Map Size

[Fried-Psitalon]

Again, sorry if I'm claim jumping - maybe it's the fact that I'm an educator in the real... I want to see education in motion, not hung up with people waiting.

[conmcb25]

Don't get too big just yet, A lot of folks are having lag issues with larger maps.

[ducki]

I voted Standard, but I really mean "Standard or smaller".

[Stuie]

Without knowing how well the patch will address performance issues, I voted Standard.

Large+ currently become unplayable for me in the late game due to slowdown.

[Arrian]

Standard.

-Arrian

[UnOrthOdOx]

My comp won't go over standard.

[V3nom]

standard.

[Sirid]

I voted Small, just because I think a 'learning the basics' game for the first course would be more suited to a tutorial-style small map. But I can live with Standard.

[djpsychonaut]

Bigger is (usually) better

My personal favorite so far is Large. This is the size that I would always choose in Civ 3. I also usually set the time to Epic. I think that the Large map provides a more realistic experience with religions as well in which some nations are guaranteed to share religions.

I've always found any larger than Large is ridiculously unmanageable in Civ 3. I've yet to try it out in Civ 4 though. Has anyone else?

[kptb]

Large

I vote for large as in a game with a large map you usually have some space to expand before you are being confronted.

[Arrian]

Room to expand is more a function of the ratio between map size and # of civs than just plain 'ole map size, wouldn't you say? 5 civs on a standard continents map (down from the default of 7) will have more room than playing on a large map with the default # of civs.

Plus, those of us with so-so systems might run into trouble in the late game on larger maps...

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

Huge is definitely out. For my second game (now that I've upgraded my graphics to a 256MB G-Force 6200), I set up an 18-civ hotseat monster with me playing two civs and having 16 AIs. (I've been wanting to do something along those lines just about ever since PtW came out, but Civ 3 wouldn't allow more than 8 civs in multiplayer mode.) By the time the game was over, my system's memory usage was exceeding my 1.25 GB physical memory, and the lag between turns was atrocious. I also had problems with having the scrolling slow down to intolerable speeds a few times, but that problem cleared up if I shut down the game and reloaded, and I hope Firaxis will get that cleared up in the patch. The bottom line is that unless I'm badly overestimating the importance of memory, people without at least a gig of memory are going to have a hard time playing huge maps. Even large may well pose a problem for people with only the minimum "recommended" 512 MB.

By long-standing tradition, most AU games have been on standard maps, and I think it would be good to start off on standard maps with Civ IV. If we decide we want bigger maps, and if it becomes clear that most people's systems can handle them, we can move up to large later on.

[Bull001]

I've been playing strictly on Huge so far. Only performance issues have been on the Highlands map, where I got a game into the 1800's before it started either crashing or having the graphics go funky a few turns into every restart. Others maps, so far no problem. Hardware setup:

Sempron 2300 (1.63ghz) on a Biostar VIG-400
1GB Corsair DDR 2700 RAM
Geforce 5600 w/ 256MB RAM
Audigy Soundcard

[Cort Haus]

Standard. We can't close the course off to all but the biggest rigs.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Bull001
I've been playing strictly on Huge so far. Only performance issues have been on the Highlands map, where I got a game into the 1800's before it started either crashing or having the graphics go funky a few turns into every restart. Others maps, so far no problem. Hardware setup:

Sempron 2300 (1.63ghz) on a Biostar VIG-400
1GB Corsair DDR 2700 RAM
Geforce 5600 w/ 256MB RAM
Audigy Soundcard

My huge-map game was on a 'pelago map with maximum land (since I wanted as much room as possible with so many civs). What kind of land/water ratios have you been using, and how many civs? Comparing systems, mine is:

Sempron 3000+
1.25GB DDR 2700 RAM
GeForce 6200 w/256MB RAM
Whatever sound is built into the motherboard