Size matters

Avoiding the obvious comments that will inevitably come up related to the topics title, I'll start out by saying you have a valid point. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If an occasional "big" game would benefit the outlook of the small game player then it behooves the big game player to occasionally go "small". After all, it might be nice to finish a game in a few hours instead of a few months.   

Hm, I think I see the thrust of your argument, G.W. Mumblefratz, you are correct on all counts. I've finished two gigantic galaxy conquest games to get the full experience; educational, but so time-consuming that I doubt I will do it again anytime soon.

Now to the original post: I had no interest in tiny or small galaxy games at first. That changed this past summer when there was a big kerfuffle about people's Metaverse scores dropping dramatically once they reached 16 games. I had just reached 15 games with my original character, but instead of whining on the forum, I just decided to start a new experimental character to see what I could do with the smaller settings. I'm still playing with that character, so for me the whole scoring problem was a good thing. I began to try out higher difficulty settings and different colonization strategies that have definitely improved my game.

The great thing about Tiny galaxies is that even I can finish a game in a couple of sittings, even with research speed set to normal. This size has a certain 'arena' feel to it, a kind of Thunderdrome 'two man enter, one man leave' competition. You have to be careful with your research strategy; pick your weapon and defense techs carefully, because you won't get time to build a second fleet - and ignore combat techs for other improvements at your peril. I never did manage to win this size game at Suicidal, though I intend to go back and try again some time.

After a few Tiny games, the Small galaxy size seems spacious (pun intended) in comparison. With fewer planets to micromanage than in a big galaxy, the game feels smoother than the larger sizes, but even with just a few opponents there is still a satisfactory amount of jockeying for position and politicking before the endgame wars commence. In my Small galaxy Thalan game, I lucked into two 26+ PQ planets in one star system and managed to get both to 100 billion population before the end of the game (using transports for some of that growth).

I've taken longer to play through my series of Medium galaxy games because they are more complex than the smaller ones, especially if you max out your number of opponents. You'll get one minor race if you don't turn them off, and I like to try to protect them as a side goal; that way, I still have a trading partner at the end. Even with research set to Very Fast, you still won't reach the end of the tech tree, so your research path still needs to be planned carefully.

Overall, the smaller galaxy sizes force you to do more with less, planning your research, building, and war fleets more carefully. You will micromanage less (a lot less) and spend less time watching your ships move across the map, but you can still field impressive military forces. The biggest benefit for me was that they have given me a chance to try new strategies and see the results fairly quickly, rather than playing a gigantic game for a month before deciding that my great new colonization ideas really sucked.

One piece of parting advice - slow AI ships have less distance to cover in smaller galaxies, so be really careful where you put your manufacturing capital, especially when you've built Eyes of the Universe and the Tir-Quan Training facility there...

I usually prefer the medium to huge maps due to quicker games. I do find a good all abundant, gigantic to be the ultimate fun for a micromanager like myself, but it does take some dedication to complete them and keep your focus till the end. I recently finished one in a week and a half, with some serious hours invested. If it wasn't for the week vacation from work I might still be playing it.   I even enjoy the occasional small setup with a couple of AIs and everyone only has three planets. Like to blast through one of those in an evening once in a while. Ultimately, I think everyone should try at least one game at the different sizes, might just be surprised how much fun you'll have.  

I really enjoy Tiny maps, and an Arena fight is a good way to think of it.

On a Tiny map with 9 opponents, if you set everything to Rare each race will be left with only their starting planets, which makes for a very interesting change. There is essentially no colonization "rush" phase, but you will want planetary invasion almost right away. With enemies stacked right on top of you from the outset (if you play any good/neutral race and start near the drenigan or yor they will start the game cool/hostile, - ethical alignment, - close borders and - our alarming influence by turn two) and you better believe on Obscene or Suicidal that you will be at war by late March of the first year. To gain any sort of production advantage you will need to take homeworlds, but that will mean you have a tendancy to conquer others and have a likely chance to be ganged up by 3-5 people in no time.

