Modifying Earth map

Hello everyone,

I've been trying to find more information on this forum about how to modify the Earth map in Civ. I saw that Gowron produced a map of Europe with custom starting locations but did not find instructions on how he did it.

I would like to modify the map to look a bit more like Rhye's Civilization IV Earth map with its resized continents that allow european civilizations to have more space.

Can anyone send me links and or tips on how I could pull this off? I'll post the results as soon as I'm satisfied with the work I'd like to do.

Thanks!

Sure, not a problem. What you need is a program that will create and edit maps. What I normally use is Dack's Terraform program, found here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=126921

You can also use Darkpanda's jCivED program. Found here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=486470

I like using Dack's program because you can edit a saved game's map, and then use the option 'set to 4000 bc' and that will basically start the game over using the map you just created! This will allow all civ's to start in random places on the map.

If you want to create a map and then use it in place of the default earth map, use jCivED as it has a nice feature of creating a map file for you. If you do, don't forget to use the patch feature and make the starting positions random (so civs don't start in the ocean). If you don't want to do that, you will have to edit the starting positions. jCivED also makes it possible to change the name of the map civ uses (must be 7 characters including the .pic).

Really quite nifty programs.

One more thing... when creating a map, don't allow cities to be placed near the edges of the map, it messes the game up. There are a few examples of that here on the forum.

The map is ready! I now have to edit the players starting locations. I want them to be customized (not random) and accessible to anyone who would like to download it. How do I do it?

These are the locations I would like :

Americans : 17,16
Aztec : 10,22
Babylonians : 51,21
Chinese : 69,16
Egyptians : 45,27
English : 34,11
French : 36,13
Germans : 40,12
Greeks : 44,20
Indians : 59,21
Mongols : 66,12
Romans : 39,18
Russians : 47,11
Zulu : 47,38

A few links for you to look at. If you need more help than that, let us know.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=223182&highlight=position

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12496933&postcount=63

As you can see by reading the previous posts, the starting positions are hardcoded into the game and the user will have to edit their exe file in order to use the starting positions that you have specified. Anyways, feel free to post a map file here as well as a saved game (my preferred method) for people to use. Please don't try to post an exe file as that would be in conflict with the rules, thank you.

Thanks! Your links have been helping me quite a lot.

Using the terraforming tool works great for placing civs where I want to, but I would like my game to feel more "natural" by not having to close CIV, see the whole map and which civs I am playing against.

I'm presently trying to edit Gowron's source code and then find a way to make an executable out of it. Trouble is, it seems I can't even write the proper coordinates in the code as I don't know what the letters are supposed to be...

Here's what I found in the code :

// custom Europe start positions
const char europe_pos[30] = {0x1F, 0x1C, // Romans
0x3F, 0x29, // Babylonians
0x21, 0x0E, // Germans
0x30, 0x2D, // Egyptians
0x20, 0x03, // Americans
0x2A, 0x22, // Greeks
0x41, 0x19, // Indians
0x00, 0x00,
0x3A, 0x0A, // Russians
0x0A, 0x2B, // Zulus
0x15, 0x13, // French
0x30, 0x2D, // Aztecs
0x20, 0x03, // Chinese
0x13, 0x0E, // English
0x41, 0x19}; // Mongols

Click to expand...

Now, must I simply change these coordinates to the ones I have in my previous post or there's something else to be done here?

It seems a JCivED configurable patch would be in order for modifying earth starting positions... Not sure when I would have time to make it though...

But to answer your question: the "letters" are actually the the coordinates written in [wiki]hexadecimal[/wiki] format, so what you need to do, basically, is to convert your own coordinates to hex.

Ok, let me do it for you:

Americans : 17,16 -> 0x11, 0x10
Aztec : 10,22 -> 0xA, 0x16
Babylonians : 51,21 -> 0x33, 0x15
Chinese : 69,16 -> 0x45, 0x10
Egyptians : 45,27 -> 0x2D, 0x1B
English : 34,11 -> 0x22, 0xB
French : 36,13 -> 0x24, 0xD
Germans : 40,12 -> 0x28, 0xC
Greeks : 44,20 -> 0x2C, 0x14
Indians : 59,21 -> 0x3B, 0x15
Mongols : 66,12 -> 0x42, 0xC
Romans : 39,18 -> 0x27, 0x12
Russians : 47,11 -> 0x2F, 0xB
Zulu : 47,38 -> 0x2F, 0x26

A patch would be cool. That's something I've been looking forward to for a while. Anyways, whatcha working on these days?

Everything seems to be working! The map file and starting locations executable can be found here.

Thanks again everyone.

kirkham7 said:

A patch would be cool. That's something I've been looking forward to for a while. Anyways, whatcha working on these days?

Click to expand...

Not really the topic of this thread, but I am very busy real life things, unfortunately, so the little amount of time for CIV is spent continuing to "port" the biggest Civ routine (city process) from IDA to Java. That's it, basically.