MAP: Marla's Earth Map - 204x256

[Badtz Maru]

Unless you are trying to duplicate real history, I don't believe it's accurate to try and force Europe to be strategically important. Geographically there are many other regions that have just as many resources as Europe. Europe is given a disproportionate amount of importance in our eyes because of specific political happenings and the fact that most of us in these forums are from Western cultures. Europe just happens to be one of the later continents to develop, past civilizations already had their 'Golden Ages'. Two thousand years ago most of Europe was very backwards compared to civilizations in the Near and Far East. The Xia of pre-dynastic China spread the roots of their culture throughout most of East Asia, which is why the Far East is so much more racially homogenous than Europe - they had their period of expansion and colonism back in the late Neolithic. Much later, but before colonialism really took off in the West, China began a period of further exploration, sending large ships to as far away as Africa and possibly the Americas, but under the counsel of his advisors the Emperor called off the program, though they had the potential to be far more important in global politics China instead became isolationist. If things had been a little different (as things should be with the player and AI deciding the course of civilizations) Chinese culture could easily have become dominant in Africa, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, Europe, and even the Americas. If you look closer to Europe you can see the huge effect the Middle East had. Our numeric system is Arabic, and the reason so much Roman and Greek knowledge survived the Dark Ages is that Arab scribes preserved it. There were also large empires in the Americas long before Europe became powerful, such as the Incas who controlled a large portion of South America and were quite advanced. We aren't sure today what caused their empire to fall, but had it not they had access to far more natural resources than what are available in Europe, had they a chance to fully exploit them they could easily have stretched their influence to other continents.

Basically, Europe is only important because of luck, not any geographical advantage. It is easy to envision a world where Europe is dominated by Chinese, African, or Incan culture, or possibly more - or it could just be the home of backwards warring tribes who are mostly ignored by the major players. I think it's a bad design decision to try and force Europe to be important by giving it an unrealistic abundance of resources compared to other parts of the world. History was decided by chance and the decisions of those in charge, and it should be the same in the game.

[Vonotar]

Re: About the Readme

Originally posted by Hastus
Everytime I open the readme file my wordpad locks up and I get a fun message like this :

EAX=00000001 CS=015f EIP=0140f6d5 EFLGS=00010206.......

Anyone else having this problem or do I need to fry my computer?

That's pretty!

No, being serious I think the problem is that your Wordpad is not able to read Word 97+ files, either that or you do need to "fry your computer". The next version will have the Read-me in Html format, the logic being that if you have downloaded a Map from here you must therefore have a browser installed!

Instructions (for those who can't read the Read-me)

1 - Install “Marla Singer’s World Map for Civilization III” by double-clicking on the install file.
2 - Open Civilization III, select “load scenario” and choose Marla’s World Map.
3 - Choose your options on how you want to play like you normally would.
4 - Launch your game and save straight away as “FIX.SAV” without founding any cities.
5 - On your Start Menu click “Correct Start Positions for World Map” (you don’t need to quit Civ3).
6 - Now load the newly created save game “FIXED.SAV”.
7 - All player positions are now correct, now all you have to do now is play!

Hope this helps

Aloisia Vonotar

[Hastus]

Ah,finally I am able to play the map with correct starting locations.

Thanks for the quick response and the instructions Vonotar

And great work on the map Marla!

[Marla]

Badtz Maru

Don't worry, China can control the world with this map .
Well, actually, I haven't decided to make of Europe something strategic... it's a bit Firaxis who decided to put 6 civilizations in such a small peninsula.

I got by the way critics about the fact China and India were advantaged because they got a terrain almost as pretty as Europe and they are alone. Well, the fact is that these countries weight today more than 1 billion people each... so that's the reason why I've put wheat in there... I thought it would maybe be fun to have most populated lands in civ3 as in the reality.

Well, about culture history, there's something weird, when you look geographically where is born the 1st city that ever existed: Ur is just in the middle between 3 continents... to me intellectual exchange has always been the first factor of devellopment.

After, The difference between Europe on a side, and India, China on the other, is that Europe hasn't been unified as soon as the others. I think the competition between european powers pushed them to devellop more and that's why in History it becomes as powerful as we know.

[Crom]

Nice work Marla and Voonlar.

Cracking looking map (very playable to) and it's such a relief to play in the proper locations for each Civ.

Thanks guys.

[N35t0r]

As i mentioned before, i can't do anything till this weekend.

But it seem OK from the snapshot.

As for American civs, the lack of suitable herd animals and food-crop staples led to the slower development of the civilizations.

