MAP: Norm's Giga map of Europe

[Harlan]

Norm,
Nice map! But whoa, what's this I hear about a BMP to Bic utility? Where do I find that? I'd love something like that. I have a bunch of criticisms about your map, but they'll have to wait to tomorrow. The main one is that, if you want to be historically accurate, some 90% of Europe was originally forest.

Actually, I think it would be better if you started from scratch. Make a smaller map, because of the maximum city number problem. Extra bonus would be if you used the flood plains and jungle terrain slots for some terrain types more apropriate to Europe. And make it a flat map!

[Norm]

First the place to get BMPtoBic..

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=34238&highlight=BMPtoBic

The techrate problem should be addressed in 1.4..I'm still a bit puzzled about how to make it a flat map.

[don.limpio]

Hi Norm ! still great work .

i tried to play the V1.3 a lot (with german and roman ...) but every time i get near to 1900 b.c. the game chrashes without a reason :-((

i still donn`t know why .

[Harlan]

Hi Norm,
Here are some more criticisms of your map. Yours is the first map I've seen that is accurate enough to not send a geographical perfectionist like me into a tizzy, so relatively speaking not much to change.

Some problem areas:

Dead Sea and areas to the east of that. No Flood Plains here, lots of hills missing.

What happened to the Tigris and Euphrates? They peter out before even reaching hills. The whole eastern Turkey area needs a lot of work. No rivers or lakes there now, too few hills and mountains.

Caucausus Mts. should be more substantial, extend more towards the Black Sea.

I would add a gradually increasing amount of Desert to the south and east of Stalingrad.

No Flood Plains at the mouth of the Danube. That area is swampy and still largely inhabitable, not VERY habitable.

Yugoslavia needs a lot of work. Should be more elevation there, and you miss the important inland rivers while including some very inconsequential rivers near the Adriatic.

There should be no Hills in the middle of the Carpathian Basin! (much less a Mountain right on the Danube)

Missing an important lake in southern Tunisia.

Hills and mountains in Iberia need a lot of work, esp. Pyranees go all the way to the NW corner of Iberia.

Generally I'd have more Hills and Mountains, but Wales, Ireland and Scotland you make too mountainous (there's nothing in the British Isles that could really qualify as a Mountain).

Forest actually can't grow on Tundra - Civ3 made a mistake with that.

Regarding terrain types, if you want to be very adventurous, here's what I would do. Turn Jungle into Broadleaf Forest. People can still use the Clear Jungle command, and it will reveal Grassland underneath. Turn Forest into Pine type forest only. Have this more often convert to Plains, esp. farther north. Have Pine forest stats be less good, and harder to cut down. Turn Flood Plains into Swamp. Lots of Swamp in Europe, no Flood Plains on your map except in Egypt, which can be done with grassland almost as well. Swamp can still give disease like Flood Plains, but very little food. Then you can add things like the Pripet Marshes (too bad no way to clear Swamps, if you did this).

The game already comes with Pine forest graphics - use those exclusively for Pine forest. Swap regular forest image with Jungle, and Jungle image with Flood Plains, and you're set graphically.

Finally, regarding Europe being waaaay more forested than you have it. You may not want to go up to 90% forest, but you should at least add a lot more, esp. the further north one goes. If you add a lot more forest, that will make starting new cities harder, and greatly delay the day when you hit the 512 limit.

Here's a map from my website I hope you didn't miss. This should put you on the right road with vegetation. For instance, look at your Volga area. You have huge areas with no forest at all, that should have lots more.

Europe Natural Vegetation Map

One of the fan made utilities makes flat maps, but I forget which one.

What do you think about making a smaller version of Europe?

[Norm]

Ah...at last a nice big list of critique, thanks. Will get working on it asap.

[Humphman2]

MY GAME CRASHES AT 50 B.C.!!

Every time I get to the end of my 50 B.C. turn, I hit return, and once I get the popup box "The Netherlands have just completed (a) wonder", the game immediately crashes back to the desktop!!

I tried re-loading and re-booting and re-trying, but nothing will let me get past this. I see from earlier posts that a bug where trading maps with the Egyptians (?) causes this, but I the only map I had previously traded was a territory map with the English (I think they offered it to me)..

I'd love to finish this scenario, as I am playing the French (in geographical Greece. This game forces me to tread warily on the continent, as it is packed with powerful potential adversaries, and expand into the Med as a naval/trading power to get ahead...

PS My game never normally crashes on my computer and runs well.

Has this happened to anyone else? Help!

[Humphman2]

Well, I ditched that game I was playing, and took the advice of another map author (in a different thread), who said that these crashes may be caused by the customised civ changes made to the in the bic file...

He suggested that you should open the scenario bic, restore the default rules then play away again! I did this, customised my file (I like to make battleships more deadly and more expensive etc) and started another game. I'm up to 1600 B.C., but so far so good...

I also noticed that an earlier version of THIS giga-euro map was supposed to have had a "4-turn discovery" bug: I found out that if you re-load a save, the restored turn often gives you a bogus "turns left until discovery" number. And if you slide the domestic advisor's science level up and down you don't change the discovery rate. This means some bug's got hold of it. In that case, I just re-load it until the damn rate is right again, and the slider finally changes the number!!

Now I've chosen to play the French again, but this time in geographical Italy so I can try again to be King of the Med! At least Italy is farmable.. tons of wheat and cows. Greece was a b****!

[joypunk]

Game crashes at 190 A.D.

Traded maps with one civilization many turns ago. I am playing Russians, traded maps with Vikings. No amount of loading, re-loading, re-booting, etc will get past this crash. Game crashes in the middle of my turn, not beginning or end.

[gaiastate]

Errors and some tips

I had the problem of the game crashing about 200 ad 150 ad, but i think i will take the advise of anther post that said to reset the rules. However this crash seems to happen as i build a settler from my capital if this helps in finding the problems.


Secondly in terms of update, i made a call to power 2 ww1 map and got in trouble in a forum for leaving countries out

However in terms civilizations for this map, i think you need to rethink you position, your trying to portray the people of Europe and this is not particual easy, for example, Rome covered most of Europe, France, Spain, Germany and Italy could all be concidered sperate parts of the roman empire. It would be similar to makeing a American map, placeing, USA, Canada and Mexico and then adding the seperate states such as NY state, Texas, Florida, and wondering why the USA is NOT dominating the contintent.

For this reseson i believe you would be better to represent instead of differnt peoples, but cities.

Rome is an example of this in common use, You have a rome empire, because the city of Rome is its capital.
Cathage, is called this as its the cities are under the rule of the city of cathage.

This type of terminolgoy is common, you always her about Washington, Tokyo or Beijing in place of USA, Japan, China.

So, German would become a Berlin empire. Egypt would be a cario empire.

This will let you place civilizations in postions in a more ideal postion.

For example the location of Venice is historicaly powerful, such as turning back the Turkish advance into Europe. And a center of trade, in an era when Italy was not united , yet in your current version, they will never exist.

This also lets you split historical empires up without ever having to reconginize their shared nationality, such as Rome and Venice being both Italian but each powerful cities in their own right.


My system avoids modern day ideas of culture and nationality and utilizes a more acient form of seperating poltical boarders. Which of the great cities of Europe do people pay tribute too.


As far as another North African nation, The people their were Berbers, but i would choice the Moors . They did invade spain via N. Africa. I think?, you would base them in morocco