Northern Europe map changes

Okay, I've finally taken a first stab at redoing the Baltic and Scandinavian area (and by consequence, Germany and Poland) by adding another land row there. These are the current results:



With the terrain, I have mostly followed the suggestions, adjusting the rivers as discussed afterwards. I mainly did resources based on my own considerations. A noncomprehensive list of changes:
- pig near Copenhagen -> cow
- added fish in reach of Hamburg and Copenhagen
- Scandinavian iron only reachable from Trondheim
- whale near Trondheim, oil near Bergen
- copper in northern Scandinavia replaced with Aluminum
- added copper in South Sweden -> Stockholm and Copenhagen
- Scania is a hill now
- Finnish copper in reach of Helsinki and St. Petersburg
- fish in the northern Baltic Sea for Helsinki, Stockholm or Reval
- fish in the southern Baltic Sea for Gdansk/Königsberg/Riga/Reval
- deer for Stockholm or Lulea
- pigs reachable by Copenhagen, Oslo or Stockholm
- northern fur for Lulea or Murmansk
- added another row of hills in Bohemia
- moved copper north to be in reach of Vienna and Berlin
- maybe Vienna 1W?
- Frankfurt 1N, Hamburg 1N, Berlin 1N
- cow near Berlin -> pig
- maybe wheat, cow near Amsterdam should spawn later?
- added iron near Krakow (Silesia)
- maybe coal in Poland as well (1N of iron)
- move Hungarian iron?
- moved Lithuanian wheat 1W to be in reach of Riga/Gdansk/Warsaw -> Warsaw and Krakow have the same number of wheat resources now
- additional resource for St. Petersburg? maybe move cow near Riga there
- maybe deer north of St. Petersburg?

I'm still unsure about the points with question marks. Comments welcome.

My suggestions:
• Move oil in Hungary/Romania 1 down-right. Budapest could go there and it would simulate Romanian oil better.
• Sankt Peterburg, in my opinion, needs a luxury resource instead to be able to shift to culture in order to combat Finland and Prussian culture.
•Frankfurt should stay one S, otherwise it will lose its resources to a strong cultural Italy.
• The whale to the extreme north is rather worthless, it's not worth making a city there. I'd say give Bergen whale and oil, and Trondheim just whale.
• Cow near Amsterdam should spawn later.
•Fish in Denmark should be oil. Scandinavia is a big exporter of oil, plus Copenhagen is going to be gigantic with so many water tiles and food resources.
It looks freaking fantastic Leoreth.

Also! Please add in Greenland and revamp Iceland a little.
• Take away deer in Iceland. Put aluminum 1 N of Rekjaviks and add a whale nearby.
• Add tundra to west coast of Greenland. Add in a fish resource.

(1) Amsterdam: Wheat should spawn around 1500 IMO. Move Coal 1NE to be right on top of Amsterdam.

Also please reduce the number of Great Merchants in it in the 1700 AD Scenario. It makes the Dutch absurdly OP in terms of Tech rate for the whole game (well into the 20th century).

(2) St. Petersburg: Deer should spawn 2N1E of it in 1700. Cow near Riga should be moved 1N2E to be in reach of St. Petersburg.

(3) Moscow (I've always done this): Move the Horse 1W so it's right on top of Moscow. Move the Wheat near it so it's accessible from Moscow.

(4) London (same deal as Moscow): Move the Horse near it to be right on top of London's tile.

(5) Paris (again, same deal): Move the Uranium near it to be right on top of Paris's tile.

In general, I think Horse resources, as well as mineral resources revealed by late game techs (Coal, Uranium, Aluminium, Oil) should be moved around so that they are right on top of city sites. Because:

(1) For Horse, Pasture is an extremely poor improvement in terms of yields in the late game (when the strategic value of Horse for cavalry units no longer matters). You'd always do better by destroying it and replacing it with some other improvement. That is sad.

