Working with giant maps

[dragonprobably]

I'm trying to work with Aldaron's Ancient Mediterranean map which is a whopping 436 x 150. Playing on the map itself, it takes a long time just to finish one turn and that's just with 16 players and I'm planning on using the full 31. Some other things I noticed is that there is going to be a lot empty space which could lead to AIs building an unecessarily huge amount of cities, the amount of time for units to get from one place to the next would be staggering, and lastly resources seem to be scarce.

I don't know how to stop the long waiting times, but here are a couple of possible fixes to these problems:

• Make settlers harder to come by. (But how?)
• Increase culture output of all buildings so territories will expand faster. (Would tripling it sound about right?)
• Give units much more movement points. (By how much though?)
• Increase appearance/disappearance ratio (Again, by how much though?)

 

[Nathiri]

I'm trying to work with Aldaron's Ancient Mediterranean map which is a whopping 436 x 150. Playing on the map itself, it takes a long time just to finish one turn and that's just with 16 players and I'm planning on using the full 31. Some other things I noticed is that there is going to be a lot empty space which could lead to AIs building an unecessarily huge amount of cities, the amount of time for units to get from one place to the next would be staggering, and lastly resources seem to be scarce.

I don't know how to stop the long waiting times, but here are a couple of possible fixes to these problems:

• Make settlers harder to come by. (But how?)
• Increase culture output of all buildings so territories will expand faster. (Would tripling it sound about right?)
• Give units much more movement points. (By how much though?)
• Increase appearance/disappearance ratio (Again, by how much though?)

Make several terrains not buildable so to only allow cities a certain distance away. You dont have to increase unit movement specifically, but increase road movement. You could also make certain terrains have a higher movement cost, so to differentiate distances. Roads remove movement cost, so it will revert to how many moves you give to units.

Culture borders do not stop the AI in building cities, so you have to make land unbuildable to stop them.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Haven't seen this particular map. I imagine there's a lot of coast & water.

If harbors or other improvements allow trade by sea then the AI will check every possible connection by road from resources to each accessible harbor, then every possible water route to any other harbor connecting to a possible trade route. Which means checking every combination of moving from one water tile to the next, to the next, to the next, ... For each civ.

Disabling trade by sea can significantly reduce time between turns.

 

[dragonprobably]

Make several terrains not buildable so to only allow cities a certain distance away. You dont have to increase unit movement specifically, but increase road movement. You could also make certain terrains have a higher movement cost, so to differentiate distances. Roads remove movement cost, so it will revert to how many moves you give to units.

Culture borders do not stop the AI in building cities, so you have to make land unbuildable to stop them.

Okay, going with the Rhye strategy could always work. For road movement: should I double normal road movement or triple road movement?
No clue how I'll do terrain cost. All flat land should cost the least but grass costs the least of flat land and desert costs the most.

Haven't seen this particular map. I imagine there's a lot of coast & water.

If harbors or other improvements allow trade by sea then the AI will check every possible connection by road from resources to each accessible harbor, then every possible water route to any other harbor connecting to a possible trade route. Which means checking every combination of moving from one water tile to the next, to the next, to the next, ... For each civ.

Disabling trade by sea can significantly reduce time between turns.

Okay, thank you for the advice.

 

[timerover51]

As for slowing down the AI creation of settlers, have the capital auto-produce them every few turns or so. As they will be produced only at the capital, that will also slow down city creation by the time to move to acceptable terrain. Another option would be to require a resource within the city limits to produce settlers.

With respect to resources, I have determined that the game will generate strategic resources at the rate of plus or minus 1 of the number of civilizations in the game. So, 16 civilizations will get between 15 and 17 strategic resources. On very large maps, my experience is that luxury resources tend to be clustered together. As it is a pre-generated map, you can put on it additional resources if you think that the resources are a bit thin. That would include strategic resources.

Edit Note: Looking at the map again, you might want to cut down on the Barbarian camps.

