Magna Orbis
Disclaimer Some language used below can be offending. That was not my intent. In no way did I mean to sound smug or in any way superior to any other gamer out there.
To be frank: I hate the “Candy Crush”-aesthetic Firaxis inexplicably went for with Civ VI. It looks more like a tacky mobile phone game to me than a Grand Strategy game (so I went back to Civ V and its much nicer maps). I came back to Civ VI recently after I saw a mod change up the look of the mess Firaxis made. The problem remains that even with this mod, randomly generated maps still look totally disjointed. This hand-drawn map therefore is an attempt to make a world in Civ VI LOOK GOOD again. While this map will work just fine without any mods, I highly, highly recommend to play this map only with a mod that changes up Firaxis’ visuals, like GrrrArrrg’s excellent one: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1702339134 (all screenshots above were taken with GrrrArrg’s mod enabled).
Accordingly, there’s no benefit running any of the resources mods (like Resourceful/Resourceful 2 or Sukritact’s Resources). I suggest disabling them for this map, to prevent mod conflicts.
This (large) map is challenging; it purposefully contains multiple choke points that create natural boundaries for the first empires (which will likely be fiercely contested later, once the budding empires have consolidated their home territory). If more than 10 Civs or City States are seeded, it’s likely that some spawn so close to each other, that it’ll result in death matches from day one just over starting territory.
This map creates – unsurprising given Civ VI AI’s existing weaknesses – some additional difficulty for your computer opponent. In my trial runs, the AI wasted considerable resources because it did not/could not recognize some of the terrain advantages this map provides (which a human player will). Hence, if you like a fair challenge, it’s a good idea to play on a high difficulty to make the AI a worthy opponent. After all, it’s a lot of fun to slaughter a dozen of enemy infantry columns of a mobilized (and seemingly unstoppable) AI in a narrow mountain pass and flip the scorecard of the war into your favor thanks to your brilliant leadership. Try it!
In my trial runs, choosing Legendary instead of Standard for the Starting Position resulted in a more interesting distribution of Civs across the map.
How to Play This Map
1. Hit the Subscribe button above.
2. Subscribe to GrrrArrrg’s mod, too: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1702339134
3. Boot up Civ VI while you’re online on Steam.
4. Enable both the Magna Orbis and GrrrArrrg’s mod under External Content.
5. Start a new game, select "Magnus Orbis" as the Map Type.
6. Go into the Advanced Set-up, check that the Expansion Rise & Fall Ruleset is active (if not, you’ll also have to enable that under External Content first). Decide if you wish to follow the suggestions above in regards to # of Civs/City States and Starting Positions; if so, adjust the set-up accordingly.
7. Much fun on Magna Orbis!
Required DLC:
These DLC should be installed in order to use this item.
Sid Meieru2019s Civilization VI: Rise and Fall