For even more fun, set research to slow on this setting. Sometimes being the first to Harpoon or Singularity driver is all it will take to win the game. With these games you will conquer or be conquered in an hour or two, but you will sweat and struggle through every minute, especially on suicidal.

There is no chance to build a defence, no chance to build an infrastructure. With only your starting planets, you must make hard choices between research centers and manufacturing plants on limited tiles, and one mistake will mean several enemies parked outside your world as 2226 rolls around.

If you can play on Tiny with Slow research, rare everything against 9 suicidal opponents and find it is not enough of a challenge compared to what you are used to, then my hat goes off to you, you are a better player than I. Give it a try (it will only take a few hours of your time anyway), I think you will find it packs one of the stiffest challenges GalCiv2 offers.

I usually like to play on large maps, but not gigantic. I usually play on a large map with all 10 races, and I will usually set habitable world count to either common or occasional, and sometimes I do it without tech trading. This setting usually makes for competitive games, though if you have it on occasional I notice that only 2 or 3 "superstates" emerge and the others kinda become a little bit like minor races. Disabling tech trading really makes the game that much harder and more interesting, as the only way to get techs from other races is to invade worlds. And if you really want a game that will be challenging, set all the races to evil and set your alignment to neutral (an essential safety factor) and try to go for an Alliance Victory. All races with evil alignment are usually far more aggressive and far less likely to ally unless they see some way to benefit from it, so be careful.

I never did manage to win this size game at Suicidal, though I intend to go back and try again some time.

Thats funny, my three metaverse scores have been tiny galaxy suicidal wins, and I consider you to be a much better player than I. Goes to show you how different play styles work better on different map sizes. IMHO, the key to wining suicidal tiny is diplomacy. Trade for techs, get your enemies to attack each other, divide and conquer.

If you can play on Tiny with Slow research, rare everything against 9 suicidal opponents and find it is not enough of a challenge compared to what you are used to, then my hat goes off to you, you are a better player than I. Give it a try (it will only take a few hours of your time anyway), I think you will find it packs one of the stiffest challenges GalCiv2 offers.

That sounds like quite the challenge. I'll have to try it. I have a feeling that it will be easy with my diplomacy heavy play style though. The more AIs there are, the more you can exploit them when you have a diplomatic advantage.

I would like to see the amount of potentially habitable number of planets listed in the debug file for each map. It would make map settings a lot easier to figure out and give you more knowledge about your type of game and how long it will last.

I really enjoy Tiny maps, and an Arena fight is a good way to think of it.

The way you describe it sounds more like a cage match. It also sounds both fun and intimidating.

I usually play fot the long game. I don't want to play a night or two and then start over. I have altered the way I play every game just to see what works better in different situations. I think the smallest I have played is large way back in the beta. I think I would play smaller more often if we ever got Meta scenerios that Wheel has pushed so hard for.

Thanks all, especially MarshallO, for the replies so far. I think I'm more likely to try small maps for some exercise (at least after the DA beta). I'm also curious about whether map size might affect AI choices of victory goal--I've still not noticed talk around here about an AI trying for anything other than a conquest win.

I haven't seen the AI go for either an influence or diplomatic victory, but it will most certainly take a tech victory if it can. This has happened twice to me. Late in games, just when they were getting interesting, I get the warning that civ so and so is about to get the tech victory. This is very annoying. I now disable tech victory in all my games, so that I can continue on deeper into the game.

Mistralok, you remind me of an old game I'd forgotten where I basically quit b/c it was frustrating to get the "We're almost ascending" warning with so little time to do anything about it.

I wonder if there's room somewhere in the primary UI elements to put some intel summaries that might include crucial factors like Best Guess for This AI's Victory Goal and Progress Twoards Most Likely Victory Goal.

