Map type for a civ 4 BTS game?

[deuxhero]

I just tried an islands map twice, the first was fairly fun untill I found Asoka (in charge of Japan) had a land the size of a small continent and made winning impossible (they also had oil navies and a huge production thing, so I couldn't conquer them, kicking the ass of a wooden navy last placer was annoying enough). I tried the same settings again, and this time I got stuck on a desert/tundra with no resources while everyone else got mineral rich huge chain.


What's a good maptype for a fun and unique game? I've done continents a few times.

 

[Turisas]

My favorites are PerfectWorld2 and Planet_Generator_x_xx (my version number is 0_68 but it must be outdated by now). Lots of options to mess around with so you never get the same map twice. The only downside is the long map generation time, but you get used to it.

 

[Malakal]

Pangea is the ONLY map type that makes sense for any Civ game. AI is complete shit on all other map types, cant use its navy properly (I bet you could win that game with just a few oil warships) and cant expand on smaller islands/archipelagos.

Pangea is always good, if you want more water make it less land on bigger map size. Resource balance is also better then, even if you dont get enough in the start you can always rush someone.

 

[Turisas]

Why'd you even play vanilla BtS these days anyway, at the very least you'll want stuff like Better BTS AI.

For stuff like:

Naval invasion logic: Successfully launching naval invasions requires coordination between city production, transport and escort motion, and loading of groups of land troops. Reworking the AI's invasion system has been one of the primary pushes in this project so far. The biggest addition is the ability of the AI to reinforce its initial invasion fleet with subsequent waves, previously it basically waited to build up a brand new full invasion while its initial invasion force was whittled away. When the AI does build up enough troops to launch a second invasion (instead of just a reinforcement), it now sends the second wave near the first wave instead of often spreading out to two distinct fronts. The AI can also now time multiple invasion flotillas to show up at nearly the same time. If the AI has no land path to its enemy, it will now use the invasion production logic and load its troops into transports, previously the enemy would see at most one initial invasion wave. A related important new behavior for the AI is the ability to pickup troops which get stranded on islands or on other places around the map, something which previously could break immersion. Also, a bug where AI transports would loiter trying to pick up the units they already had onboard has been fixed, this previously could cause partially full transport flotillas to get stuck indefinitely on small islands.

Settler bug: In vanilla BTS, if there were sites where the AI wanted to settle cities available on the same continent as the settler unit, the AI would never load the settler into a transport. Since AI settlers will not move through other player's territory even with open borders (fixing an annoyance from Civ3), this would stunt the AIs growth if it was cutoff from those potential city sites by another player's territory or mountains. The AI now properly loads settlers into transports if they cannot reach the target location over land.

 

[Malakal]

Even with all those supposedly fixed AI mods AI is really bad at naval combat/invasion/task force management. Playing any maps with bigger focus on naval combat is like playing on lower difficulty levels.

 

[deuxhero]

Considering I've done like... 2 other games of civ 4 (neither of which I finished because I wanted to try the BTS stuff/got bored because the game pace wasn't on quick) before, why not do a lower difficulty.


Also, third time was the charm with islands. No massive imbalances when I got to the 1800 (I have the least land, but still "winnable", plus I plan to take Napleon!Germany's when I get my invasion fleet into position. Demand tribute from me will you?! Gahahaha).

 

[Turisas]

Even with all those supposedly fixed AI mods AI is really bad at naval combat/invasion/task force management. Playing any maps with bigger focus on naval combat is like playing on lower difficulty levels.

Well yeah, but at least there's some degree of challenge that way (and it's not like the AI is very hard to beat even on pangaea maps, unless you play on the higher difficulty levels which just gives the ai retarded bonuses).

I enjoy the empire building aspect the most in Civ anyway, for hardcore wargame strategy there's plenty of much better options.

 

[Xor]

I must be terrible at BTS because I still can't beat Prince difficulty with the vanilla AI.

 

[Malakal]

Well I used to be (when playing BTS) Emperor level player going for Immortal (still too hard due to forced memorization of AI routines and personalities required, wtf!) so that influences my point of view. Of course islands/continents are fun maps for players demanding less challenge.

 

[Jigawatt]

I think 'Medium and Small' is the best map type for vanilla BtS, you usually get enough land that you don't feel like reloading but unlike pangaea you don't know ahead of time what the world is going to look like