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The Maps and Map Editor
I'm having a rather strange experience. It was commonly known that the Civ2 world maps were horrible concerning accuracy. Now, the first civ2 map converted to civ3 is the civ2 world map, as a desperate attempt to get rid of the even more horrific civ3 world maps! Maybe the inaccuracy was intended, like in Age of Empires, where maps were never intended to be accurate. If so, I think Firaxis made a gross mistake, especially taking into account the vast amount of accurate maps and scenarios created for civ2. If this wasn't intended, I suggest you have a talk with Zach Wilson (and the rest of you, because you obviously left him little time to do a good map on his own)!
The map editor is not much better, being in many ways worse than the already mediocre civ2 mapeditor.
Essential additions to the map editor, in no particular order:
1. Include a small overview window
2. Allow zooming in and out
3. Make the terrains, resources and overlays more easily accesible. If someone wants to draw a map quickly using different terrains, he now has to work his way through a whole list of menus before he can even change the terraintype to draw with.
Civ3 requires a minimum resolution of 1024x768. Why don't you use it? You could add a window pane like the terrains bar in the civ2 map editor, the favorites/history/search bar in Internet Explorer, or the color spectrum/palette in any decent paint program. This pane could contain different tabs, each having all the existing terrains, resources and overlays in them. That would allow for easy switching between drawing tools. And while you're at it, extend these tabs to include units and cities for easy creation of scenarios.
4. Add more versatile drawing options, such as:
- flood filling an area with the same terrain,
- replacing all occurences of one terrain by another
5. Display round maps as actual round maps in the editor, not as a flat map.
6. What's up with the undo function? Especially because of the limited access to the terrains and resources, having to redraw something after a mistake is unnecessarily tedious.
As for the maps:
1. Add the possibility for flat maps at least. As a bonus, and to make up for the bad start, you could add some more fancy types like a map that wraps around vertically in stead of horizontally, and a torus (wraps around both horizontally and vertically). And you'd better make damn sure the "go to" function works!
2. If you add reasonable scenario support, remove the obligatory coast around land. Now the editor will always need to have a bit of coast immediately around land. I'm sure scenario creators would find plenty of reasons why this shouldn't always be the case. But this may also require the change of existing or addition of extra coastline graphics in case the water surrounding it is not the coast terrain?
That´s my 2 cents.
I also sent this to askthecivteam@firaxis.com
I'm having a rather strange experience. It was commonly known that the Civ2 world maps were horrible concerning accuracy. Now, the first civ2 map converted to civ3 is the civ2 world map, as a desperate attempt to get rid of the even more horrific civ3 world maps! Maybe the inaccuracy was intended, like in Age of Empires, where maps were never intended to be accurate. If so, I think Firaxis made a gross mistake, especially taking into account the vast amount of accurate maps and scenarios created for civ2. If this wasn't intended, I suggest you have a talk with Zach Wilson (and the rest of you, because you obviously left him little time to do a good map on his own)!
The map editor is not much better, being in many ways worse than the already mediocre civ2 mapeditor.
Essential additions to the map editor, in no particular order:
1. Include a small overview window
2. Allow zooming in and out
3. Make the terrains, resources and overlays more easily accesible. If someone wants to draw a map quickly using different terrains, he now has to work his way through a whole list of menus before he can even change the terraintype to draw with.
Civ3 requires a minimum resolution of 1024x768. Why don't you use it? You could add a window pane like the terrains bar in the civ2 map editor, the favorites/history/search bar in Internet Explorer, or the color spectrum/palette in any decent paint program. This pane could contain different tabs, each having all the existing terrains, resources and overlays in them. That would allow for easy switching between drawing tools. And while you're at it, extend these tabs to include units and cities for easy creation of scenarios.
4. Add more versatile drawing options, such as:
- flood filling an area with the same terrain,
- replacing all occurences of one terrain by another
5. Display round maps as actual round maps in the editor, not as a flat map.
6. What's up with the undo function? Especially because of the limited access to the terrains and resources, having to redraw something after a mistake is unnecessarily tedious.
As for the maps:
1. Add the possibility for flat maps at least. As a bonus, and to make up for the bad start, you could add some more fancy types like a map that wraps around vertically in stead of horizontally, and a torus (wraps around both horizontally and vertically). And you'd better make damn sure the "go to" function works!
2. If you add reasonable scenario support, remove the obligatory coast around land. Now the editor will always need to have a bit of coast immediately around land. I'm sure scenario creators would find plenty of reasons why this shouldn't always be the case. But this may also require the change of existing or addition of extra coastline graphics in case the water surrounding it is not the coast terrain?
That´s my 2 cents.
I also sent this to askthecivteam@firaxis.com
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