Synterra

This map is a tiny, realistic and crowded Earth-Map in Terra-Style. That means, the "new world" is barbarian land until colonization.

I made the map similar to the geographic projection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_carr%C3%A9e_projection) of Earth by Winkler. Screenshots are attached. Europe is slightly increased.

I tried to place the ressources at places, where they were found in reality. Ressources for the UUs are placed near the capital of that civilization to ensure, they are able to build their units. Starting techs are altered to fit the needs (according to the starting place) and the historical happenings.

All standard civilizations are included at their correct starting place. America, Inca and Aztecs are left out (because of the Terra-Style).

Larger empty places on the map are filled with barbarian cities. They are named after cities, which were located in that region.

I used romanized (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization) endonyms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exonym_and_endonym) for all the playable civilizations names and capitals and not the english exonyms. For Example: "Kyoto-shi" is the capital of "Nippon" and not "Japan".

Everything else (Tech-Tree, Civilopedia etc.) is unchanged.

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Version-History:
1.0 - 24th March 2006
1.1 - 27th March 2006 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3860887&postcount=9)
Final - 21st April 2006 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3955572&postcount=29)

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Have fun!

Very nice, very nice map. I don't think I understand the naming system, but still very cool.

Ecellent, this is the kind of small World Map I was waiting for... thanks and good job! ;)

EDIT: After testing this map out on Noble, I gotta say I think the Egyptians are overpowered in their starting position. First off, they have the Culture trait, thus, expanding and controlling more territory in the Euro-African battlegrounds. Second, around their territory is an abundant in resources, thus giving a monopoly over the only Civs. Third, the early excess of horses gives the Egyptians the only powerful unit for the first 1000 years, the War Chariot. Fourth, the barbarian cities below the Egyptian capital are too weak, thus, can be overrun by the War Chariots.

With all these advantages, I was able to conquer all the barbarian cities and Mali, with his Holy City. With the whole continent of Africa, I was the sole superpower of the world. I researched technology, trained military, and built wonders faster than most of the Civs combined. I took over Arabia because they were weak and the Greeks for their Holy City. I am around 3-10 technologies ahead than everyone and pulling away. It is now in the 500's AD, and I built my first two Knights. At this moment, I could conquer the rest of Europe in 500 more years.

What I suggest is to tone down Africa's resources (if possible) and to at least give barbarian cities one archer each. The other problems, I don't have a clue what to do.

Other than that: I LOVE IT :)

Thanks for the reply.
I will work on this in a few days and try it with a few archers. When I take away the horses, the Egyptians are the only Civ which can´t build their UU - I think that is also not optimum. Maybe there is another solution...

To further explain of the naming system:
The people of the city "Rome" didn´t call their city "Rome", they called it "Roma". I used "Roma" in my Map. Thats, whats meant with "endonyms".
"Romanization" is the use of the latin alphabet instead of the original alphabet (cyrillic alphabet in East Europe, the arabic alphabet in the near east or Kanji in East Asia etc.).
On the same way I changed the leader names.

Great map so far, playing at Prince level as Egypt, it does make it easy.

Small mistake I noticed: I see 2 russian cities so far, and they are: Moskva and Moscow. woops? ;)

I placed Moskva. Moscow is build with a settler by the AI. Is there a way to edit the list of citynames without a mod-directory?

What I would actually suggest is to give the barbarian city to the south of Egypt the supply of horses. This will slow down the Egyptian rampage, but will give them their UU once they earn it.

Try to do that with the Mongols as well, bcause they too have a big advantage. Plus, barbarian cities should be stronger because they are civilizations themselves in perspective.

Can't wait to see the next update :)

EDIT: As for the city names, I don't think there's anyway to rename them without making a mod out of this. It's not that big of a deal to me.

I placed Moskva. Moscow is build with a settler by the AI. Is there a way to edit the list of citynames without a mod-directory?

ahh yeah makes sense. Hadn't thought of that.

Great map too!!!!!!! Lovin it so far.

