[Thufir]

Thanks for the info Mr. Fel, this helps!

Nagot Gick Fel said:

My advice is to not pick large or huge maps for newbie games. You tend to learn the basics faster on smaller maps, and that's what new players need. Besides, the amount of MM you'll have to cope with after 30-40 turns tends to increase exponentially with the map size, and heavy MM is what turns newbies away from Dominions before anything else - so avoid it at all costs.

Maybe you're right - I guess I just love huge, complex games, and have always been willing to put up with the MM, even when first learning a game. But then again, maybe I am not a representative newbie.

The thing I was thinking was to setup a 14+ player game, and by map description, it seemed that Orania and Zen's Cradle were the likely candidates.

Inland seems popular for advanced/expert games - not too big, even playing field for everyone because of the wraparound and rather uniform layout. Although it's not really suited if both Atlantis and R'lyeh are in.

Is there any reason Inland would be unsuitable for newbies?
In the ingame description Inland says it'll handle 10-15 players - does it still provide a good game at 14/15 players? Also, with 5 water provinces it would seem advisable not to include either Atlantis or R'lyeh - do players actually go for either of those on Inland?

You can also edit the Orania map file and remove the #neighbours clauses that connect North to South.

Thanks for the tip - I'll try this out on Orania, sp.