MAP: Earth120X180 12players

[Becephalus]

This map is an attempt to render an accurate earth map with as little distortion as possible. This was done by using a mercator-like projection and cuting off the top and bottom at 60* lattitude (roughly the artic and antartic circle). This has two benefits...as stated above it reduces distortion greatly, and two it prevents massive artic empires in northern Russia and Canada...those of you who play against cpus on most earth maps know what I am talking about

I do not think this takes much from the play either as these regions are pretty historically unimportant in civilization terms

Also I made most small islands costal squares...this allows one to use them for exploration with galleys and caravels but saves one from having 50 disproportionately large islands all over the map (and now you do not have to wait for marines to take all those stupid little things from the ever expanding cpus) so every island which would be just one square was either connected together with other nearby island or eliminated

I am a geography and mathmatics major and went to length to attempt to make the map accurate to 4000bc...obviously there are lots of comprimises to be made because of the large tiles...playability and accuracy also conflict often and I tried to chose accuracy

I have one version of the map with all civs at right strating locations and one where there are 12 more or less equally valuable/viable and equally spaced starting locations (4 in americas 8 in eurasiafrica)

The resources are just randomly distributed...I did this for two reasons...first much resource production is a matter of historical happenstance (e.g. brazil has just as much mineral wealth as russia or the us it just does not have the capital/infrastructure to exploit it)...secondly I view the resources in civ3 as proxies...so oil is more like "energy" and horses are "ridable beasts" etc. This makes some sense with the strategic resources and perfect sense with luxery resources since their selection/distibution is ure historical happenstance

If there is enough interest I might do an accurate resource map,but the research for that is a lot of work

Please give me feedback as I am still working on this and would greatly appreciate any comments positive or negative...

India and Indochina still need some work but I have not been able to get them in a configuration I like

[Becephalus]

hmmm...how do you get screenshots of your maps....

[Becephalus]

ok i fugured it out

[Becephalus]

asia

[Becephalus]

oceania

[Becephalus]

1 of 4

[Becephalus]

2of4

[Becephalus]

3of4

[Becephalus]

4of4

[Kal-el]

Ok man, you asked me for my opinion. I like the general idea behind the map, cutting off the poles to try and reduce distortion, but then my use Mercator? Mercator is a notoriously bad projection. That being said, here are a few questions for you.

-Why is the Iberian Peninsula connected to North Africa?

-Why is Italy connected to Greece?

-Why is England connected to France?

-Why is Sweden is attached to Germany and Denmark?

-Why is Iran is attached to Saudi Arabia?

-Why is Borneo is attached to Celebes?

-Why is Japan is attached to the Sakhalin Islands?

-Why is there no Baja California?

[Becephalus]

1) I used the mercator because that is what almost all vegetation elevation andclimate maps are done on and that is what I am using to decide what terrain where

2)Because the straits have historically been crosssed in small craft and one has no need of a actually naval ship to cross them

3)This is the same story for all of these places...I would rather have the map acurately portray land then worry about 20mile wide (or less) straits being closed off...the resolution on a map like this is around 100 to 150 miles on a side per tile...100 to 150 miles that is right...so how would you represent a 20mile wide strait?...by 150mile wide strait or by no straight at all?...plus all those straits you mention are still navigable by ship you can just cross diagonally. I think a diagonal connection with the land more acurately represents the fuctionality of the landofrms in those regions anyways...I one wants to isolate england like was done historically one need only build a fortress and throw a defensive unit in there

4) to make those straits completely uncrossable I would have to get rid of normandy and ille de france or all of southeast england...or grenada and cadiz or tangiers etc you get the picture...

[Becephalus]

that first point actually should be qualified as many of them are also robinson...but discontinuois maps (especially when thee is no grid overlay can be hard to poject onto a rectangle) Plus although the mercator is notoriously bad it is mostly thought to be so becaquse of the gross distortion of the extreme north...what better way to eliminate distortion than to pick a map that focuses most of its distortion in one area and then not include that area?

[sabrewolf]

i get your point but kind of disagree. one of the reasons that conquering britain in earlier eras was difficult is because it's an island.

also, why a D-Day in normandy if you could just march past dover and stand on the european continent

seafaring was extremely dangerous and not many rafts and primitive boats made it over even short passages like the street of gibraltar or the channel. only when "proper" ships were invented (represented by galleys in civ3), a bigger number of people could cross these areas...

don't forget, these are VERY early days (map maping comes iirc with writing... and that's been around for well over 5000 years...)

i think denmark-sweder is the only thing which is realistic. afaik you can SEE sweden from one of the danish islands... and they are just spitdistances away from each other (exadurated ofcourse )

[Becephalus]

you can see england from france and vis a vis i am pretty sure it is the same with gibraltar etc.

[Gangerolf]

i think denmark-sweder is the only thing which is realistic. afaik you can SEE sweden from one of the danish islands... and they are just spitdistances away from each other (exadurated ofcourse )

yeah but you can't sail into the baltic sea...