What's your ideal map topography?

[BuzWeaverCiv]

I confess I'm incredibly persnickety when it comes to maps. This map is from the Detailed Worlds MOD. I'm really enjoying the map selections. This game is on King difficulty, but as a result of the amazing hills I'm able to do a little wonder spamming. What type of topography is ideal for your game play?

 

[LethalLeigh]

Any Map where I can build 3-4 Cities with out pissing off another Civ for building too close. But I like island Maps where you can Colonize without another Civ. Maybe 1-2 City-State preferably a Gold or Production City-State .

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Depends on what I'm aiming for, but generally I want at least one 3-food tile (Marsh, Cattle, Rice) and a few productive tiles (forest on rivers, hills, resources).

My capital should have access to at least one luxury and fresh water, and my core cities shouldhave fresh water as well.

I find your map quite good., for instance.

 

[ShakaKhan]

I'm also very picky about what the map presents, because it is an element of randomness that has such a huge impact on the player's ability to progress in a game. An average player who starts with a map that has their first two unimproved tiles be a hills/rainforest spices tile (4F, 2P) followed by a hills/rainforest truffles tile (2F/2P/3G) will be equally if not more successful than an elite player who has their first two unimproved tiles be two 2F/1P tiles. I guess the order of importance for what I'd like to see in an ideal map are:

1.) multiple different luxuries
2.) the tiles which allow for eurekas, particularly early eurekas (a pasture-able tile, iron is a 2-fer, a farm-able resource, etc.)
3.) full strength fresh water or the ability to have it via aqueduct in as many cities as possible, and hopefully all of the first 6 or 7 core cities.
4.) One or two triangles of flat land (preferably plains) for farms/growth (and eureka), hopefully NOT riverside, extra credit for farming bonus resource tiles. Everything else would be hills or forests, hills used to be better since they upgrade earlier but now that there's the appeal change maybe forests are better. Except...
5.) Some cities would have adjacent mountain tiles 3-4 tiles out for both district adjacency bonuses and later national parks.
6.) It's ok, almost preferred to have 3 or 4 garbage tiles for districts, especially if positioned adjacently for districts.

 

[Bro]

I've found hills the most important asset, some Iron and Horses will also do, but not necessary. It's also good to have some desert tiles for at least Pyramids, if there are more of then then also for Pertra. A couple of luxury resources will do, but don't need loads of them cause I'm building Entertainment District and a Colosseum anyways. Oh and some tiles with good gold output are always nice.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I like to start on a river, within a few tiles of the coast. Unless I'm England, Australia, or Norway, then I want to be right on the coast. I want to have at least two different luxuries. I like cattle, bananas, wheat, rice, stone (on hills) or deer for bonus resources.

I like to have a Natural Wonder nearby if I'm playing a civ that relies on religion.

 

[KmDubya]

A nice river network. I also usually set the world age to 3 billion so there are more mountains and hills. I like how mountains limit movement and certain terrain in a pass becomes much more valuable then it'd be in a flat world.

 

[Futumch]

Love me some river valleys protected by mountain chains. When I'm selecting the map options at the beginning of a new game, I will often set the world age to "young" in order to get a more concentrated clumping of physical features. The downside is you get a lot more hills, which can really slow things down in the initial exploration phase. Later on though, those hills become little industrial miracles.
I also enjoy settling along the coasts, must be the Aussie in me.

aside: I think next game I'm using the winning horses from the Melbourne Cup as my city names.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Melbourne_Cup_winners

 

[Victoria]

Jungle hills are just awesome. Chop the jungle means you grow way above your pop limit and the plains hills left are scrummy, Naturally you need some food eventually, no luxes? Just build an ED. I can found in jungle hills in T200 and by T220 its pop 11 and juicy

Never heard anyone ask for flat desert before @Bro

 

[Bro]

Never heard anyone ask for flat desert before @Bro

I usually build the Pyramids and the Petra as China, so I need some deserts! =D

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Pyramids sure are yummy, but I ask for my neighbor to have deserts so he can build them for me

 

[Phoenix1595]

I like maps that are civ-specific (i.e. Egypt as a river civ surrounded by desert, Russia by lots of forests, lakes, rivers, and tundra, etc.), however I agree with other posters that a hilly map is a good one. Mountain ranges are great too, at least early on, to create a barrier from aggressive neighbors forward-settling me, and to block waves of barbars.

Also, I tend to look for a variety of luxury resources when founding cities, especially since the happiness/amentities changes between Civ5 and Civ6 (I tried the Colloseum route, and I wasn't convinced the opportunity costs were worth the ED+Col). I am a tall player, so I really only need a handful to keep my cities happy, if not ecstatic. Stone, horses, and iron are always priorities too, and always fresh water!!!

 

[Leyrann]

I really like this one, also from the Detailed Worlds mod. Surrounded by sea and mountains while having two 1-tile passes, one leading to a city-state that seems to be at the end of the continent (considering it took a while to find it and I still got the envoy) and the other to the rest of the continent, starting with formerly-declared-friend Gandhi. Meanwhile, the land is full of hills and rainforest, but not so much I can't build farms, except in the far west, where I got a water-improvement mod which will probably allow me to do fine. On top of that, to the north I have a seemingly empty land that I can get to over just coastal tiles, allowing me to continue expanding there.

 

[BuzWeaverCiv]

You guys certainly have a wide variety of preferences and its great to see that you're able to utilize the topography for your game style. I start to get a little twitchy if I'm on flat land because I love production. The game above was on Epic speed (King Difficulty) but I was quickly able to put down districts and buildings which allowed me to quickly catch up and overtake the AI. I'm confident that a map like this would be ideal for a Deity game because you'll get a great balance of production.

 

[zoundmine]

Well I think the subject is well covered by everybody and almost everything is needed in the right place and the right time. For me what I do miss is having smoother maps and more uniform landscapes, I mean it seems strange to have in a city everything from mountains to swamps... Ok obviously this is more fair for every city to grow big but in civ 6 there's no need for that, but even under this it's very bad having a 36 tiles with 5 hills, 3 swamps, 10 flat land etc all scattered around... Also were are the deltas, a major place of birth for many civilizations? I think we can have a tile or two of flood plains where the rivers meet the sea...

Edit: Well I am a little out of subject...

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Well I think the subject is well covered by everybody and almost everything is needed in the right place and the right time. For me what I do miss is having smoother maps and more uniform landscapes, I mean it seems strange to have in a city everything from mountains to swamps... Ok obviously this is more fair for every city to grow big but in civ 6 there's no need for that, but even under this it's very bad having a 36 tiles with 5 hills, 3 swamps, 10 flat land etc all scattered around... Also were are the deltas, a major place of birth for many civilizations? I think we can have a tile or two of flood plains where the rivers meet the sea...

Edit: Well I am a little out of subject...

Depending on map size, a city's territory can be a large chunk of the world. Think of them as only the major cities of a civ, and each tile a smaller town or region which specializes in the improvement you made there (or in the case of no improvement, well, they don't specialize much).

And deltas can be awesome cities. They get access to the Harbor/Commercial Hub combo, are able to churn out ships without Harbor and have fresh water without Aqueducts. They generate heaps of gold for me (though they can lack some production).