Giant Earth Map for ViSa

As promised I'll make a version of Genghis Kais map for ViSa, plus some cut down versions. After giving a lot thought to it, I decided against using the "perfect" 2.2 version.

Instead all my maps will be based on the 3.1 version. While ViSa 3 is supposed to repair the MAF bug, 16.000 plots is still so big that almost no one will be able to play this map to 2050 anyway. And, the "missing" 1.800 plots are ocean, ice and tundra mostly anyway.

The mastermap will include the following 32 civs:

North America (4 of 7): Aztec, Cherokee, Iroquois, Maya

South America (1 of 3): Inca

Europe (8 of 6): England, France, Germany, Greece, Rome, Russia, Spain, Vikings

Near East and North Africa (5 of 4): Byzantium, Carthage, Egypt, Israel, Persia

Sub Saharan Africa (3 of 3): Ethiopia, Mali, Zulu

Siberia (0 of 4): -

East Asia (4 of 4): China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia

South and Southeast Asia (3 of 3): India, Thai, Tibet

Oceania (2 of 2): Aborigine, Polynesia

As you can see also this map will be plagued by the usual problem: to many civs in Europe and the Mediterranean. I'll leave 4 of the 36 slots open, to be filled depending on the cut out. You might ask why I didn't add the 3 american civs. Well, it looks to weird having the Canada compete with the Mayans. ^^

About resource placement: I think I'll go along with Genghis, and place resources only where they where native.

So barley, coffee, hemp, lemons, olives, only in the old world, cotton, potatoes, tobacco only in the new world. Rubber will be an exception. There will be one or two rubber resources in Indonesia which represent usable trees in those jungles.

Bastian-Bux said:

As promised I'll make a version of Genghis Kais map for ViSa, plus some cut down versions. After giving a lot thought to it, I decided against using the "perfect" 2.2 version.

Instead all my maps will be based on the 3.1 version. While ViSa 3 is supposed to repair the MAF bug, 16.000 plots is still so big that almost no one will be able to play this map to 2050 anyway. And, the "missing" 1.800 plots are ocean, ice and tundra mostly anyway.

The mastermap will include the following 32 civs:

North America (4 of 7): Aztec, Cherokee, Iroquois, Maya

South America (1 of 3): Inca

Europe (8 of 6): England, France, Germany, Greece, Rome, Russia, Spain, Vikings

Near East and North Africa (5 of 4): Byzantium, Carthage, Egypt, Israel, Persia

Sub Saharan Africa (3 of 3): Ethiopia, Mali, Zulu

Siberia (0 of 4): -

East Asia (4 of 4): China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia

South and Southeast Asia (3 of 3): India, Thai, Tibet

Oceania (2 of 2): Aborigine, Polynesia

As you can see also this map will be plagued by the usual problem: to many civs in Europe and the Mediterranean. I'll leave 4 of the 36 slots open, to be filled depending on the cut out. You might ask why I didn't add the 3 american civs. Well, it looks to weird having the Canada compete with the Mayans. ^^

About resource placement: I think I'll go along with Genghis, and place resources only where they where native.

So barley, coffee, hemp, lemons, olives, only in the old world, cotton, potatoes, tobacco only in the new world. Rubber will be an exception. There will be one or two rubber resources in Indonesia which represent usable trees in those jungles.

Click to expand...

It is possible to do dynamic resource spreads, where resources spread at a certain time; this has been done in Rhye's and Fall of Civilization. I'd suggest contacting Rhye about this, as I'm not that good at modding.

Anyway, this sounds good! I will certainly play it.

Good suggestion, but above what a mere map maker like me can do. ^^

If the ViSa team would apply such a python solution, I'd surely use it ^^.

My suggestion on this would be to change two "files"

a) design a python that can place additional resources if the following conditions are met

1) the resource can only be placed in the old world if it is a new world resource, and vice versa
2) all climate restrictions apply
3) resources can only be placed inside the cultural border of a nation that has access to that resource already, either due to a colony, or due to trade
4) resources can only be placed if there is a building using that resource (stable and such) is "nearby"

b) Change the terra map script to include a requirement of "new_world" or "old_world" for certain resources additional to the climate limits. So terra maps would be even more similar to real terran restrictions. And if you are at it: five civs a flag about their origin, so that placement would be a bit more realistic ^^.

