MAP: Improved Huge Map of Earth

[Don Homer]

One of the things I find annoying about civ3 is the fact that you can't cross over those oh-so-thin pieces of land with a boat. When there are two land squares across from each other, just touching by the points, and the rest is ocean. This causes a few problems in your map:

1) You can't get through the Suez Canal area, even if you build a city to get your boat through because there are two land barriers. This should be reduced to one.

2) Baffin Island shouldn't be attached to Quebec.

A few other suggestions:

3) The gold in the Rocky Mountains should be moved higher up into the Yukon/Upper BC area, not in Lower BC.

4) There should be more Uranium in Russia; in my experience Uranium is exhausted very quickly.

5) Several places on the map are extremely hard to irrigate. Add a few more rivers because there are rivers everywhere, and it is hard to start up a civ if you can't irrigate.

I love this map, it's great!

[satyajedi]

Solomyr: I'm starting to suspect that if there were CivIII players on this board from Africa, South America and the Middle East, we would have every resource in every region of the world by now :-)

[Solomyr]

it's a shame for them that there aren't. anyways, there wasn't that much in the thread, i will post it later. i have been to busy playing the map to do much else i think there is the right amount of iron in europe...just enough so every civ can have one, but just enough so that one or two civs could get them all so the others are up sh*t creek. time for bed

[Llama]

Protista:
First off, I can't remember if you can change the amount of barbarians in a pre-made map (I'm at work, so I can't check it out).
Secondly, if you want to change the rules then you'll have to load up the rules file in the editor & edit them directly (I think I might have seen some maps made by fans that have the rules included, but I might just be imagining it). The rules file is called Civ3mod.bic and it's in the Civ3 root directory (along with the civ3 exe & editor exe, if you start the editor I think that the File/Open defaults to this directory).
Thirdly, when you select the map from the load scenario screen, it always comes up with that screen asking if you want to modify the map & if you select yes, it will re-generate the map for you. If you select no then you get taken to the choose civ/difficulty screen. I think that you might be able to select the barbarian difficulty if you load the map with the editor, then one of the menu's (options ?) gives you the ability to change the level of barbarian aggressiveness, although I can't remember which menu it is (I think it's at the right-hand end of the menu bar).
Hope this helps.

[Alexandre Madeira]

Ok, here's 5.5, updated from subheat's, with most sugestions by Warlon and Don Homer.

[warlon]

Good job Alexandre

I have been working too and then shifted over to your changes and added some stuff:

Deleted gold in Northen Himalayas.

Remodifying Indochina and Malayn peninsuala.

Remodifying some mountain chains in Northen China/Fareast Russia

Given Japanese Island coal.

Given Romania Coal.

Added hills in Ruhr district.

Making Denmark more "real"

Deleting gold from places in the rockies.

Adding gold near Mexico City (Aztec gold )

Deleted uranium from Scandinavia instead adding Aluminium.

Added some hill spots in Western Russia.

Added some hill spots in Southern China.

Moved German start position slighty more east.

Moved Chinese start position slightly more south west

Moved Zulu start location slightly more north and setting cattle there instead of inititial start position.

Moved Iroquis start location more toward Chicago (eg. a bit more west).

Added rivers in Southeast Asia.





Things I am still not too happy about:

Australia is too small compared to Europe. Perhaps this is to illustrate what little impact Australia had on World History (no offense aussies ).

perhaps need a rubber in Europe to illustrate the synthenetic manufacturing of such products? Perhaps near one of the two oil fields in Europe (one in Romania, one in Norway).

Western USA is untaken and Iroquis and Americans seem to fight eachother while the Aztecs takes the spoils.

I don't know about the resource count? Is it too much?

[warlon]

given romania not coal but oil

[kittenOFchaos]

WHY THE HELL HAVE YOU GIVEN JAPAN COAL???

Remember each strategic resource is enough for an entire civilisation...Japan has not got enough coal to maintain her empire...nor iron

Can we please have some research done before you slap down resources...

E.g aluminium in the USA...hmmm!

Australia produced (in 1980) 20 times as much aluminium than America, Guinea produced 10 times as much...in 1980 93% of ore for aluminium came in from abroad to america...so she is hardly deserving of that resource!

I love this map, but I really don't like the allocation of resources and luxuries and when I get my Christmas holidays (14th December) I'll be changing ALOT unless people get there ahead of me.

[Alexandre Madeira]

Ok, I just deleted a few of your changes warlon:

Fixed some civ's starting locations, closer to their historic locations. Anyone wishing to change it for whatever reason should keep a seperate version of the map in your computer.

Is there Uranium in England? Anyway, I removed it, if the English colonize Australia they'll have enough Uranium

Removed the Romania oil.
Removed the coal from Japan and the Iron in the northern island so they only have 1.
Removed another oil you added in indochina.
Added one horse in England, this ok? I was playing with the english, and I still didnt have horse units in the middle ages. It better be ok

You should play a game in the map to find out too many resources take away some of the fun, cause every civilization will easily find the resources they need.

Thats it warlon, think its a good compromise
Take a look.