Any plans to seperate the americas from the rest of the world with impassable oceans, like in the Terra maps (since this is supposed to be like Terra maps)?

edit: well I haven't actually checked up close so it may be the case already, and it just looks like greenland etc connects both landmasses with coasts... I'll go check before deciding if I should eat my words or not ;)

I´ve finished version 1.1

Changelog:
Replaced the warrior in every barbarian city with an archer.
Shorted the river north of the Evenks.
Placed ocean in the Bering Strait.
Moved one banana beside the Bantu two tiles west into the jungle.
Removed the horses in north africa and placed it east of the Bantu.
Removed the dye in africa.
Removed one gems near the Bantu.
Moved stone west of London into the city.
Moved clam in the English Channel two tiles east.
Placed fish south of Roma.
Gave a second starting tech to each Civ.
Added a list of three Cities to each Civ

There were some major changes:
- Each Civilization got a second starting tech. I tried to lead the AIs to special strategies. As far as I can see, it works only in a few cases. I have to correct this in future versions.
- All Barbarians got an archer instead of a warrior. thx to thenooblet22 for the idea.
- There was a way to define a Cityname-List in the WBS-file. thx to Dale for his Reference (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=135669). Each Civilization has now a list of three additional transliterated Citynames. I hope thats enough. thx to narmox for his bug-report.
- Greenland was already seperated with ocean-tiles from the "old world", but I forgot the Bering Strait. America is now completely isolated. thx to narmox.
- I work over Africas ressources. Some positions have changed and I removed the dye. Let´s hope the Egyptians are not longer overwhelming. The Mongols keep their horses. In my test-games they where not that overpowered. There is maybe a change in a later version.

Download is in the first post.
Thanks so far for the interest. You´re still welcome to comment or criticize :)

Sweet! Now I have to start a new game... ;) Thanks for the updated version!

If you have the problem that non-creative civs in crowded areas (like the Romans and Greeks) are too weak and get absorbed by their neighbour's culture without exception, consider giving them an obelisk at start. I used that trick in my tiny world map, too.

whew nice.. I played as Germany on Prince level, marathon speed.

I'm in the 1700's now, soon heading to the modern age. All of europe except Britain is mine, and I just recently finished conquering Iran and the Bharat (india).

I have not built one single cottage the whole game, yet am the richest and most advanced Civ. I believe I was definitely playing to my civ's advantages (create and philosophical) - I can't count how many Great Scientists I've had ;)

Interesting things I've noticed: culture. Those AI civs stay at 1-2 cities max most of the times, but their culture is HUGE even if it's not noticeable. That's because the map is so crowded. When I took out Iran-yia (cause I wanted the oil east of Moskva, which was owned by an iranian city - huh, does this sound familiar? anyways...), Parsa was basically a useless city costing me a LOT. It went from population 18 when I captured it, to 1 in very few turns (*whip* + starvation), because the Bharat culture completely surrounded the city AND the radius of 2 tiles surrounding it. Perhaps even 3.

Then I conquered India because I wanted some breathing room, and what happened? The MONGOL culture completely surrounded Dililka on the north, east and south, and on the west the Arab culture took over. Thankfully the Mongols took over Makka, which gave me a bit of room - but just a bit, cause Egypt's culture was right around the corner...

I don't mind it at all; it was an unexpected twist for someone used to less crowded maps... ;) Although conquest was easy because I had such a strong powerbase (the crowded Europe all under my control), the cultural invasion aspect made it quite interesting.

Now I've made up my mind - I'll conquer them all, so I can have the $%$#%$# breathing room. mwahahhahaha


PS: in my next game, I'll go the "new world" route instead of the conquest route, to explore a different kind of play.

This was a fun map, but I have one problem with it. I tried playing as the romans, and because of the culture problem, they start out with only water tiles. So my production was horrible. What I ended up doing was going into the world editor, I moved the plains in N. Africa just south of Rome down one tile, which widened the med. sea. Then I added a hill below rome to give it some production.
It still resulted in a very slow start, but I was eventually able to beat France, Spain, and England. But a few hours into the game, I realized that compared to everyone else, I was basically just a human controlled barbarian. (The barbarians in America were as advanced (if not more) than me. :lol:)
Anyway, good map :goodjob:

I am currently running several test games to compare all included civilizations. I hope that I will be finished with that until sunday, so that I am able to publish a new version. In addition to corrections on the civs and their starting positions, I want to rename all barbarian cities and make a few more small changes.

If anyone has another suggestion to made, it would be nice to bring it now, so I could possibly include it in the upcoming version.

I tried playing as the romans, and because of the culture problem, they start out with only water tiles. So my production was horrible.

