"Demographica" - Europe map (100x73) with 11 Civilizations (patch 1.61).

Hello, and welcome to my little thread!

I've just recently started to play Civilization 4, and the first thing that struck me, was that it was a pity the "real" maps (Europe, South America and Africa) did only have random starting positions for the civilizations. The civilization options was random too.

Therefore, I took action and fired up Notepad in order to modify a bit. This was to be a new map - not a scenario. Meaning that which civilizations to be able to play and their respective starting positions would be pre-determined, while options and victory conditions would be customizeable for the player.

I'll get back to the details around my decisions in a while, but first the overview:

"Demographica" by Joseph Goebbels:

Download here: http://www.ssl-tromso.org/Civ4/files/Demographica.Civ4WorldBuilderSave



PLAYABLE CIVILIZATIONS:

Egypt
Leader: Hatshepsut (spiritual & creative)
Capital: Thebes

England
Leader: Victoria (expansive & financial)
Capital: London

France
Leader: Napoleon (aggressive & industrious)
Capital: Paris

Germany
Leader: Frederick (creative & philosophical)
Capital: Berlin

Greece
Leader: Alexander (aggressive & philosophical)
Capital: Athens

Mali
Leader: Mansa Musa (financial & spiritual)
Capital: Timbuktu

Mongolia
Leader: Kublai Khan (aggressive & creative)
Capital: Astrakhan*

Persia
Leader: Cyrus (expansive & creative)
Capital: Persepolis

Rome
Leader: Julius Caesar (organized & expansive)
Capital: Rome

Russia
Leader: Catherine (creative & financial)
Capital: St. Petersburg*

Spain
Leader: Isabella (expansive & spiritual)
Capital: Madrid

Click to expand...

CITIES AND LOCATIONS:

As the name of this map implies, the point is to have all the civilizations and their capitals being at the appropriate/correct historic postion when you start the game. The reason for the asterisk after Astrakhan and St. Petersburg is that these two cities are not the respective nations' default capital. During both Catherine and Peter's reign in Russia, the nation's capital was St. Petersburg. This is why I've changed the Russian capital for this more historical "correct" map. As for Mongolia's case: The first Civ4 city for Mongolia is Karakorum - a city that is outside this map's borders. Therefore, I chose to pick a city that was as far east on this map as possible as the capital. I know Astrakhan wasn't founded by Mongolians, but I concluded it would be the best alternative for this map.

Further, I've entirely changed Russias citylist. I've removed all the asian ones that are in Civ4, and only included those west of the Ural mountains.

As for Mali and Persia. Both those nations' capitals are outside this map's borders, but only slightly. This is why I have not changed them, but just moved them a bit off position. Timbuktu being situated too far north and Persepolis northwest of it's real-life location. I hope you can forgive me for this.


RESOURCES:

Originally, I had decided not to do any changes to terrain or resources at all. The first still applies (I've modified less than ten tiles). But after playing through an entire game on the original "Europe" map, I found out that it is really unbalanced when it comes to resources. This is why I decided to give every capital city between five and seven resource bonuses within their fat crosses. Also, there is originally far more resource bonuses in Europe proper, meaning South-West Europe, Central Europe and North-West Europe than elsewhere on the map. North Africa, though it's pretty big, has virtually no resources at all. That also applies for the Russian steppes and Eastern Europe in general. This is why I introduce to you the "Great Cities" concept of mine...


"GREAT CITIES":

OK, we have the "Great Person" concept in this game, so why not "Great City"?

There is nothing mysterious about this really, its just a measure in order to "fix the problem" with the resource-less areas as described above. In the areas where these cities are/was situated in the real world, you will find a great amount of resources. This should be a fun addition for those of you who are as obsessed with geography/demography as I am. You should know where to move your settlers.

"Great Cities" list:
- Antioch
- Babylon
- Carthage
- Constantinople/Istanbul
- Fez
- Kiev
- Moscow

Click to expand...

