Map preferences

[Blake]

What type of map do you prefer to play?

Dry (Flat, few rainy tiles):
Strong Erosion, Low Rainfall
Strong erosion, Average Rainfall
Average erosion, Low rainfall

Average(A nice happy medium)
Low Erosion, Sparse Rainfall
Average Erosion, Average Rainfall
Strong erosion, High rainfall

Wet (many peaks, rain):
Low erosion, High rainfall
Low erosion, Average rainfall
Average erosion, High rainfall


I prefer the dry maps myself.

[Zakharov VII]

I prefer the wet maps, as the AI gets a huge disadvantage on dry maps since they just don't terraform (or when they do, they farm and mine/solar collector - oh goodie, this square gives 1 nutrient and 1 energy!). They can grow a lot faster (3 food with their favorite farms, instead of 1 on arid), and generally be more challenging/difficult.

We, however, as the all-intelligent sentient beings, know how to terraform, and what do boreholes and condensers and forests and energy parks care for about the original raininess? Arid land doesn't "condense" well, but two condensers next to each other makes it as good as a condensing on Rainy. The only thing this will help us with is Planetary Transit System, as if you don't plan ahead and pre-terraform, your poor new base will probably starve on an arid map. But as humans usually pre-terraform (I think) to put in the sensor anyway, I assume they would make that +2 nutrient square to make sure the base survives.

So, in short, Rainy for the AI challenge, though if I were to play Multiplayer against Humans, Arid would be an interesting option...

**Note: I've had many successes only planting forests from the beginning, so the minor advantages a human might get from utilizing Rainy squares early in the game is, to me, negligible, especially since Rainy farmed is just as good as Moist farmed, until restrictions are raised, and by Gene Splicing you should only be 10 years (or maybe 20, on bigger maps with non-builders) or so from tree farms anyway.**

Z

[Blake]

Actually AI's play better on extremely arid maps, because they have little choice but to plant forest. (they choose forest on flat arid much more often than farms...) The forests expand, and by the time tree farms roll around they can have half decent terraforming. If an AI gets the WP it often goes condensor crazy under such dry conditions too.

They seem to play worst on maps with a large number of moist tiles, but few rainy. Because then they cultivate farms and build mines everywhere. The result being lots of 2-1-1's, 1-2-0 tiles.


Anyway, here is proof of the AI arid terraforming theory.
I swear all morganite territory was terraformed by the AI, and only the AI.
I dare you to call it bad terraforming. (other than the road sprawl)
(Note, it seems that the AI insists on having atleast 1 coastal base... so after morgans colonypods wandered for a hundred years I added a water tile... then he placed his bases quite nicely, also the AI is a superAI version of Morgan).

[bobyk464]

I like huge random maps with average everything, except erosion. I like higher erosion rates, because I want to mine for minerals in the early game, and then later on replace mines with forests without having to level the rocky terrain. I just keep an eye out for when a mine has gone from from rock to roll, and then go forest it. By then, Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests are in place in the core bases. Also, I'll often select low native life, 'cuz I'm a lazy Marketeer.

[Bella Hella]

i like a C map....

that's AVERAGE. i prefer to have it average everything, with 70-90% water. that way no one gets a huge advantage (more native life = dierdre and cha dominating) and everybody can pretty much start out on their own continent. nothing irks me more than to run into santiago before i've even built my 3rd base!

i haven't had the bawls to do an arid map in a while... could that be my next game??

as for map size, it really varies. i like standard maps a lot becuase you usually have a pretty good amount of space and can communicate with the other peeps pretty early. but i'm currently playing games with anywhere from tiny to large maps.

[knowhow2]

Blake, is that you man?

[Tizzy]

I prefer a wet map, average or low erosion, and average lifeforms (unless I'm playing Dee or Cha Dawn )
I usually set 30-50% water as I like a lot of land to build over, and because 30-50% of the planet for just one faction (and a couple of bases from the others) is more than enough!

[DilithiumDad]

I played a bunch of game on arid maps to get the "build every secret project on Transcend/Ironman" challenge. On an arid map, I found I could build every secret project as (in order of difficulty):
University > Gaians > PK's > Morganites > Hive

Couldn't do it as Believers (got tech too late) or Spartans (always missed at least one). The secret with the Morganites and Hive was to build extra terraformers then cash them in toward your first SP, which should be Weather Paradigm.

On Rainy maps, I couldn't build every SP as ANY faction. The AI is that much stronger.

I should add that another advantage of rainy maps is that the AI bases are big and well-developed enough to actually be worth capturing! (Except for Spartan bases --they always stink!)

[Avenoct]

I'm in the long habit of playing on Huge (or even Huger) maps, average everything, but low erosion. I love elevation, and high plateaus are worse than deserts-3000 meters of rockyness. Its easy to predict where the large settlements will go: on the west side of the big hills.

I also like mostly-land low erosion maps for the nifty valleys and rivers that form. It's an aesthetic thing more than practical because I feel that as a human player I can exploit such valleys much better than the AI, and that's not a good thing for me.

