(FEEDBACK Pt 5) When is your main landmass is basically covered by cities/borders?

Almost done all the questions I want to ask! Woo!

I want as subjective an answer as possible. I'm not talking about the moment that little city up in the arctic is settled. And we don't care about that strip of desert in the middle of the continent. We're talking about the moment that your main landmass resembles a basically solid set of borders (aside from cities being conquered). Far off islands that can only be reached by Galleons do not count.

Here's a screenshot, to help guide your senses. As you can see, the borders now basically cover the continent:



A few other thoughts, to get consistency between everyone's answers:

• The map is neither huge nor tiny.
• The map is not a Pangaea.
• The map is not an archipelago.
• Yes, there WILL be islands that can only be reached by Galleon. And NO you do NOT have Galleons.
• Who expands faster? You or the AI?
• How does your favorite victory condition affect your desire for founding your own cities?
• Is the AI generally better than you at grabbing good locations?
• Ignore replacement cities (for cities razed by the enemy, or enemy cities you raze and replace).
• Overestimate. If you can't decide if it's sooner or later, pick later.

(Part 4 was here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=178312)

 

In case people are interested in what I'm NOT looking for, the following image is way too early! It still needs a few more cities settled to be considered "covered", IMO.





Add any discussion, comments, or queries as needed. (This will probably be the last question I do that deals with settling cities).

 

It all depends on level. I usually play emporer+ and there is not going to be any land left to settle when you get to 1300BC let allown 300BC.

 

More civs = quicker coastal coverage. Whether the interior gets filled quickly is, obviously, strongly dependent on how much interior there is. But I an amazed to see votes for 800AD and later: by that time it's the tiny islands and tundra fragments that I see being built on.

 

Those late votes, I believe, just reflect a lower difficulty setting. I play on monarch (lowest setting where I typically lose) and an average continent (handful of civs) completely fills about as the years start ticking upwards. Sometimes I'm defacto-out-of-the-game by then, too. Haven't quite got the knack of beating the AI's out of the gate unless I'm allowed to out class them in an early War.

 

Difficulty level is going to be a factor. But I'm sort of assuming that's pretty consistent for most people (isn't it?) ... I mean, most people at least have a favorite difficulty and playstyle.

Map size should be somewhere in the middle.

 

I never paid strict attention to the time (BC/AD). I voted '375BC-800AD' as 800AD looks pretty late to me. I'm more or of a builder and a Monarch player and win more often then I lose on that level, so also started two Emperor games. The expansion trend (obviously) seems the same, but indeed faster for the AI. Usually one, possibly two, Barb cities have/had emerged not too far of me on a Standard, non Pangea, non Archipelago map.

What do you want to learn from our feedback, dh_epic?

Jaca

 

Fairly early, usually around 500-600 AD. Of course, this is mainly caused because of high culture cities that have huge zones of control. I expand quite aggressively now, so most of the contenent is mine.

 

I'd say between 800 and 1000 AD (I suspect it'd be earlier if I turned up the difficulty.) This kind of coincides with the "when do you found your last city?"-question. I'm not really keen on founding cities in large areas of useless terrain, and the undiscerning AI takes a while in getting there. This really depends on factors that are out of my control, so I don't have much to say on this one.

Still, there's some interesting reading to be had in this thread, as usual

 

This will be nearly entirely dependent on difficulty level, due to the huge increase in AI expansion rate as the level increases. Since I play at high level the AI will expand vastly more quickly than me, though its city placement will be poor.

On dates, it'll be early, before 800AD. However without a specified difficulty level this poll won't produce meaningful results.

 

So far so good guys. It's still kind of fluctuating a lot, so I want to get a few more votes before we wrap this up.

Well, I don't want to give too much away. I've always been one for analyzing the shortcomings of the Civilization franchise -- not because I hate it, but because I love it, and always imagine ways that it could potentially be better. Right now, i'm trying to prove that you can make generalizations about the flow of the game that allow you to see areas for improvement.

I won't say more than that... until later.

 

The votes keep coming in. Let's get a bit more feedback before we move onto the final poll.

(Are people enjoying these little surveys, or are they more confused than anything?)

 

Mostly confused. Some of the surveys seem to be asking essentially the same question. The use of the dating system and an unspecified difficulty level for the poll makes the results extremely vague. In particular the questions with the galleons (2nd poll?) didn't really seem to be being asked about the appropriate unit.

Judging from the questions you're attmepting to determine something about the settling habits of people in Civ 4, with particular reference to the (lack of) significant expansion phase with the invention of galleons. However I really can't see that the very imprecise information collected in the polls themselves being of any use. Some of th e written information might be usefu though.

 

I'm not too worried about getting a range of responses. In fact, a range is what I want. Some questions will definitely reveal more than others, being much more significant and discernable turning points in the game.

I'm pretty pleased, actually, with the info I've gathered so far. The conclusion I'm working towards is actually an old debate in these here forums -- but I wanted to use some concrete data to support it.

The next question won't have much to do with exploring or settling at all. (In fact, I'm tempted to ask a couple more -- since I got carried away with the exploration questions.)

Keep the votes coming! This one still hasn't found an equilibrium, as far as I can tell.

 

I'm rather confused about what you are getting at. But I guess you will explain later.

Also, this survey is just too....broad. There are so many variable characteristics that I find it impossible to give a single answer to your question.

 

I figure this survey IS pretty broad. But I don't mind having some variance in the answers. It's the law of large numbers -- the larger the sample, the closer you get to the truth. And the truth IS subjective when it comes to game play -- some people just play a different style of game from one another. I don't want to weed this out. I want a variety of playstyles reflected in the results. A range is a good thing.

When in doubt, I always defer to the final point: Overestimate. If you can't decide if it's sooner or later, pick later.

I'll bring people up to speed after the next question.

 

Let me give this one last bump. I know we can get a few more votes.

 

I usually expand faster than the AI, in that I focus on culture. The AI, on the other hand, can get more cities than I do, but I feel our borders congeal more or less around 1AD. On some of those maps that don't wrap, like Inland Sea, the edges of the map may or not be covered, but I am discounting this.