Garlic Pudding's EARTH map

This Earth map is inspired from Ronyboss' Standard Earth map for Quot Capita. It mainly features re-scaled continents and rougher terrain that should give more versatility to AI factions, especially those that start in Europe. The map has not been fully tested yet so any comments on how to improve it will be appreciated.

Mongols starting location is set, just like in the original game, around where Samarkand is located. I have been thinking of placing the Mongols closer to Mongolia but do no think of doing this before having first modified their capital city to be Karakorum. This will require more help from other users as city names are hard coded in Civ.exe.

I will also be working with the JCivED tool to regroup the many islands on the map with larger continents. This would mainly affect how wonders work in the game. This way, building the Hoover Dam in America or continental Europe could enable a city like Havana or London to also have a free hydro dam.

Usage

1. Make a backup of MAP.PIC from your Civ1 installation (or simply rename that file). While you're on it, you might want to make a backup of CIV.EXE as well.
2. Put the new map file MAP.PIC from the attached .rar archive into your Civ1 installation directory.
3. Put the program "Starting_locations.exe" from the attached .rar archive into your Civ1 installation directory and run it once. It will edit the standard starting positions in CIV.EXE to match the Europe map instead of the standard Earth map.
4. Run Civ 1, and select "Earth" at the main menu.

Note:
If you run "starting_locations.exe" again, it will revert the change of starting positions, so you can use this program to quickly switch between Earth starting positions and Europe starting positions.

Credits:
Many thanks go to Gowron, kirkham7 and darkpanda which have given me all necessary information on how to complete this project.

Great job! I don't have time to test it, but it sure looks sexier than the original.

Great job, Garlic Pudding!

I was thinking of doing up my own World map, but I really love yours and would love to give it a go straightaway!

What I Love about This Map!

Island Clusters: I especially love that you've included the island clusters. Land is much more relevant to us, humans, than sea. For instance, World War II in the Pacific was all about building on tiny islands that then command large swathes of ocean. So any world map that *excludes* the pacific islands due to "small size" doesn't work for me.

Strategic Isthmuses: I also love how you retained the land squares at the Suez & at Panama. This means that a city needs to be established at that exact square to allow your ships to pass between the two corresponding seas. And then you need to retain control of those strategic cities. This is much more realistic than just altering geography to allow any tribe free passage.

Tiny Suggestions

May I make two tiny suggestion to further improve your excellent work?

a) In your map above, I think you missed out the starting location of the Babylonians. You may also wish to consider using PNG format for the map instead of JPG.

b) For the islands, you can add a river to the single square to make them look visually like a cluster of 4 islands.

Again, a HUGE thumbs-up from me!


Yiren.

I ran into a technical snag that I've been trying to fix for the last 2 hours & I'm feeling pretty discouraged. Hence, I'm hoping that one of the more learned tech masters here (like DarkPanda or Kirkham7 or Dack or Gowron) can help me.

"Starting_locations.exe" does not run. The error I ran into is that "MSVCP110D.dll" is missing. I tried the known solution of re-installing MS Visual C++ Redist for Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 on two different machines to no avail. I checked after installation & the files continue to be missing. I am using a 64-bit Windows 7.

SOLUTION 1:
Instead of fiddling with this, I am wondering if it is possible for someone to just take my CIV.EXE file and run "Starting_locations.exe" on it, then email it back to me. Note that this is not some trick to get a CIV.EXE as I will send you my CIV.EXE.

SOLUTION 2:
Maybe someone can just email me your copy of "MSVCP110D.dll". It is found in "C:\Windows\SysWOW64.dll". I'm not sure if this would work though, as I think it needs some Registry entries also...


Yiren.

===========

Update 1:
Apparently, the reason why "Starting_locations.exe" is looking for the "D" version = "MSVCP110D.dll" instead of "MSVCP110.dll" is that it was complied in "debug mode". Not that this helps me because I don't have either versions of the file...

Update 2:
I ended up hex-editing the file to the coordinates shown in Garlic's Pudding original thread. All listed in that thread are correct, except for the Mongol location, which is actually Karakorum, but changed to Samarkand's coordinates in the current release. The reference threads are:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=533510
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=11982898

However, this is the hard way & I am still hoping for some help...

Your call didn't go unheard... kirkham7 will testify that I am notoriously unreliable in terms of delivery (although I usually try not to promise anything), but I think adding a patch in JCivED for starting positions in Civ is fairly easy.

In fact, I have work in progress, idle, on that matter, in my busy workspace, only problem is that real life keeps taking its toll on hobby activities like this one, especially those days.

Anyway, I will try to hack something out in the coming days (or weeks), and for getting your chances up, it would help to know which version of CIV you're playing, for better focus of efforts.

Cheers

darkpanda said:

Your call didn't go unheard... kirkham7 will testify that I am notoriously unreliable in terms of delivery (although I usually try not to promise anything), but I think adding a patch in JCivED for starting positions in Civ is fairly easy.

Click to expand...

Thanks, DarkPanda. Sorry, I didn't mean to foist more work on you, just to solve my immediate problem. Really appreciate your reply as well.

I haven't tried JCivEd, so I hope it doesn't rely on that same Visual C++ DLL... Anyway, definitely intending to give it a spin after I finish the current game on the new world map.


Yiren.

Darkpanda, you always deliver great work. Whether or not you deliver on a timeframe, that is a different story.

fuzzy3 said:

I haven't tried JCivEd, so I hope it doesn't rely on that same Visual C++ DLL...

Click to expand...

JCivED requires Java 7 (or later) and nothing else (no C++ involved).

All details by clicking the link in my sig.

darkpanda said:

All details by clicking the link in my sig.

Click to expand...

Roger that, DarkPanda.

darkpanda said:

Anyway, I will try to hack something out in the coming days (or weeks), and for getting your chances up, it would help to know which version of CIV you're playing, for better focus of efforts.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I forgot to answer your question. Mine is the DOS version. I'm playing it using DOS-BOX.


Yiren.

fuzzy3 said:

Sorry, I forgot to answer your question. Mine is the DOS version. I'm playing it using DOS-BOX.

Click to expand...

I assumed so, but I need to know the exact version, the one you see in the first A/V selection screen, and looks like "CIVILIZATION (TM) - Version 47?.0?"

Anyway, I think I'll have it working for all (supported) versions, so it's no longer a big deal.

Here is some candy about the work in progress, I think it will greatly simplify your task:

Incidentally, I just released JCivED 0.0.17a, which contains said patch for customizing Earth starting positions.

Enjoy!

darkpanda said:

Incidentally, I just released JCivED 0.0.17a, which contains said patch for customizing Earth starting positions.

Enjoy!

Click to expand...

Oh excellent! I just got my wisdom tooth taken out, so I'm now convalescing at home. Perfect time to fiddle with things!


Yiren.