The Wide, Wide, Wide Open Spaces

[jshelr]

Clueless in Kansas

I've played 99% of my games on standard maps and I'm wondering if shifting to other map sizes creates many more new and interesting choices than I imagined.

Last night I started a game on Marla's earth map that is included in PTW. It's a great map, but I'm frankly clueless about how to play in such a huge space.

We started as Iriquois in just NW of where Toronto really is and were presented with vast green, river-filled, wheat saturated, cow-populated spaces to expand down the Mississippi valley. America obliged by building the GL in DC just as our swordmen were ready for a visit. Drove the Yanks into New England where they can farm the rocks and got all the good golf courses along the Atlantic coast and the vacation spots in Florida.

Aztecs are having trouble finding South America, having started in Mexico, but they colonized Texas. Liberated Texas, but they can have the rest. (GL needs to be fed some techs.) We now have all the Rockies and California, plus most of NW Canada and Alaska completely empty -- BUT I'M A VERY BIG CIV DESPITE THE VAST OPEN SPACES.

WHAT THE HELL DO YOU DO? BUILD OR SETTLE? WE COULD SETTLE FOREVER?

Meanwhile, we have a couple of galleys going three squares per turn through the "NorthWest Passage" out of DC, hoping to meet the Ruskies. The guys in Europe and Asia are building wonders that we are far from acquiring techs for. At this pace, we will meet the Ruskies in time for a tank war.

In short, size matters. But what are the best strats for dealing with wide open spaces.

[lateralis]

if i read you right, you are still getting the full function of the GL, ie you have not yet reached education. The cool thing is that once you meet up with 2 of those european civs, chances are that they will ALL be way ahead in tech as they will be trading with each other. The GL will give you everything you can get in one turn, even beyond education as it will only stop working the turn AFTER you learn education.

in terms of such an enormous map, domination and conquest are pretty much out. with your galleys getting ready to meet the europeans, how is your reputation with the guys you've been beating down? obviously they are furious, but did you do any thing like getting peace and then declaring war right away again? your rep will take a hit if you have, but otherwise, not so much. This would be important if you are thinking of getting the diplomatic victory.

otherwise, with as much land as you have, once you get the huge push from the GL, you should be able to keep up or even push ahead with tech if you want to go for SS (lib/univ everywhere will give you 4 turn techs pretty easily with a huge empire). what difficulty level are you playing on? I played marla's as the egyptians on regent and couldn't resist over settling. I think I won via culture (it was a while ago) but my empire included almost all of africa (i skipped the vast dessert areas and the south african area) all of europe and I rushed my forbidden palace in the south american jungles to create a big second center of egyptian excellence. The key there was the industrious workers who , in pairs, could clear jungle in like 4 turns under democracy.

I've never played as the iriquios but I know one of their traits is expansionist(?) I would send some guys to south america and pop some of the goody huts just to see what you can get. My experience on marla's map is that no one goes down there until they are done setting up their own kingdoms. (although, I've never played it with PTW)

the truth is, that map will almost NEVER run out of land to colonize and even the AI settles down and builds when they ususally don't do that till there is no land left to colonize. once you get your tecch push form the GL, trade with the europeans for a world map and see who the big players are. then, I would say, it's time to decide ow you want to win and just push push push till you get it. If you want culture, build more cities and make as many culture improvements as possible, that victory becomes MUCH more feasible the more cities you have. if you want diplo, start trading: techs, luxuries, resources (IIRC there is an unbroken coastal waterway to europe which will allow these trades once you meet them) and build up a good rep. If you have your continent under control, you should have little to worry about in terms of wars from the others as it takes forever to get people over to you (kinda like real life, at least until they implement a suicide bomber unit ).

Good luck!! maybe I'll try marla's again, I remember it being a fun game!!

lateralis

[Catt]

It's been a while since I played a huge (or larger) map, and I haven't played an Earth map yet. But I will chime in to say that I find some real differences in "feel" and appropriate tactics when I try different map sizes (I play mostly tiny-small-standard, with an occasional large thrown in). The first few times moving away from my early favorite (huge) and then away from my "regular" (standard), I felt like I was playing a game that was fundamentally diferent in some way.

I haven't played them all enough to have any firm views on appropriate general adjustments to gameplay. But I do know that moving to a smaller map tends to force more choices on me than when playing a larger map. With a smaller map (and a smaller number of cities - aka production centers), specific build choices carry more weight than when I have a 30-city empire -- a surprise war in the early middle ages presents some tough choices when half the empire has invested hundreds of shields in AoW, Leo's, Sistine, and a pre-build and is therefore unable to produce units for the war effort!

At the risk of advocating an unfocused strategy, and with the caveat you provided elsewhere that this speculation is completely unencumbered by any experience or facts, is it feasible to do both - alternately building improvements and settlers so each city grows but the empire itself expands? You would neither be building infrastructure nor expanding as quickly as otherwise possible, but perhaps you'd be putting yourself into position to choose a more definitive strategy when greater knowledge of the world and its state of balance comes into play?

Catt

[jshelr]

thanks guys -- good advice.

these damn galleys are so slow that i don't know if i can make it to two civs before someone over here gets education

when i arrive i might get tech all the way to the industrial era --. just east of siberia now

for no reason at all, i've settled the area that is the actual US and annexed all the lower provinces of canada.

abe still has martha's vineyard

i could probably trade all of canada for the vineyard even up

[Theseus]

I haven't played huge in a while, but I'd suggest your normal strats, and then when you hit the 12 pop "pause," a WAVE of colonization.

Map size makes a significant difference in game play... you listenin' Vel??!!

[jshelr]

Everyone should play this map at least once from his or her own home starting spot.

I hit the size 12 way too early due to all the cows and wheat and rivers and such. Not much lux in North America. Turned out Marla wants us to eat coal So, the lux slider was way over on 40 and 50% and I'm not as rich as I hoped.

The GL got me all the way to magnitism!! So, whining should be kept to a minimum.

But, T's basically right as were all the comments above. You really have to balance building and expansion correctly in order to optimize all this space.

Meanwhile, Abe is up with the Eskimos now, patrolling the far north. If he has the only oil, we intend to visit again.

[Stuie]

Maps that size should have ships modded to move faster. I always play on larger maps (140x140 and above) and I've modded all the ships so that movement is double for everything up through ironclad, but sea costs two movement and ocean costs three. The modern ships I left with the same movement rate, but gave them the "treat all terrain as roads" flag. Now ships actually seem to act like ships. The AI makes very good use of them as well.

That said, I haven't tried Marla's map yet. Now that I gave my RAM a boost, maybe I'll have a go at it.

[jshelr]

By the way, in my continuing misguided quest to spoil my own fun I ended this game as follows:

Recall that North America starts without horses. So, no golden age. As we entered the modern era in a relatively good race with about five other civs, I selected fusion to research and sent a stack of five MWs up to the tundra to take out a wandering American midevil infantry (spelling?). That created a modern era golden age and we sailed off into the technology sunset. Wow, what an inspired move

The point is that sometimes the game rules tip over into exploits and you have to be careful when you are battling for a win not to do things that make the win hollow after you achieve it.

This game was an investment of 20 hours. 19 hours of fun and an hour wondering what would have happened if I had played it out fair and square.