A real world map with realistically placed resources is much appreciated. The Ghenghis Kai maps are truley the most wonderful. However, even on his later version cutdown of the world map, even with my truly decent comp with 2000 RAM, when I use 10 man formations, I still get memory allocation failure on saves by 10,000 AD or so. Perhaps the smaller formations in this mod will work better.

Anyway, I just want to suggest that, after you finish with that map, and or his Eurasia only cutdown, you might also consider addding resources to the Pantastic Worlds map, which is also a very nice, and considerably smaller and therefore more playable, but still giant world map.

Thanks for your work. I am truly looking forward to the results.

Thanks for the work on this as the Team is not into making any maps for ViSa....and please let me post the link in the proper thread....instead of making new ones here, thanks.

^^, its ok didn't intend to publish the map here, I just didn't want to clutter the map thread with my call for feedback and ideas.

I have a slightly disappointing information for you out there though:

I'll postpone the development of this map till I finish another project: a Mod-comp, mainly directed at ViSa, but hopefully usable for other Mods as well.

Now you might ask: why postpone the map, can't the mod-comp wait? I'll give you a little info on that mod-comp, and you'll understand.
When I was working on this maps resource layout, I ran into th problem of "new world resources" (corn, potatoes...). I remembered that there was a mod out there, that might be helpful with this, but couldn't remember the name. After making several adjustions to the ViSa XML files (thx MrGenie for your help), I found out that a SDK change would be needed. And thus I found gordonthewhales mod again. ^^

My modcomp will be based on gordonthewhales mod, but:

- resources will only be plantable by the new farmer and seafarmer units (to allow an own AI for them)

- resources will only be plantable on "fertile terrain", a duplication of the current terrains that will replace a certain percentage of the original terrain (to make a limitation of resources possible)

- all (for ViSa 34) plant and animal resources will be plantable, given the correct tech

- as in gordonthewahles mod, you 'll need access to at least one unit of the resource to be allowed to plant it.

- resources will follow climatic and terrain limitations (no banana in tundra, sorry guys)

You see why it can't wait? Imagine the following: all plant and animal resources on Genghis Kais map are removed. INSTEAD their places are changed to "fertile terrain". Only a very select few of each resource will be pre-planted at their historic places (wheat and barley in the fertile crescent, potatoes in the andeans, corn in southern/eastern north-america...). So only the civs that settle those areas can directly use those resources. And once they build a farmer unit, they'll be able to spread that one resource to the fertile terrains in their cultural borders. Thus they'll gain access to several units of this resource, and can trade it to friendly neighbors.

This way resources will spread naturally. No corn or potatoes in Europe until a european civ either makes friends with an american civ, or conquers/builds a colony that gives access to that resource. Same is true for hemp or wheat the other way around. There will be no need for any python code to do this, just plain XML to use the SDK change.

As you can see, this will have a major impact on any map design. Hope you can accept this as a good reason to delay the further development of the map.

I ain't sure if my limited skills are enough to make this mod-comp. If I fail, I'll immediately return to the development of this map.
Also I ain't sure if the ViSa team will deem gordonthewhales SDK changes appropriate to the "more of everything, but no major game changes" credo. If they deem that there is no need to include that change into the ViSa SDK, I#ll also make a "conventional" version of Genghis Kais map.

Though if the ViSa team includes gordonthewhales SDK work, and if I manage to do the XML basics for an adaption of my ideas, then the resulting map would be even more "earthlike" and still free to develop along a natural, player /AI determined path then anything out there till now.

Here some update on the status. The "dynamic resource" modcomp has reached its beta status. That means, its usable together with gordonthewhales mod as standalone mod. Whats now left is "polishing" and more importantly bugfixing.

I'll use this morning to thoroughly test the mod (after applying a few changes to make my life easier). If it works out fine, I can go on with the map.

Good Luck with that Bastian-Bux -- A good map is just what we all need

OK, its done.

v1.00 of the Giant Earth map for ViSa is ready for download.

