Why are pangea maps considerer better than continents?

[Deity player]

I personally like continents more. Some of my reasons:

- winning by domination or conquest becomes more tricky (at least with renaissance units)
- intercontinental wars have to be planned more carefully
- dealing with a runaway AI on another continent can be challinging
- the game gets some new millstones (such as optics -> getting the +1 movement bonus, astronomy)
- you need to care about having intercontinental TR
- there are usually more religion blocks
- some resources are only on one continent so handling the happiness/health issues is more tricky and trading for resources is more important
- you can enjoy building drydocks and all the naval units
- TR multipliers (harbours and custom houses) but also airports and castles (haha!) are more valuable
- capturing some wonders on other continents can be useless since some of them work only for the continent where they are built (Statue of Liberty, Three Georges Dam)

 

[krikav]

I personally like continents more. Some of my reasons:

- winning by domination or conquest becomes more tricky (at least with renaissance units)
- intercontinental wars have to be planned more carefully
- dealing with a runaway AI on another continent can be challinging
- the game gets some new millstones (such as optics -> getting the +1 movement bonus, astronomy)
- you need to care about having intercontinental TR
- there are usually more religion blocks
- some resources are only on one continent so handling the happiness/health issues is more tricky and trading for resources is more important
- you can enjoy building drydocks and all the naval units
- TR multipliers (harbours and custom houses) but also airports and castles (haha!) are more valuable
- capturing some wonders on other continents can be useless since some of them work only for the continent where they are built (Statue of Liberty, Three Georges Dam)

I agree, and also. I do play continents way more than I play pangea.
The two-phased nature of the game is fascinating imo.

 

[mtr12]

Pangaea maps are basically Fractal maps in terms of gameplay balance. Because of all the land, there's a bigger possibility of some people getting too much land, some people getting boxed in, etc. This was seen very prominently in today's Different Leader challenge.

Also, even if you're a mechanically sound player you can still lose games because of volatile diplomatic situations. Negotiating with 6 civs is a lot harder than negotiating with 2.

Some players like Pangaea games because they allow for fast tech rates (all the trading) and lots of (successful) wars. But they also forget about random gamebreaking Daggers that wouldn't have happened in a Hemispheres game. I dunno, it's a pretty different cup of tea.

 

[yatta77]

Speaking for myself, I personally liked Fractal the most since they added this mapscript to Civ IV.

I didn't mind start on tundra, with low resources, with an hard to predict diplomacy, and without knowing if I was alone, on a pangea type fractal map, or in a continent type of fractal map: every game was different and somehow mysterious at least in the beginning.

If picking another map type I was used to change every game (pangea, islands, fractal, big and small, medium and small, continents, terra, ...) for diversity or to try a specific plan or victory condition on a specific map type.

But, however, I've been told here that for game balance and comparison between games pangea is the best pick, and the best map-script, so this is the reason why most players play so I guess.

- yatta, post #983

 

[ahcos]

1. You may end up in isolation.
2. Naval wars usually are no fun at all, at least not for me... especially because of the "pillage seafood" garbage.
3. It's frustrating to play a game, and when you ship over to the other continent you find yourself in a position you can't win. Pangea allows you to control the game.
4. Pangea is good for learning purposes, as you can learn the most important aspects of the game very good here (earlygame buildup, techtrading, diplomacy, military etc.), and don't have to worry so much about things like uneven distribution of the land. Therefore, pangea is the most common forum map nowadays, but that doesn't reflect the whole community. It's possible that most people who never visited S&T play everything but pangea
5. Usually pangea gives all of the civs the most even starting positions, at least in terms of land you can peacefully expand to. Makes the games more even and is less likely to create runaway AIs.

That said, i also like continents, but more for the fact that it requires some other strategies than pangea. Same reason i like Big&Small or Fractal, you just don't know what to deal with and this makes the game surprising and fun. If you want to learn how to play, or you just want a pretty even game, pangea is one of the best choices you have. Continents is also pretty good in this regard, but still might create super AIs and has the annoying naval warfare in it.

 

[Habitus]

Iirc its basically Continents is easier but less balanced (more likely for runaway AIs, but less likely for the player to get boxed in and such). Pangaea are harder but more balanced.

If I'm playing for fun I often play Fractal, but for forum games I generally use Pangaea. Saying that, I think I might use Continents for the next IU just for a change

 

[Manco Capac]

3. It's frustrating to play a game, and when you ship over to the other continent you find yourself in a position you can't win. Pangea allows you to control the game.

Yes! *Grumble* I hate you tech runaway deity Pacal II who killed my beautiful CR3 infantry army with tons of calvaries because of railroads...'twas fun how easy I crushed Raggy and how easy Pacal II the wimp crushed me.

Very interesting to see one the primary reason for pangaea maps is control of powers.

Someone told me continent maps are easy (mostly) because once you conquer your own continent, then one is living in an ivory tower with almost zilch as odds to be wiped out.

