(February 16th, 2014, 08:58)Catwalk Wrote: Memory considerations aside, I think it'd be more fun to play this on a very cramped map. Wars will lead to civ death more often, as opposed to being crippled and left for dead. This will trim the player count nicely throughout the game.
I think this is just incorrect. The only profitable wars in Civ 4 are quick, certain, and decisive. You only have the luxury to finish someone if you have a very defensible empire with coasts or chokepoints. The opposite is true on a cramped Torusland map. Since you need to commit much more than you kill for a war to be cost effective, an opportunistic neighbor will just take advantage of you if you make the effort to finish someone off, so in practice it will rarely happen.
Defeated players would linger on for months of real time even more, not less. They tend to live until their tech disadvantage is so massive that they can be killed cost-effectively, and perhaps well beyond that.