 

[Quintillus]

Blue Monkey is right about sea trade being a major factor. I've heard building maintenance calculations can also add up - though not as much as trade - and as I recall Civinator did some interesting experiments in reducing AI turn times by drastically decreasing the number of buildings with maintenance. That's a significant rule alteration though, so not for every scenario. Good ideas on limiting settlers as well - I'm partial to terrain restrictions, but timerover51 has some interesting ideas if limiting the pace but not location is what you prefer.

That's an interesting map, too. I had not been aware of any existing maps with more than 362 tiles in one direction, but that one has been around since 2006!

 

[timerover51]

I like to play on very large maps, generally over 200 by 200, and a fair number at 360 by 180. I have played on at least one 400 by 200 map, but I would have to check where it is.

Another thing that you have to consider when playing on very large maps, especially if they have a lot of water, is that you have to increase the movement rate of ships in order to get from one spot to another in a reasonable turn time. I am on a map now of 300 by 200, and with galleys and caravels, travel times of 10 or more turns are common. Land exploration is also slow, until you get to explorers. I have boosted the movement rates of later ships, but I have not really looked at land movement. Movement rates that work fine on a map of 100 X 100 are very slow on maps ten times the size. I have reduced the time to build roads and railroads on the very large maps to speed movement up by faster road construction.

One way that I help the human player is to increase the yields of terrain and resources. This allows for a player to have a smaller number of highly productive cities, without reducing the ability to keep the game moving fast. If you combine that with limiting settler production, it works well. Allowing towns to grow to 9 and cities to grow to 21 helps as well. That can massively boost a city's production.

 

[Oni Ryuu]

Make settlers harder to come by. (But how?)

I started work on an idea for a 360 x 720 map but quickly realized that it wasn’t feasible but my plan for controlling city placement was.

All civilisations have access to settlers but not the resource required to build them. Carefully placed barbarian camps have an immobile settler unit with no HP or population cost. You can only found new cities by capturing these settlers.

It’s as organised a having preplaced cities but with the uncertainty of not knowing which player will get there first.

 

[timerover51]

I started work on an idea for a 360 x 720 map but quickly realized that it wasn’t feasible but my plan for controlling city placement was.

All civilisations have access to settlers but not the resource required to build them. Carefully placed barbarian camps have an immobile settler unit with no HP or population cost. You can only found new cities by capturing these settlers.

It’s as organised a having preplaced cities but with the uncertainty of not knowing which player will get there first.

That is an excellent concept, Oni. Somewhat akin to TETurkhan having workers at Barbarian camps which can be captured, but a bit more advanced. That would put a premium on exploring as much of the map as possible as quickly as possible. Do you have all civilizations with Scouts, and do you play on maps with a lot of water, which would benefit Sea-Faring civilizations?

 

[Oni Ryuu]

timerover51
I abandoned that project within the first 48 hours so I can’t provide much more than the ideas I had.

If it helps; I only play 360 x 360, 80-70% water, archipelago, 31 player games. All of my civ’s start with Trackers (which have 1 movement) so it’s not a fair comparison. I love battle fleet action (if I ever get the opportunity); it’s only happened a few times on RGM games in the years I’ve been playing but it’s one of the things that gets my blood pumping.

MartinLuther
A city with a 13 tile diameter (100,000 culture) would occupy 136 tiles when you exclude the lost corner tiles.
436 x 150 = 65,400 Total Tiles

If every square of the map was a land tile you’d need 480 cities to cover every tile (not including packing efficiency or the free land awarded for being one tiles distance from the border of another one of your cities).

A city with an 11 tile diameter (10,000 culture) would occupy 88 tiles and 9 (1,000 culture) will equal 61 resulting in 743 and 1072 cities respectively. If you assume that half of the map is uninhabitable (water, mountains etc.) then even the pathetic 1,000 culture cities could cover the map at the maximum allowed city limit.

 

[timerover51]

Oni Ryuu

You have a similar preference in maps to me, but mine are a little smaller, more around 320 by 300, with less than 31 civilizations so that the computer does not slow down too much. I will give some serious thought to your ideas for reducing settler production. Always good to get another viewpoint.

 

[dragonprobably]

I'm so sorry for my late response but I figured out how to work with giant maps: I made a horse unit that can transport 1 foot unit and has a lot of movement points.