Continents
Speed: Standard
Leader: Depends on desired victory
Opponents: Any
Number of civs: Standard
Era: Ancient Era
World Age: 4 billion years

 

[Solutionfinder]

Map: Pangea -> Low Sea. Usually(if not blocked or eliminated early) everyone gets to know everyone early and things do happen more often.
Map size : Large
Pace: Epic
Difficulty: Recently moved from Immortal to Deity. Immortal is fun, Deity a real challange from the start.
Civs: 11-13 random
Victory conditions: All but time
Starting Era: Ancient

Additional options:

Sometimes I check random personalities or raging barbarians box to make it more interesting.

 

[sixty4half]

Standard Speed
Random Map Type
Random Leader
6, 8 or 10 civ size map
Quick Movement
Quick Combat (these two combined make for fast AI turn speed)
Policy Saving On
Random Personalities

 

[beetle]

One setting I have not experimented with Planet Age. The description just says more or less mountains. Is there more to it than that? For those who have settled on a non-standard setting for Planet Age: Why do you like to play that way? Why is it part of your favorite game setup?

 

[LMT]

Map: Large islands. It's the perfect balance of defense and room for me (I play tall).

Map Size: Small. I like games that don't take forever to discover all civs & city-states.

Difficulty Level: Immortal

Everything else is standard (pace, 4 mya earth, rainfall, etc.)

My favorite civs to play are Venice, Egypt, and Korea. I like Greece, too, and am having good luck on my first game with Assyria (my 6-year old son talked me into giving them a try).

 

[Dragon Reborn]

I usually play continents, large size at standard pace.

I turn science victory off because rushing to build something to win always seemed off to me. This means that it usually turns into a late game battle between a warmonger and a cultural civ with a couple of civs trying to win diplomatically.

 

[waikalua]

Map type: Small Continents
Map Size: Large
Difficulty Level: Prince
Pace: Marathon
Era: Ancient
Age: 4 billion*
Temperature: Cool
Rainfall: Arid
Sea Level: High
Resources: Standard

This set up produces lots of forests, tundra and desert. It's great for playing my favorite Civ the Celts. Forests give you early faith bonuses via Druidic Lore. Plenty of tundra and desert hexes give you the option to select Desert Folklore or Dance of the Aurora. These pantheons give you additional passive, land-based faith bonuses as you get started.

Result: Huge early faith lead with extra faith boosts from Pictish Warrior victories. I'm always the first to have a religion. I often enhance my religion before the other guys even establish one.

I also choose these civs as my rivals: Songhai, Babylon, Huns, Siam, Egypt and Assyria. Why? Because these civs are disadvantaged by the exact terrain types that benefit the Celts.

Small continents and high sea level produce favorable conditions for my style of play with right-sized land masses, realistic island groups and large ocean separations. Naval and air power are relevant and balanced with armies.

*World Age: I'm ready to try 3 billion year start for the additional hills and mountains. More challenging, but the AI seems blockheaded about city locations so this should help me out as others have suggested.

Would love to hear more from the group on the topic of World Age, Sea Level etc. It has major impact on the game from where I stand.

 

[Carl5872]

Map type: Small Continents
Map Size: Large
Difficulty Level: Prince
Pace: Marathon
Era: Ancient
Age: 4 billion*
Temperature: Cool
Rainfall: Arid
Sea Level: High
Resources: Standard

This set up produces lots of forests, tundra and desert. It's great for playing my favorite Civ the Celts. Forests give you early faith bonuses via Druidic Lore. Plenty of tundra and desert hexes give you the option to select Desert Folklore or Dance of the Aurora. These pantheons give you additional passive, land-based faith bonuses as you get started.

Result: Huge early faith lead with extra faith boosts from Pictish Warrior victories. I'm always the first to have a religion. I often enhance my religion before the other guys even establish one.

I also choose these civs as my rivals: Songhai, Babylon, Huns, Siam, Egypt and Assyria. Why? Because these civs are disadvantaged by the exact terrain types that benefit the Celts.

Small continents and high sea level produce favorable conditions for my style of play with right-sized land masses, realistic island groups and large ocean separations. Naval and air power are relevant and balanced with armies.

*World Age: I'm ready to try 3 billion year start for the additional hills and mountains. More challenging, but the AI seems blockheaded about city locations so this should help me out as others have suggested.

Would love to hear more from the group on the topic of World Age, Sea Level etc. It has major impact on the game from where I stand.

I see you also do marathon! I love that setting. It really lets you dig deep into a game. The stakes are really high when you have so much time invested in a game, you don't feel like rage quitting when things go bad.

 

[ShakaKhan]

I consider myself mostly an archipelago specialist, but I prefer one extreme or the other: archipelago or pangaea, not continents. I find continents to be the worst of both worlds (no pun intended ), you don't meet all your trading partners until way later, but you can still have 2 or three simultaneous early rushes against you.

Although I also find donut to be very enjoyable for several reasons:
-same landmass, meet all trading partners real quick
-all capitals are coastal, optional frigate endgame
-along with coastal, capitals usually have a wide angle that land units can approach from.
-flatter terrain generally, quick movement.

 

[Roller123]

The bigger the map the less tech/social costs do increase with more cities. In civ4 i always played small Pangaea/low sea level. But in civ5 it appears huge Pangaea/high sea level would be much better.

 

[elniallo]

I like to just put everything on random,
Game Speed : Epic
Normal Map size
Immortal difficulty (only just moved up, 1 win from about 5 mostly aborted attempts, Science/Shoshone)

 

[meatpardle]

Emperor difficulty

Huge map

Marathon speed

Everything else random

 

[beetle]

Has anyone on this thread tried the Terra Incognita map script? If so, what did you not like about it?

Somewhat related...

Random Map Type...Random Personalities

I like to just put everything on random

Everything else random

I really do not understand the appeal of the random map type settings. Yes, the surprises and unknown aspects of the game would be a positive. But you have to balance that against how easy it is for the map settings to nerf civ abilities, both the players or the AI. Civ III and IV leaders were not so vulnerable to map characteristics, but in V many UU and UA just don't work for the majority (by count) of map possibilities. Using random personalities also nerfs the AI since the developers have, as best they can, tuned several personalities for synergy with their UA.

So if you want random opponents (which is the default of course) who are not likely to be crippled by the map, your are stuck with pangaea, continents, fractal, small continents, and a few variants. And with knowing something about the map which you would rather have as something to be discovered.

For the folks saying that random map type is their favorite game setup:
If you roll something terrible like Great Plains with Celts or a naval civ, do you just suck it up and play?

 

[NorthNovas]

For the folks saying that random map type is their favorite game setup:
If you roll something terrible like Great Plains with Celts or a naval civ, do you just suck it up and play?

Just suck it up and see how far I can go and if looks bad I pull the pin. In the lower levels I would let it run to the end and see if victory was possible or how bad it would end.

Starts Random Civ and Map always Ancient start

Speed Standard
Level Just moved up to Immortal adjusting to the mechanics