I've often dreamed of maps with double the visual elevation, true analog effects of elevation (rather than levels), and the incorporation of complex square-varying resources. Has anyone ever seen the game Conquest of the New World? What a great game in terms of city building! Of course, the overall strategy of the game stank so badly that I think the game was hardly noticed. But in the cities, which you could zoom into, rather than click-opening, animated workers worked gold or iron mines, lumber-mills, farms, etc, but each mine or farm could be from 1-4 levels, and you had to buy each upgrade of facility. The particular resources at that square determined it's base output. In other words, one gold-mine might produce 1.41 gold/turn at level one, 4.82 at level2, etc., while one closer to the source, an invisible gold-vein, might produce 3.7 at level 1, 12.1 at level2, etc. Thus, how you terraformed (built facilites in this case) was a huge balancing act between maximizing the natural resouces and maintaining a balance of essentials in each city. Smac with this complexity and beauty would be a great thing.

Sorry for the OTC rant there, but I just don't feel that the map's variations make enough difference in Smac. You can take a rocky square at low elevation and change it into a super-farm at high elevation. It doesn't matter a whit how a square starts out. It would be interesting if soils and rocks had potentials at least. A rocky square might yeild 1-5 minerals max, but only 1-3 nutrients max, no matter what you did. Just an idea.

-Smack, future game designer

[Cybergod]

Here are moi's preferences...

Huge Map (NOT of Planet)
Low Erosion - nice hilly, mountaniuos terrain!
Low Water Coverage - the naval strategy isn't developed well in SMAC so I don't use it
Dense Cloud Cover - help the AI, I plant forests a lot so it doesn't matter much to me
Low Native Lifeforms - I just can't stand those critters! (unless I play Gaians )

I also like the Buster custom designed map (downloadable here, at 'Poly) and the Earth map (also found here)

[Purple]

Originally posted by bobyk464
I just keep an eye out for when a mine has gone from from rock to roll, and then go forest it.

I've never seen this happen, but then, I've never looked for it. How long does this transformation take?

[Ironwood]

I've always felt that the random maps were a bit unrealistic, often unbalanced. You can have a giant continent where everybody fights everybody else, or a world of itty bitty islands which take forever to claim and conquer.

I've always liked the Map of Planet. It has a genuinely human touch to it. Three land masses, each of them unique, each of them interesting. The big landmarks are sensibly placed, and spaced. Things don't look like a haphazard jumble.

One thing I always enjoyed was a scenario where six of the factions were placed on the big continent farthest east (west of the L continent, east of the one with the crater). Morgan I placed in the Monsoon Jungle, since he can benefit the least from it. The Gaians I placed to the far north, among the fungus. The University, to the east, near the Plateau. Miriam is in the south, in the arid lands. Yang has his beginning at the southern tip of the western peninsula. And dead in the center, I placed the Peacekeepers, giving them the ability to contact all, first. Santiago I placed on the small island to the northwest.

When a faction is eliminated, it obviously will have problems, but it'll have those problems on it's own continent. Conquering the big continent only means you've knocked them out temporarily. It's really cool.

Are there any user made maps out there of roughly the same quality? I'd love to play on a map that has a sensible touch to it, but isn't intamitely familiar to myself.

[yavoon]

Hi! this is my first post here. I tend to pick maps that I feel benefit the computer most. generally standard size, I think the computer eats it hard on huge maps cuz they can't deal w/ the amount of abusive things a human can do with the extra time.

lotsa land, same reason as standard map size, the computer doesn't deal with water too well. this often creates a kind of pangea continent, which is kinda annoying, but if u wna help the comp thats wut u gotta do.

rainy, or comp base sizes stay way too small.

I think low erosion helps the computer, I'm not sure yet. I never care much about this, I'll go both ways. and I also go avg native life, rare might help the comp, but I feel like too much of a wuss on rare. and of course on rare, who wants to be gaian? which kinda leads me into another thot, I really don't like changing the settings just to make whatever I'm doing at the moment work better. feels cheap.

[Blake]

Originally posted by knowhow2
Blake, is that you man?

I'm suprised to see no other 'dry' players.
If you play on a Dry map with 90% water, then the AI will hurt. It performs much better on 50-70%.
Note, the actual %age land depends largely on erosion, approximately:
High Erosion +50-70% water == Low Erosion +70-90% water. This is because peaks tend to cause a lot of land.

The other factor is probably that I dont use crawlers in SP, if you go crazy crawling all the mines then you get a truly massive advantage over the AI. But without crawlers it is hard to get enough extra nutrients to put a worker on a mine. Basically putting you in the same boat as the AI, but the AI has it's growth and industry bonuses, making things somewhat interesting.

Btw: Did anyone notice the double borehole in that saved game? I've seen the AI do that once before.

[Flubber]

I usually played random maps of standard or custom size. Now i play almost exclusively MP so I play whatever the mod sets up.