Map size?

[Panzerfanlol]

Does anyone else thing the map is a little small? Does anyone have a comparison to other civ games for the size? because it looks kinda small to me seeing people play the previews, are they restricted in their previews?
I was hoping for twice as big as civ 6 since iirc civ 6 was smaller than civ 5 maps (but I could be wrong on that)

[Lëgënd]

Depends on which age you're in. As you go through ages, the map grows rather quickly, plus we haven't seen what the release patch will do, or future content.

[plaguepenguin]

There are clearly different size maps that you can choose on setup[. I believe,based on one of the previews, that there are no huge maps right now that you can select, but neither the devs in their livestreams and game guides, or any of the previewers, went over the details of size range in any sort of comprehensive review. So, not clear just how big a map you will be able to choose.

That said, some of the previews were played on maps that are clearly bigger than the ones in the livestreams the devs released about Antiquity and Exploration. The Modern livestream seemed to have a much bigger map, but we never got a glimpse of more than just a bit of it.

Then there's the factor that Legend mentions,that the map grows, clearly between Antiquity and Exploration because they have to toss in those Distant Lands. Between Exploration and Modern, it's less clear. Expansion was definitely hinted at, but no word about how and where the map would expand during that age transition. We are going to get a final dev livestream on January 30, and given that the previewers have been embargoed from any mention of the Modern, the livestream will probably tell us about some new features of the Modern we haven't heard about yet -- maybe more clarity on the map growing n some way.

As a final consideration, map sizes as they appear in the livestreams and previews are hard to interpret reliably, because there are different map types in addition to different map sizes. Nothing I've seen covers map types, any more than map sizes,at all systematically.

[The Tear Collector]

i saw videos mentioning that only the three smallest map sizes are in the game yet.

[katzenkrimis]

Originally posted by Panzerfanlol:

Does anyone else thing the map is a little small?

No.

They look as large as the need to be for the Ages. And I know that they'll be huge for the Modern Age and anything that they add to the game beyond that.

There are 8 competitors. That's more than enough from what I've seen for the map sizes.

With the combat being so balance, and with no more runaways, any Civilization that survives to the Modern Age will have a chance at victory.

You may have to start playing on Sovereign or higher difficulty, though. I've seen some Deity players handle the new gameplay changes fairly well.

Maybe a little too well.


Deity
Immortal
Sovereign
Viceroy
Governor
Scribe

[keviinb]

Yes maps sizes are smaller than before with less variety.

[Evilgenius]

Originally posted by Panzerfanlol:

Does anyone else thing the map is a little small? Does anyone have a comparison to other civ games for the size? because it looks kinda small to me seeing people play the previews, are they restricted in their previews?
I was hoping for twice as big as civ 6 since iirc civ 6 was smaller than civ 5 maps (but I could be wrong on that)

They seem to have significantly cut down on map size, my guess is to make the game work on consoles and to accommodate their sub-par AI.

Best indicator that they significantly reduced the size, is that they only allow very few opponents and made rules to prevent you and the AI from creating a lot of cities.

And just as with Civ 6, their AI seems to still be so incompetent that playing on anything lower than immortal will make you steam roll them. The saving grace is that every ages resets your snowballing, for a few turns, and artificially boosts your opponents to obfuscate how absurdly horrible their AI is.

[DonPablo]

yes map size is small because of the console support.
Console make each game on PC bad

[Panzerfanlol]

Originally posted by katzenkrimis:

Originally posted by Panzerfanlol:

Does anyone else thing the map is a little small?

No.

They look as large as the need to be for the Ages. And I know that they'll be huge for the Modern Age and anything that they add to the game beyond that.

There are 8 competitors. That's more than enough from what I've seen for the map sizes.

With the combat being so balance, and with no more runaways, any Civilization that survives to the Modern Age will have a chance at victory.

You may have to start playing on Sovereign or higher difficulty, though. I've seen some Deity players handle the new gameplay changes fairly well.

Maybe a little too well.


Deity
Immortal
Sovereign
Viceroy
Governor
Scribe

Uhhh I'm not talking about difficulty and excuse me if I'm misunderstanding, but, I don't think the age of which you start or the difficulty is going to change or actively contribute to the MAP size, I'm asking how large, by hex/tile, the maps are going to be.
I've seen people do the old "let me scroll up and see where the northern part and then the southern part of the map is" at the beginning and it looks pretty tight, like the desert tiles in the middle are going to be really sparse for example.
I was really disappointed with the "real earth" map in civ 6, it was impossible to play on, I was really hoping for a map size that would let you play "real earth" with more than 2 cities in France or Germany lol

Originally posted by Lëgënd:

Depends on which age you're in. As you go through ages, the map grows rather quickly, plus we haven't seen what the release patch will do, or future content.

Can you explain what you mean by "As you go through ages the map grows rather quickly" ? I haven't seen or heard anything about the map actively changing in hexes as time goes on, and that wouldn't make any sense anyway?

Originally posted by The Tear Collector:

i saw videos mentioning that only the three smallest map sizes are in the game yet.

