World Maps - Uninspiring?

[Catawumpus]

I've been playing BNW since day one and I usually play on game generated maps. I recently switched to trying out some TSL Earth maps and found myself really enjoying those games, in large part because of the maps. I find that the Earth maps seem more realistic to me. There are swathes of forest, followed by plains and then deserts. The resource distributions also seem less random and more plentiful. I can identify things like river deltas, discrete geographic features, it all just blends very beatifully together.

I went back to the game generated maps last night and found myself underwhelmed. The georaphic features seem more patch work, there's no smooth transitions or swathes of territory. It just all looks thrown together and doesn't gel well to me. Resource wise I've always been a little miffed at things like luxury resource clustering. By that I mean when I start on a map and there's a bunch of incense around my city I know I'm going to be incense guy on this game. Because you can bet your bottom dollar, no matter the size of this world I will have the largest collection of incense because of this clustering effect. Sure, there's be one or two scattered here and there but most of the incense in the world will be within my city radius and a little beyond. You can subsitute any luxury this way.

The same goes for resources. I once played on a map where I was on the largest continent and when industrialization came along there was a single 3 patch of coal and that was it. On the entire continent. I get resource scarcity and why its a factor in the game but going back to my experiences on these Earth maps the resource disparity makes a little more sense. You get a large enough empire and you will run into just about every resource you need. There's some scarcity on these maps such as aluminum but its not as frustrating or senseless as say no coal on a north american size continent.

I wanted to see what others folks thought about the game generated maps, if anyone had suggestions on how to improve it or play on more exciting maps, suggest maps to play on, etc.

Thanks

 

[Glassmage]

TSL earth maps are best. I usually play this one. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=108728331&tscn=1379977399

 

[zukenft]

there's always the legendary start option if you want more resources.
earth map is more familiar, so that's why you'd think it's more 'exciting' : you already know the lay of the land.
if you want larger geographic feature area, I'd recommend the fantasy map. Had a huge snow continent in the middle of the map once. fun!

 

[weregamer]

You might also want to look into some of the other map scripts people have worked on. PerfectWorld3 is even available as a workshop download.

Part of what I've noticed is that "better" maps like PerfectWorld3 and Tectonics seem to result in better-looking maps, but not necessarily better-playing ones.

 

[Talcove]

I actually don't like TSL Earth maps, they take all of the mystery out of the game.
If you're playing Civ then you're going to know how the world looks, and therefore know the layout of the map, exactly where you are, and exactly what's around you from the get go.

Part of the fun in generated maps is the exploration, discovering your surroundings, and the shock and and terror you feel when you find out that Shaka is your closest neighbour! That's gone in TSL Earth maps, especially the Shaka Shock; if you want your TSL Earth games to go smoothly, you'll also have to pre-pick exactly which Civs you want in your game, otherwise you run a very high risk of ending up with two thirds of the Civs being in Europe. I once did a TSL map wherein there was only one Civ in ALL of the Americas - north and south.

Scripted maps may not be the 'smoothest' but they're always different, and with custom made scripts, such as Perfect World and Tectonics, they get even better.

 

[Matoro]

I prefer random maps. Terra is probably the best; it has smooth enough terrain changes and it is otherwise realistic. But the greatest reason why I prefer it is because of randomness. For me, exploration is a big part of CiV. If I want to play something historical, I play Europa Universalis. If I want something more exciting and fresh, I play CiV with random-generated map. Finding new things beyond the seas is always awesome. It's just boring when you already know where things lie.