drewisfat
King
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2011
- Messages
- 929
Short of some sort of impossible situation like GHP just described every map is winnable -- it just may be the situation that even the best players would usually lose, or would lose the first playthrough before they knew the map layout.
I'll go out on a limb and say there's no naturally spawned map (on fractal/pangaea/continents, etc) that is impossible to beat, even on Deity, even with culture/AP excluded.
If you can survive until nukes you can beat enemies many times stronger than you. Even with a horrible land disadvantage a good player can get to nukes before the AI launches a space ship, by using tech trades / bulbs / resource for GPT / espionage economy.
So the main challenge is surviving, which may be impossible with some horrid early DOW luck, but DOW luck is just that, luck. Luck will change from game to game, so the map would not be impossible. On a gamier note, you can argue that any game where you win with reloads, even 100 reloads, was inherently not impossible. If you can avoid a DOW long enough to where you manipulate diplomacy to get the AI pleased/friendly you're in the clear.
The other big early game threat is being cut off with too little land. But GLH can carry your economy on life support even with god awful cities. And if you don't have enough room to build enough even marginal cities, then you're probably close enough to the AI to choke them.
I'll go out on a limb and say there's no naturally spawned map (on fractal/pangaea/continents, etc) that is impossible to beat, even on Deity, even with culture/AP excluded.
If you can survive until nukes you can beat enemies many times stronger than you. Even with a horrible land disadvantage a good player can get to nukes before the AI launches a space ship, by using tech trades / bulbs / resource for GPT / espionage economy.
So the main challenge is surviving, which may be impossible with some horrid early DOW luck, but DOW luck is just that, luck. Luck will change from game to game, so the map would not be impossible. On a gamier note, you can argue that any game where you win with reloads, even 100 reloads, was inherently not impossible. If you can avoid a DOW long enough to where you manipulate diplomacy to get the AI pleased/friendly you're in the clear.
The other big early game threat is being cut off with too little land. But GLH can carry your economy on life support even with god awful cities. And if you don't have enough room to build enough even marginal cities, then you're probably close enough to the AI to choke them.