My Biggest Initial Dissapointment With CTP Was...

[Bkeela]

...it didn't have an Earth map. I just couldn't comprehend why anyone would want to play historical nations, on a random map. When finally the Earth map arrived, it didn't place all the nations in their correct places. It's a bit absurd playing Japan, when their starting location is South America!
It has taken my a long time to get over this, and I am willing to give CTP another go before I either sell it, give it away, or burn it. So what is the latest news on Earth Maps? Do you start in correct locations, and can you choose who the other nations are? Oh, and what patches or mods do I need that will improve the bugs?

Bkeela.

[skorpion59]

Bkeela,

Maps:
While it might seem easy to create a realistic earth map, it is not. The dimensions you have to work with don't lend themselves very well to producing accurate maps. I can tell you it takes hours and hours to come close to producing a good map. To get one aspect right, you throw off another aspect. When I first started working with maps, I created custom sizes to try to get around this but I don't do that any more.
As for starting locations and choosing Civs, that is entirely dependent on who creates the map. Both are possible but I don't think many map makers understand just exactly how to do this yet.
Very soon you will have many more maps to choose from.

Mods:
This depends on how well you know the original CTP game and what you are looking for. I would suggest the following for starters (and please read their readme's):
CTP v1.2 patch
Hack v1.21 patch
Apolyton Pack
Medieval Mod (which gives you Awesome AIPs)
I would not suggest using any mods until you have played a few games with the original files to get a feel for it.


------------------
Don, Apolyton Junkie

[MadWoodster]

The Apolyton pack mentioned contains a very good World map, however do not use the world map with the Medieval Mod Pack as it crashes (see Medieval Mod Pack crashes thread in this forum for details)
[This message has been edited by MadWoodster (edited February 03, 2000).]

[Celegorm]

Skorpion -

Have you had success creating a map, then placing the start locations by either civ or player number? If you've been able to do either with more than 8 civs, I'd love to hear how to get that to work properly....now granted, it's been a while since I tried it, but I think I always got a crash when I started the scenario....

Thanx,
Eric Loft