The best food crops present naturally in America were, AFAIK, Maize and Poatato. Before modern 'natural selection' and hybridization of crops, and also before pesticides/fungicides/herbicides/fertilizer appeared, it was hard to produce very much of these crops. The same stuff that caused Ireland's potato famine was present in America almost since poatato existed, so the yeld was not as high as it had been in Europe. As for maize, it originally was no longer than 10 cm and about 2 cm wise, and it had to evolve a lot before it could be used as a food crop. Furthermore, maize drains a lot of nutrients from the soil, and thus it could not be planted anywhere.
Finally, the north-south main axis in America meant that traveling only a few miles north/south meant that the climate was very different, which slowed the diffusion of these crops along the continent. (maize never reached anything northern than mexico in precolumbian times...

[N35t0r]

oh, and you probably need MGE to open the file...

[Ancientfool]

Theres a good book on the subject of europes recent supremacy called, "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond. Fun read.

Besides some of the factors mentioned by others above Diamond discusses the East-West orientation of Eurasia as being superior for cultural development compared to the North-South orientation of the americas and africa. Food, livestock and culture disperse more easily on a west-east axis as they dont have to cross intemperate latitudes.

Edit: oops, someone already mentioned the axis.

[sianews]

My mistake

[warlon]

Your readme file is done with quite some professionalism Marla. Having read it through I do have some suggestion for you.

right at the moment the european can each support around 3-4 cities before they have to move out and colonize. the chines, russian and American civillizations plus the zulu and egyptian will always have a rather big advantage over the European, if a human player isn't taking control of an European country.

Himalaya don't have gold. I have seen 4 gold spots in Himalaya mountains. There is no gold of noteworthy mention up there. And some of the resource placement is not really realistical. I will be glad to come with some more resource placement suggestions if you want so. Having done quite some work and playtesting on Satya's World Map, and seeing that that project is soon to end, I would like to help you with this map.

[warlon]

Originally posted by Badtz Maru
Unless you are trying to duplicate real history, I don't believe it's accurate to try and force Europe to be strategically important. Geographically there are many other regions that have just as many resources as Europe. Europe is given a disproportionate amount of importance in our eyes because of specific political happenings and the fact that most of us in these forums are from Western cultures. Europe just happens to be one of the later continents to develop, past civilizations already had their 'Golden Ages'. Two thousand years ago most of Europe was very backwards compared to civilizations in the Near and Far East. The Xia of pre-dynastic China spread the roots of their culture throughout most of East Asia, which is why the Far East is so much more racially homogenous than Europe - they had their period of expansion and colonism back in the late Neolithic. Much later, but before colonialism really took off in the West, China began a period of further exploration, sending large ships to as far away as Africa and possibly the Americas, but under the counsel of his advisors the Emperor called off the program, though they had the potential to be far more important in global politics China instead became isolationist. If things had been a little different (as things should be with the player and AI deciding the course of civilizations) Chinese culture could easily have become dominant in Africa, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, Europe, and even the Americas. If you look closer to Europe you can see the huge effect the Middle East had. Our numeric system is Arabic, and the reason so much Roman and Greek knowledge survived the Dark Ages is that Arab scribes preserved it. There were also large empires in the Americas long before Europe became powerful, such as the Incas who controlled a large portion of South America and were quite advanced. We aren't sure today what caused their empire to fall, but had it not they had access to far more natural resources than what are available in Europe, had they a chance to fully exploit them they could easily have stretched their influence to other continents.

Basically, Europe is only important because of luck, not any geographical advantage. It is easy to envision a world where Europe is dominated by Chinese, African, or Incan culture, or possibly more - or it could just be the home of backwards warring tribes who are mostly ignored by the major players. I think it's a bad design decision to try and force Europe to be important by giving it an unrealistic abundance of resources compared to other parts of the world. History was decided by chance and the decisions of those in charge, and it should be the same in the game.

If Europe was unified in a single country, it would have the world's largest grain production, the world largest dairy products production, the worlds largest coal production and the world's largest iron production. It would also be producing more oil than USA and Mexico combined.

Europe do have quite some natural resources. Also the european civillizations did advance in a more "brutal way" due to competition as Marla mentioned.

Europe as a whole have more resources and agriculturable land (that can yield most, due to soil sort) than any other continent, perhaps due to the fact that there is no deserts in Europe nor relatively large mountain chains or jungles.

