Ya, I don't know if anyone else will remember this, but a planed feature for Civ 4 was to have a number of dynamic minor factions. Their goal's would not be to win the game, but to survive. For whatever reason that feature got merged/replaced by the barbarian system.

---I think something like that would be very awesome in this game...especially on larger maps. I can even see a mega event where they all merge into one powerful faction...intent on destroying all humand and fallen!!!

But why is bigger always better? Its like your average paradox game.

NOW WITH 10.000 PROVINCES!!!!¨

I was happy with the 5000 i already had. I rather they improved the gameplay.

While I don't share your exact reasoning as it is battle specific instead of exploratory in nature, I too think bigger is better. I was a huge, huge fan of HOMM3 and just exploring random maps was awesome, just to see it was there and even when games ended without the entire world being explored, I thought that added to teh charm. Some of the recent attemps to do a similar style game put time limits on the turns which gave the game a pretty rigid, one way to do it feel. I hate that.

Limiting human players to 8 doesn't seem that limiting to me considering the type of game it is. Heck, I can barely get 2-3 of my gaming friends to finish games that are a lot quicker than that as it is. So long as the game doesn't drag, I suppose there isn't a need to put an artificial limit on human players, but hopefully the boards won't fill up with people complaining about how long games take.

I don't quite agree bigger maps always mean more strategic paths. You can't really try a speed/blitz strategy on a huge map. That strategic option is taken off the table due to the size of the area to be conquered.

I would certainly agree that large maps offer different strategies that never could come into play on a small map.

I ADORE tiny maps! The close borders, the quick offensives, I jst love 'em. However, I also like to have options, to experiment, and to push the boundries. I know I wouldn't be happy if every map was huge, and I can half understand the desire for bigger maps too. I feel we should give people as many choices as possible: the only thing you have to lose is virual memory...

The important part I'd say is that player and AI number restrictions are not rooted deep in code but instead are only set on the surface where they are modable.

Since the stated aim for the game is to keep it as moddable as possible I'd say that is quite likely.

Yes, and I hope that it is not a hard limit. And the statement that they will see in beta where they set the limit does not point at a hard limit but instead that they wrote the code at all places up to now for x players (x not fixed).

Personally, I'd love to see 32 player support.  No one has to play with that many but I'd like to see the game support it.

The 5 ways of moving a knight from point A to B will rarely provide the same end effect.  Not only will the end effect be different but his very traveling along the path could encounter a new friend(Independent or Player); a new enemy(Independent or Player; a new quest; a new hidden structure; etc, etc., .  Also the longer the distance from point A to point B also means the more likely something will happen and each event/obstacle/creature/etc means the player will need to make a strategic choice.

Unless you're only safely moving between very secure town A to very secure town B while each path is equally distant with no side structure options and no events.

I'm not convinced that bigger maps are inherently more strategic, or that they even provide more fleshy strategic options. Sure there are more little things like "do I explore those ruins or chase down that band of adventurers?" but those are, in a way, more tactical than strategic. In terms of broad, sweeping strategy, there's not much of a difference. You have the same general strategic choices to make; there are many ways of going about accomplishing them in any size map (except maybe ridiculously small ones where there's no room to move...). Deciding whether or not to go up one extra square is hardly the meat of a strategic decision. Strategy is too nebulous to be quantified; it isn't possible to calculate how many strategic choices there are regardless of map size. You could do a crude and misleading 'upper limit' by calculating all the permutations of things you could do on any given turn, but that isn't helpful - strategy is forward thinking, so unless there is a time limit imposed on the game then it is simply impossible to to even calculate the number of permutations of playing any given game.

   The very fact that the exact opposite is also true validates bigger maps are more strategic.  Take a super super tiny map and the strategic options are clearly very limited.   I've played with many chessmasters and any of them will clearly tell you the number of strategic choices would greatly increase if an additional 64 squares are added in between the players of a chessboard as would the strategic options decrease if any squares are removed from the default game board.   It's mathematics, if necessary keep making the tiny map smaller until you recognize the difference. 

   Of course Chess provides significantly less options than Elemental, but for you I always have to use the most basic comparisons available.  These are both TBS games and the main differences is one has only two players, fixed amount of units, no diplomacy, no magic, no structures, etc., etc., which are all extra variables which reduce strategic options... however the point is the size of the chessboard clearly reduces or increases strategic options even for chess. 

 The point here is no human would ever recognize all the different strategies, HOWEVER with more being available the gamer is more likely to recognize and have more options because of the larger pool.  Thus it comes down to how many the gamer would recognize during gameplay, NOT how many are actually available.  I'd rather have a pool of strategic options with a larger selection of choices than fewer.

 Here are some of the other benefits available with massively large randomly generated maps:  The massive maps also provide a much greater amount of units which will be fighting on the battlefield by mid and late game due to more resources and structures being available.  The massive maps also provide a game where the human player is more likely to expand quietly and safely for weeks or on the 64bit maps even months.  Based on my experience the larger maps are in higher demand from the singleplayer gamers as well.