What do you consider the 'normal' map size?

[Bangau]

I think we have a clear winner: standard is the default for most players, though many prefer to play bigger maps.

Minor request to Firaxis: next update, could you set the default game settings to standard instead of small?

 

[Jimdigriz]

Huge. Biggest map possible. Ive always been the same with every iteration of Civ. Any other way is just too small.

 

[ghost88]

Firaxis does not support what should be normal map sizes. Duel should be 100X80, Small 500X400, Standard 1000X800, Large 5000X4000 and True Start Earth should be 1km per hex. All unit movement should scale to the selected map and turn duration. But I'm an empire builder if I want to play war games I play Risk.

 

[shaglio]

Standard is clearly the "normal" map size. Otherwise, they would have named it "Medium."

 

[Clan]

Huge. Biggest map possible. Ive always been the same with every iteration of Civ. Any other way is just too small.

This!

 

[KayAU]

All map sizes are "normal", with "Standard" probably being the most...standard. Personally, though, I usually prefer Small, with high sea levels enabled. The AI may not get bored managing dozens of cities in the late game, but I do.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

It's gotta be medium size (normal). not 'small',even if the game has the 'duel' as smallest map, and 'tiny' as slightly bigger. Small is small, not medium. not what should be considered 'default'.
And i'm not a fan of little maps either! I prefer a spacious starting locations where I can shield my capitol with an 'inner ring' cities that's six hexes away and no overlaps. (except that a capitol is either located near the ocean. next to one or two CS or shielded by a long mountain range. having a 'borderland capitol annoys me. having closely packed cities aren't appealing either.)

 

[The googles do nothing]

I’m guessing small is the default size because at civ 6 release they could count on it being playable - ie loading and ai turns are quick even in the modern era.

I have to admit I am jealous of you guys playing on larger maps.i play on a 2014 MacBook and huge is just too slow.

Map size is why I think/hope they hold off on civ7 until they can make it a true epic sized game. Halve the scale so that three hex’s would be 6 and have more varied terrain. Small passable rivers and amazon sized and every thing in between

 

[Disgustipated]

my old computer was pretty slow, but I still managed standard size maps without too much trouble, could even delve into large if I didn't mind longer turns at the end. And my old computer I built in 2009 I believe, so I would expect most people can run standard maps.

 

[AntSou]

Used to play Huge in Civ 4 and Civ 5. In Civ 6 I find it impossible and end up never finishing my games. I really like districts, but in huge maps it starts taking forever.

I've also found that different map sizes create different experiences.

This is how I do it:
Duel or Tiny Maps + Quick Speed: I do this when Hot-seating myself. I play two Civs and have two AI. A faster way to learn new Civs. I find Quick speed detrimental on anything above Tiny.
Small and Standard Maps + Standard Speed: It's all very personal in small maps. You really get to interact with all the Civs, rather than them just being on the map far away.
Standard Maps + Standard Speed: I do find this the default option and the one I use the most. Anything else seems to distort Victory types.
Huge + Epic: Not large enough to achieve the benefits of enormous. You still learn where most Civs are fairly early, continents can still spawn too close to one another and be connected by coast tiles, and islands isolated by ocean are generally too tiny to make colonisation fun.
Ynamp Enormous + Epic Speed: Had a lot of fun, best option for exploration and colonisation of new territory. But eventually it becomes too much of a hassle. Turns take forever, too many cities and units. Then, if I happen to be away fro the screen for two days, once I return I don't even recall where I was at.

Never tried Large. Feels unnecessary to me.

TLDR: Standard Size + Standard Speed in Civ 6 when playing single player, variation of smaller sizes when Hot-seating myself or playing multiplayer online.

 

[Abaxial]

I imagine huge maps make some victory types unfeasible - like Domination.

 

[AsH2]

I’m guessing small is the default size because at civ 6 release they could count on it being playable - ie loading and ai turns are quick even in the modern era.

I have to admit I am jealous of you guys playing on larger maps.i play on a 2014 MacBook and huge is just too slow.

Map size is why I think/hope they hold off on civ7 until they can make it a true epic sized game. Halve the scale so that three hex’s would be 6 and have more varied terrain. Small passable rivers and amazon sized and every thing in between

Or split them into triangles and then we can play in spherical worlds..

Spoiler from "In Civ VII: spheres or cylinders?" :

I find it a funny geometric coincidence since 12 pentagons makes a dodecahedron which is a 'sphere' (okay, spherical polyhedron, sue me.) So you need a sphere to finish the hexagon sphere!


Also fun fact: you can make a toroid out of regular hexagons:

Although displaying this in a 3d fashion in game would start to get trippy.


i know like 10 people have already replied, but certain shapes can never make closed objects in 3+ dimensions. For triangles, they always can form some kind of shape. Imaging trying you have 3 (equilateral) triangles, and you want to put them together so they all meet at a single point, and touch to form a sort of cone. Well that's basically the top of a pyramid. If you use 4 triangles you will also get the top of a pyramid, but now its a wider cone. If you use 5 triangles, you get the top of an icosahedron (a 20 sided die) and it's even shallower. To fit 6 triangles around a point, you end up making a hexagon, which is perfectly flat! In the same way, this is why you can almost make a sphere of hexagons but you can never make a perfectly closed one. For those who are nerds, look up Euler's Polyhedral Formula for a real explanation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anyways...
If they brought the map itself to be able to be translated between flat and spherical - like civ4 had- then you could get a lot of what people want (zoom out and see a globe) without making a mess of the internals.

