If you mouse over your score, you'll see a breakdown of where your score comes from, and the number that denotes the land score has a denominator that states exactly how many land tiles are in the game. Big and small maps give about 3000. You can go and see just how much land is actually on this map and then re-evaluate this point.
You might say that 3000/18 is slightly more than 160 tiles per person, so you should have enough space for 8 cities. But that isn't how it works. There are dead tiles counted in that, ice and tundra, and then you are on a big and small map so there will be a lot of land tied up in islands. I wouldn't be surprised if there were 750 tiles accounted for by that.
So that would mean on average players could expect about 125 tiles on average without counting island cities, which would mean that players start closer together but have expansion room in weird directions, but that's an average. Some players will start incredibly close to their opponents and have much fewer tiles to expand to.
All that said, I am sorry that this map script was used, and perhaps I should have stated these numbers more publicly, but most people do tend to just ignore the points I make and tunnel vision on their personal beliefs on how and what to play. To an extent that is fine, but maybe it would have been fairer to explain what this choice meant so people could back out.
You might say that 3000/18 is slightly more than 160 tiles per person, so you should have enough space for 8 cities. But that isn't how it works. There are dead tiles counted in that, ice and tundra, and then you are on a big and small map so there will be a lot of land tied up in islands. I wouldn't be surprised if there were 750 tiles accounted for by that.
So that would mean on average players could expect about 125 tiles on average without counting island cities, which would mean that players start closer together but have expansion room in weird directions, but that's an average. Some players will start incredibly close to their opponents and have much fewer tiles to expand to.
All that said, I am sorry that this map script was used, and perhaps I should have stated these numbers more publicly, but most people do tend to just ignore the points I make and tunnel vision on their personal beliefs on how and what to play. To an extent that is fine, but maybe it would have been fairer to explain what this choice meant so people could back out.