Larger than Gigantic?

Me too. I always play on gigantic maps and they still seem too small. Most of the time I don't even have to put life support on my ships since they can reach almost the entire map without it (after colony rush and starbase techs). It would be nice to have a REALLY big galaxy to play with, I know it would probably make the games very long but I don't mind epic length games.

Gigantic is actually 18 * 18 - so 324 sectors (72900 individual parsec squares). A 32 * 32 would be 1024 sectors (230400 parsecs). Have you any idea of the sort of computer you would need to run a game that big?

Consider that every turn each AI has to evaluate every other ship / planet / starbase that they can "see" and decide if they need to do anything about it. Might as well make your moves, hit "Turn" and go to bed hoping that the AI is done by the morning and your comp hasn't crashed

"Space is big - really big - you just won't believe how vastly, hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." - Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe

Sounds good. By time you met any of the other races you would both be at the high-end of the tech tree and with economies in full swing. That would make for some epic battles!

Gigantic is 256 sectors i belive... 32x32 is prob a but large but 24x24 or around there would be nice to have.

If I ever play something like this, it would just be for the range, that is, I'd set stars to few, and planets to few and technology to long. The only reason to do so would be to create that 'distance' factor, but I would probably only do it once or twice just for the sake of it. Realistically, it's just much more fun with everything close together and a lot of action going on at once. Conquering a massive galaxy like that would just be way too tedious with a lot of stars and planets. Keep in mind that 32x32 is actually 4 times as big as 16x16... that's just way too much in my book.

Have you any idea of the sort of computer you would need to run a game that big?

Ever played Settlers 1 ? With the biggest possible map size it took weeks to come near the enemy and longer to crush them.

Here's a crazy idea...

a multilayered map à la HOMM simulating multiple wormhole-tied-galaxies

Thats a great idea japata.... it could lead to all sorts of possiblites like a second colony rush or invaders from another dimension or all kinds of cool stuff.

Have you any idea of the sort of computer you would need to run a game that big?

Ever played Settlers 1 ? It's biggest map could take weeks to get close to the computer players (depending on starting positions) and weeks before you defeated 1 of the 3.... But you could only play the largest map if you PC was up to it (had the RAM).

Does that imply that GC2 should do the same ? Not really, and SD did allready comment on map size some time during beta 3 or 4 (sorry no link) so I don't expect that GC2 will allow bigger maps. Maybe the expansion or GC3

Here's a crazy idea...

a multilayered map à la HOMM simulating multiple wormhole-tied-galaxies

Yep it's a crazy idea. That would be just NUTS. The game-time alone would be weeks just to get it running. ACK! Runs away!

Gigantic is actually 18 * 18 - so 324 sectors (72900 individual parsec squares). A 32 * 32 would be 1024 sectors (230400 parsecs). Have you any idea of the sort of computer you would need to run a game that big? Consider that every turn each AI has to evaluate every other ship / planet / starbase that they can "see" and decide if they need to do anything about it. Might as well make your moves, hit "Turn" and go to bed hoping that the AI is done by the morning and your comp hasn't crashed

It would be four times bigger.. but that doesn't necessarily mean much. The more important question is whether the AI is O(n), O(n^2), etc. with respect to the size of the galaxy (number of planets, etc). We really can't venture a guess as to whether a galaxy an order of magnitude larger would cause problems because we have no idea what kind of solutions they've implemented to the Travelling Salesman problem they have.

It's probably more a question of fun.. a galaxy that big is very, very large- and it could make for some epic games if you were able to start "clusters" (essentially four Gigantic galaxies adjacent to one another) of civilizations who would evolve, become more powerful, and then eventually collide with one another on a large scale. Or, it could be tedious.

I do think it could be an interesting option to have, if it is within the AI's limits.

I sometimes miss the Gigantic setting of GalCiv2 for OS/2: 22x22 sectors, with stars scattered around in clusters, and range started short enough that you had to expand from star to star, sometimes settling a low planet quality planet just to increase range (there were no starbases to increase range).

Another interesting aspect of that game was that you usually only met/had to deal with 1-2 races early on in the game. In order to meet the others, you had to either increase range to go past those races, or conquer some of their planets to increase range.

One downside was that you could be stuck in a corner of the map with almost no stars, or caught between 3 other races near the center. You also could get lucky in setup and wind up with almost a quarter of the galaxy yours alone.

The huge galaxies have always one of the better points of GalCiv - you could have upwards of 500 star systems in the game, as compared with <100 for most other 4X space games.

I've got enough trouble playing on anything other than large It's what I played both GC 1 and GC2 on (large maps that is) since it all fits nicely in the map... but thats just me

Ummm...I thought the hyperdrive made those wormhole simulators obsolete

Ummm...I thought the hyperdrive made those wormhole simulators obsolete

I'm sure they will come up with some 'creative' solutions... aka... dimentions. You could research "Dimentional Gateway" to access the other side, where evil Altarians are slaughtering the haplessly nice Drengins because their blood makes for a nice wine.

Your ships would have to be equiped with "dimentional drives" in order to cross over, and there would be all kinds of messed up scenarios where you could sneak into the heart of another empire by traveling from the otherside and jumping through.

Yeah, things like that... actually, now I that I think about it, having 2 layered map like this might be a lot better than just one massive map... if only for the gameplay possibilities. You'll be wondering for half the game what's going on "over there", worrying whether a massive fleet will come out of nowhere and crush you... fun stuff.

Expansion anyone? I would so buy that. Hell, when is the preorder?

I'm sure they will come up with some 'creative' solutions... aka... dimentions. You could research "Dimentional Gateway" to access the other side, where evil Altarians are slaughtering the haplessly nice Drengins because their blood makes for a nice wine.

The Dreadlords and Thalans came from a different dimension, so why not?

Gigantic is 256 sectors i belive...

Nope... definitely 18 * 18 or 324 sectors - just counted 'em.

We really can't venture a guess as to whether a galaxy an order of magnitude larger would cause problems

Try playing an abundant everything on Gigantic with 9 max intelligence AI opponents (so they have to evaluate against all their algorithms, and everyone has obscene amounts of planets and ships). You'll soon see why they can't go any bigger.

I woudl love a more gigantic map but I already have problems in BETA. I'm hoping its due to an unresolved memory leak and not commign fromt he increased numebr of habitable worlds on abundant. But if Im this laggy out of BETA I may not even play Gigantic anymore

Sounds cool but would take years to play a game!

gigantic maps needs more than 1 gb RAM (at least). Perhaps when the game engine is completely optimized it while be possible . (Does someone tried to make a bigger map with the GC2Builder? Or made a request if the programmer of that program makes it possible to create a bigger map?)

Sounds cool but would take years to play a game!

why "but"? Is that a problem anyhow?

(yhea, you could never finish a game, 'cause SD would come up with a patch always before you can end the game, so you start another to test the new AI...)

If the computer can handle it, I say do it. I think players are nuts going anything larger than gigantic, but knock yourself out.

It's just nice to have a choice to specify our own map size with no limits. I mean, we don't have a limit for polygons for models so why do will need a limit for map size unless something's hardcoded to a certain size.

I can imagine myself years from now still playing this game and probably having a machine that can handle 50x50 maps BTW, I just pulled that number out of thin air.

Gigantic maps do not require 1 GB of RAM.....I've been playing from day one on gigantic maps with less than that.

If you played Gigantic on abundant/abundant/abundant I could see that taking a large amount of RAM, but it would take an even larger amount of your sanity.