I think your map is one of the best. I gave this same feedback with Lucy, which is that the features seem realistic. Looking at a Civ map, you see too many illogical features. But here they flow together. The provinces are the right size and the borders make sense geographically. I think in Lucy there were too many rivers flowing into lakes, but that seems to have been corrected as I only note one this time (note rivers can flow into lakes, but most major rivers around the world flow into the sea). For all your points above, I think ti's great.

The only downside I feel is, similar to Endless legends, there are far too many all desert provinces. In the real world, there should be more all forest/jungle provinces.

First impression in Victor, there is a lack of diversity between different regions, I didn't choose region by its biome like in EL, I just grab nearest one, and its worked just fine. It seems that resources are far more important than biome, it isn't bad, but I think it made exploration not so exciting.

tassarho wrote:

also as said above ressources take all the blanket when exploring ressources is a major factor when choosing which sector you will put an outpost first, the lands themselves despite being beautiful, lack a real purpose for the developpement of the city, in the current state there is no big difference between a city on the snow vs grassland. (maybe have some unique ressources tied to each biomes?)

This is a very good point. I don't even think civ does it that well. But for a me a good example are Paradox games (EU IV, CK3 and Imperator: Rome). They're able to make the terrain have a big effect on development. It's almost impossible to develop a city in the tundra or desert, as is historical, unless you put a ton of extra effort into it. Whereas cities in lush, coastal rivers grow naturally without needing much attention. They do it simply through modifiers, which probably can be implemented here.

I also noticed that on this specific map, the player is kind of boxed in by AI players everywhere, while other parts of the map remain empty and are only settled by independent cities. Also, the player is in a terrible position to explore the new world, as the sea to his right only leads to the other side of the same continent. Or does it? I don't know what continents are in the game, there should be a mapmode for it or at least tooltips. Is there a notification if you find a new one?

I'm not sure if I like the two ressources per territory. Maybe having a bit more would be nice, so that you have multiple options when looking for a specific ressource.

I didn't have any iron, so yes...

Maybe the icons for ressources could be colored, that'd make the i.e. the copper much more identifiable.

Speaking of which, where is the minimap? Is there one?

Dayvit78 wrote:

Speaking of which, where is the minimap? Is there one?

The game doesn't have a minimap system (similar to previous Endless games I assume).

I don't know if I'm unusual, but I always like to play on the biggest size map available, and, where possible, mod in even bigger sized maps!

I guess I'm mostly into eXploring, but I also find it really fun to work out if I have to rush certain areas to capture certain points even though it might leave me overextended.

I haven't put enough time into the latest opendev yet, but feeling boxed in is never that fun, because you have less choices to make, you simply take what is on offer.

Also, maybe I don't understand them yet, but it feels like Natural Wonders don't make that big a difference, so there's not a rush to capture them, and the general impression that the biomes aren't that different means that it's really only resources that give you incentives to settle different areas.

I'll report back once I've put more time in!

Strategic resources are frustratingly scarce with the starting region basically bare of anything except horses and copper for maybe an ancient era unit. It does not help that when the AI is falling behind in technology it often means that the only practical way to develop those resources is to conquer the territory yourself. The incredibly rare distribution means I would have ended up conquering the entire continent or two in order to actually use contemporary era units which means in the current scenario I've basically won anyways.

Danann wrote:

Strategic resources are frustratingly scarce with the starting region basically bare of anything except horses and copper for maybe an ancient era unit. It does not help that when the AI is falling behind in technology it often means that the only practical way to develop those resources is to conquer the territory yourself. The incredibly rare distribution means I would have ended up conquering the entire continent or two in order to actually use contemporary era units which means in the current scenario I've basically won anyways.

I think it is meant for you to trade with other empires to gain access to the resources you don't have :/
But even then, is it a bit iffy.

I would advocate for bigger maps in general. I love the idea (and implementation) of the nomadic, tribal phase of the game. I always disliked on Civ, feeling so pressured and forced to found my first city ASAP. This way, it gives you a chance to survey your surroundings and try to pick a good spot - this is awesome! On Victor however, I dont feel like I get to actually do any of that because I am so boxed in by AI. It becomes a bit of a mad rush to settle somewhere half-decent as quickly as possible before all the territory is snapped up, which isnt really realistic for the ancient era anyway.

I would also echo some of the other comments that it seems odd that I can just as easily found a city in the desert, snow or lush grasslands, and the difference seems relatively minor. I would like to see more differentiation between biomes. Extreme conditions should be harder to settle, but maybe this could be addressed through certain cultures? Russia successfully settled much of Siberia despite the harsh conditions - this could be reflected in-game by the Russian culture giving a bonus to cities and outposts in cold regions, and so forth. Snow and desert should also provide some defensive bonuses - it would be a great basis for an attrition mechanic since you already have the "supplied" status. Sending troops on a long expedition into unforgiving enemy territory should be costly and risky.

Finally, I have yet to find much use for the naval units so far. After spending the effort to actually build harbors and build some ships, all I could really use them for was exploring the coasts it seemed. Amphibious landings/troop transport, defending naval trade routes, raiding coastlines, blockading ports (maybe some of these are already in game). These would be great features.