[warlon]

I think the Iron and Coal in Japan was used to represent the quick economic growth of Japan. But you are correct in that they don't have THAT much coal as some of the othe places that only have 1 coal resource.

Uranium was added to make UK get the extra trade and abillity to produce nuclear units even if cut off.

Romania got their oil due to that they supplied much of the german wehrmacht with oil in WWII.



Aye I didn't have the time to playtest 5.6


What changes are you thinking of doing with resources and luxuries for that matter?

[satyajedi]

It is unfortunate that with games taking as long as they do, our ability to playtest lags behind these updated maps. I am just now finishing up a game on 5.0 in which I started in Babylon. A couple interesting/odd things about that game:

-Again, the civs starting in China, India, Egypt and America were the early leaders. However, America lagged technologically because of the lack of communication with Eurasia and had a major gap to fill after the discovery of the new world. The two island nations, in Britain and Japan, were easily the most irrelevant in the game; neither has managed to do anything interesting outside of building a few decent cities on their home island. This is a concern. The crowded European civs did somewhat better. France, Germany and Russia were all competitive, although Greece and Rome were not.
-Persia, who I thought was by far the worst off, had a pretty good civilization going in the plains of central asia, until they were attacked by every civilization around them simeultaneously, and went from the largest civilization in the game to non-existent in less than 100 years.
-Babylon is a fun civ to play. The flood plains provide food but no shields, which means you're constantly in a race against your own civilization's growth. You blink and your capital city has become a 12 before you've even produced a temple.
-By the late middle ages, I had acquired just about every strategic and luxery resource there was. It didn't exactly inspire colonial ambition. There was very little by way of trading resources, either, because the AI seemed to have most things as well. There's really no doubt that resources are way to high, and need to be toned down. Also, although at no point did I have a resource dry up, 2 new resources were found during the game, which makes me suspect this happens just as much as a resource drying up.

I'm thinking that it is time to limit all the luxery resources to 16 or less total, and to bring down the strategic resources in the range of 16-20.

Obviously, the next step is to determine what are the 16-20 most significant cites for these resources. I somehow doubt Romania is going to be on the list for any particular resource.

-Satya

[kittenOFchaos]

Japan should have access to iron and coal in nearby Manchuria...as historically was the case (at present japan imports iron ore from the USA). Thus an expansionistic Japan can quickly get hold of iron for her samuri.

Maybe changing the Chinese capital to Nanking would thus prevent China securing manchuria...or simply changing the rules to not require the japanese to have iron for her samuri unit (assuming local production is sufficient)...

Needless to say Japan has it hard and will only gain advantage fro being relatively safe on an island.


As for Britain, sufficient coal should be available and iron (though Canada becomes the major source for Britain) aswell as horses (basically horses should be plentiful for steppe and european nations but not available in india nor south africa nor the Americas -sorry iroquois but you shouldn't be in the game as with the americans. India is not a good breeding area for horses, though there is nothing to stop them like the iroquois getting hold of them via trade.


If Britain is an irrelevance is it probably more to do with the strength of the french and the fact the americas are so heavily populated 3 civs in n.america (that in my games have matched the old world for tech ) that Britain has no where to go! The problem being for the British then a source of saltpeter without which they can't seriously compete with other nations later on or build her navy.

I'll do some work on this map during the holiday...though I just want to make people think more about resource allocation and the significance of the changes they make.

[warlon]

most unsettling news Sayed.

What level are you playing on though? If it is chieftain I am sure that would be possible, but if it is on regent or king I think it might be a bit of too many resources (not that there comes more resources as chieftain, but because you have easier time securing them).

[satyajedi]

The move to Nanking was a change I made in an earlier version of the map for that precise reason, however, I think it got lost along the way so that is something to look into. Part of the problem, I think, is that the AI doesn't realize that Japan needs to move into Korea and Manchuria as soon as they possibly can. As a player opponent, I suspect that I could beat China to Korea / Manchuria. Perhaps the Iron will make the AI understand, or perhaps we can encourage seafaring in the editor.

As for England, I think one effective strategy to help them out would be to make them the only place that can build Ironworks. That will help them in the early industrial period, which should be their golden age. Also, anything that helps Scandenavia helps England, as by far the easiest way to get to Sweeden or Norway is by the sea.

-Satya

[warlon]

Island cultures are mostly the strongest throughout the game.

I have thought about the whole imbalance sitution and I feel that there is nothing to do about it. Some countries will be weaker than others when controlled by the AI. Countries starting in Japan will have difficulty catching up in tech since their only trade partner in the start will be China. But Japan have alot of resources compared to others, so that will weigh up in the end.

China is dominating in the far east, but they will also be having difficulties with technology and later on Uranium since the nearest is in Japan or in Central Asia, where the persians or russians should have gotten it.

The Zulu will get easy play in southern Africa and Russians will get easy play to cover the east of their lands.

The European countries should have no trouble being those mostly advanced in technology.

The computer also gangs up on those that are too big, so China, Russia and Zululand might see some heavy gangupping later on if they are too good in the start.

There will always be countries that have a dominant role. The A.I is simply not good enough to randomnize the playing of the different cultures.