What's your favorite map script and why?

[topsecret]

What's your favorite map script and why?

I figured with the new map script, Highlands, coming out, it would be interesting to see what other players favorite map scripts are and why they enjoy them. My favorite is probably Fractal, just because of the randomness involved.

I am eager to see what others say. I haven't even tried all of the options yet. I can't do modded map scripts, because I play on the Switch, but I'd still like to hear about those too.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Continents, but with rainfall set to "wet".

This way the Continents script will generate a lot of lakes and several islands in the middle of the ocean. Really Earth-like. Continents and Islands on the other hand simply have far too much islands.

In general I like maps with a balanced amount of land and water, for equal footing - too much land or too much water can easily make your army/navy and related infrastructures obsolete - and I'm not super interested in super-optimization plays so no love for Lakes/Seven Seas/Highlands.

 

[cain3456]

Island Plates. That seems to be the only script so far that can actually generate Earthlike maps.

 

[Futumch]

It seems that since June, Continents just seems to generate two massive continents which are blocked at the poles. I know there is a degree of randomisation but the broad shapes are remarkably consistent. Fractal and Seven Seas hardly give you room to swing a cat.
I chose Inland sea from the list above, because it has tons of room to expand and if you want to grab shorelines it's pretty easy too.
I will have to play around with the Island Plates script (thanks cain3456), I always thought it was too close to Fractal to be worth considering.

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

I enjoy shuffle games. I like figuring out the map type as I go along. Not sure how random shuffle actually is, it does seem to tend to continents or small continents more often than not.

Occasionally, I enjoy Primordial just for volcano yields and amazing campuses. Lakes is fun too, especially for domination games.

 

[Lord Lakely]

Seven Seas. You always get a large swath of land to settle without interference.

I always play large or huge, balanced start (legendary on pangaea), low sea levels.

 

[blackcatatonic]

Continents and Islands is my go-to 90% of the time. I like having a mix of larger and smaller continents with a bit of ocean as well.

Seeing the full list of scripts makes me realise there are so many I've never even tried though!

 

[Casworon]

The idea of Terra is my favorite by far, but i'm not the biggest fan of its implementation.

Ideally i would have one continent being 2/3 of the map which has all the city states and civs. And then another continent being 1/3 of the map that only has barbarians and tribal villages. If the AI was also more proactive in settling the new continent that would also be better

 

[anonxanemone]

And then another continent being 1/3 of the map that only has barbarians and tribal villages.

This could be interpreted as quite culturally insensitive perpetuating the myth of uncivilized native populations.

 

[Casworon]

This could be interpreted as quite culturally insensitive perpetuating the myth of uncivilized native populations.

Aye i guess that's true. How about free cities then?

The problem at the moment is that you can just go over with settlers as the barbarians are all wiped out by the city states. This gives a huge buff to Norway and Maori on this game mode. Ideally i would like the new continent to require both military and settlers to colonize making it more of an investment.

I like how this would give a new round of city settling in the mid game where usually most of the city spots have been taken, while also allowing early game military civs to win the game as it is essentially a Pangaea game when the new continent is taken out of the equation.

I guess situations like this is where having a historical theme is a negative

 

[anonxanemone]

I guess situations like this is where having a historical theme is a negative

The premise of the map itself is a little toeing the line to begin with, reminiscent of European settlements of the Americas and Sacramble for Africa. But from a gameplay perspective, I think it's fine and creating a unique goal in how to play the map.

 

[pokiehl]

Continents, but with rainfall set to "wet".

This way the Continents script will generate a lot of lakes and several islands in the middle of the ocean. Really Earth-like. Continents and Islands on the other hand simply have far too much islands.

In general I like maps with a balanced amount of land and water, for equal footing - too much land or too much water can easily make your army/navy and related infrastructures obsolete - and I'm not super interested in super-optimization plays so no love for Lakes/Seven Seas/Highlands.

The rainfall setting only affects forests, rainforests, marsh, and oases - not lakes or terrain or anything else.

 

[LMT]

Fractal because it seems like the most random map type out of all of them (especially when temp, world age, precip, and sea levels are set to random). It seems like a more random map than even "random."

 

[RealHuhn]

Seven Seas 90% of the time. I just wish it had a high sea level option, just to mix it up every once in a while and generate a bit more water, especially for harbor and navy based civs.

Exploring Seven Seas is always exciting, both on water and land. You never know how important sea exploration will be and the vast amount of connected ice and tundra tiles at the poles create a lot of strong barbarian camps which early scouts cannot pass until much later into the game.
It also has good spacing between starting locations and enough decent land to settle because I'm not a big fan of the turn 20 warrior rush and I enjoy peaceful empire planning more than combat, at least in the early game. Sometimes starting locations are a bit too isolated and "easy" though. Well, at least the AI is somewhat competent on this map script compared to island maps. It's also quite tempting to settle late cities because of the way exploration works on this map.

I haven't tried them all though. Continents and Islands with low sea level could be interesting for example.

 

[Starwars]

I don't want to like it the most but Pangea is the one that gets me my best games usually. I love the idea of naval warfare and exploration but the AI doesn't fare all that well on the maps that feature more oceans I think.

Seven seas often makes for fun maps too though.

 

[monikernemo]

Lakes. Alot of land to settle.

 

[marius_kaparius]

Lakes, I just like the way it looks.

 

[Bosque]

Fractal because it seems like the most random map type out of all of them (especially when temp, world age, precip, and sea levels are set to random). It seems like a more random map than even "random."

Have you tried Splintered Fractal? I believe there is even more variety there. That is my go-to map type.

 

[8housesofelixir]

The rainfall setting only affects forests and rainforests - not lakes or terrain or anything else.

I thought it only affects forests before as well - but if only set to "wet" without changing nothing else, the map result will have a higher chance of lakes, small islands in the middle of the ocean, and weird-shaped continents.

Of course I am not a map script modder, that's just my experience in rolling the same map script setting in World Builder over and over again for more than 20 times, and do a different script another 20 times for comparison.

 

[MrRadar]

Usually it's Continents&Islands for me, as those unsettled islands are nice to discover and compete for around mid-game, and AI has enough land to do better.
Fractal, when I feel adventurous, and Splintered Fractal, when I feel crazy

Tried Inland Sea and 7-seas once or twice, but they have so much land, it becomes boring too fast.
On water-rich maps AI just can't do much. Tilted axis is misnamed - that's Flat Earth implementation, and it is too weird

I was really looking forward to Terra script, but yeah, as mentioned before, its implementation is not great. In Civ IV playing on Terra was an exciting race to the new land, In Civ V Terra was - why?, and in Civ VI Terra is also leaning towards - why? Usually it is all done and decided by the time when you can get there, and AI doesn't really strive to go there. Even AI Kupe prefers to send his settlers to the Old World and donate those cities to the oldworlders via loyalty flips.