differences in civ 3 and civ 4 maps

[redstar05]

is it me or is there alot more desert on temperate in civ 4 than in civ 3?

[Vince278]

Does seem that way.

[joncnunn]

The bigest difference is that Civ 3 maps tend to be squarish.

Civ 4 maps chop off the poles from the playing area, resulting in a somewhat wider map.

Also, each terraign type & bonuses has min / max latituide assigned to it. On Temperate, yes more desert but only because much of the ice caps are off the map.

[Sirian]

Re: differences in civ 3 and civ 4 maps

Originally posted by redstar05
is it me or is there alot more desert on temperate in civ 4 than in civ 3?

Civ3 deserts can be irrigated and railroaded, thus aren't all that painful. Civ4 deserts are dead space. Civ3 deserts tend to be larger, more realistic but fewer in number, while I changed the Civ4 deserts to be smaller but more numerous and spread around, for game balance reasons.

Try the Earth map and look at how much desert there is in the real world. There's a huge swath of terrain covering half of Africa and straight on in through the gut of Asia that is dusty and largely barren except along the rivers. A third of the continental USA is desert (most of what is west of the continental divide).

Civ4 deserts are about a third of the terrain in their temperate zones, which cover only thirty percent of the map. A third of thirty is ten percent, or about one in ten plots that would be desert. That's for an all-land map, though. Many map types will put more than a fair share of the land in the temperate zones and come out with more desert -- but also more grassland and plains, too. Pangaea maps, some continents maps, and massive continent settings on Tilted Axis will have really big landmasses centered on the map, and carry a much larger percentage of jungle than other maps. Some continent maps will put whole continents in the temperate zone and a third of all the available land (on that continent) will be desert. ... Depends on where the continents are generated. On rare occasions, you may get a continent in such a zone that hits more than the average share of desert from the overlapping climate fractal, and you could even see half a continent be desert. THAT, however, is quite rare. It's also possible to get a continent in the same zone that has very little desert, but that will also be rather rare.


- Sirian

[johnmcd]

The biggest, best, difference from my point of view is that you now almost always start on fresh water and if you’re playing something that is mostly watery then on the coast too. Both of those things are great.

A couple of things I’d love to see in the custom game options are
- Lucky start, when I’m stepping up a difficulty level for the first time I often restart and restart and restart till I get a really primo start as it helps me stay competitive longer. It would be good if there was an option that guaranteed you an excellent starting location.
- Similar start, so that when you’re playing multiplayer you can be assured you and the other human(s) have a similar start and one is not sitting on a gem studded river while the other is trying to work out how long to boil beaver fur. The existing symmetry options are close but a little to tight.
I miss the occasional patches where coast would extend two or three tiles from the land. You can always work out now if a boat will let you visit new lands without building a boat, that feels wrong to me.

[Jvstin]

Originally posted by johnmcd
The biggest, best, difference from my point of view is that you now almost always start on fresh water and if you’re playing something that is mostly watery then on the coast too. Both of those things are great.

A couple of things I’d love to see in the custom game options are
- Lucky start, when I’m stepping up a difficulty level for the first time I often restart and restart and restart till I get a really primo start as it helps me stay competitive longer. It would be good if there was an option that guaranteed you an excellent starting location.
- Similar start, so that when you’re playing multiplayer you can be assured you and the other human(s) have a similar start and one is not sitting on a gem studded river while the other is trying to work out how long to boil beaver fur. The existing symmetry options are close but a little to tight.
I miss the occasional patches where coast would extend two or three tiles from the land. You can always work out now if a boat will let you visit new lands without building a boat, that feels wrong to me.

But do you miss "suicide galleys?" (a tactic I admit to shamefully exploiting time and again in Civ III.)