First off, you won't know what every single civilization will be going for at the very beginning of the game. I think it's perfectly fair to adjust settings to play your chosen civ to its fullest potential.ĭisaster is always default 2, unless I'm playing Egypt or Canada, then I'll go to 4.As we noted in the Things To Do First page, knowing what kind of victory you'll be going for is extremely crucial as without it, you won't be able to know how you're going to actually win! However, many people could think that playing it safe and attempting to go for multiple victories would be the best option, in the off chance that there is another one or more civilization(s) trying to go for the same victory as you, so that you can switch over to a new one as soon as you realize they're going to be doing the same thing. I'll tweak the temperature or legendary start if I'm playing a civ that depends on terrain or if I need resources.

Do I want to go cultural Indonesia? Archipelago. Map type depends on the civ and victory condition. I think that by keeping all my games in those parameters, I can properly understand build times, building units, and having a good general framework in which to play.Įmperor is the sweet spot, since I can win with certain civs on Deity, but I at least have some challenge thrown at me. I like to keep those first three settings a constant since I 1) like to compare civs against each other and find out who is the fastest at certain victories and 2) those seem to be the most balanced for how the game is designed. Map type: Pangaea, Continents, Archipelago. I do increase number of religions, though (to 6 on Small map and 8 on Standard map). I maintain the default 2:3 ratio of civs to city-states, so I think 15 city-states is also a good number, and more than this would be too much.

Civs average at half a dozen or so cities, although some civs can get much higher. The maximum number of civs allowed in the vanilla game on small size is 10, which seems like a good number. More than a dozen feels like too many to have to deal with.

The increased need for thinking, regarding city-planning and District placement, uses up a lot of brain resources, so I prefer not to have too many cities. With the building of districts on the map, it seems like they are representational, rather than literal, depictions of the world, which I think suits a smaller board-game style map with a quicker game pace. Normal map size, Standard speed feels to me like a Large map with slow speed. I currently consider Small map size, Quick game speed as the game's standard settings.

Civ 5 city-states always on islands