The Evolution of Map Size

historix69

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Sep 30, 2008
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The biggest official map size in Civ 6 is huge with 66 x 106 = 6.996 tiles.
The biggest inofficial map size is ludicrous with 100 x 200 = 20.000 tiles.
Minimal configuration for the Ludicrous size:
- 8GB Ram
- a graphic card with more than 4GB of VRAM

I remember games like Railroad Tycoon 2 featuring a map editor and supporting maps of 500 x 500 = 250.000 tiles 20 years ago.
Civ 3 had a map editor and there is an Earth Map with ca. 360 x 360 = 129.600 tiles.
( https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/gigantic-earth-map.18756/ )

While map tiles became prettier with each iteration of Civ, the map sizes became smaller and smaller since Civ 3.

The city area in Civ 1 - 4 was 20 tiles + city square. In Civ 5 and Civ 6, the city area was increased to 36 tiles + city tile. So the city area became larger and was used for more detailed game mechanics like building GP-improvements in Civ 5 or destacking cities with districts in Civ 6. (Increase in city area by ca. 76% (37 / 21 = 1,76).)

An old 500 x 500 map is equivalent to ca. 11.900 old city areas (20+1).
A new 66 x 106 map is equivalent to ca. 189 new city areas (36+1) which is ca. 63 times less compared to the map size above.
A new 100 x 200 map is equivalent to ca. 540 new city areas (36+1) which is ca. 22 times less compared to the map size above.
So a new map with same strategic resolution as the old ones should have a size of 22 ludicrous maps (470 x 940 tiles).

If you translate map differences into GO dimensions, the old 500x500 map can be identified with the 19x19 classical GO-board while the new ludicrous size then represents a 4x4 board and the new huge map a 2x2 board.

I do hope that maps do not become even smaller with the next iterations of Civ, since then one day we might end with a Civ game where the map would feature only one city and every player would manage a single district/quarter and combat/warfare would be house-to-house-fighting.

Realistic Earth Maps have the disadvantage that 70% of Earth surface are covered by water. So on an earth map with new huge map size only about 2.100 tiles are land which equals ca. 56 new city areas. (DefaultPlayers="12", DefaultCityStates="18")

The graphical represenation of water tiles should not require the same amount of resources as the representation of tiles with mountains, vegetation, cities or buildings, especially since most of the water tiles are usually hidden by the fog of war.

At the moment I play on the official standard size Civ 6 earth map. The distance between the Appalachian Mountains and Rocky Mountains is only 6-7 tiles, which is the diameter of a city area.
I know the YnAMP mod with Giant Earth Map (which I play from time to time) and Ludicrous Map Size (which my hardware probably does not support.)

I hope that the devs will stop decreasing map size and instead optimize the engine and
offer an official world map bigger than ludicrous map size but with reasonable resource requirements.

Civilization is still a turn based game. I can play on my system other games like Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands which features an open world of ca. 24 km x 24 km (= ca 576 km²) and allows the player to fly freely with a helicopter in that world, but I cannot play Civ 6 on a ludicrous or bigger map size.
 
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