Rick´s Battleground

Current version:
1.2 - ***Public beta test phase*** - Revised Map & Scenario
1.1 - Map and limited scenario
1.0 - Map only

Note: Downloads in post #2 / Map Overview on post #3

Introducing the first version of my "Battleground" map. This map is an huge scale map 362x362 for high performance computers, up to 32 civs are allowed to play, but 24 is the recommended scale for most games.

This map has everything for every type of player, you want a pangea huge warfare ground? you have two huge continents to make it so. You´re more of a builder type and like to create your very one Atlantis super island continent? you got it! You don´t like big islands like Australia, instead you prefer Archipelago types, you got that covered also, there´s lots of medium to small islands to go around.

Also on map features, resources are distributed everywhere on the map and are relativetly abundant, there are plenty of rivers and all starting locations have the same potential as others, for game balance, so if you end up in an island you still have lots of land to expand to keep up with the lucky ones on the pangea continent.

Strategic resources are enough to go around but there will be some wars to be fought for some.

Distances between civs are medium to vast, so all the civ traits will be put to work here.

The starting locations have been placed to maximize the civ´s unique traits, but of course you can change that by unselecting culturally linked locations.

The map as X and Y wrapping active and is well balanced, there are lots of goody huts. Land units will be as important as sea ones in this scenario.

The original intention is to provide a single player map as well as a multiplayer map that is challeging and super fun for the player(s) and that allows the usage of strategy to a higher level.

Can you survive in the Battleground?? This map is not for the easy going of heart...there are wild creatures and nature phenomenons everywhere, the Gaia civilization already holds all the key locations in the world and the barbarian civilization is at the height of its power. With the fall of the Mu Empire and the loss of power by Atlantean, barbarian conquered the lost cities of gold and now prosper under the cities mighty walls...can you take seize their vast riches? or will the AI beat you to it and send you civilization into the the abyss...

You want a "Suez Canal" here and there to cross between countries? You can, you want to make the wall of China? Why not? You like bases and airfields along the ocean, also feasible, and the best is that it seems there is always new land to explore.

+ There are navigable rivers across the major continents, ishtmos and great lakes crossings to allow sea units participation in military actions. Of course you will have to deal with Gaia civilization to achieve this....

+ The world of battleground also features a road that was once part of the royal atlantean and mu empires, they connect the golden cities between them and cover most of the globe, these outposts are now in Gaia and barbarian hands, and will not be easy to travel through...

There are also rumours that the lost capitals of Atlantis and Mu Empire are still in existence, only tales probably, but who knows....

Credits: N/A for the moment...

Rules: N/A for the moment, unit roster based on RaR mod, with a lot, lot, lot of tweaking...

To enjoy your experience a mix of epic music themes have been prepared for your delight, so it´s recomended to play with Music On from the game preferences.

World preview shots:


Tech Tree:


Cities of gold:


Some Pedia shots:




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Work beeing done for version 1.3 (eta: January 2013)
-Unit update, current and new;
-War Clans;
-Civilopedia entries;
-Terrain graphics; - Done!
-up to 4/8 players Multiplayer version PBEM/Hotseat campaign;
-Leaderheads; - Done!
-Landmarks and ocean namings;
-Revision of rules;
-New tech tree with hidden future age built-in;
-Media content Utilility
-----------------------------------------------------

Download Map File & Art/Pedia files here:
(Note: As any scenario install the .biq and scenario directories to your C3C 1.22 scenario folder)

#v1.0 - Removed after 170 downloads
#v1.1 - Removed after 290´ish downloads
#v1.2 - Start your Battleground adventure!

Download links:
(@Atomic Gamer #1,9 GB archive, 3 zip files plus patch, estimated dwn time for each part is 15min, 300kbps average speed)

Part 1:(700Mb) http://www.atomicgamer.com/file.php?id=104465
Part 2:(700Mb) http://www.atomicgamer.com/file.php?id=104466
Part 3:(552Mb) http://www.atomicgamer.com/file.php?id=104467
Patch:(3,7Mb) http://www.atomicgamer.com/file.php?id=104510

File contents:
(The scenario is self playable, you need only C3C installed, all other needed directories and files are already in the scenario folder)

C3C.exe with no raze, no unit limit and no city limit if you choose to have more than 500 cities (recommended)
Play with capture shipments always on - the scenario has a lot of barbarian flag units/buildings/props that can and should be captured by your civilization.