The bigger problem is so much of the game is built on using a grid of (X,Y) which perfectly maps a cylinder, and a la civ4 you can stretch it a little to cover the areas between the poles of a sphere.
But in a true spherical map, the grid breaks down because different "latitudes" have different numbers of tiles in each "row". (they get thinner/fatter depending on how north/south you are.)

Okay, so, we need to introduce a new table to tell the game what tiles touch what tiles. With that go-between, there's no reason you couldn't have pentagons on the map; of course, that would add some issues with graphics- you would need hexagon and pentagon supported designs for districts, for example- but I don't think I can emphasize enough how much extra work that "translation" step to connect tiles would make for virtually every subsystem. You can't really just say "range of 2 tiles," you need to search for every tile within two tiles, for example. It loses the intuition aspect.

This might work better in a beyond earth style game than a historical civ game, though, where you have flying ships and satellites and such. And in a space setting, a 3d map space would even allow you to add in other geometries. For example, a moon or second celestial body that players could get to and play on. A binary system of planets would make for quite the "terra" or continents map... A ringworld map. A ringworld encircling the planet! Etc.

I would totally be a fan of a improved civ4 style "zoom out and you see a sphere" thing though. Imagine zooming and seeing hurricanes from space...

Well, then make tiles (to improve) triangle-shaped though let units move on edges to nodes between those (triangle-shaped) tiles and that some constructions (eg districts, wonders) require several tiles (like national parks do now).
Of course they could show a hexagon- or pentagon-shaped tile of influence around the unit's location/destination.

IE Compared to Civ6, units would be able to move distances of half (hexagon) tiles and along rivers.

..which would unclog paths; and as terrain on the sides could differ, I think 3UPT would fit well here.

 

[bengalryan9]

I guess I'm an oddball in that I actually prefer small. I just feel like there's too much land on bigger maps, even on standard. I couldn't imagine going for a domination or religious victory on some of these giant maps... give me a small map and maybe shove an extra civ or two in the game for good measure.

 

[Dr Yaz]

I used to play mostly Standard but have recently switched to Small. I am enjoying it so far. Not much of a difference in terms of gameplay. I have enough space to expand without the map feeling "tight". This has been improved ever further with the new Continent with Small Islands map (more islands to expand to). Which goes great with the new Patch buffing coastal cities.

 

[Patchmaster]

This thread reminds me of a restaurant I used to frequent. I would always order a "small" soda and the guy at the counter would say, "We only have medium and large." He was unaffected by my argument that with only two sizes a "medium" wasn't really possible.

since I built my new computer, huge is pretty much the only thing I run (other than the red death scenario yesterday). I have the cpu for it, I might as well go all the way.

So what kind of hardware are you throwing at this? My computer is about three years old but I went fairly high end for the time. i7-6700k overclocked to 4.5GHz, 32GB RAM, NVMe SSD, GTX 1060ti GPU. I'm not remotely thrilled with the speed of Civ 6 on this machine. I don't think I've ever thought, "Wow, that was fast." Quite the contrary. Every time I even start the game I find myself wondering what it's doing that's taking so long. Frequently, later in the game, I find myself spending about 80% of my time waiting for the AI to finish. Admittedly, I'm on Linux and I understand the engine that makes it run on that OS has some speed issues. Anyway, I'm curious what you have that makes you so happy with the performance.

 

[Naeshar]

My normal map size is TINY.

The 4-player map. Performance is not the issue, though the game stops reacting for 10 seconds in any game after medieval. It is actually the mental space I can comprehend after loading the game the next day and fits about 7 normal-sized cities. And I can compete for most of the wonders. Anything bigger than Standard (the one names such) is simply too large to manage.

 

[Deggial]

Standard. The hint is in the name.

 

[MisterBoomBoom]

I guess I'm an oddball in that I actually prefer small. I just feel like there's too much land on bigger maps, even on standard. I couldn't imagine going for a domination or religious victory on some of these giant maps... give me a small map and maybe shove an extra civ or two in the game for good measure.

I agree with this approach and have found myself doing it quite a bit. I do wish however that one could raise the number of continents from 2 so trading is better.

Even given the above, I DO like loading up on huge+ maps ...slow things to marathon...and enjoy a multiplayer game of exploring and word building!

 

[enKage]

The problem of map size is that it has no scaling with alliances. Playing small has no sense, if you can ally every single civ in game and not worry about building a single unit. The same refers to standard, as you can ally everyone except 1 or 2 and befriend the rest.

In these terms default setting for any flavour is large and above.