Poll: 2020 Favorite Maps for VP

[Ragic]

Continents Plus. Low sea level, medium map 7 players. Lots of choke points and city states seem to hold up better vs warmongers.

 

[vyyt]

Tectonic all the way. It creates balanced and interesting shapes, usually AI friendly (= wide enough flat lands, so that they can position their armies well), main continents usually properly separated by oceans while keeping some smaller continents/islands reachable by ancient ships. Also, the huge size is REALLY huge, so civs have space to expand even if you play with 22 civs.

The negatives are: sometimes the continents "touch" the poles blocking the naval passage. Someone might dislike that it creates big snow areas on huge maps (= only barbies can live there, and they sure do!). Not sure what is triggering it, but in like 1 out of 10 games, it creates a small maze of 1-tile wide mountain ridges with 1-tile wide passages between them in 1 area of map. AIs can pass through, but cannot fight well there. It is just 1 area, the rest of the map is fine.

I sometimes alternate with PerfecWorld3, PlanetSimulator and I think I also tried and liked Fractal.

 

[DeAnno]

I've been playing default settings Standard Oval. It's a good map for people fed up with stringy continents, that's for sure.

 

[vyyt]

I've been playing default settings Standard Oval. It's a good map for people fed up with stringy continents, that's for sure.

Oval has been on my radar for a while, thanks for reminding me. Stringy continents with lack of space for armies to clash / launch sieges / expand your empire is exactly what I am trying to avoid.

Does it provide enough variation / replayability? Does it always create 1 big potato and several smaller islands around? Meaning all AIs are always on the same land mass? Or am I mistaking it for some other map script?

 

[DeAnno]

Does it provide enough variation / replayability? Does it always create 1 big potato and several smaller islands around? Meaning all AIs are always on the same land mass? Or am I mistaking it for some other map script?

It always makes a potato, sometimes (not always) there are rather medium to big islands cut off from the potato by coast but major civs don't seem to start on them ever. Sometimes there are still chokes when the potato has massive bays carved out of it, or from mountain ranges, but they tend to feel more natural and are much less common than with the continent strings.

The potato tends to brush up against the ice a lot in north and south so you can't generally sail around it completely on the north or south side, meaning the ocean mostly connects the East coast with the West coast (this is one thing I'd change about the map if I knew how to without messing with the rest, less ice crowding.) There are also a lot of inland seas of various sizes from singleton lake all the way up to 30 tile monsters. City State placement is very well distributed, though if there are any of those big islands they tend to have a few City States on them.

 

[vyyt]

Thanks, @Rhys DeAnno , sounds fun. I will try it next time.

 

[black213]

I tried your mapscript and felt it keeps civs too close together. Apart from that it is great, makes interesting geographic features and feels realistic compared to the continents scripts.

Which settings should I change/meddle with if I want more space between starting tiles?

Regards
XSamatan

You could try lowering the sea level and also narrowing the rift width. But I personally like low sea level with wide rift.
On topic, Communitu79 is probably my new favourite. Continents Plus edited to remove the city-state placement rule is my second favourite. But whenever I play that, I miss the sea rifts!

 

[Valvts]

Tilted Axis with aggressive barbarians. Most interesting for me, a combination of land for early game and sea for late game, with interesting choke points.

 

[Jiggly]

Glad you like it, people. I try to keep Gazebo's philosophy, so if you all think I should reduce a value here or there, I'll tweak it.
Don't ask too much, though, I'm not that code savvy

Also... Is there a reason for calling it Comminitu? Or are you copy pasting?
It's good old Communitas tweaked by azum4roll and me

For Communitu_79 how would I tweak the settings to make it so that there are minimum 3 large continents, half players on 1, half players on another and then the "new world" in between? I like later game settling battles in the new world and 2 distinct continents with half the players who meet only after the oceans can be crossed

 

[Drakle]

I'm trying the Communitus map, but even on Large with two civs subtracted and the spawns set on All Continets, the clustering of spawns makes things way too crowded. On large on other maps I seem to have much more room, so something with how the map puts down spawns seems to be a issue.

 

[Stalker0]

I'm trying the Communitus map, but even on Large with two civs subtracted and the spawns set on All Continets, the clustering of spawns makes things way too crowded. On large on other maps I seem to have much more room, so something with how the map puts down spawns seems to be a issue.

I play Communitas quite a bit, so here are a few notes:

1) I tend to see two styles with the settings you mentioned. I do see the clustered starts as you mentioned, but I also get continent with only enemy 1 civ or even no civs...so sometimes I have a ton of space. Its a bit luck of the draw.

2) I find that with the map, the tiny islands become more important. Yes sometimes you get crowded on the main continent, but if you go island hopping around your immediate space, you often find a ton of good land for settling. So if your getting crowed, get fishing and start scouting.. and you may a lot more land than you expected.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

Continents Plus edited to remove the city-state placement rule is my second favourite.

Continents++ for the win

 

[Jiggly]

Continents++ for the win

Does continents++ work with vox populi? for some reason i remember ctd's with it?

 

[Eddie.exe]

Comminitu_79a all the way.

 

[black213]

Does continents++ work with vox populi? for some reason i remember ctd's with it?

It hasn't crashed in my experience (if continents++ means edited continents+).

 

[JamesNinelives]

Continents Plus for me at the moment . I want to try ++ and tectonic at some point though!

sometimes the amount of stone spawned can be ridiculous.

That seems like a strange thing to critique if you are playing with abundant resources :|.

I miss the sea rifts!

What are those like?

 

[tu_79]

For Communitu_79 how would I tweak the settings to make it so that there are minimum 3 large continents, half players on 1, half players on another and then the "new world" in between? I like later game settling battles in the new world and 2 distinct continents with half the players who meet only after the oceans can be crossed

Honestly, I tried to do that and the result was not as expected. I forced half or so players in one continent, the rest in another, but the smaller continent became too crowded. azum4roll reverted this change as people were complaining.
EDIT. Luxuries placement became an issue too. They weren't distributed properly.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

Communitu_79 is awesome, but I just don't like the land at the poles all the time.

It hasn't crashed in my experience (if continents++ means edited continents+).

Haha yeah, the one I got from you!

 

[black213]

Communitu_79 is awesome, but I just don't like the land at the poles all the time.

Haha yeah, the one I got from you!

Edit* here it is

It's a part of the map pack DLC. I think distributing it for free isn't allowed.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

It's a part of the map pack DLC. I think distributing it for free isn't allowed.

Ohh sorry if I was mistaken, I will take it down if necessary, but the map I uploaded was the one you'd posted in another similar thread a while ago. I recall you saying it's just the Continents+ with edited CS scripting/chains/placement - I just call it Continents++ (unless there is another actual Continents++ map, in which case I'd be confused...).