Europe does lie in a strategically good position, benefitting from mostly temperate climax and a close proximity to coastal, sea and ocean. The places that are good for grain production in China is near the Yangtze river, the Yellow River and along the coasts (which is quite a large area I might add). The rest of modern day China is not good for grain production in the same extension as Europe. China was and could not be a dominant factor in Europe nor Africa nor Australia, nor in any other continent. Why? Because it was only the provinces along the rivers and eastern coast that was developed. That central power was then collecting tribute from provinces far away from the rivers and from the surrounding countries that was also considered farlying provinces of China. The Chinese also had enough trouble with surrounding barbarian armies and inner turmoil, to start thinking of "expanding". Only during the Ming-dynasty did they achieve some sort of inner stabillity, but at that time European trading vessels from especially Portugal was already arriving in Southern China. At that time without competition from other outlying neighbours, the Chinese had not developed their discovery of gunpowder into useable and reliable firearms (another reason why Europeans dominated America and Africa.... quick adaption of new technologies for warfare use).

[Badtz Maru]

If Europe was unified in a single country, it would have the world's largest grain production, the world largest dairy products production, the worlds largest coal production and the world's largest iron production. It would also be producing more oil than USA and Mexico combined.

I'm not disputing that Europe is productive, developed, or important. I was pointing out it's importance has more to do with historical developments and geography. The statistics you mention are due more to the fact that Europe is densely populated and heavily developed than some geographic superiority. If you took a portion of South America the same size as Europe and put the same amount of people, mines, and oil wells, made sure the people were as educated as Europeans and had 50 years of relatively war-free stability to build infrastructure on top of hundreds of years of thorough discovery of where the resources were and efficient agricultural development, it would produce at least as much, if not more. You could do the same with almost any part of the world with a temperate climate and similar geography.

I'm not trying to knock Europe, I'm just saying it's position is due to it's history and level of civilization.

[warlon]

Originally posted by Badtz Maru


I'm not disputing that Europe is productive, developed, or important. I was pointing out it's importance has more to do with historical developments and geography. The statistics you mention are due more to the fact that Europe is densely populated and heavily developed than some geographic superiority. If you took a portion of South America the same size as Europe and put the same amount of people, mines, and oil wells, made sure the people were as educated as Europeans and had 50 years of relatively war-free stability to build infrastructure on top of hundreds of years of thorough discovery of where the resources were and efficient agricultural development, it would produce at least as much, if not more. You could do the same with almost any part of the world with a temperate climate and similar geography.

I'm not trying to knock Europe, I'm just saying it's position is due to it's history and level of civilization.

Aye I agree that a large part of Europe's "advantage" (in terms of military, technological and production) over other civillizations is due the fact of various historical factors.

But with that said, there is no single large portion of any other continent (perhaps north america though), that have the same kind of diversity in change of terrain as Europe, and the same amount of rivers flowing through fairly flat country without jungle, hills or deserts.

[Ancientfool]

Wow, nice map. I started playing as zulu and africa seems huge. Im getting a headache thinking about late game slowdown on such a map though. Ill see what happens.

One resource issue I noticed though as someone who used to live in africa. SW africa (namibia, botswana and SA) has HUGE diamond deposits. It actually makes the botswanan pula worth more than the US dollar. Also, Zaire is famous for gold deposits as well as gems. I would remove 2 diamonds from central africa and add gold in the eastern jungle. Then add a few diamonds where you have your kalahari desert. One near the coast and one in the SE desert.

Its also a shame they dont have a desert hills tiles as many so-called deserts are quite hilly.

Just my two cents

[Lenius]

Hi Marla

sorry I haven't contacted you about re-doing map resources, i've been pretty busy. Anyway i've finished a resource distrubution table to show you my changes.

Theres certain things I haven't changed - Horses because I have no information on them and Saltpetre because the information I have is weird. i.e. Salt petre (potassium nitrate) is only located in Peru. The only substantial place of pottasium in the world located is in Canada and the only nitrates that are shown (of which are fetilisers) are shown in substantial amounts in only six places worldwide and they probably have nothing to do with saltpetre.
This was ample reasons for me to leave saltpetre alone.

Anyway heres the table:

Lenius Resource Table

Continents
Resources Americas Africa Europe Asia Oceania Totals
Iron 8 4 6 6 3 27
Oil 7 2 2 13 0 24
Coal 5 1 7 8 2 23
Aluminium 7 2 5 2 7 23
Rubber 2 6 0 13 0 21
Uranium 4 4 2 0 3 13

I haven't started changing the map yet, but will do soon. I'll probably leave the luxury and bonus resources alone except maybe changing ivory + vines a touch and adding gold.