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Here's an Idea
Mark, something I've found fun lately is a "builder" game: a map with 60% ocean coverage and 60-70% capacity on number of opponents. This really increases the amount of land available per civ, space between civs, and pushes the player into lots of city expansion. It has made for a quite a contrast to every game I've played with the max number of opponents available on that map size. The AI's can also spread out more, as they like to do, and are capable of building up a larger "roaming" group of units to send on the attack, which adds its own wrinkles to the diplomacy. Another key factor is the scarcity of resources: less are added to the game when there are fewer civs, so they get spread out more, become harder to trade for, and require much more effort to run out and grab if your homeland lacks a key resource.
This basic concept could be modified in any number of ways, such as shutting down some or most victory conditions, tailoring the terrain to favor AI expansion (hot, wet, flat) or to hinder everyone's expansion (cold, arid, rugged). With 60% water, the landforms tend to be less important, because even archipelago gets stuffed in there and can come out like a pangaea or nearly, but it could impact the game.
Large maps with 7 opponents or standard maps with 5 opponents can fit this bill. Huge maps are possible but run really sluggish on a lot of PC's. All that space and the need to fill it also changes priority on wonders. Those that help per city (pyramids, sun tzu, smith) take on greater value vs those that help one city (colossus, shakespeare, newton) or give a special ability, since you tend to have a lot more cities. Whether you play military aggression or peaceful expansion, or some combo of both, there's a lot more building, planning, working of the land, etc, and fewer civs means less value from tech brokering.
Since you always remove goody huts (to cut down on the luck factor? Or some other reason? The AI's are also slowed down by this, you know), and set barbs to raging (would be a LOT of them wandering all over the place, for quite some time, to train the AI's up to hordes of elite units), it might be interesting to give the player a bit of a disadvantage, too. Consider this possibility:
Zulus
Monarch
Large Map
60% water
Continents
Hot, Wet, Flat
Opponents: the five scientific civs (Bab, Persia, Germany, Greece, Russia), plus French and Egyptians
And make sure the player does not start on a river.
That would be my suggestion.
- Sirian
Mark, something I've found fun lately is a "builder" game: a map with 60% ocean coverage and 60-70% capacity on number of opponents. This really increases the amount of land available per civ, space between civs, and pushes the player into lots of city expansion. It has made for a quite a contrast to every game I've played with the max number of opponents available on that map size. The AI's can also spread out more, as they like to do, and are capable of building up a larger "roaming" group of units to send on the attack, which adds its own wrinkles to the diplomacy. Another key factor is the scarcity of resources: less are added to the game when there are fewer civs, so they get spread out more, become harder to trade for, and require much more effort to run out and grab if your homeland lacks a key resource.
This basic concept could be modified in any number of ways, such as shutting down some or most victory conditions, tailoring the terrain to favor AI expansion (hot, wet, flat) or to hinder everyone's expansion (cold, arid, rugged). With 60% water, the landforms tend to be less important, because even archipelago gets stuffed in there and can come out like a pangaea or nearly, but it could impact the game.
Large maps with 7 opponents or standard maps with 5 opponents can fit this bill. Huge maps are possible but run really sluggish on a lot of PC's. All that space and the need to fill it also changes priority on wonders. Those that help per city (pyramids, sun tzu, smith) take on greater value vs those that help one city (colossus, shakespeare, newton) or give a special ability, since you tend to have a lot more cities. Whether you play military aggression or peaceful expansion, or some combo of both, there's a lot more building, planning, working of the land, etc, and fewer civs means less value from tech brokering.
Since you always remove goody huts (to cut down on the luck factor? Or some other reason? The AI's are also slowed down by this, you know), and set barbs to raging (would be a LOT of them wandering all over the place, for quite some time, to train the AI's up to hordes of elite units), it might be interesting to give the player a bit of a disadvantage, too. Consider this possibility:
Zulus
Monarch
Large Map
60% water
Continents
Hot, Wet, Flat
Opponents: the five scientific civs (Bab, Persia, Germany, Greece, Russia), plus French and Egyptians
And make sure the player does not start on a river.
That would be my suggestion.
- Sirian
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