Giga Map specs?

[snoochems]

I say let them build on tundra. Other wise there will be the forest bug thing. Maybe you can not allow cities on desert. Anyways, stick with the jungle and swamp. because if you really want, you can clear the jungle and swamp, and build.

The Ai probably wont think of that though, therefore slowing down there city rate...

[vmxa1]

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

In the scenario properties you can set the number of civs. You can only have 31 as barbs are the 32nd civ. If the map is not large enough to hold them, you may have to place them manually or end up with civs on top of each other.

[Switch]

Well, out of sheer curiosity I've decided to try and make a balanced giga map, fit to hold 31 civs but not kill any system that tries to play it. I've found a 240x240 map to work well, although I suggest using 60% water or else several civs will start on very, very small islands isolated from everyone else. I tried a 230x230, but it ended up with several civs starting literally next to each other despite the 36 distance. This was with continental, btw. However I am not too sure about the tech rate. I followed the pattern set by standard to large to previous, to get a ratio to develop the parameters, however with the resultant tech rate the beginning techs were all greater than 50. I tried setting the max rate to 100, but there were a couple at 100 so I'm guessing that they go even above that. Perhaps this would provide a balance issue, I'm not sure.

[Switch]

Ok, here's a link to my thread in the creation forum with a mod including a 24 civ mapsize and a 31 civ mapsize, slightly modified since my last post. It also includes stock standard, large, and huge sizes.

[Commander Bello]

Funny, that so many people think about the same thing as I am.
I'm currently testing to play on a 350*350 archipelago map with 70% water. Cities are not allowed on tundra, deserts, forests, jungles.

This makes it hard even for the human player to find a good location for the 7th or 8th city. You require quite some workers to clear forests or jungles to find enough space for your expansion.

I am in the early states of the game (current year is 160 BC or something like this), and on my P4 2.6GHz with 512 MB RAM turns are quick. Some of them may last for 5 - 10 seconds. Most probably, this will increase considerably in the later times.

Ah, and I am playing with 24 civs in one game, and 31 in another game. The only thing which really concerns me is that "§$"§$ city limit....

[vmxa1]

With lots of water, I would expect the trade route calculations to become an issue later.

[Commander Bello]

Hmm.. you may be right.. I will have to wait and to check for this.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Switch
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?

It's a combination of both. According to a long ago statement from Firaxis, the path finding is the main culprit in long turn times. So the larger the map, the more caculations the AI has to make in order to determine unit movements.

[Willem]

Originally posted by alva
Isn't there some loophole regarding forests?

The loophole is that the AI won' t think about planting a forest on Tundra in order to build a city on a square. Since the human player does understand that this can be done, you have to agree to yourself not to take advantage of this.

[Jaybe]

My experience is that the AI WILL build cities in forests on tundra, even if tundra cities are disallowed. Of course, they will not go to the effort of planting forests to allow a city.

One option is to not allow cities in forests (along with all the other terrain types other than grass/plains/hill/flood plain). Also, make forest chopping a major undertaking instead of a quicky, like 32-40 turns instead of 4. Perhaps also give the forest-chop value a bump up to 20 shields.

[Jaybe]

For an awesome huge-map experience, check out Rhye's of Civilization, available at
poly forum
or at
Civ Fanatics forum

It's an Earth map of 170x170, tailored for quick load times.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Jaybe
My experience is that the AI WILL build cities in forests on tundra, even if tundra cities are disallowed. Of course, they will not go to the effort of planting forests to allow a city.

Of course they'll build on Forest squares. But if they don't plant Forests first, as the human player knows to do, they're at a disadvantage. But having a self imposed rule not do so solves the problem easily enough.

Another possibility is to change the worker job for Tundra. I encountered a problem in my mod with the AI planting Forests on all Plains squares when I allowed Mining in Forests. I changed the worker job in the editor to Clear Forest on Plains, and now I can't even plant them even if I wanted to.