I tried it out as the Romans and was not bad. Fishing and mining are two strong starting techs for them. Researched bronzeworking, changed to slavery, put out a workboat and researched ironworking. I rushed several Prets and conquered whole europe and africa before 1 AD. Maybe I will change the tile of Roma to a hill for an additional hammer. I haven´t decided yet. Anyway, thanks for your post.

PS: in my next game, I'll go the "new world" route instead of the conquest route, to explore a different kind of play.

:) I haven´t found the time yet to watch a game until the late years. It would be nice, if someone who has seen it could talk a little bit about the colonization of the "new world" and the late game. Any suggestions, bugs or anything else?

I just have the possibilaty to choose between 2 civ´s german and spanish. Dosn´t matter wich one i choose i loose the game before!! round 1...???

I can´t find an error in the .wbs-file. Anybody else with such a problem? Did you played it with a mod loaded?

I played as Germany and had a blast!
Thanks for making this, this is a great map!

Syntherio, I haven't continued my game much, yet (I took out Mongolia and can breathe a bit now, letting my culture grow, probably gonna lose a city or two to China unless I conquer them too ;) ).

The new world colonization is spearheaded by Egypt currently, with a few cities where there were empty spots. I wondered why Egypt was always close behind me in score and tech, till I saw a full world map. They haven' conquered any barb city, and it seems they brought in enough defense against the barbs too. From what I can see, the barb cities are pretty well developped too, 14-15 in size and well defended by grenadier and riflemen.

Nobody has colonized Australia or any of the surrounding islands - they're full of barbs!

Finally! A small Earth map! Kudos and starting a game as soon as at all possible!!!

:D <-- see, that's me now.

Looks very nice :) I'll have a go on it tonight

Finally! A small Earth map! Kudos and starting a game as soon as at all possible!!!

:D <-- see, that's me now.

There is another very good tiny earth map called "radical earth" , in this very forum too. Its landmasses are more distorted in order to give more balance to every civ (esp in Europe ==> more space, and in the americas ==> less space).

This one here's major point is the Terra-like play of having a completely uncivilized new world :D

Great map! I play on my laptop so appreciate the map size, and I think the radical map is too distorted to fit my idea of terra.

I like the crowdedness, really changes the gameplay as expansion by settling is just impossible.

I played my first game as monarch, normal, france, and was able to quickly take out spain, germany and rome by chop-rushing axemen. Russia and England were more resilient but caved in after catapults and macemen. And then I shipped over three galleons of troops to the new world and conquered the whole thing lock, stock and barrel. The only tricky city was the Azteks (probably because it was the last one and my troops were tired and tied down in protecting) and they actually sent a stack of 10 axemen to die... Won using spacerace, Iran and China were trying as well but not even close. The challenge was actually finishing the race before running out of time, since the development is really slow in such crowded conditions (or is it just me...?) and I did not really concentrate on space race properly (also built a lot of tanks to go on safari in Africa)

But then I decided to go for a cultural victory as china, and I found out is is actually really difficult to expand in the beginning without the (1.52) chop rush and great production tiles in Europe.

So I was wondering what your experiences are as playing with a non-european civ and going for a cultural or diplomatic victory on this map?

Cheers!

I just played this map and I must say it was suprisingly, rediculously fun!

Good Job, 10/10

-Alex-

I really like what you did with the barbarians... will download it now and check it out tomorrow (my machine is doing a slideshow slowness routine every ten minutes, so I don't know how far I will get).

My only suggestions would be:

1. Give Italy a little more room at the expense of africa
2. Add a square to any one tile islands

Very cool!

I actually made some small changes to the map, to make two(imho) interesting players more viable:

- England:
Added a hill+sheep to England's north ("Scotland")
Added iron on the grass, coal on the plains* (coal in the midlands seems reasonable)
Added fish in the 'irish sea' (none left now, but they used to be there!)
Added fishing to the starting techs.
- Japan
Added myst. to the starting techs
Nudged the unreachable plains (Kyushu?) one square up and replaced it by a rice grassland
Added a hill to the north (hokkaido)
Added a fish between korea and kyushu

Both islands now have three tiles apart from the starting loc, which seems on par with the european civs. They are also quite resource heavy, maybe I overdid it a bit?

