Anyone tried this map setting? Quite fun!

[wheathin]

End result is an almost total water world, with many small islands composed almost exclusively of hills and mountains.

Settings: this must be a Huge map (I don't know why, but otherwise it won't work)
The climate settings are irrelevant, since most hills and mtns are alike.
Ocean: the farthest to the left.
Islands: second from the left (or last on the left)
Uniformity: keep it towards the middle, maybe a tad to the right.
Trade goods: what ever you like - just remember that the variety will be limited, with TONS of crab and pearls and thus easy monopolies. Anything more than one or two off the center will be too much.

Great because:
- low total cities means that you minimize the micromanagement. Fast games!
- tough defense by the computer: all the cities are on hills and mountains!
- computer players expand fairly well once they get triremes
- map is composed of the most productive terrain - water and mountains
- lots of gold (water and mines) means that tech moves fast, providing a good chance for a REAL race to colonize the ocean floor - each player has so few cities that extra sea cities are quite helpful.
- different wonder balance: among other things, East India is one of the best because ALL trade routes go over water at some point, and the computer has plenty of production to build caravans!

Drawbacks: the computer isn't great at naval battles, and you get annoying trespassers on a regular basis.

Wheathin

Does anybody else have some favorite oddball settings to share?

[Locutus]

Sounds like fun, I'll give it a try sometime...

If you try this with Nordicus' trade goods you will get more different types of goods, which might make it even better (not to mention AAIPS).

And no, I don't have a favorite setting myself.

[coldsteel]

I had an interesting game on huge map with ocean/land all the way to the left but islands/continent all the way to the right, and min trade goods. also aaip's. I started on a 23 square island with a 2 square island in trireme range, and that was it (took a lot of restarts). So I only had 5 cities crammed in there. With continent all the way to the right, the computer gets decent land masses, once they get going they do ok. London was expired by the time i got to it. edison was built in the middle of a mountain range so it took forever to get my cannons there on the road building... but of course eventually the computer was defeated, but they built the wormhole and esp center and stuff like that i haven't seen before. There still doesn't seem to be a setting or starting position where you can lose if you just go all out for cannons and take over the good wonders starting with london exchange. But I keep trying.

cold

[wheathin]

Part of the problem is that the game picks the N best starting locations, where N is the number of players, and then gives the best one to the human player. So your initial location will always be the best, and since that usually involves a rivered forest and other goodies, you will always do well in the early game.

This pro-human 'cheat' is easily as powerful as many of the cheats the AI gets.

Somebody (i forget who) suggested that for a better challenge, start a game in the scenario editor, and then swap with an AI player. It'll get tougher in a hurry.

But, that aside, I'll try a few with the island slider at the opposite end - I sort of assumed that would leave 2 or 3 continents and one HUGE ocean. Worth examining - thanks!

[JimMac]

Wheathin,
I believe that if you change
UseNiceStart= Yes to No
in either Userprofile.txt or profile.txt (I cant remember which one, I have both set to no), then the human player starts at one of the best 8 starting postions selected at random. (if there are 8 players)

Jim