The Road to Empire: Preview

[Prometeus]

Nice work... complimenti!!!!

[Jimmywax]

Just wondering how it's coming. I am really looking foward to seeing this finished.

[Exile]

Ok, Spanky, you must tell me how you got those leader pictures to look like that.

I must KNOW!

Exile

[Spanky]

A little update

Once again, thanks for the interest, guys. It helps motivate me through what at times can be a gruelling process!

I am still working on agriculture and traffic routes, and I'm now finished with South America and the Chinese Empire. Along the way, I keep discovering how inaccurate the map is that I started off with - I certainly agree with Magyar Crusader on that. So, I'm further adjusting it on the fly. This meant some extensive remodelling in North Korea, the Russian Far East, the Gobi Desert and, not least, the Himalayas. Lhasa is now easily accessable only from a winding road through mountain passes extending from the city of Lan-chow. I also blocked easy access between China and Burma by inserting a graphically discrete Deep Water (formerly "Ocean") square into the rivers that connect the two, hoping to simulate the foreboding terrain in that area (think 'waterfalls').

Sometimes I wish I had discovered Andrew Livings' superb earth map before I had started, but actually, I dare say mine is now more accurate in many areas - including the above.

Latin America was a bit of a drag to do, especially because I still haven't found a good source for the extent of railroads outside Europe and the United States around 1875. The map now has two token railroad squares near Lima and Rio de Janeiro, and a small network radiating from Buenos Aires. Of course, none of these cities will be player-controlled, but will be available for trading and general atmosphere.

Oops, gotta go - Exile, I'll get back to you with some advice on the portraits.

[Case]

Spanky, I can help you with Australian Railroads. By the late 1870's I think there was a rail line running down the east coast from Brisbane to Sydney, and inland lines linking sydney with Melbourne and Melbourne with Adelaide. The rail line from Perth to Adelaide wasn't started untill 1900. Also, the rail lines in the different colonies were all of diferent gauges, meaning that none of them actually joined up!

(p.s Please don't assume I'm some kind of train nerd for knowing that, I did an assignment on Australian railroads for high school a few years back [and that gauge thing was a major reason the Colonies united 100 years ago, which is being celebrated this year] )

[Spanky]

Thanks, Case!

I had actually finished Australia already, but I wasn't aware of the line from Sydney to Brisbane. Your help is much appreciated.

P.S.:

Roads present as much of a problem to do accurately as railroads, so I sometimes resort to guesswork. I'm putting roads along some of the routes for major railroads that haven't been built yet by 1875. For example, I guess there must have been some kind of road predating the Transsiberian and the Canadian Grand Trunk Railway, since there are already cities and settlements along those routes. As long as they don't contradict history, I am hoping that the roads will also help lead the AI's Engineer units to build the respective railways on their own at some point (can't fault me for lack of faith... ).

Where the Perth to Sydney line is concerned, I assume this wouldn't make any sense, though, since according to my information, nobody really bothered to traverse that wasteland until they decided to conquer it by rail. Would you agree with that assessment?

[Spanky]

How I did the portraits

- WARNING: EXCESSIVE LENGTH -

Well Exile,

Basically what you would need is Paint Shop Pro or something similar and, of course, GIF Extractor.

Since Extractor limits the file size for the portraits, and also since it sort of fits into the 'feel' of the time period, the first thing I did was to convert my pictures to grey scale.

Next, I copied the frames out of two of the preexisting Civ2 images. For most portraits, requiring a western-style frame, I used the one that comes with Catherine the Great (the Russian female leader).
To get this frame, you basically need to load mk.dll in Extractor, go to the required picture, save it into a directory, and then work from there using Paint Shop. Here, you would mark the inside area of the frame and delete the picture that you don't need.

Next, you would have to see whether your leader portrait fits into the frame. If it is too large, you need to try cropping some of the edges, or alternatively shrink the image. If it's too small, you can reduce the size of the frame. I'll explain how in a moment.

To get an accurate measure, make sure you have the status bar visible in Paint Shop, then click on the icon that lets you mark out a square area (the one used for cutting and pasting). Mark the area inside the frame, and make a note of the horizontal and vertical lengths indicated in the status bar.

Using these numbers, you can now begin adjusting sizes.

To shrink the portrait, you first need to make sure it has 16 million colors. If not, go to the 'Colors' menu in Paint Shop, then to 'Increase color depth'. Use the 'Resample' option (under 'Image' in the menu), and make sure 'Maintain aspect ratio' is checked. Then, adjust the numbers in the 'Custom size' window to make sure at least one or both of the sides don't exceed the length allowed by the picture frame. (When you're finished, you need to decrease the colors back to 256.)

