civvver
Deity
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2007
- Messages
- 5,855
I love GEM. I've won with about 5 different civs, in multiple ways, and started countless games I never got around to finishing. After playing ancient and modern world scenarios though it has become very apparent that the map is not balanced for a few civs.
All of east asia has an enormous amount of food. Even the isle of japan can support a few gigantic cities. These eastern civs are typically always near the top of the scoreboard when controlled by the AI. There's also a pretty decent amount of room for them and wang kon is always there and he doesn't expand much.
India has similarly ridiculously good land to start, but is usually in a tight competition with the mughals and persia for land so it's not as obvious.
Europe has the best land on the map in terms of balance of production and food with some commerce resources mixed in. It's balanced though because so many civs are present there, so each one ends up with one a couple cities with room to grow. Compare that to the chinese who can easily build 6 cities without having to go to war. For the player though european civs are probably the easiest to play since you can just conquer your neighbors and have the best land and plenty of space.
The middle east and north africa is well balanced. All the starts there (carthage, egypt, israel, babylon, persia, arabs) have nice land, but not obscenely good, and room for 3-4 good cities.
Africa however pales in comparison. Shaka has pretty food poor land in the south, mansa's land is ok but a lot of jungle and lacking in resources, and zara has to fight a lot of hills and tundra. I realize the tundra is due to a realistic map and the elevated terrain there but throwing in more resources to compensate would be nice.
Then travel to the americas and austraila... their food output is barely half of what's in asia. I've tried many times to play one of those civs but it's just not that fun building a bunch of mountain cities as inca or expanding into the great plains with the souix. The usa does have some nice corn and wheat for growth but it's still not as good as china.
I'm sure this was all intentional. My question is was this done for the sake of map authenticity? In real life asia does support huge amounts of population and it seems the map is made to model this. But if that's the case the huge amounts of food in europe don't seem to fit. Or was this done with the idea that civs with more room have worse resources (inca for example has a ton of space but not the best land)? Or was it simply that some civs are supposed to be more challenging to play?
All of east asia has an enormous amount of food. Even the isle of japan can support a few gigantic cities. These eastern civs are typically always near the top of the scoreboard when controlled by the AI. There's also a pretty decent amount of room for them and wang kon is always there and he doesn't expand much.
India has similarly ridiculously good land to start, but is usually in a tight competition with the mughals and persia for land so it's not as obvious.
Europe has the best land on the map in terms of balance of production and food with some commerce resources mixed in. It's balanced though because so many civs are present there, so each one ends up with one a couple cities with room to grow. Compare that to the chinese who can easily build 6 cities without having to go to war. For the player though european civs are probably the easiest to play since you can just conquer your neighbors and have the best land and plenty of space.
The middle east and north africa is well balanced. All the starts there (carthage, egypt, israel, babylon, persia, arabs) have nice land, but not obscenely good, and room for 3-4 good cities.
Africa however pales in comparison. Shaka has pretty food poor land in the south, mansa's land is ok but a lot of jungle and lacking in resources, and zara has to fight a lot of hills and tundra. I realize the tundra is due to a realistic map and the elevated terrain there but throwing in more resources to compensate would be nice.
Then travel to the americas and austraila... their food output is barely half of what's in asia. I've tried many times to play one of those civs but it's just not that fun building a bunch of mountain cities as inca or expanding into the great plains with the souix. The usa does have some nice corn and wheat for growth but it's still not as good as china.
I'm sure this was all intentional. My question is was this done for the sake of map authenticity? In real life asia does support huge amounts of population and it seems the map is made to model this. But if that's the case the huge amounts of food in europe don't seem to fit. Or was this done with the idea that civs with more room have worse resources (inca for example has a ton of space but not the best land)? Or was it simply that some civs are supposed to be more challenging to play?
