02-04-2004 11:30									#1
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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.

	02-04-2004 16:10									#2
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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.

	02-04-2004 19:39									#3
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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.

	02-04-2004 22:40									#4
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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.

	02-04-2004 22:59									#5
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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

	02-04-2004 23:28									#6
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I would say 250 is min for 31 civs. The loading of the map will even be painful though.

	03-04-2004 00:21									#7
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quote: 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.

	03-04-2004 00:34									#8
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Isn't there some loophole regarding forests?

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

	03-04-2004 01:50									#9
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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.

	03-04-2004 02:27									#10
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It is, but you can still settle tundra and the like if there is a forest on them.

	03-04-2004 03:26									#11
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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?

	03-04-2004 03:59									#12
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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.

	03-04-2004 04:43									#13
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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.

	03-04-2004 07:21									#14
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I have the El Mency map, may I will load it as a test over the weekend.

	03-04-2004 16:10									#15
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Too be honest, I still don't understand how to play with 32 civs. Where should it be editted?

	03-04-2004 19:17									#16
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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...

	03-04-2004 22:58									#17
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quote: 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.

	04-04-2004 15:32									#18
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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.

	05-04-2004 01:01									#19
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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.

	05-04-2004 21:56									#20
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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....

	05-04-2004 22:43									#21
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With lots of water, I would expect the trade route calculations to become an issue later.

	05-04-2004 23:54									#22
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Hmm.. you may be right.. I will have to wait and to check for this.

	06-04-2004 00:28									#23
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quote: 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.

	06-04-2004 00:33									#24
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quote: 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.

	06-04-2004 02:09									#25
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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.

	06-04-2004 02:16									#26
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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.

	06-04-2004 23:38									#27
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quote: 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.