Since it is improbable that your picture will have the same ratio as the frame, you will need to resort to some cropping. To do this, mark out the area you want to keep, while making sure it fits the numbers for the frame you wrote down earlier. Then select 'Crop' from the 'Image' menu.

To make the frame smaller without sacrificing detail, take a look at its pattern. You will notice that certain elements keep repeating themselves - in the case of the 'Catherine' frame, they have the shape of little knobs. Mark the entire half of the frame right up to the edge and including one of these knobs on each side. Then, drag the marked half slowly over the unmarked one, stopping as soon as you've covered one pair of knobs entirely with the other. The sides of the frame can thus be reduced by one or more of such 'increments'.

One last thing: before replacing an old portrait with a new one, make sure the latter has the same palette. You can do this by first saving the palette used by one of the original portraits, using said option in the 'Colors' menu. Then, before saving the new portrait, choose 'Load palette' and use the same file you just saved to.

Well, this turned out to be quite a lengthy explanation after all...

Hope that answers your question. If not, feel free to ask me some more.

[Case]

Originally posted by Spanky
since according to my information, nobody really bothered to traverse that wasteland until they decided to conquer it by rail. Would you agree with that assessment?

That's about right. A few crazy European explorers passed through the area, but no one in their right mind went near the place. Even today, the only people who drive across the Nullarbour are those who can't afford the plane ticket to Perth.

[Jimmywax]

I was just hoping for an update.

[Henrik]

So am I

[Spanky]

Minor Update

Sorry for the delay, guys - I've been very busy lately, so I haven't been able to devote much time to the project.

Mapwise, I still have the Australian outback to touch up, and then there's the African continent to revise (the sub-saharan parts).

I've spent some time researching wonders, and have included background text to the pedia entries for a handful of them now. These include the Ruhr region (formerly King Richard's Crusade) and the Victory Column in Berlin (formerly Women's Suffrage) for Germany, and three wonders for China, representing the three main religions/philosophies: Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. These are necessary due to the fact that the temple and cathedral improvements have been replaced with "churches" and "mosques", which wouldn't make much sense in China (especially the former). The two German wonders are there to make the empire more powerful and warlike, to compensate for its small initial size on the one hand, and to counteract the pacifist effects of Constitutional Monarchy (formerly Republic) on the other.

Note, though, that these are subject to later change, if playbalancing should require it.

Finally, here's another preview shot, showing the Himalayas under Chinese control, parts of India and Burma, plus the Gobi desert and Tarim basin (where the Silk Road runs through). The Slavic looking fellow in the upper left, of course, indicates the border to the newly acquired Russian territories. The turbaned British soldiers are Sepoys, which are available to the Player only if in control of a city on the subcontinent (the exact mechanism still needs to be finalized).

[Jimmywax]

Looking good my man. I am having a hard waiting for this one.

[Spanky]

Alright, here's another couple of shots to stay you over until I find more time to devote to this. They should illustrate a few aspects of my design philosophy.

The first one shows Brazil, Paraguay and Parts of Bolivia, Argentina and Chile:

[Spanky]

Note the kneeling unit, which is the generic graphic used for all Riflemen that aren't controlled by European great powers. To make things simpler, the Japanese use this same graphic, as well as the Chinese once they acquire the technology. Although the two are intended to be playable by humans, I needed to save space. There is a logic to it, though, in that the Asian powers mixed and matched their uniforms from different Western sources anyway, coming up with a kind of 'generic' look that was actually quite similar to the guy pictured here. He and the Light Cavalry soldier both wear black, which I think is the most neutral looking colour. Cavalry looks the same for all powers, again due to the limitations of FW. It's a small sacrifice, though, since Cavalry uniforms generally adhered less strictly to national colours.

Latin America is almost entirely 'Barbarian'-controlled, but should prove interesting for trade.

Note also the newly revamped generic architecture, which is also used in the region featured in the next shot, encompassing most of North Africa and Southern Europe:

[Spanky]

You may wonder why Italy seems so small. This is due mainly to the fact that I've had to exagerate the size of the player-controlled countries like France, Germany and Great Britain. Keeping with the original size, there would have hardly been enough space for the most important cities in the respective "motherland", where most of the products, capital and manpower are supposed to come from. Italy, being none-player controlled, has been kept as small as possible (as has e.g. Austria-Hungary), but still retains its historical population size, albeit concentrated in Rome.

Concerning island colonies, I chose to use the name of the capital city (e.g. Valetta, Victoria) instead of the colony's (e.g. Malta, Hong Kong) wherever possible.

The Bedouin-looking unit is a Spahi in French service. The player acquires them in similar fashion to Sepoys in India (see above). They also appear as non-player units throughout the Middle East.
The white-uniformed soldier is Muslim Infantry, used mostly by the Ottoman Empire, but generally by any Middle Eastern power which has imported modern weapons and training.