MAP: Kal-els 140x140 Earth Accurate Resources

[sabrewolf]

i have a PIII/450, 256 MB (however only 66 MHz), Matrox Millennium, etc.
bios is the newest possible (although ASUS stopped bringing out BIOS-versions for my motherboard since approx. 2 years), defragmentation of the system disk every 2nd month, etc.

i might have exadurated with the 50 moves. but it does take ages to start and play large/huge map scenarios with thousands of units...

however, this is off topic, so don't care any more about it

about the map: kal-el: i tried that 24 civ game and you were right, it doesn't work so well. spanish, french, celts (you forgot their starting location btw.), babs, ottomans, etc. only have 2-3 cities spread far apart while the russians, mongols, chinese, american civs and others have 5 or more nicely places cities. btw: there are enough luxury resources (as india i grabbed 4 of 'em), but strategical ones are fairly scarce. as long as persia and rome have iron, the iroquois have horses, etc. it doesn't really matter too much

unfortunatly the civs aren't fighting yet (since vast areas of africa, asia and certainly america havn't been settled yet, the AI civs obviously don't care to fight for territory yet (--> wierd seeing the 3 babylons cities spread over southern egypt, iraq and near ukraina ... and japan only building 2 cities on an island, i'd place 4-5 if i started on that limited area! )

[sabrewolf]

feedback

i playtested this map with 24 civs and the american civs moved to africa (america now is nigeria, iroquois are present day liberia, aztecs are in kenya). i played on monarch level as india because i like those traits and there is some space to expand (only mongolia, china and russia have more space)

my mistakes: i should have put up the agression level of everyone to max. it's around year 0 now and the only wars declared where the ones of countries paying me gpt for renewed peace treaties or RoP. but now the "old world" is full, probably militaristic expansion will start... hopefully.

what i noticed while playing: india starts out in a region with 4 luxuries, a VERY powerful capital (2 wheat, 1 cattle) and has horses and iron very near. this makes india completely overpowered (i let the AI play india in another game while i hid on a small island. after 3000 years i debuged to see the world map... india was aswell far more powerful than most other nations).
kal-el, for game-balance purposes, india shouldn't have 4 luxuries.

also, the arabs sucked in this game. but no wonder, if you consider their position: not a single tile with 2 food units until culture expansion. then also only 1 of those tiles (fish). irrigation is virtually impossible, because by the time the workers are near a river, the babylonians have claimed that territory. i'd say: give 'em some fish, possibly an oasis bonus resource or at least a flood plain to make irrigation possible.

as expected, france, rome and germany had to build cities far away from their capital because europe is so crowded. but surprisingly, they are technologically not far behind.

[sabrewolf]

here's the minimap.

thank's to the optimal starting location, 2 settlers for goody huts and beelining to map making, i got india, pakistan, bangladesh, most of south east asia, indonesia. i also managed to claim australia all to myself (except those barbarian rats who had 4 (!!!!) massive uprising spots and harmed my growth.
i bought warrior code, ceremonial burial, mystisism and luckily got polytheism from a hut. so i researched monarchy (couldn't do it in less than 40 turns, so tax rate was at 90%) which helped me in my expansion (less corruption).

[edit: persepolis recently conquered ]

[Kal-el]

Sabrewolf,

Thanks for all the input. I will definitely take a look at India and Saudi Arabia.

I would suggest fewer using European civs:
If you use France don't use Spain
If you use Greece don't use the Ottomans
If you use Babylon don't use Ottomans
If you use Rome don't use the Celts
If you use Germany don't use the Celts

Just a suggestion.

[sabrewolf]

kal el: somethings imho could be changed:
- you can cross over to south america just with galleys using oceanian islands. as you can see above i'm the first to settle america. even if i'd play another nation, the AI probably wouldn't send ships over (and unfortunaty the AI never tries suiside crossings). i think that one single island west of argentina sould be placed just one tile further away... makes the great lighthouse even greater

- south america lacks all kind of luxury resources. there's not a single one! shouldn't there be some fur, dyes and/or silks?

- isn't north america famous for it's horses? and the native american were great riders? well with your distribution, that's difficult there's only 2 horses-tiles right next to each other. and just north of them is the only iron source (except in the canadian rockie's). a human will go straight for it, the AI won't. anyhow, that area is paradise. i'll attach a screenshot...

but otherwise: great map. fun to play (although i'm too strong in this game. i'll try emperor or deity next). thanks for the work, kal-el!!!

