Quote Originally Posted by screwtype
There has been quite a bit of controversy over the map generator at CivFanatics.
Really? I've been reading a bit over there and a bit on Apolyton, but there is so much traffic and I only have a bit of time, so I'm mostly speed reading the strategy forums to see what others think. Good; if people are grumbling en masse then Firaxis will see, and they might do something.

So far I'm not troubled by the size of the map, but then I've only played two learning games on lower difficulties, default map size and settings, with 4AIs a piece. When I get all 18 civs on the map I expect it will be crowded ... so I may not even bother. I have heard plenty about all civs and the largest map making for a slow lagfest of a game. I expect my PC has the umph to handle that, since the game is running almost perfectly, but the possibility of finding my game unplayable after a few hours puts me off trying.

I had a few bad starts in the older games, but never quite like this. I feel like I have the 'jungle' setting on, or the 'ice age' one, or both at once. From my next game on I think I may join you in dumping maps, unless I desire to play a game with a poor starting position.


Your city has to be adjacent to a coastal tile, not merely have one "within its workable range".
Thought it would be something like that. Pity; my city is about half coastal, but not quite on the coast thanks to a mass of jungle and mountains. It's an odd location. I was lucky to even squeeze it in in a location where it would do more than cost me money. My third city, and the last one to go in a location I didn't have to spend ages hacking jungle before the site became useable. Oh well, there goes my hope of having it work the coast - not enough food to support it, unless I pull workers off my very productive mines. That would be pointless, detrimental, even.


Not sure if I agree with this. It was much the same in the earlier game, the only real difference is that now galleys have an MP of two instead of three. But there is an "auto-explore" function which is quite useful. Build a couple of galleys early and put them on auto-explore, they will map your continent out in no time.
I haven't played civ3 in years; my main memories of it are covering the world in cities, roads and railways, and hating the music in the modern eras.

It's not my continent I want to map via sea; I usually have it done by land units before I even consider building a navy. It's other continents and islands I want to map by sea, to find the civs that are not on my own continent and to look at possibly expanding to a new land mass. Which I can't do until optics gives me caravels. So I ignore the sea until I get the techs needed for that.

One game in this series, I suspect it was civ3, had three different types of ocean. Coast, sea, ocean, something like that. Each advance let your units go out one type further, so that your ships capabilities echoed the historical possibilities reasonably well for such an abstracted game. It's a pity they didn't keep that.

Yeah, it ain't bad. But its moddability is probably its great redeeming feature. I'm sure we're going to see a lot of good mods for it over time
Yes, that is the best thing. If you don't like it you can change it, and that will soon apply to everything in the game. :cough: Though I doubt I will be able to do more than simple text editing type changes, due to being a modding n00b.



Anyone finding definite preferences for leaders yet? I find Qin Shi Huang to be mine thus far. Industrious and commercial; wonders and cash in large quantities. Louis sounds like another I might like; industrious and creative.

Aggressive, spiritual, expansive, organised - they don't feel much use to me. They could be nice, but I wouldn't like to pass up something which feels better to play as those traits. Depends on your playstyle, I suppose, but it seems to me that those bonuses are either not used very often, can be imitated by a wonder or civic, or don't really seem to be needed. Hehe, but then I am a builder/researcher frog.