What I have done to it:

- removed 600 floodplains (there are still too many, but well)
- added 200 ViSa land resources
- added 200 ViSa sea resources
- added 300 vanilla sea resources
- placed 30 civs (its not possible to place more due to a weird runtime error)

The included civs are:

Aboriginee
Abyssinia
Arabia
Aztec
Babylon
Byzantium
Carthage
Cherokee
China
Egypt
England
France
Germany
Greece
Inca
India
Iroquois
Israel
Japan
Korea
Mali
Maya
Mongolia
Persia
Polynesia
Rome
Russia
Spain
Viking
Zulu


Oh, to mention some pecularities:

- no tech trading
- raging barbarians
- 2500 turns
- expanded cityradius
- mastery victory

Of course you can change all that . No tech trading might be a bit hard on the european powers, but on the other hand they don't have to cope with barbarians (Russia will take down all the Tatars ^^).

And good news:

playing this map on my Athlon XP 64 3200+ with 2GB of RAM, I had no MAF yet. Played till turn 140 for now (its getting late, so I stop for now). And while the turnover now approaches 30 secs each, as said, no MAF.

So it might be possible to finish a game with this map. If you are up to several minutes of turnover in late game.

ViSa team, you are incredible. ^^

Bastian-Bux,
Somewhere on this site you can find suggestions on disabling some of the
options to improve the speed, mostly having to do with simpler graphics...

Alondin, Master of the Obvious

First awesome map.

I dont know if this is from your map or not, I get corrupted saves, it tells me the save is corrupted. The ncsaver file is very small. Is there anyway to disable ncsaver?

No, there is no way to disable NCsaver, as this is what keeps the MAF away.

And Alondin, right, that I could do ^^. But why? Playing a 2500 turn game on such a map, well, who wouldn't get a good book (or better several) to accompany it?

OK, and to all others out there:

Here is another version of that giant map. Only a few simple changes:

5 civs got the boot: Aboriginee, Abyssinians, Arabs, Maya and Persia.
5 civs got in the boat: Austria, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and Ukraine.

This isn't thought as a replacement of the map, but as a special gift to MrGenie and Kaiser Franz, so that they can play their home countries.

Looks cool, downloading both now!

Just two questions though, do the Civs spawn in the correct locations, and can you select the Civs?
(you knew I'd ask didn't ya )

It'd be cool to be able to choose which Civs you want out of the bunch. Also it'd be nice to be able to have a lightly smaller map than the uber huge one; although, it sure is nice to try such a huge map like this one.

Thanks for the great work!!

The Civs (mostly) start in the correct location. Sometimes I moved them a bit to allow breathing space or get them to a river.

And on both maps all 30 are on the map. You can choose one of that 30, but can't choose the leader (without modifying the map yourself). Thats a limitation made by firaxis, sorry.

Preytor, I already experimented with that Europe map. Now it was time for the release of that uber master map. I'll wait for input on this map, develop it further, and then cut out smaller parts of it.

Firstly: thanks for great map!
I have a small sugesion Could you cut your map down to 2 parts: one with both Americas and second one with Europe, Africa and Asia ??

Cool, sounds good.
Great work on this map BTW. I played for several hours lastnight.

One issue I'm having is I can't use any of my saves now, it keeps crashing to desktop. I don't know why though so I guess I'll start again.

@Bastian-Bux Im currently playing your earth map. Very nice work thanks for your efforts.!!

@Preytor, the most probable answer is, that your computer just isn't strong enough to keep going with such a large map.

@konserw currently I plan to make the following cut downs of this map:

Old World (Huge, 125x80, everything except the Americas) 25 civs
New World (Large 50x80, only the americas) 5 civs
Ring of Fire (Huge, 125x80, East-Asia, Oceania and the Americas) 13 civs

Eurasia (Large, 120x50, northern part of old World) 22 civs

Europe (Tiny, 40x40) 15 civs
Africa (Standard, 60x50) 6 civs
Asia (Large, 80x50) 8 civs
Oceania (Small, 60x40) 2 civs
North America (Small, 50x40) 4 civs
South America (Small, 40x50) 3 civs