For those who just want the map:
- 1st file-> map with original scenario layouts included;
- 2nd file-> clean sheet, only terrain, no pre-placed goody huts, ruins, victor locations, roads, forts and so on)

# Alpha Versions removed after 290´ish downloads. New ones are up.

Looks like a fun map. I might try it out with some of my favorout mods, implimenting some of the changes you made also, like the extra road movement.

This is a beautiful map, Rick, complex and original. I'm very impressed. You have a good feel for making the terrain look real; it seems to have natural contours. I can't speak for gameplay, but I hope to be able to soon!

Ty guys, i´m glad you liked it, i use the watercolor terrain palette from Warpstorm

I´m open to sugestions on future changes to the map and game rules.

nice work! Some ideas about strategy:

Compared to those megamods, I think this balanced map is actually playable. The rules changes are easy to understand and to remember, compared to learning and analyzing 100 new techs. You can start right out.

Except the GW, I think the rules changes are quite balanced. The civ with GW will effectively left out from attacks until IA. Maybe air trade should be abandoned at all.

A propos IA: As long as you do not start as the Vikings, Amphibious WF will become a very valuable tech considering all those tiny islands. Conquest will be very hard to achieve, and to win with domination, you will have to play always fair, because you will not be able to kill the AI's off with reasonable effort. Instead, you will have to live with those 1 city island civs always furious with you for the rest of the game.

Therefore, the map will be a constant battleground until late in the game when you go to war. And a micromanaging hell when you are eager to expand. Probably, it's a good exercise to hone combined arms skills.

Definitely, the new trading solution makes sense for various reasons: There is no need to build harbors on islands. Trade can be efficiently stopped by military.

There are a lot of interesting options within the familiar game set. Worth a try!

bluebox said:

nice work! Some ideas about strategy:

Compared to those megamods, I think this balanced map is actually playable. The rules changes are easy to understand and to remember, compared to learning and analyzing 100 new techs. You can start right out.

Except the GW, I think the rules changes are quite balanced. The civ with GW will effectively left out from attacks until IA. Maybe air trade should be abandoned at all.

A propos IA: As long as you do not start as the Vikings, Amphibious WF will become a very valuable tech considering all those tiny islands. Conquest will be very hard to achieve, and to win with domination, you will have to play always fair, because you will not be able to kill the AI's off with reasonable effort. Instead, you will have to live with those 1 city island civs always furious with you for the rest of the game.

Therefore, the map will be a constant battleground until late in the game when you go to war. And a micromanaging hell when you are eager to expand. Probably, it's a good exercise to hone combined arms skills.

Definitely, the new trading solution makes sense for various reasons: There is no need to build harbors on islands. Trade can be efficiently stopped by military.

There are a lot of interesting options within the familiar game set. Worth a try!

Click to expand...

Ty bluebox, i´v been playtesting it, and focusing much on waiting time in between turns and so far it looks good, even with 31 Factions, it´s running pretty somthly.

As for the Great Wall, it does have quite a bit more power, but its also very costly, thus the player who build it will be definitly making a tradeoff shield production and time vs defensive power. Of course once you have it up it can turn any city into a fortress, but if you use artillery units the enemy units will still be damaged and vulnerable to defeat.

My intention was to provide a builder type of player some options to survive vs an very hostile environment and not to be killed in 2 turns by a cavalry rush in late medieval times, as so often happen in human multiplayer games.

The one tiny islands can be a bit off a turn off, increasing ones war weariness if no amphibious units are available, thus not beeing able to kill a faction and ending a war, but it does also provide a bit of more strategic options, to resolve that issue i´v made the Crusader units also amphibious since its autoproduced by a wonder, thus limited to the civ that builds it, making the Knights Templar a prize to achieve! What you think? It will also limit the number of amphibious units in the map and still provide the Scandinavian player with its Beserker advantage over everyone else.....

Hope you try it, not only versus the AI, but also versus human players, i believe the map would be very fun in that variant.

As always i´m open to more sugestions.

Note: I´m not so inclined in abandoning the air trade, although maybe increasing the Air Terminal improvement cost even a lit bit more might not be such a bad idea..

I like the map, but I might eliminate the X-axis wraparound, preserving a north and south polar region. Given the size of the map, I can see the need for the Y-axis wraparound.

