Europe/Arabia/Meso Map! With a twist!

Made this map for a scenario I am thinking about, been wanting to make this for a long while now. Some of the problems I notice with the usual maps of this area is that they either show too much territory (too big) or cut vital areas out.

The TAM mod map is probably the best one of this area out to date. My map is similar except I am including a bit of scandinavia and the upper nile area, while a lot of useless steppe has been cut.

My map would be good for cradle of civilization mods thru the classical and roman time period, really right on up through the dark ages. Once you get past this point you really need to see more of russia and scandinavia.

Basically I drew a freehand sketch of europe and the middle east, then drew a rectangle on about a 30 degree angle around the area I wanted, then rotated the paper and used that as a guide.

While I do love large maps, the scenario I am planning needs a smaller one for gameplay reasons, this map is 110 by 80. I may redo this map about 160 by 120 if I get some time to do so.

Since it is freehand drawing there are a couple spots that dont look exactly right, also its smaller map so not as much room for detail. Feel free to post feedback or change map as you need.

It is virgin map, no resources, locations, etc.

A bit more about the map, if I may!

I'm going to use for a Byzantine Reconquest/Muslim Expansion/Rise of the HRE scenario and it really is perfect for such a period as Constantinople is at almost dead center of the map.

I really hope I get around to making the bigger version though, as this would also be prime for excellent mods like RFRE. My maps twisted perspective dosent do away with the wasted spaces of the map, but it does make those wasted spaces places where nothing is built anyway. For example the sw corner of my map is all ocean and again some more up in nw, while we dont have all the crappy steppes. There is still enough steppes to throw in the invading nomads but without having to make that big water area (like RFRE does) which is rather annoying in an historical scenario/mod.

Screenshot!

Holy Hanna Manna, man, I'm loving the looks of this map (and it's size). I will download it, import my whack rules into it, and play my next game on it. Yipee! Thanks alot!

One word, great, looks like you've spent ages on it, thanks mate!

I was dickering about on it last night, and a few issues came up:

1. I was wondering why there are gobs of flood plain in Egypt and hardly any in Mesopotamia.
2. I also thought that huge swath of undifferentiated plains ("useless steppe"?) up by the Caspian Sea could be spiced up a bit, maybe with the odd hill or desert tile.
3. You're right, a bit more of Russia might be nice so that Moscow and St. Petersburg could fit in. But I don't mind so much, my Russians will just be Kievan Rus, I guess!
4. Lastly, I think maybe for playability reasons, the wee island beside Denmark would be a better location for Copenhagen if it were actually attached to Jutland. As it stands right now, I just surrounded it with RaR offshore rocks resources and I'll see how that works.

The size is great, as I said earlier. Any bigger and I wouldn't be able to play it on my 'puter.

Hey, this is great!!!
I just can not stop playing it!

Hey this looks great, you've managed to fit most of the 'old' world onto a map AND managed to cut out the useless steppes! Thanks!

BTW I remember having a world map that did somthing similar, it made europe and near east alot bigger to reflect their population densities etc and cut out alot of north canada and russia etc anyone know what its called?

Wow, great stuff. Like the tilt of the map, really gives it that "woah!" feeling, can't suggest much more apart from too much Africa? But then again that's probably me just being picky...

Mithadan said:

...2. I also thought that huge swath of undifferentiated plains ("useless steppe"?) up by the Caspian Sea could be spiced up a bit, maybe with the odd hill or desert tile.

Click to expand...

That's right. There are some hills along the south-central area of the Dnepr. There are probably also scattered woodlands along the major rivers.

The Donets might be worth adding.

THe Dnepr looks like it should make a wider loop north/east before turning northwest.

Here's the URL to a good relief map of that area:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/commonwealth/ukraine_rel93.jpg

Very good map, i`ll downoad it...

Glad some of you are enjoying this map. I realize there are a few areas where it needs improvement, please feel free to change it for your own use.

After I finished it and went to preplace some cities, I realized that it was way too small for my tastes, redoing it now to a more suitable size, will probably be a couple weeks before I can get a larger version finished.

Very nice, but i am not too keen on maps that are twisted

very inovative map, I love the way it's twisted! Hopefully someone will devote the time to add RaR resources!

A preview of the upcoming larger twisted med map, with all of arabia shown, it will probably run 256 by 160ish.

Eeek, that's too big for me! I'm already struggling to keep up with the size of the first map. (I'm a s***ty Civ player, what can I say?)

:)civ2 said:

Hopefully someone will devote the time to add RaR resources!

Click to expand...

Just randomly generate some RaR resources once you've loaded the RaR rules into the map. That's what I did. From there you can add more if you feel like it (like aligators in the Nile delta, etc.).

Whoah, looking good, that'd be great for a second world war scenario son!

Updated the pic in post 14 showing progress on the larger map so far.

What you are looking at there is 250 by 150 or 18750 tiles. Approximately equivalent to 195x195.

If you need the map for a scenario, depending on your need the map could be cropped down. If you slice off scotland, scandanavia, and the bottom of arabia and iranian desert, yous till get the whole med at about 210x130 or 13650 tiles, roughly the same as 165x165.

Wow, great map, I download it right away

Any idea why the unexplored blackness doesn't cover the edges of this map?

Woah, that is strange and disconcerting. I assume it has something to do with cropping or nudging the map in maptweaker, I will see if I can fix it tonight.

I checked the map in the editor, somehow the FOW is not there at the edges, I put it in with the editor and it is fine, so either just fix the map yourself real fast in the editor, or I will fix it and update when I get home from work. Sorry bout that.