I think that regions are too big. By the end of the second era there is nothing left to conquer and because of the war mechanics where you can't capture other players you are left with sim city in the regions that you got in the early game. Everything just happens way too fast event until the end game there  should be places not taken by anyone.

The territories are too large.

The Average city will only be able to exploit at most 1/3 of the tiles inside of any given territory over the entire 150 turns. Maybe if we could build districts off of strategic and lux extractors, it would feel better, but right now it often feels like there's a lot of empty land per territory, especially since it feel like the average city is going to want to attach at least 1 outpost due to the city cap.

Furthermore, the size of the territories, combined with how close every civ spawned to each other, meant two things. 1) Early game outpost expansion to claim borders and regions away from your core cities disappeared in the Ancient era, which is way to early. The concept of early limited wars where you and your neighbor fights over territory by building and burning outposts is very interesting and unique to this game, and yet there was no time to do so, since said outposts being fought over near instantly get attached to your cities. Ideally, you would have something like city->attached outpost -> normal outpost -> Disputed territory -> civ 2 normal outpost -> civ2 attached outpost -> civ 2 city in terms of distance. The distance in terms of territories between the player spawn and the default brown team felt more right.

 2) Neutral forces, ranging from wild animals to independent people, never showed up near the player, which made interacting with them nearly impossible. Considering independent people are supposed to be the barbarian/minor civ equivalent in Humankind, the fact that it often felt they were a million miles from me means I never care about them. I never felt the need to try and influence them, bribe them, hire their armies or interact at all. If they were actually near my borders, said desire for interaction, and for controlling them against potential rivals, goes up. And to do that, they need to be able to spawn between all the players, which can't happen if all the territories between them get grabbed instantly.

But the actual terrain distance, it actually didn't feel that bad? This was very obviously a map seed using the Civ 6 terra map decision (one "Home" continent with all the major players, a second "away" continent to expand to mid/late game). Viewed from that lens, I assumed that civs would spawn a bit more cramped, and interaction distance was about what I would expect as a result. However, if I had picked the default map gen option, I would have expected the civs to be more spread out and less concentrated. But as is, it isn't to hard to interact with your various neighbors with troops, and there is enough distance that you have time to move units in response to a sudden declaration of war.

So if the terrain didn't change, but the territories shrunk by about 30-50%, with the associated increase in number of territories, I think it would feel a little better. Probably closer to the 30% shrink then the 50% shrink.

On a different note, sometimes it was very hard to tell whether a cliff would be scalable or not, and it caused some very weird choke-points, especially with the way the territory boundaries were drawn. I'd like if the boundaries primarily followed rivers and hill ranges, and if there are none then it should default to straight lines.

eraserman wrote:

The territories are too large.

The Average city will only be able to exploit at most 1/3 of the tiles inside of any given territory over the entire 150 turns. Maybe if we could build districts off of strategic and lux extractors, it would feel better, but right now it often feels like there's a lot of empty land per territory, especially since it feel like the average city is going to want to attach at least 1 outpost due to the city cap.

Furthermore, the size of the territories, combined with how close every civ spawned to each other, meant two things. 1) Early game outpost expansion to claim borders and regions away from your core cities disappeared in the Ancient era, which is way to early. The concept of early limited wars where you and your neighbor fights over territory by building and burning outposts is very interesting and unique to this game, and yet there was no time to do so, since said outposts being fought over near instantly get attached to your cities. Ideally, you would have something like city->attached outpost -> normal outpost -> Disputed territory -> civ 2 normal outpost -> civ2 attached outpost -> civ 2 city in terms of distance. The distance in terms of territories between the player spawn and the default brown team felt more right.

 2) Neutral forces, ranging from wild animals to independent people, never showed up near the player, which made interacting with them nearly impossible. Considering independent people are supposed to be the barbarian/minor civ equivalent in Humankind, the fact that it often felt they were a million miles from me means I never care about them. I never felt the need to try and influence them, bribe them, hire their armies or interact at all. If they were actually near my borders, said desire for interaction, and for controlling them against potential rivals, goes up. And to do that, they need to be able to spawn between all the players, which can't happen if all the territories between them get grabbed instantly.

But the actual terrain distance, it actually didn't feel that bad? This was very obviously a map seed using the Civ 6 terra map decision (one "Home" continent with all the major players, a second "away" continent to expand to mid/late game). Viewed from that lens, I assumed that civs would spawn a bit more cramped, and interaction distance was about what I would expect as a result. However, if I had picked the default map gen option, I would have expected the civs to be more spread out and less concentrated. But as is, it isn't to hard to interact with your various neighbors with troops, and there is enough distance that you have time to move units in response to a sudden declaration of war.

So if the terrain didn't change, but the territories shrunk by about 30-50%, with the associated increase in number of territories, I think it would feel a little better. Probably closer to the 30% shrink then the 50% shrink.

On a different note, sometimes it was very hard to tell whether a cliff would be scalable or not, and it caused some very weird choke-points, especially with the way the territory boundaries were drawn. I'd like if the boundaries primarily followed rivers and hill ranges, and if there are none then it should default to straight lines.

Yes exactly, there is a lot of unused space. With smaller territories there would be more space for independent people and wild animals. Also gaining more territories should cost more and more influence so playing influence driven nation would be more valid than it is now.