A lot of your rules changes are similar to ones that I use, Map Making allowing for map trading, no requirement for a victorious army for the Heroic Epic or Military Academy, Wonders that place a building place it in every city, boosts in sea tile yield for harbors and coastal fortresses. I do prefer the Heroic Epic being available with Literature, but that is a matter of choice.

However, in the download, the Trading Port and Air Terminal show as Small Wonders. Are they to be improvements? If Small Wonders, then you only have one of each, which does not seem to be your intent.

I can understand on a huge map that you need to restrict sea and air trade otherwise the Between Turns takes forever (or at least long enough to make a pot of coffee, pour a cup and fix it up, and drink most of it). Have you considered rather than having an expensive improvement, has the improvement require a number of buildings before it can be built? Say, for every three harbors built, you can build ONE Trading Port, allowing sea trade. This would restrict the number of possible trade routes, and force the player to build harbors, with bonuses to sea tiles as compensation. It would also make going after all of those single tile islands more worth while, as they would add to your number of harbors. Do the same with your Air Terminal, and require say 5 airports to be built for every Air Terminal. Again, this would reduce the number of trade routes for the computer to calculate. It also makes the cities with those improvements that much more valuable and therefore something to attack.

I like the idea of Crusaders being amphibious, as otherwise on a map like yours, or the archipelago or continent maps that I play on, the single tile island cities are invulnerable until pretty late in the game except for the Vikings, i.e. one player. Having the Crusaders be amphibious does help even things out. It would be interesting to see the effects of making the Knights Templar a Small Wonder, available to all playing civilizations.

timerover51 said:

I like the map, but I might eliminate the X-axis wraparound, preserving a north and south polar region. Given the size of the map, I can see the need for the Y-axis wraparound.

However, in the download, the Trading Port and Air Terminal show as Small Wonders. Are they to be improvements? If Small Wonders, then you only have one of each, which does not seem to be your intent.

I can understand on a huge map that you need to restrict sea and air trade otherwise the Between Turns takes forever (or at least long enough to make a pot of coffee, pour a cup and fix it up, and drink most of it). Have you considered rather than having an expensive improvement, has the improvement require a number of buildings before it can be built? Say, for every three harbors built, you can build ONE Trading Port, allowing sea trade. This would restrict the number of possible trade routes, and force the player to build harbors, with bonuses to sea tiles as compensation. It would also make going after all of those single tile islands more worth while, as they would add to your number of harbors. Do the same with your Air Terminal, and require say 5 airports to be built for every Air Terminal. Again, this would reduce the number of trade routes for the computer to calculate. It also makes the cities with those improvements that much more valuable and therefore something to attack.

I like the idea of Crusaders being amphibious, as otherwise on a map like yours, or the archipelago or continent maps that I play on, the single tile island cities are invulnerable until pretty late in the game except for the Vikings, i.e. one player. Having the Crusaders be amphibious does help even things out. It would be interesting to see the effects of making the Knights Templar a Small Wonder, available to all playing civilizations.

Click to expand...

I double checked The Trading Port and Air Terminal and they are set to improvements, i do agree on your pre-building requisits and it will force players to build harbors/airports prior to the Trading Port or Air Terminal, plus limiting the AI thinking time even further Thanks!

The Knights Templar beeing available to all doens´t seem fair for the game balance and the eventual Scandinavian player, by limiting it to one wonder, there will be at least 2 players with amphibious units in Med Ages, and the race for the Knights Templar and the need to research Chivalry even more interesting.

I´m not too inclined for polar caps, i like to maintain the players looking for every direction and avoid corner campers from fortifying and then invade players with more then one war front. This will also put more valuable in sea units and exploring the full lenght of the map, that said, maybe i should redesign the polar caps terrain itself, making a larger continent there in place of the current somewhat scattered islands (but remember you can´t settle in tundra).

Map updated with changes, thank you all!

As always open to more sugestions in reducing the AI thinking time and game balance issues.

Note: I´m thinking there could be way too many goody huts, is there a way to limit their number without having to reduce them manually, or perhaps reduce the chance of poping techs from it? I want to keep the advantage of beeing expansionist but not that much.