I am currently playing a game as England (monarch), I went heavy on the culture, building stonehenge and founded hinduism (pure luck, I think, as I did masonry first. I was actually aiming for judaism). This really paid off, I got the clams between london and pair and now actually got the iron in the pyrennees (sp?) as well. The religion is really paying off, since I got a prophet pretty quickly and built the holy thing the religion spread to over half the world, giving me a good income without ever taxing my people. Why did we ever go secular? :-). So anyway, the game seems to go pretty much my way although it is difficult to maintain tech parity with only one city and no hapiness resoures. I decided not to go for either pyramids or monarchy, which might have been stupid (I was hoping to reade monarchy, but no luck so far) so my city is limited at size 7 with enough food to drive your cars on.

So maybe I will tune down england a bit, not having to build any military is quite a boost, so I might have to drop one of the goodies. But england in the original map is really unplayable (I think), so I like this.

Might also play Japan,see if I can make it up to samurai and kick some chinese .. and/or do an early pearl harbor.

Cheers,

Wouter

*) I think iron was already on the plains, but I accidentally deteled it before I figured out a way to see what's on a tile. Hey, this is my first worldbuilder exp :-)

I am currently working on balancing. It needs more time, then I tought, but I will finish an update in a few days.
Indeed England needs improvements, but I doubt they need an additional starting tech. And Japan is compareable to other Civs. Their position is fine for conquest of China or the barbarian islands.
This update will be the final version, so I hope everyone will be happy with it. The difficulty of this map varies heavily from a standard game. So if you have problems with it change the difficulty first. Thanks for all the comments.

Yeah I probably overdid it on England; maybe switching mysticism for fishing makes sense given culture and starting position, although I guess myst+stones really set them up for stonehenge.

I hadn't actually played Japan, but I just noticed that it always sucks with the computer.

Talking about AI, the AI is not a very good player at this map. They don't seem to understand the large scale invasions needed for this map, I haven't really seen any succesful inter-AI warfare until quite late into the game. This means that, while the human can usually destroy one or two civilization in the axeman-maceman part of the game, it is generally an unfair endgame. The thing that the AI is good at - early land grabbing - plays little role here. I wouldn't know whether it is possible to tweak the strategy of the AI though... making settlers unavailable or highly disfavored until after astronomy actually might make some sense as it is a waste of resources...

Also as mentioned earlier the culture is really counterintuitive; I played england, captured Paris and razed Rome and Berlin only to find the culture of Athens and Moscow grab all the land east of Paris. Modding down the palace to 0 culture might make sense on such a crowded map? (although this would make early wonder or religion extremely powerful... but that might be a fun strategy choice...?

Anyway, fun map, I was experiencing civ-fatigue (esp. due to the repetitive intial game of chopping-and-grabbing) and this really triggered me to waste some more time behind my computer :-)

looks nice. will check it soon :) thx

Here comes the final update. I´ve spend dozens of test-games and tried to rebalance the Civilizations. The map is fully compatible to 1.52 and 1.61.

In addition to the Balancing I placed every city on a hill. This way it is more difficult to achieve an early advantage through conquest. Also I activated the "Aggressive AI"-Option. If you dislike this option, you can deactivate it, by choosing custom scenario in your main menu and deselect the checkbox.
I renamed every barbarian city. Now they are not named after the people who life there, but after a real city, which was located in that area or which is still there (i.e. "Inca" changed to "Cusco"). Finally I made some small changes to the map itself.

Changelog:
Removed one jungle W of Jing
Placed fish SE of Jing
Removed pig SE of Athina
Removed forest E of Berlin
Placed fish N of Berlin
Placed fish E of Madrid
Placed river W of London (St. George´s Channel)
Placed fish NW of London
Changed the icemass in the arctic ocean
Replaced coast in the Baffin Bay with ocean
Renamed barbarian cities
Placed every city on a hill

I hope, everybody is happy. Of course there are still differences between the Civs. Some have an easier life than others, but the differences are smaller than before. At last I want to remember of the four main ideas of this map: crowded, tiny, realistic and terra-style-map. Thats the reason, why europe is so small and why there are no american civs.

Download is in the first post.
Have fun.

4 quick points.

1. The Bantu homeland is in modern day Cameroon, not Eastern Uganda/DROC.

2. There really needs to be one more African civilization. There's still too much room to expand (the same is true on a larger scale for the Americas). I would propose Nubia or Ethiopia (whichever is easiest to come by).

