Civ3 huge maps...size of real-life United States?

[Noble713]

In one of my games on Marla Singer's map, I was playing as the Persians and had conquered/colonized all of Asia, Africa, and Europe (except for England/Ireland). I had well over a dozen cities with populations over 20+, and yet my whole nation still had only a few hundred million people. I wondered how I could control so much territory, have so many big cities, and still not even begin to approach the population of the "real" Earth. Somewhere along the line I began to wonder about how the game computed your land area for the demographics screen.

Next time I started a game, I immediately checked the demographics screen. I had a land area of 900 sqr miles. Since I controlled 9 squares, that would be 100 sqr miles each, making the square's dimensions 10 x 10 miles.

Therefore, a 300x300 map has a circumference of only 3,000 miles. The US is approximately 3,000 miles across.

Small world, huh?

Does anyone know if it's possible to change the demographic dimensions of a square in the Editor?

Likewise, is it possible to change the relationship between city size and population size?

[kimmygibler]

I agree, cities in civ 3 are really the size of countries in the real world.

[Firebird]

I think they have simply chosen some numbers for simplicity. You could argue that 10,000 is very large for a small city in 4000 BC. IIRC Athen had between 30000-60000 inhabitants in ancient times. Thats a size 2 or 3 city in Civ! I think Rome got somewhat higher in population, but I am quite sure it wasn't a size 12 city (780.000). Don't hang me on that one, though.

[dannubis]

Rome was the only city in the ancient times which had a population of well over a milion inhabitants at the hight of its power. This is an amazingly high number knowing that Paris and Ghent (the two largest cities during the middle ages north of the alps) had only about 90000 inhabitants.

[dexters]

That is why they called it the middle ages.

In other parts of the world, in China for example, there were already population centers rivalling the size of the modern mid-sized cities 1 to 2 million.

[Firebird]

Wow, that is quite population!
Thank you for the correction, dannubis.
Good thing I said "Don't hang me"
Do you also happen to know more about the size of the greek cities?

[Flight]

i'd be happier with the end game being more realistic, as thats when im vaguely interested in my population compared to other games ive won to see how big my empire is

whats the circumference of the earth?

[Firebird]

Originally posted by Flight
whats the circumference of the earth?

Aprox. 40.000 km

[dunk]

Originally posted by Firebird

Aprox. 40.000 km

Or 24,000 to 25,000 miles. At the equator of course.

[Skeeve]

I've wondered the same thing about population from time to time. I don't think I've even reached anywhere near 1/4 of a Billion people by 2050AD on the huge maps.

Well, you either sacrifice realism in ancient times or you do so in the modern era.

Anyone know if the expansion PTW will address this?

[zulu9812]

I doubt it - nothing's even been hinted at about it

[miccofl]

I managed to get a population of over one billion on a huge map, but in order to do so I had to change the food requirement and increase the food bonus of resources with the editor. (I got a couple of cities up to 84 this way.) I have yet to find a way to alter the map square’s dimensions.

[Noble713]

Ya know, now that I think about it, the population densities/city sizes and land area aren't the problems. If you think about it, having a few hundred million people covering an area the size of the US is pretty much spot-on, considering the US's population of ~280 million. This is ignoring the fact that the Chinese have crammed ~1.3 billion into the same area, though.

So now that we know the numbers are relatively realistic given the area the current game covers, we can conclude that the problem is that the area is simply too small to represent a world.

Knowing that 300 squares circumference ~= 3,000 miles, to make a map 24,000 miles around the map would have to be:

2,400 squares wide

I wonder what kind of processor power we would need for that....

[DAVOUT]

It seems that the Civ3 map and population represent the real world with a reduction from 10 to 1.

[Firebird]

Originally posted by Noble713
2,400 squares wide

I wonder what kind of processor power we would need for that....

Perhaps in five/six years time, when Civ 4 comes out (I hope it does ) the processor power is there. If only they stop putting all that pop in (you now 3D animation and the lot ) so that we can get maps of the right size... and with around 117 civilizations.

It might be a bit hard to keep track of all those tiles with 100,000 units and 10,000 cities. Perhaps its not so bad as it is after all .