Overview
The objective of this gude(if not obvious already) is to make max size comparison of all games in Gal Civ series, including number of sectors and number of tiles per sector.
Too long, didn’t care
- Gal civ III (649,519)
- Gal civ I (112,896)
- Gal civ II (108,900)
Intruduction
While it is easy to assume it’s the case, is not always true that future games in a 4X title will be bigger than its predecessors. a classic example of this would be Sid’s civilizations. the third in the series is actually the biggest tiles wise(as far as I know, civs 6 has yet to break that mark)
For obvious reasons, I’m not couting the possibility of mods for the games. only non modded games allowed. also i’m counting Gal civ 2 ToA as the sample, since it gets bigger than the non-expantion games.
Alright, then. Let’s get started.
Gal Civ III
Gal civ III is by far the biggest in the francise. It is so big, in fact, that every now and then the devs feel the need to scale down the max possible size because,according to them, even your average gaming custom built PC will very probally suffer.
With that said, keep in mind that there’s a chance that this guide will be outdated because of it, so I’ll make a little exception for this one: I will also tell the second biggest size just in case Stardock decides to scale down again.
But before that, the basics…
Gal civ III’s map is not calculated by sectors(not that i’m aware of), possibly because of tiles being in a hexagonal pattern that would make a bit more difficult to nail down sectors in the tradittional sense.For this reason, It will be the only one where this guide will not provide info for sector size or number of sectors.
The maximum size, as of now, is 649,519 tiles, as said here: [link]
That makes it, by far, the biggest Gal civ game tile wise. You may even notice this is true even in the second biggest pssible map (233,827), so if stardock decides tomorrow to scale back yet again, rest assured it will still be be biggest.
Originally posted by Old-Spider:These numbers are not correct. The link in the first comment above goes to a post that gives numbers based on using the formula for the area of a hexagon to get the number of tiles. It is completely wrong to use that formula. See comments 4, 6 and 7 in that link. After looking at those, go to page 2 of the comments in that link and find comment 42. It has a link to more information about what is right.
The sizes of the galaxies keep changing with updates to the game. The most current information is here: [link]
Note that the sizes for Intrigue also apply to Crusade, but some of the values for Intrigue/Crusade in that table are no longer correct. The three smallest are now the same size as in Retribution, and the next one (Large) is slightly bigger than what is shown in the table. The rest are still the same.
Pretty much the only thing left untouched by Old Spider was Gal civ’s being the biggest overall,so yeah, just scrach everything else I’ve told you.
Basically, from what I’ve undertood, galaxy size is indeed cauculated by sectors, in this case HexSectorSize(or HSS) using a formula that I cannot even begin to compreend(visit the link provided in the quote and the link mentioned by said quote (https://forums.stardock.net/487528/page/2/#replies) if you’re that curious).Sizes are different with each dlc’s(some sizes actually get smaller, but we’re only couting max possible size, so our task is simpler)
Intrigue has 500 HSS, making 751,501 max tiles, while retibuition has 524, making 825,301 tiles.
As a small sidenote, i thank Old Spice not only for the reply, but because for what I could tell, he’s really into the research behind Gal civ III’s map sizes, and probally put more effort in his overall research than i’ve putted in this little guide.
now to the next.
Gal civ I
Remenber when I’ve said that is not always the latest games that are the biggest?
well… surprise, that’s(kinda) the case here.
Gal civ I has smaller sector size of the series, with only 12×12 size(144 tiles).The catch, horever, is that it has more sectors in its biggest map than Gal civ II, with suprisingly translates into having a bigger possible map than our loser, with it having 28×28 size(784 sectors), giving it 112,896 max tiles.
It should also be noted that Gal civ I has a diferrent scale for the universe itself(planets are not represented in tiles, instead they are ‘inside’ the star tiles, each turn takes a month instead of a week, inplying that the scale of distance is different, etc) so even if the game only wins Gal civ II by not much, when taking into account the actual scale, the actual universe is much more bigger than Gal civ II.
And now, with our loser…
Gal civ II has more tiles per sector than Gal civ I, with 15×15 size(225 tiles), but as said earlier, has lower number of sectors in it’s biggest map size, with only 22×22 sectors(484 sectors in total), making having only 108,900 tiles in total. what makes it more sad is that most people say Gal civ 2 is better in(almost) every possible way to Gal Civ I, so it would be very cool to have a bigger possible size, especially considering the scale of the universe for both being different in favor of making Gal civ I bigger raw universe size wise.
Credits
This guide was made after my OP [link]
So I appreciate everyone who invested their small potion of their time to post on it, since it helped to make this guide possible( or at very least, easier)
And on the last note, I aware that I have some typos, but if I ended looking for goggle my search engine every time I suspected of one, it would be really painful to make this. So put your useless degree in literature to some use 😉 instead of just complaining about my english.
…ok that sounded unecessary harsh, but please, just help if you’re willing to. I very much appreciate.