civilization-5
When I play Civ V, I always start a game via the Mods menu. The Setup screen under mods lists a many more map types, and I set to random.
However, I am not sure how random it is. Is it selecting at random from the full list or from the regular game list (which is more limited).
Is there a way while playing the game to find out what map type it is?
Start with a bigger world? If all you want is room to spread out. In Civ 5 there are actually reasons not to want to spread out so much, if you want to go for culture instead. 4 cities with decent resources is plenty to get you to the modern age, with the added advantage that you'll have 4-5 more social advancements than your rivals. Just don't alienate everyone, so that you're able to trade for aluminum and uranium.
Remember that on difficulty higher than 4, the AIs cheat. They will have more settlers, workers, and military much faster than you do. You can't beat them in the early game just by outbuilding them, you need to out-think them as well. This is where diplomacy can come into play; if you can trick the AIs into starting a war with one another, it does hurt their economy (not as much as it would hurt yours, but a little).
They are only maps (not scenarios), the pack includes map types called Americas, Asia, Mediterranean and Mesopotamia.
The answer is that they will appear for you via the following menu path:
/Mods/Single Player/Setup Game/{Map Type}
They should appear in the regular single player setup. It is a poor mistake by the game makers.
I always use the mod route to setup a game. I no longer use the Single Player option at the start. (Tip: setup your defaults via regular single player, start tha game. As soon as you see your settler, exit and go to the Mod setup game to see the default selections saved)
Here is a print screen showing Americas and Asia.
My last game was on the Bering Strait which was awesome. However, I am not sure if it came from another map pack or was with the game to begin with.
Best Answer
In the load menu, when you click a saved game, you can see a question mark signifying that your map choice was random. If you hover your mouse over that question mark, the tool-tip will display the actual map type which was chosen:
You can also see a similar graphics in-game by opening the game menu (by clicking the button or hitting Esc), where you can also hover the cursor over the map type to see what it is:
(had to edit the cursor back in because the screenshots won't show it :)