In the next post, I'll post screenshots of each starting location if that's of interest to you?

Have fun, and give me a feedback when you have tried out this "replacement map"!

PS: I can upload the file to CivFanatic's server when I have learned more about how to do that.

Post reserved for future use.

Joseph Goebbels said:

I've just recently started to play Civilization 4, and the first thing that struck me, was that it was a pity the "real" maps (Europe, South America and Africa) did only have random starting positions for the civilizations. The civilization options was random too.

Click to expand...

I'm assuming you're referring to the maps included buy default with Civ 4, as the forums here have many real world maps with accurate starting locations.

Hell Hawk said:

I'm assuming you're referring to the maps included buy default with Civ 4, as the forums here have many real world maps with accurate starting locations.

Click to expand...

Yep, that's correct!

I think that Mali should be removed. Unplayable civ, since they are in the desert and that's not their start location.

You should add more civs to the map.

Looks like a fun map.

This map looks like it has a lot of potential and is already the best Europe map I have yet found. I do have some suggestions on how it could be improved, however. First of all, perhaps you could rename the Mongols the Scythians, with leader Fenius Farsa. That would enable you to full the territory of the Ukraine (to balance the Russians), and simulate the influence the steppe tribes had in Europe, all while remaining historically accurate. It would also be nice to add BtS Civs like Carthage, Sumeria or Babylonia (I'm partial to Sumeria), Byzantium, Portugal, and the Netherlands. At the same time I also think you should remove Mali (too far off the map IMHO), Egypt (critical to the history of the region, but the map doesn't include the Upper Kingdom, Egypt was a river kingdom, not a coastal one), and Persia (map doesn't even reach Iran). Anyways, thanks for the cool map.

I would add Sumeria, Israel, Armenia, Another Russia with its capital at Moscow, Ottomans, Byzantium, Bulgaria, Austria, Hungary, Sweden, Poland, Netherlands, Burgundy, Portugal, Carthage, and Morocco. I would also Take away Mali and make the Persian capital Tabriz. That would give you a total of 26 civs, just enough to make the game interesting without slowing it down.

Great map, thanks a million.

soshiyuguri said:

This map looks like it has a lot of potential and is already the best Europe map I have yet found. I do have some suggestions on how it could be improved, however. First of all, perhaps you could rename the Mongols the Scythians, with leader Fenius Farsa. That would enable you to full the territory of the Ukraine (to balance the Russians), and simulate the influence the steppe tribes had in Europe, all while remaining historically accurate. It would also be nice to add BtS Civs like Carthage, Sumeria or Babylonia (I'm partial to Sumeria), Byzantium, Portugal, and the Netherlands. At the same time I also think you should remove Mali (too far off the map IMHO), Egypt (critical to the history of the region, but the map doesn't include the Upper Kingdom, Egypt was a river kingdom, not a coastal one), and Persia (map doesn't even reach Iran). Anyways, thanks for the cool map.

Click to expand...

Thanks for good feedback!

I must underline the fact that I'm not a modder (at heart or in any other way), so my ambitions with this was actually to tweak as little as possible on an original Civ4 map. Therefore I just wanted to make som minor improvements to the standard Europe map that comes with the game.

As mentioned in the first post, my primary goal was to be able to play on Europe without starting in Russia as the Aztecs or something like that. When the map is defined as Europe, I thought it would be reasonable (from the vanilla version) to assume that you started out with the proper civ. on the proper location on the map (as the have tried with the world map in civ1). Otherwise I wanted the map/campaign to still be as close to the original as possible.

You mention adding civs. for playability (and historical accuracy) reasons, but this was never my purpose. I'm sure there are other maps made by "professionals" that address this issue better than mine.

This was simply my humble effort in making the vanilla Europe map just a bit less random (since the landscape is not).


Thanks to all you other guys that has left me a comment!

i am a mac user and when i click the link it simply opens a window with text, and i am unable to download it. anyone know why?