Beg pardon for the apparent digression from my own OP, but if you torture the pun a bit, it *is* still sort of about size and what you do with it

I could usually handle one of these announcements, by going to war and either make the civ cry 'uncle', or destroy/seize it's tech resources until this type of victory is out of it's reach. It is another matter entirely when 2 civs announce within a turn or two of each other; that is a game killer.

I haven't seen the AI go for either an influence or diplomatic victory, but it will most certainly take a tech victory if it can.

I had a game early on, in v1.1, where the Iconians' sickly gray influence cloud had enveloped three quarters of a Huge galaxy before I teched out ftw. Maybe that was an accident, but they were doing darn well and had caused two factions to surrender that way.

As for the diplomatic victory, I saw some fairly large coalitions of allied factions in my early games, too - though not since v1.3, I believe. Of course if an AI faction were going for a diplo victory, they would have to either destroy the player (game over, player defeated) or include the player in the alliance net (game over, player wins as part of alliance).

I have disabled tech victories for the same reason that Mistralok and G.W. have pointed out. I think it would be an extremely cool twist on an AI tech victory, though, if the game kept going after the faction disappears (evolves?). Suddenly you would have a late-game colony rush for the abandoned worlds and haunted ruins that they left behind, with fast transports and heavily-armed fleets desperately battling in the skies over silent cities.   

I think it would be an extremely cool twist on an AI tech victory, though, if the game kept going after the faction disappears (evolves?).

I love this idea. Any guesses about how much of a hassle it might be to code?

I wonder if there's room somewhere in the primary UI elements to put some intel summaries that might include crucial factors like Best Guess for This AI's Victory Goal and Progress Towards Most Likely Victory Goal.

You can see the technology the AI is currently researching in the report screen if your espionage is high enough. Once you see an AI look at "Deeper Knowledge", it's a clear indicator of what they're trying to do. Nobody researches this unless they're going for a tech win.

If you look at the games I have submitted, small maps are practically all I have ever played. I tried a medium map at one point and found it quite different. Marshall summed up most of the reasons I play a small map quite nicely. For some reason, maybe because that is all I know, I am comfortable in a smaller galaxy. With that said, as of now, I have started a painful / gigantic / loose / abundant / very fast research / 9 opponents map. Talk about being taken out of your comfort zone.

Suddenly you would have a late-game colony rush for the abandoned worlds and haunted ruins that they left behind, with fast transports and heavily-armed fleets desperately battling in the skies over silent cities.

This would be a brilliant game altering event! Since a tech victory is a possible way for the AI to win, maybe Stardock could look into another avenue to achieve this event without taking away a path to victory. Although it would decrease the number of opponents you are facing in the game, it could possibly make those remaining even stronger.

You can see the technology the AI is currently researching in the report screen if your espionage is high enough.

This I did not know. I, like some of the others, disable the tech victory conditions for the reasons stated above. Stopping the AI from accomplishing this also limited my options of victory as well. Thanks for pointing this out n0v4k4n3.

To get back to the OP and the question G.W. had asked, there is only one other reason I like the smaller maps that has not been addressed. I have trouble trying to remember what exactly was going on in the galaxy after I return to a saved game. Obviously, the larger the map, the more going on, the more lost I feel. With the smaller maps I really do not have that problem.

@n0v4k4n3: I know about the intel reports (much harder to get as of 2B). My request for "summary" stuff in the UI was laziness-driven. I wanted some pointy-haired boss tools.

@Quixen: I'm pretty sure now that I need to work on some small maps after the beta. Leaving the comfort zone is doubtless good exercise.

Re digression on intel reports, another good reason to keep an eye on AI research paths is to help you pick the best time to trade or give away a tech, e.g. trading away an enviro tech just before your top rival finishes researching it.

You can score big stuff for enviro techs as of 2B, and IMO helping folks on the other side of your neighbors' empires keep up with the colony rush might mean fewer annoying foreign enclaves in "your" space.