You might want to consider removing the resource requirements for the Privateer, so as to give single time island cities some ability to create combat ships, as without a Trading Port giving access to resources, or an Air Terminal connection, those cities are going to be very limited in what units they can produce. For that, you might want to take a look at a Naval Mod that I did where I have heavily modified the combat ratings of the naval vessels.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=322522&highlight=timerover51

As for your Goody Huts question, here's a creative idea, which, while not exactly a solution to your stated problem, could at least make all those goody huts more interesting: in the General Settings Tab in the Editor, down in the lower right corner is a little box titled 'Default Money Resource'. What this does, apparently, is put a "reward" resource in Goody Huts, but there are some rules, as I understand it: 1) the terrain beneath the Goody Hut must allow that resource; 2) there must be no other resource, present or future, beneath that Goody Hut; 2) that Goody Hut would have provided Gold anyway; 3) the resource will appear once you research the tech that provides it, even in the future. That's the rub, you see - if you hit a goody hut and it gives you nothing it could be a "money" resource, i.e., very valuable, or a quite different resource, but you won't know until you've researched the tech that causes it to appear.

Once I found an old thread with GI Dustin discussing it (alas, I don't have the link any more), and I thought it would be a perfect thing to put into my Old West Mod. Any Goody Hut that doesn't give me a tech or a handful of hostiles would be a potential spot to stake a claim, as there might be high grade Gold there someday. Or I could end up with something else, like a silver mine...or a dry mine!

timerover51 said:

You might want to consider removing the resource requirements for the Privateer, so as to give single time island cities some ability to create combat ships, as without a Trading Port giving access to resources, or an Air Terminal connection, those cities are going to be very limited in what units they can produce. For that, you might want to take a look at a Naval Mod that I did where I have heavily modified the combat ratings of the naval vessels.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=322522&highlight=timerover51

Click to expand...

Agree, reworking some aspects in the naval part of the game to achieve a better balance for an archipelago type of empire vs a land pangea one is essential, thus i´ll see what changes i could make, the Privateer could drop 1 movement point and lose the need for iron and saltpeper requirement.

On the upgrade paths somethings could be done also, i´ll dig in this soon, looks like version 1.1 is under way!

Balthasar said:

As for your Goody Huts question, here's a creative idea, which, while not exactly a solution to your stated problem, could at least make all those goody huts more interesting: in the General Settings Tab in the Editor, down in the lower right corner is a little box titled 'Default Money Resource'. What this does, apparently, is put a "reward" resource in Goody Huts, but there are some rules, as I understand it: 1) the terrain beneath the Goody Hut must allow that resource; 2) there must be no other resource, present or future, beneath that Goody Hut; 2) that Goody Hut would have provided Gold anyway; 3) the resource will appear once you research the tech that provides it, even in the future. That's the rub, you see - if you hit a goody hut and it gives you nothing it could be a "money" resource, i.e., very valuable, or a quite different resource, but you won't know until you've researched the tech that causes it to appear.

Once I found an old thread with GI Dustin discussing it (alas, I don't have the link any more), and I thought it would be a perfect thing to put into my Old West Mod. Any Goody Hut that doesn't give me a tech or a handful of hostiles would be a potential spot to stake a claim, as there might be high grade Gold there someday. Or I could end up with something else, like a silver mine...or a dry mine!

Click to expand...

I´ll have to study how this works, but if so, it might create some further incentive to exploration and not pop goody huts right away for usage later on....thanks for this value input.

Ok, i´v update the map, and its now more like a scenario, as the rules have changed quite a bit and a few units for balancing have been added.

I also advise playing this with the nocitylimit C3C.exe available in the CivFanatics download database to make the game even bigger and more fun.

Current download version is -> v1,1.

Another way to get a player to research the Ironclad advance is have the ship upgrade to a Battleship, rather than a destroyer. Upgrading to a battleship is far more historically accurate as well.

timerover51 said:

Another way to get a player to research the Ironclad advance is have the ship upgrade to a Battleship, rather than a destroyer. Upgrading to a battleship is far more historically accurate as well.

Click to expand...

Agree, but i´v made it upgradable from Ironclad to Cruiser and instead i improved the Battleship´s capability with increased range (now 3 squares) to reflect its real range, +1 HP bonus and 6 movement points to provide a reward to those that build this "Queen of the seas" unit.

This has me tempted to reinstall civ III. >.>
Looks a little crowded but in a good way.

Glad you like it Lord Drake.

Version 1.2 update will be out soon, new governments, new interface/art graphics, new techs, new units, further rule changes for even more game balance.

Would it be possible to get just a clean map with the standard game setup so that I could do some of my own modifications without having first to take all of yours out?