3. The Red sea is way too large. It's usually around 100-150 miles across (20 at its narrowest), and never greater than 200 miles, so it really shouldn't be represented by more than one square (which is approximately 200 miles).

4. Southern Africa is way too narrow (which stems from the Red sea being too wide, as it makes the horn smaller and more interior, pushing all of the eastern border back). Where it becomes sort of linear (just south of "Bantu") is lined up with eastern Greece, when it really should be lined up with the western boundary of the Caspian sea.

I hope, everybody is happy. Of course there are still differences between the Civs. Some have an easier life than others, but the differences are smaller than before. At last I want to remember of the four main ideas of this map: crowded, tiny, realistic and terra-style-map. Thats the reason, why europe is so small and why there are no american civs.

Download is in the first post.
Have fun.

First - it is a fun map: my first time through this version I played Mongols and I am currently rolling... Next time through I will try one of the crowded western europe civs.

Second - minor bug/ map error: For england and surrounding islands you don't have the coast tiles set.

Third - my suggestions for mods: This may be something I do for fun after playing it a couple of times... Madrid = 1L, Egypt = 1D, Greek = 1D1L, German = 1R, Russia = 2R, Rome = 1D (remove two tiles from africa add one tile south of rome). I would also add one squre to any remaining one square islands (ie honolulu does not appear to have any chance of being taken over either by culture or invasion)


In my current game (yr 1785) - Paris culture has wrapped London, Madrid, Roma, and Berlin(with help from russia) completely. Greece is caught in culture trap between france and persia.

There is one french colony in south america... and at least one russia colony has been killed by barbarians in north america.

1. The Bantu homeland is in modern day Cameroon, not Eastern Uganda/DROC.

Is the city still called "Bantu"? I thought, I´ve changed the names of all barbarian cities.

3. The Red sea is way too large. It's usually around 100-150 miles across (20 at its narrowest), and never greater than 200 miles, so it really shouldn't be represented by more than one square (which is approximately 200 miles).

4. Southern Africa is way too narrow (which stems from the Red sea being too wide, as it makes the horn smaller and more interior, pushing all of the eastern border back). Where it becomes sort of linear (just south of "Bantu") is lined up with eastern Greece, when it really should be lined up with the western boundary of the Caspian sea.

Maybe this was a mistake. I didn´t looked it up now, but it is possible that I accidently double a "row"... If you want to change that, your welcome. I don´t think, that I will update the map once again. Maybe, when Warlords comes out, I will make a second one...

Second - minor bug/ map error: For england and surrounding islands you don't have the coast tiles set.

If I remember correctly, I´ve done that to make the connection between GB and Greenland "greater". Not really usefull, because of Englands culture, I think...

Third - my suggestions for mods: This may be something I do for fun after playing it a couple of times... Madrid = 1L, Egypt = 1D, Greek = 1D1L, German = 1R, Russia = 2R, Rome = 1D (remove two tiles from africa add one tile south of rome). I would also add one squre to any remaining one square islands (ie honolulu does not appear to have any chance of being taken over either by culture or invasion)

My aim was a quite realistic map, thats why some locations are really small.

My aim was a quite realistic map, thats why some locations are really small.

Yes - and that is why i suggested the changes as "mods" to the original map (not changing the original map itself).

On another topic... is there a northern passage in the real world (I am not an expert on this) north of russia? Perhaps some ice tiles could be used to close off the water passage north of russia and china?

I am not sure about it. According to the map I used as source, there is a passage, but an old globe I have, says it isn´t...

any support for warlords civs?

heeeey!?! is this map working for warlords?
could you please also release clean version of this map?
clean = with no cities build (only settlers), with standard civs/leaders names

Actually this map works with warlord. I've completed it a couple of times, and enjoyed it totally.

This map is sooo good, that I would like to play the same map with a number of other mods, like Genetic Era Mod, Amra's Mod, etc. I can play them, except that I do not get the new resource types that are in these mods. For example, the Genetic Era Mod have new resources like Varech and Methan and they are not present if I just played the map on the mod.

Is there are way to modify this map, so that it can cater for new resource types?? Thanks.

Sorry, I haven´t played Civilization for quite a time and I will not be able to spend time in editing this map in the near future. I don´t even own warlords :blush:

But you are welcome to edit this map on your own and provide it here for others. I don´t think there are any passwords or something like that needed.