Anyways, my favorite random settings now is large/normal speed/fractal_map (although I encountered many unbalances).

On large map, the diplomacy is trickier, but less complicated than huge/mar...err I mean huge.

 

[elohssa]

Pangaea maps are basically Fractal maps in terms of gameplay balance. Because of all the land, there's a bigger possibility of some people getting too much land, some people getting boxed in, etc. This was seen very prominently in today's Different Leader challenge.

Also, even if you're a mechanically sound player you can still lose games because of volatile diplomatic situations. Negotiating with 6 civs is a lot harder than negotiating with 2.

Some players like Pangaea games because they allow for fast tech rates (all the trading) and lots of (successful) wars. But they also forget about random gamebreaking Daggers that wouldn't have happened in a Hemispheres game. I dunno, it's a pretty different cup of tea.

Yea, my diplomacy is crap (I never agree to demands - I just can't help it) and I always get daggered in pangea maps. My two best ever scores were on pangea though. It's easier to get a very high score on pangea but it's also a lot easier to lose especially if like me you have crap diplo or are just unlucky.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Continents tends to be more imbalanced than pangaea by far, because the game has a tendency to make continents with one civ spawning in the middle and another at the edge, forming a natural hard-block. Although Pangaea will occasionally feed someone 25-30% land w/o war, on continents it happens fairly often.

It's nice to have navies matter, although their real impact is just a forced hammer sink to invade. It necessitates a small delay in conquest of enemies over on same-continent, but once you start the chain of units it becomes very similar. In effect intercontinental will set you back 20ish turns.

 

[mtr12]

Yea, my diplomacy is crap (I never agree to demands - I just can't help it) and I always get daggered in pangea maps. My two best ever scores were on pangea though. It's easier to get a very high score on pangea but it's also a lot easier to lose especially if like me you have crap diplo or are just unlucky.

I spend a lot of my games wishing people would demand things from me so I didn't have to worry about defense.

 

[Mylene]

Yes! *Grumble* I hate you tech runaway deity Pacal II who killed my beautiful CR3 infantry army with tons of calvaries because of railroads...

You shouldn't make Infies CR
Artillery & friends task to soften up defenders, priority for Infies is protection + cleanup (if i get that far in the game ~~)

On topic, i like the more intense diplo on Pangeas.
Refusing a demand can be a big mistake here

 

[Manco Capac]

You shouldn't make Infies CR
Artillery & friends task to soften up defenders, priority for Infies is protection + cleanup (if i get that far in the game ~~)

On topic, i like the more intense diplo on Pangeas.
Refusing a demand can be a big mistake here

I didn't have the tech power (to compare with Pacal) to go up to Artillery. Pacal II really was a tech monster in the other continent, but still soft.

I never refused any demand from him...I backstabbed him, in the hopes (if I hadn't make THE mistake) to vassalize him to neutralize him. Then, the rest of AIs was an easy mop up. The big mistake was not rushing the others still not having Replaceable Parts, then using them to finish once for all mayan.

Railroad was the killer tech, not for Machine guns, but the railroads themselves.

Perhaps, I should've wait for a more advanced modern war, but I had an opportunity.

The game isn't lost, far from it...even with all the losses, Pacal II seemed to think he was slightly losing the war.

 

[kossin]

Matter of opinion.

Early game
Harder on Pangea for expansion, easier for barbs.

Middle game
Easier on Continents (you can wipe out the few civs there are without too much trouble... harder on Pangea). Also, Astronomy means big commerce from the other continent. However, you have access to more resources on Pangea so you can tech more quickly.

Late game
Military is tedious on continents: making a large stack and invading the others takes a bunch of time!

 

[Bei1052]

Negotiating with 6 civs is a lot harder than negotiating with 2.

Disagree. You get a tech bonus the more civs you know. All else being equal, knowing two civs out of six total will net you a slower tech rate than knowing all six civs in the game. Furthermore, more civs means more trading partners and more allies. Of course, there will always be that one odd AI who hates you, but that's why you bribe one of your buddies into DOW'ing him or her. Conversely, if you only know two civs out of six, there's a very good chance the AI won't trade you any good techs because it thinks it has a monopoly on the tech. It's even worse if it's just you and one AI, as the computer will pretty much be in perpetual "we don't want to start trading away this tech just yet".

As far as I'm concerned, Pangea is among the easiest map scripts in the game.

 

[obsolete]

Pan games are the most well-balanced. Stuff like fractal tend to be the reason for many re-loads, etc. Simply because someone always tends to get screwed.

And maps like Big&Small are just asking for the luck of junk-maps. Things may go super good for you, or horribly bad.

 

[ben-jammin]

Intercontinental warfare is a bit of a pain in the ass. And on higher difficulties your window of opportunity with superior military technology is already very small, if you're invading a continent that isnt totally backwards your killer army might not be so unstoppable by the time you actually get there.