[sabrewolf]

the great lakes region (aka paradise)

btw: i modded that tundra and desert cannot have a city. with so many oponents, the civ who get's that future oil spot won't survive anyway

I would suggest fewer using European civs:
If you use France don't use Spain
If you use Greece don't use the Ottomans
If you use Babylon don't use Ottomans
If you use Rome don't use the Celts
If you use Germany don't use the Celts

of course... i knew that would be an issue. i just wanted to play with 24 civs just for fun.
in the firaxis default, large (130x130) only has 12 civs...

[sabrewolf]

sorry, it was too big in the first go. i'm not trying to spam

[Kal-el]

Sabrewolf,

About crossing over to South America. I recommend setting ocean and sea movement cost to 2.

South America is so rich in Strategic resources not found in most other areas of the map I decided to leave it free of Luxury resources.

Actually there were no horses in America before the Europeans came over. My having them in North America is a compromise for the Iroquois so that they can build their UU.

[sabrewolf]

kal-el,
i was just wondering: how did you get a river through deserts and not have them turn into food plains? e.g. see southern part of south america...
i tried it but just couldn't find out.

also, your rivers are strange in another way too. sometimes you can cross them diagonally (not in 90° angle, but in 45° angle to the river) without using up the full turn (until engineering roads lose their movement bonus over rivers).

what's your secret?

[Kal-el]

I was wondering if anyone would notice the subtle differences with the rivers.

The trick is creating the initial map using the original editor which handled rivers in a much better manner. In the original editor you could run two rivers prallel along opposite sides of a tile without having them connect. You could also delete the floodplain from one side of the river.

So what I did was laid out all the continents using the original editor, then I placed all the rivers. Once all the rivers were in place I installed v1.29f of the editor which allows zooming and filled in all the rest of the details.

It takes a bit longer but the overall effect is much nicer. At least I think so. I am glad somebody noticed.

As for the the movement, I can only guess that this has something to do with that as well.

[sabrewolf]

oh, i'm proud in that case

i like having deserts near rivers instead of floodplains, because on other maps, map-makers usually replace the desert/floodplains with normal plains to not get those nice whip-producing cities

it's just pity that the diagonal river-movement exists. it's kind of exploiting. otoh, the AI can use that too (and will) because goto-commands used that diagonal movement.

kal-el, wouldn't it be nice to ask firaxis to make that automatic conversion (desert <---> floodplain) optional in a coming patch? it would make things easier for you and others

[Kal-el]

I asked them about that while testing PtW for them. Apparently they didn't think it was worth the effort of restoring the old editor abilities.

[Yanghead]

Originally posted by sabrewolf


- isn't north america famous for it's horses? and the native american were great riders? well with your distribution, that's difficult there's only 2 horses-tiles right next to each other. and just north of them is the only iron source (except in the canadian rockie's). a human will go straight for it, the AI won't. anyhow, that area is paradise. i'll attach a screenshot...

but otherwise: great map. fun to play (although i'm too strong in this game. i'll try emperor or deity next). thanks for the work, kal-el!!!

Actually horses were introduced to north america by the europeans! I don't personally understand why horsebackriding is a required advancement.

[Ozymandias]

Originally posted by Yanghead


Actually horses were introduced to north america by the europeans! I don't personally understand why horsebackriding is a required advancement.

Horses actually evolved in North America, and crossed into Eurasia via the occasional Bering "Straits" land bridge.

Once our dear ancestors crossed the other way, into North America, the best guess is that we literally ate them into extinction -- along with all the native mastodons etc.

-Oz

[Harrier UK]

Originally posted by Kal-el
I suppose that the only way to prevent this would be to have Alaska and Siberia reach all the way up to the top of the map.

That might be interesting to try, but I am not planning on redoing the whole map over that point. From what I have seen nobody else has done this with their earth maps either. i.e. all other earth maps allow a Northern route around the world as well. Some may block it off at Greenland but that is only a minor obstacle.

If you try that, all you do is open a path for land units to cross from Euraisia to America before Ocean units can. I have done this on Civ2 games. Civ3 would not be any different.