Inland Sea maps

[vormuir]

Why no love for these? They seem like a conqueror's best friend.

It's a flat world -- you can't go off the edges -- with a sea in the middle. The civs are around the sea like people seated around a table. No isolated starts. You'll usually have two and exactly two neighbors.

This makes domination wins almost painfully easy. Rush a neighbor, consolidate, repeat.

But this map never seems to get discussed. Too silly? Too arbitrary?


Doug M.

 

[Killroyan]

I don't know. I actually like this map. Easiest map for conquest I have to say although in my last game I got backstabbed like no tomorrow by cathy and her overwhelming force of 50+ cossacks. That will teach me not to check the power graph.

But overall fun map but it is not as random as fractal which is more fun in that way I guess.

 

[AThousandYoung]

I don't like maps in which you can't go around the world myself.

 

[mice]

Inland sea is useful for diplo victories where you have no border tension with a lot of the rivals. You can set up the diplomatic situation early on and just keep feeding it.

Cultural, you are assured of all religions but civs on the far shores are less inclined to attack you because of distance and a defensive pact equals a real barrier.

Team play 3v3 . The 'back' civ just works commerce to make research, and feeds low level units to gift to the frontline civs who upgrade them cheap. frontline civs do all the fighting (either AI or mulitplayer teammates)

Take out one civ and build to space. Your borders are often very narrow and easy to defend.

My favorite is to launch a naval assault on the civ on the other side of the lake. They dont expect that.

 

[Phrederick]

The most annoying thing about those maps is that you can't really choose who you attack next. Since you only have two neighbors, and it's usually best to attack someone close to you, you have to go against your neighbors. This is annoying when your rival is across the map and you have to fight through 3-4 other civs to get there.

 

[uncarved block]

I love Inland Sea maps, mostly because when it comes to Civ4, I'm hydrophobic-- two of my other favorite maps are Great Plains and Lakes. Too much water drags the game down, IMHO, and almost feels like an exploit to boot. More water= less barbs, the AI is notoriously bad at naval invasions, and you can kill one or two neighbors without suffering a diplomatic demerit if you do it before Caravels. (OTOH, Obsolete had a point about snowballing being too easy, but it's not my fault Soren wanted to make the AI so peaceful. This will probably change with BtS anyway.)

I can see why the map isn't discussed much, though, as the game plan is pretty straightforward, and diplomacy is a joke if you don't have world wrap enabled. (If you do, it's an inverted Pangaea; personally, I think it's a lot of fun.) Early exploration is also diminished, as the terrain tends to be remarkably similar from map to map, and the biggest suspense is finding out who are your neighbors/victims.

I wonder if there are going to be any new maps in Beyond the Sword. Anyone heard anything on that front?