I heard someone say the same in a video, does anyone know where they got that info or impression from? Because I'd like to know a comparison of hexes on the largest map size since civ 4 until this one

Originally posted by DonPablo:

yes map size is small because of the console support.
Console make each game on PC bad

yeah I was thinking the same thing, my friend said they want to release it on switch 2 (which I'm highly doubtful of it actually working) and I was thinking if they wanna release it on consoles that its going to take a huge toll on things that they cant actually optimise, unless they let PC players have experimental sizes and console players restricted to large and under which might be for the best

[Panzerfanlol]

Originally posted by plaguepenguin:

There are clearly different size maps that you can choose on setup[. I believe,based on one of the previews, that there are no huge maps right now that you can select, but neither the devs in their livestreams and game guides, or any of the previewers, went over the details of size range in any sort of comprehensive review. So, not clear just how big a map you will be able to choose.

That said, some of the previews were played on maps that are clearly bigger than the ones in the livestreams the devs released about Antiquity and Exploration. The Modern livestream seemed to have a much bigger map, but we never got a glimpse of more than just a bit of it.

Then there's the factor that Legend mentions,that the map grows, clearly between Antiquity and Exploration because they have to toss in those Distant Lands. Between Exploration and Modern, it's less clear. Expansion was definitely hinted at, but no word about how and where the map would expand during that age transition. We are going to get a final dev livestream on January 30, and given that the previewers have been embargoed from any mention of the Modern, the livestream will probably tell us about some new features of the Modern we haven't heard about yet -- maybe more clarity on the map growing n some way.

As a final consideration, map sizes as they appear in the livestreams and previews are hard to interpret reliably, because there are different map types in addition to different map sizes. Nothing I've seen covers map types, any more than map sizes,at all systematically.

Ahhh so they were actually restricted on their test builds you think? I was hoping that was the case, and sorry to repeat or sound like a ♥♥♥♥, but, I don't mean by what you can see on the minimap, my original question was about if anyone knows the actual final largest map size but I don't think that info has been made clear yet now that I'm reading more about it unfortunately.

but I will note that everyone I've seen so far, that showed their setup, is playing on continents or I think continent with islands or something like that, so maybe the map types were restricted to those two and continents would give you a skewed view on the over-all map size

[plaguepenguin]

Originally posted by Panzerfanlol:

Ahhh so they were actually restricted on their test builds you think? I was hoping that was the case, and sorry to repeat or sound like a ♥♥♥♥, but, I don't mean by what you can see on the minimap, my original question was about if anyone knows the actual final largest map size but I don't think that info has been made clear yet now that I'm reading more about it unfortunately.

but I will note that everyone I've seen so far, that showed their setup, is playing on continents or I think continent with islands or something like that, so maybe the map types were restricted to those two and continents would give you a skewed view on the over-all map size

I'm not sure if by test builds restrictions you mean the builds used in the dev livestreams, or the previewer videos, or both. I am not a dev or modder by any means, but I doubt that either type of video was created on anything less than a build that is able to handle maps as big as will be in the initial release build. Some of the previewers in the last few days have mentioned that the build they got a month ago had been superceded by a new build they just got, and they referred to the new build as resulting from a final balance pass. What that wording means to me is they tweaked a few numbers here and there to give different civs some sort of balance among each other, or different mechanics of the game more balance in their interplay. It seems to me easy enough to change a few numbers less than two weeks out, but new map sizes would seem to require so many changes to the program that they wouldn't want to risk that two weeks out.

I am reasonably confident that as far as map size and type goes, what the devs and the previewers had available is what we are going to get on initial release. That doesn't mean that what both devs and previewers chose to show us included the entire spectrum of map size or map type.

The Exploration dev livestream sure gave me some concern over the small landmass that the four starting civs shared in Antiquity. Greece, which had done pretty well as the age drew to a close, had 5-6 settlements, while Persia had been hammered and was down to only 3 settlements. Then there were two civs in the Distant Lands that were discovered in the Exploration Age. The Distant Lands looked more spacious, but, they were never fully uncovered in the livestream, so unclear how accurate that impression was. Unclear also is how much the cramped home continent was a function of the choice of a small map, versus something peculiar to the Terra Incognita map that was briefly mentioned as the map type in use. It's possible that map type is designed precisely to force players to expand to the Distant Lands, because the home continent is too crowded.

The Modern dev livestream was even more sketchy on the subject of map size and type. It is mentioned in passing near the end, after the sequence in which America takes two cites from Xerxes, that he has 15 other settlements that we don't see on what of the map that is shown. Xerxes was not doing well in that game (I sense a theme). I also recall that America had a settlement limit of 22 at that late point in the age. It seems like the maps can be pretty spacious, at least by the Modern. In that connection, the devs embargoed all mention of the Modern by the previewers, and have scheduled their own livestream for January 30. Sounds like they have something about the Modern they want to present themselves, perhaps exactly how the map changes during the Exploration to Modern age transition, so stay tuned.

As for previewers, I agree that most of them seemed to be playing fairly small maps as judged by number of AI civs, though not as cramped as the Terra Incognita the devs showed in their Exploration livestream. Presumably continents map type with 4 civs on your home continent is roomier than Terra Incognita. However, while most had relatively low numbers of competitor civs, one previewer I saw had, if memory serves, 8 total civs on the home continent alone. Maybe the majority played maps with fewer civs because they are just learning the game. When I get my hands on it, I am going to start at a low difficulty, and probably fewer than 8 civs total, to give myself a little time to get used to how the game is played, before I tackle higher difficulty and bigger maps with more competitors.