Favorite map types and settings?

[WoundedKnight]

What are your favorite maps to play, what settings do you use and why? What random maps do you favor? What are your favorite scenarios? Anybody play earth?

Thanx.

WoundedKnight

 

[LKendter]

I play Marla's Earth map a decent amount of the time.

I tend to prefer Wet, 5 Billion, Warm - It maximizes the amount of viable city sites. Generaly I plan continents, but I have done the other land mass flavors

 

[Ozymandius]

I like and play Pangea almost exclusively. Wet & warm & old. Transportation is relatively easy, farm land is plentiful, and most importantly, expansion is possible in all directions. You generally don't have to worry about ships and shipping distances (corruption). Wonders work best for all cities on the same continent. ie. barracks in all cities, happiness from Oracle. Expansion to other continents is made difficult by Firaxis' scoring system

 

[Trabpukcip]

Perosnally I like pangea for the obvious advantage when I build the Piramids and the Sun Tzu Art of War... I generally choose 5 billions year old, temperate and normal climate, that way theres still some challanges to find go spots.

 

[No.Dice]

Huge Pangaea, everything else random. Keeps things fresh.

I find if you don't give the AI loads of room to expand, they die off way too easily. The AI settler spamming is kind of a neccessary evil.

I also enjoy playing on small land % archipelagos every once in awhile, everybody is usually in the same boat starting wise, and theres a little extra challenge since the AI galleys seem to fly across the map and make contact with each other impossibly early.

I never liked continents. Once you conquer your own, the AI is so horrible at amphibious assaults, you've won the game. Maybe a large land % continental map would be worthwhile, putting some importance on naval warfare/transporting, while making it difficult to secure the entire landmass. In my experience, the AI becomes a bit more competant if it only has to ferry troops over a couple of ocean tiles.

In my current game, i randomed the settings and it looks they appeared as dry/cold/3 billion. Needless to say the majority of the civs recieved fairly awful starting positions, myself in particular. The AI is so terrible at terrain improvement however, that i've been the most productive civ on the f11 (demographics?) screen since the end of the ancient age (on emperor difficulty btw, where they already recieve nice fat discounts on production). Seems they prefer to build in pretty patterns instead of improving tiles that actually need improvement. A strong argument to switch back to standard settings, where the AI can still be productive despite its poor decisions.

 

[WoundedKnight]

Do you like small, regular, large, or huge maps?

And how many civs do you play with?

Huge maps take SO much time...I like medium or small.

 

[Richard III]

Random land/continent mix
Large map (not huge)
Moderate settings on all terrain
12 civs

 

[Trabpukcip]

Huge map cool, but not to offen. Generaly most games end up with a tiny or standart map, those are my faverites.

 

[bobgote]

I usually have all random stuff (at the moment civ is random too).

I did have Huge maps but it takes too long, so I'm doin standard at the moment

 

[Masquerouge]

I personally like huge maps. I'm not a militaristic guy (though CIVIII forced me to do it ), so what I aim at is expansion and victory through science (space ship, UN (when I can't win the SSR)).
So I'm saying, "Why settle for a standard map when you could have more room in a huge map ?"
I know, I know, corruption, blah blah, ressources, blah blah... I NEVER said it was rationnal
I usually play with 8 civs, because what I hate the most is having an AI starting right NEXT to me... I don't like war, I'm a pacifist !
So I just LOOOOOVE culture-flip. But I have the french version, and patch 1.23f is not yet out for this one, and culture-flip is a bit underpowered...
For the other settings, I choose 4 billions years because you've got to have some moutains but not too much, temperate because desert and tundra are a bit too harsh, and normal because jungle is a real pain.
As far as land is concerned, I like Archipelago with big land mass, it gives you a chance to start alone on your big piece of land (did I say I HATE to have someone next to me ?)

 

[Ronald]

I like standard map size, because it allows the most variation of strategies. Everything else, including civ, random for maximum variety.

 

[amadeus]

Standard map, warm and wet climate, 4 billion years.

I downloaded one of ccm01's leaderheads (Stalin) and play almost exclusively as "Uncle Joe"

It's even better when you change the Russian color from brown to red...mwhahaha