How Close is Too Close?

[steveg700]

So I always play on huge shuffle maps. When I want to play a Casual game that will maintain my interest, I knock off two AI civ's in the hopes that might give a little breathing space. Still tho, I go into every game knowing chances are good I'm going to be at loggerheads with an AI civ within the first 10 turns. It can be such a buzzkill .Time to start racing for military strength and settle spots, with the diff setting doing its thing. Some other civ will get the shot at those early wonders.

How close is too close? Eight tiles? Twelve? When does it feel like there's a fair amount of breathing room?

 

[UWHabs]

I'd actually treat that as a relatively open space. You've got a city-state buffer, with what looks like a mountain range below them. Park a warrior on the stone and they're not getting to your city. And then it seems like you have plenty of room to the West and South in that case.

I think in the above, if Borsippa was their capital, and then Mohenjo-Daro was the 2nd city they settled, I would feel a lot more pressed in. Now, that's not to say the AI won't still attack you. But especially with Babylon there, I would just hope that they have a neighbour on their other side, and then focus on settling the land to the other side.

 

[steveg700]

I'd actually treat that as a relatively open space. You've got a city-state buffer, with what looks like a mountain range below them. Park a warrior on the stone and they're not getting to your city. And then it seems like you have plenty of room to the West and South in that case.

I think in the above, if Borsippa was their capital, and then Mohenjo-Daro was the 2nd city they settled, I would feel a lot more pressed in. Now, that's not to say the AI won't still attack you. But especially with Babylon there, I would just hope that they have a neighbour on their other side, and then focus on settling the land to the other side.

Well, that's fair. I've certainly experienced worse than this. It was my fifth restart tonight so I went ahead and grabbed this screenshot. The mountains provide a good barrier. It's yet another reason why mountains can determine how easy a game a player is going to have.

Really, it's when I go to the east and there's another civ the same distance, and another one to the south .

 

[steveg700]

So here's another game. Similar distance with Babylon, although with no mountains. As soon as we met Cleo was marching troops to dance on my border. I tore the invading slingers and warriors to pieces, yet she never wanted to make peace. of course, event, eventually waves of chariot archers came along. A big waste of energy that seemed unavoidable due to our closeness .Too bad. Egypt has that sweet trade route bonus. Cleo's agenda does not favor the player at this stage of the game.

 

[Dragabond]

Roughly 60 tiles is too close. Anything closer than that irritates me.

No, but, seriously, even ~15 tiles between capitals is still pushing it, IMO, but asking for more than that (or even just for that, really) requires larger maps. The default of 9 tiles is never acceptable for me.

 

[AntSou]

I dislike lack of interaction. I used to prefer to pack maps really tight full of Civs in 4 and 5, but found myself disliking that approach in 6 (I put it down to the district system which makes it frustrating to play when there isn't sufficient space).

Still, your too close example looks to me like it has a ton of space.

I'll have to recommend again Zegangani's Customization mod. The tools already exist for players to customize a ton of different parameters in whichever way they please.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I knock off two AI civ's in the hopes that might give a little breathing space

I prefer to knock them off after the game starts lol

 

[Finvola]

I like to play on marathon with huge maps with 10 civs. I remove 2. I feel 12 is too many and less than 10 feels like there's too few. More often than not, I'll find another AI within the first few turns and then I have to decide what to do. If it's someone like Gaul, I know I have no chance as I play on Deity. It's not possible to defend against his UU that early on, same as with Monty's Eagle Warriors. Anyway, I started a Pericles game the other day and thought it was great when I spawned mostly around mountains. Nobody was coming up from below, nobody was going to get me from the west, and the AI would have a hard time coming down through the pass to the north. But my east was wide open. And yeah, found the AI was kissing my borders right in the very spot where I was less likely to be able to defend at that early stage. It was Gaul. I was, like "Nah" and restarted.

 

[Futumch]

The way civs are spaced is always a bit of a head-scratcher for me. It's not uncommon to have two large landmasses (the random terrain generator's "Continents") with a bunch of civs on one landmass and only a couple on the other.
I often find city states have swiped a lot of the closer prime real estate in my games. I think I edited the starting distances ages ago, but it may have been reverted in subsequent patches. I might check that again.