Marshall Thomas
King
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2005
- Messages
- 700
I just quit my last campaign at about 1700 AD. It was very enjoyable for most of it but my campaign set-up didn't turn out like I had hoped. Before I start describing what went wrong, let me give you my game set-up details:
map size: large (the 2nd biggest)
map type: continents
number of civs: 14
number of city states: 28 (maximum)
game speed: epic (normal's too quick, but marathon's too slow for me)
world age, rainfall & sea level: all set to standard
resources: standard
After I built caravels and discovered all the land of my map, I was really disapointed with continents (at least on stardard sea level). The continent which I began on was a boringly shaped square/circle with only one or two tiny islands off the coast. The other continent turned out to also be a just a big "block" of a land mass with a couple of tiny tundra islands of the north coast. The only real difference was that it was larger than my starting continent. Neither of them had anything interesting about them layout-wise; nothing like The Mediterainean Sea, The British Iles or Scandinavia. They were just something in between a large square and a large circle.
But the main reason I had to quit my campaign was that by the time I had discovered the other, larger continent, over half of it was owned by one civilization (Russia) and almost all the rest was owned by another civilization (The Ottomans). Originally there had been 8 or 9 civs on that continent; but by 1500 there where just two "superpowers" and a couple of city-states. To make matters even worse (although they were bad enough already), Russia took about half of what the Ottomans had within 50 or 100 years of my discovering them. But even before then, Russia had about 30 cities when the second highest was maybe the Ottoman civ with 15 cities. I had though I was fairly big, with about 9 cities (4 of them puppet states).
So anyhow, by the time I had discovered that Russia owned half of the larger of the two continents, my game had lost all balance and just wasn't interesting to me anymore. If a civ had done this during the end-game (Industrial/Modern era) that wouldn't have been as bad, but I had discovered this in The Renaisance Era; and could only imagine that it had been a problem by at least The Middle Ages or earlier. Russia's score was much higher than second place; and second place was held by The Ottomans, who where about to be killed by Russia. As it turned out, about half the civs that stared my game were just about completely dead by the time I found them.
But even my starting continent had seen too many complete, or near complete, take-overs by the time The Renaisance began. For example, India was east of me and China was west. India asked for open borders and I accepted. After a while, practically all of China was owned by Gandhi. North of Gandhi's China was Germany; and north of Germany was Rome. Well Gandhi must have gotten an open borders aggreement from Germany, because after a while all of Rome belonged to Gandhi. So not only had India completely conquered two large civilizations by the end of The Middle Ages, but neither of them were adjacent to India or even each other!
So conquest by the AI against other AIs on both continents was way too complete, too early. I want to see if I can prevent this in my upcoming campaign somehow.
Here are a couple of changes to my game set-up that I'm hoping will make a difference:
- I might stick with a "continents" map, but go with "high" sea levels. My hope is that this would give the continents a less "big blocky" shape and might also make early land conquest more difficult. It may also make sea power more important. I should add that, in my previous campaign, depite there being plenty of water on a continents map -sea power was almost completely pointless (Russia used it's army to conquer over half of the larger continent before mid-game; no amount of sea power could make a difference at that point).
- I'm thinking of either going down a map size (from large to standard), or adding more civs (up from 14; can't increase the number of city states -28). Maps seem much bigger compared to Civ 4 (must be because of the switch to hexes) and the recommended number of civs for each map size are way too few for me. I don't like having a huge number of cities; and because I don't like having too many, I don't want the AI to have tons of cities either. Russia, The Ottomans and India having way too many cities for my taste is what ruined the balance of my last game. Even if I could have taken that many cities, I wouldn't want to. I think that when you have too many cities, it makes the smaller decisions for each city far less meaningful.
Well that's it -sorry for the long post and thanks for reading. Based on my last game's problems, how do you recommend I make changes to my game set-up? Thanks in advance
map size: large (the 2nd biggest)
map type: continents
number of civs: 14
number of city states: 28 (maximum)
game speed: epic (normal's too quick, but marathon's too slow for me)
world age, rainfall & sea level: all set to standard
resources: standard
After I built caravels and discovered all the land of my map, I was really disapointed with continents (at least on stardard sea level). The continent which I began on was a boringly shaped square/circle with only one or two tiny islands off the coast. The other continent turned out to also be a just a big "block" of a land mass with a couple of tiny tundra islands of the north coast. The only real difference was that it was larger than my starting continent. Neither of them had anything interesting about them layout-wise; nothing like The Mediterainean Sea, The British Iles or Scandinavia. They were just something in between a large square and a large circle.
But the main reason I had to quit my campaign was that by the time I had discovered the other, larger continent, over half of it was owned by one civilization (Russia) and almost all the rest was owned by another civilization (The Ottomans). Originally there had been 8 or 9 civs on that continent; but by 1500 there where just two "superpowers" and a couple of city-states. To make matters even worse (although they were bad enough already), Russia took about half of what the Ottomans had within 50 or 100 years of my discovering them. But even before then, Russia had about 30 cities when the second highest was maybe the Ottoman civ with 15 cities. I had though I was fairly big, with about 9 cities (4 of them puppet states).
So anyhow, by the time I had discovered that Russia owned half of the larger of the two continents, my game had lost all balance and just wasn't interesting to me anymore. If a civ had done this during the end-game (Industrial/Modern era) that wouldn't have been as bad, but I had discovered this in The Renaisance Era; and could only imagine that it had been a problem by at least The Middle Ages or earlier. Russia's score was much higher than second place; and second place was held by The Ottomans, who where about to be killed by Russia. As it turned out, about half the civs that stared my game were just about completely dead by the time I found them.
But even my starting continent had seen too many complete, or near complete, take-overs by the time The Renaisance began. For example, India was east of me and China was west. India asked for open borders and I accepted. After a while, practically all of China was owned by Gandhi. North of Gandhi's China was Germany; and north of Germany was Rome. Well Gandhi must have gotten an open borders aggreement from Germany, because after a while all of Rome belonged to Gandhi. So not only had India completely conquered two large civilizations by the end of The Middle Ages, but neither of them were adjacent to India or even each other!
So conquest by the AI against other AIs on both continents was way too complete, too early. I want to see if I can prevent this in my upcoming campaign somehow.
Here are a couple of changes to my game set-up that I'm hoping will make a difference:
- I might stick with a "continents" map, but go with "high" sea levels. My hope is that this would give the continents a less "big blocky" shape and might also make early land conquest more difficult. It may also make sea power more important. I should add that, in my previous campaign, depite there being plenty of water on a continents map -sea power was almost completely pointless (Russia used it's army to conquer over half of the larger continent before mid-game; no amount of sea power could make a difference at that point).
- I'm thinking of either going down a map size (from large to standard), or adding more civs (up from 14; can't increase the number of city states -28). Maps seem much bigger compared to Civ 4 (must be because of the switch to hexes) and the recommended number of civs for each map size are way too few for me. I don't like having a huge number of cities; and because I don't like having too many, I don't want the AI to have tons of cities either. Russia, The Ottomans and India having way too many cities for my taste is what ruined the balance of my last game. Even if I could have taken that many cities, I wouldn't want to. I think that when you have too many cities, it makes the smaller decisions for each city far less meaningful.
Well that's it -sorry for the long post and thanks for reading. Based on my last game's problems, how do you recommend I make changes to my game set-up? Thanks in advance
