Ideal number of players in MP

[Freyaaa]

The Ideal number also depends on the starting date

Tomorrow I will be taking part in a week long lan game with 10 other players. We start in 1492, which in my oppinion is the most balanced starting date and the one most suited for multiplayer. France and Austria are about even in strength at this point, and portugal, castille, and England can start their colonizing right away if they so desire. Their are almost no major hordes left at this date either, which is I appreciate because the current horde system is absolutely terrible.

We play the following nations

Austria
France
Castille
Portugal
England
Denmark
Bradenburg
Poland
Muscowy
Venice
Ottomans

Poland is pretty exposed, but overall the balance is fine

 

[GAGA Extrem]

I guess it really depends on your game- and playstyle.
The more aggressive players are, the more buffering states should be between them.

That said, most games I played we had 7-9 players, all in Europe, and it worked out well. At least for the early and mid game, because late game colonization clearly got out of hand. 2-3 additonal nations would have been really great to contain massive colonial expansion (like Spain all over South America and England over whole North America). And these games also saw no player being "killed" by another one - in general, whenever a human controlled nation threatened the existence of another one, there was a player going in and defending a part of the Status Quo, so if people are finished off, there should be additional human countries.

Although we had not house-ruled it, there were quite some RP like situations. As if we had a real "badboy system". Austria being nasty and trying to take 80% of Hesse's provinces (8 out of 10)? Well, England, France, Castille and even Ottomans to the rescue! Let's save Hesse, the Status Quo and the balance in europe!. Sure, not of Altruism, but to cut their rival down - still, some sessions had an almost historical feeling, thanks to that. We even had a war were Spain had beaten up Italy, smashed his forces completly and occupied the whole country - but took nothing but Corsica, so Italy would still threaten Austria and France for him.