Giga Map specs?

[Switch]

I'm interested in playing a giga map with 31 civs, but I was wondering what values I should have for max. good cities, civ separation, etc, so that it would be similarly balanced with the vanilla sizes. What's a good size to use, as well? If anyone could give me some balanced examples, I would be grateful.

[Krill]

Do not forget to alter the amount of corruption, and increase the tech rate mutiplier. Personally I like to play on a 200x200 size map, and middle of the road settings.

[Switch]

Thanks.

200x200 seems rather small for 31 civs, though...although on second thought, I would only need to double the area of the map. Huge maps are 160x160 I believe, so If I just double the product and then find the square root of that it should be a reasonable size parameter...so somwhere around 220x220, which is close to 200x200...Maybe I'll give it a try when I get home from school.

[snoochems]

What kind of PC do you have?

You'll definately want a beefy PC. (CPU and RAM) Unless you want to spend vast amounts of time waiting between turns....

Anyways, i play the kind of game you want to play. I usually play on map 233 * 256. HUGE. Also, i like to give the worker unit an extra move rate. This speeds up roads and infostructure. Very good at helping get around HUGE maps.

With that many AI, you'll soon run into the built in city limit number. Which really really sucks. So, make it so you can't build cities on swamp and jungle (and maybe tundra). This'll stop the STUPID AI from building cities in really stupid places!

Anyways, make sure you have your CPU oc'ed as far as it can go.... turns take 20mins at it is on my AMD 3200+ @2.31GHz with 1GB RAM.

[alva]

Don't be scared off by the first turn btw in terms of time it takes. That one can take a long time with the AI settling it's cities and all. It's gets beter after that....for a short while

[vmxa1]

I would say 250 is min for 31 civs. The loading of the map will even be painful though.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Switch
Huge maps are 160x160 I believe, so If I just double the product and then find the square root of that it should be a reasonable size parameter...so somwhere around 220x220, which is close to 200x200...Maybe I'll give it a try when I get home from school.

The problem with getting into large maps of that size is that you start to encounter the maximum number of cities, which is 512. Especially if you're playing with 31 civs. I found that 256 x 256, with no cities allowed on Deserts and Tundra is just about right on that score.

Also, with large maps and that many civs, your game turns are going to be really, really, really long. You'll be spending alot of time just sitting around waiting for your turn to come up again.

[alva]

Isn't there some loophole regarding forests?

IIRC you should make a houserule not to settle forests or something.

[vmxa1]

The idea of no cities on tundra and such is fine, but you would need to review the map carefully to make sure no civ got in a location that would cripple them.

IOW those tiles would have to be spread out and not clumped.

[alva]

It is, but you can still settle tundra and the like if there is a forest on them.

[Switch]

Hmmm, maybe I'm stretching my computer too far...it's only a PIII 866. I tried El Mency's huge earth map, 360x320 or something like that, and the first turn took between 30 seconds to a minute. It also got long when the first border increase happened.But I figured a smaller map might be a bit more liveable...Perhaps I will have to simply go with the vanilla huge maps and only 16 civs. Typically the number of civs, and not the size of the map, will make it longer?

[vmxa1]

Well AU402 or one of them was a 250 with 24 civs, if you want a test. It was PTW and can be found on the AU forum top threads.

A some points it crushed my 3+GH PC with 1GB memory. Some turns took 25 minutes, so be warned.

[Switch]

If 24 civs will crush your machine, then I think I'll just stick with standard, 8 civs...

But don't let that stop you from posting the parameters some of you use...Perhaps we could develop the perfect Giga map.

[vmxa1]

I have the El Mency map, may I will load it as a test over the weekend.

[McMeadows]

Too be honest, I still don't understand how to play with 32 civs. Where should it be editted?