The past few games I've been playing a quite fun setup loosely based on Realms Beyond Adventure 44.
Basic setup is a duel map with A LOT of civs - enough for every civ to be represented, on a low sea map (lakes with 4% water - more on that later).
The high civ density and low water allows for a lot of interesting tactical situations - one can't expect more then one city unless he works for it.
However this raises a problem for the FFH setup - how can one expect to last long when packed like sardines with immortal (rising difficulty) AIs?
To solve this I decided to run using the FoR (Full_of_Resources) mapscript - a script that basically allows one to alter the normal settings of a map to ones own preferences.
Using this I add a bunch of units to the starting tile which I think make for intersting game:
It may be difficult to tell from the screen, but I added a War Tortoise (firstly it provides a slow defensive unit to prevent both the player and the ais from being too easily defeated, and secondly its a unique unit I've never played with before
truth be told I could've just as easily added a Longbow, but wheres the fun in that?), a Priest of Winter (the purpose of this was twofold, firstly it gives a relatively early summon to counter the slow moving units and help add dimension to the game, and secondly the "slow" ability comes in very handy at handling ai SoD) and a Wizard (why not 
- also it allows another dimension in terms of what unique improvements are used for mana).
In the end the wizard has veryu little effect, but the WT and PoW completely alter the strategic field. (Which is big - though I was playing the relatively peaceful EitB AI war decs happened thick and fast.)
Now that I was using FoR anyway, I made a few adjustments for a more interesting game:
This image shows me multiplying the amount of health/strategic resources by 1.5.
Strategic was done because it is easy to miss out on valuable resources in this game, and while not guaranteeing their existance, it does increase their likelihood of appearing, and one can always settle for it if nessecary.
Health is because due to other settings food was going to be more sparse then usual, and health cap can be brutal in FFH.
There are three major edits here - firstly I have altered the distribution of land to be more palatable (specifically: I've removed snow entirely, and the majority of tundra due to some early games where I had very uninteresting starts. Desert is slightly reduced, a change I will alter next game as I didn't see enough. Plains are also increased to prevent too much greenery).
Secondly the percentage of hills has been increased which I feel is useful in (practical) OCC games as FFH happy caps are so hard to get over that you want the hammer supply.
The percentage of jungle is also reduced to prevent to many horrible starts.
Finally I took a base lakes map and altered it to greatly reduce the prevalence of water (Very Small, 5%) as well as cylindrical (actually I've since switched to toroidial for a more fun game).
There are a bunch of other stuff I've changed, but those are the important ones AFAIC.
If anyone's interested I've attached a pair of saves to the next post - firstly a starting save, but as its for EitB (my default game type) I've also attached the WBSave.
Bunch of caveats: firstly I wouldn't recommend jumping straight into Immortal/Rising, so I've done this one at Emperor, secondly these settings/script I've only used for EitB so I don't know how well they work beyond that.
Anyway enjoy!
Basic setup is a duel map with A LOT of civs - enough for every civ to be represented, on a low sea map (lakes with 4% water - more on that later).
The high civ density and low water allows for a lot of interesting tactical situations - one can't expect more then one city unless he works for it.
However this raises a problem for the FFH setup - how can one expect to last long when packed like sardines with immortal (rising difficulty) AIs?
To solve this I decided to run using the FoR (Full_of_Resources) mapscript - a script that basically allows one to alter the normal settings of a map to ones own preferences.
Using this I add a bunch of units to the starting tile which I think make for intersting game:
It may be difficult to tell from the screen, but I added a War Tortoise (firstly it provides a slow defensive unit to prevent both the player and the ais from being too easily defeated, and secondly its a unique unit I've never played with before
truth be told I could've just as easily added a Longbow, but wheres the fun in that?), a Priest of Winter (the purpose of this was twofold, firstly it gives a relatively early summon to counter the slow moving units and help add dimension to the game, and secondly the "slow" ability comes in very handy at handling ai SoD) and a Wizard (why not - also it allows another dimension in terms of what unique improvements are used for mana).In the end the wizard has veryu little effect, but the WT and PoW completely alter the strategic field. (Which is big - though I was playing the relatively peaceful EitB AI war decs happened thick and fast.)
Now that I was using FoR anyway, I made a few adjustments for a more interesting game:
This image shows me multiplying the amount of health/strategic resources by 1.5.
Strategic was done because it is easy to miss out on valuable resources in this game, and while not guaranteeing their existance, it does increase their likelihood of appearing, and one can always settle for it if nessecary.
Health is because due to other settings food was going to be more sparse then usual, and health cap can be brutal in FFH.
There are three major edits here - firstly I have altered the distribution of land to be more palatable (specifically: I've removed snow entirely, and the majority of tundra due to some early games where I had very uninteresting starts. Desert is slightly reduced, a change I will alter next game as I didn't see enough. Plains are also increased to prevent too much greenery).
Secondly the percentage of hills has been increased which I feel is useful in (practical) OCC games as FFH happy caps are so hard to get over that you want the hammer supply.
The percentage of jungle is also reduced to prevent to many horrible starts.
Finally I took a base lakes map and altered it to greatly reduce the prevalence of water (Very Small, 5%) as well as cylindrical (actually I've since switched to toroidial for a more fun game).
There are a bunch of other stuff I've changed, but those are the important ones AFAIC.
If anyone's interested I've attached a pair of saves to the next post - firstly a starting save, but as its for EitB (my default game type) I've also attached the WBSave.
Bunch of caveats: firstly I wouldn't recommend jumping straight into Immortal/Rising, so I've done this one at Emperor, secondly these settings/script I've only used for EitB so I don't know how well they work beyond that.
Anyway enjoy!