(2) For Coal/Uranium/Aluminium/Oil, especially those on flat lands, they would often require you to destroy a valuable Town (especially for the AI, who are unaware of the resources unlike the Human player) to access them after they are revealed. Again, very sad.

iOnlySignIn said:

In general, I think Horse resources, as well as mineral resources revealed by late game techs (Coal, Uranium, Aluminium, Oil) should be moved around so that they are right on top of city sites. Because:

(1) For Horse, Pasture is an extremely poor improvement in terms of yields in the late game (when the strategic value of Horse for cavalry units no longer matters). You'd always do better by destroying it and replacing it with some other improvement. That is sad.

(2) For Coal/Uranium/Aluminium/Oil, especially those on flat lands, they would often require you to destroy a valuable Town (especially for the AI, who are unaware of the resources unlike the Human player) to access them after they are revealed. Again, very sad.

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Horse should get plus two gold after Mass Media, to reflect the use of horses in a variety of sports (a pitiful excuse, but it needs the buff).

Very exciting changes, I must say.

Leoreth said:

- maybe Vienna 1W?

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I think yes to this. Frankfurt may actually now be a bit too powerful if Vienna is not moved a little closer.

- added fish in reach of Hamburg and Copenhagen

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The issue with the present choice of location for this fish resource is that it might makes the tile 1NE of Amsterdam a bit of a supercity possibility.

With Vienna moved 1W, would it be possible/feasible to put an independent Budapest on the wheat perhaps to represent Hungary?

First of all, ugh to cities on horses.

blizzrd said:

I think yes to this. Frankfurt may actually now be a bit too powerful if Vienna is not moved a little closer.

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Yeah I agree. Frankfurt needs more overlap with other cities.

The issue with the present choice of location for this fish resource is that it might makes the tile 1NE of Amsterdam a bit of a supercity possibility.

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Hadn't considered that. For whom though? Dutch non-UHV games? All other civs will lose this city without opportunity to refuse on the Dutch spawn.

DC123456789 said:

With Vienna moved 1W, would it be possible/feasible to put an independent Budapest on the wheat perhaps to represent Hungary?

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That's basically the goal. The wheat tile is wrong though, it should either be the current oil tile or 1W of it. I'm open for general suggestions for this part of the map as well ... for example, should the wheat remain out of Vienna's BFC? I'm leaning yes, it's enough of a supercity when stealing the contested tiles of Frankfurt.

Leoreth said:

Hadn't considered that. For whom though? Dutch non-UHV games? All other civs will lose this city without opportunity to refuse on the Dutch spawn.

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Yes, I mainly thinking of Dutch non-UHV game.

But I guess Prussia also potentially benefit by running an early start (one that doesn't preplace Hamburg) and build the on superior city location 1W of Hamburg.

Does Hamburg even need that fish? What about moving the Fish 1N so that just Copenhagen can reach and move the Clam near Amsterdam 1NE instead? In this case, Hamburg could work this Clam until the Dutch spawn.

EDIT: on further reflection, the main thing really is to ensure that Hamburg is founded.

The main idea was that many people considered Hamburg useless so I wanted to make the city a bit more appealing. Same with Copenhagen, although its main problem wasn't size as much as production, and that doesn't look as bad now with the cow + hill + copper.

Maybe it's better to remove that fish again. Sharing Amsterdam's seafood is a much better solution.

The animals in Denmark should probably stay as pigs rather than cows. What with bacon being Denmark's third biggest export.

Royal Tenenbaum said:

My suggestions:
• Move oil in Hungary/Romania 1 down-right. Budapest could go there and it would simulate Romanian oil better.
• Sankt Peterburg, in my opinion, needs a luxury resource instead to be able to shift to culture in order to combat Finland and Prussian culture.
•Frankfurt should stay one S, otherwise it will lose its resources to a strong cultural Italy.
• The whale to the extreme north is rather worthless, it's not worth making a city there. I'd say give Bergen whale and oil, and Trondheim just whale.
• Cow near Amsterdam should spawn later.
•Fish in Denmark should be oil. Scandinavia is a big exporter of oil, plus Copenhagen is going to be gigantic with so many water tiles and food resources.
It looks freaking fantastic Leoreth.

Also! Please add in Greenland and revamp Iceland a little.
• Take away deer in Iceland. Put aluminum 1 N of Rekjaviks and add a whale nearby.
• Add tundra to west coast of Greenland. Add in a fish resource.

Click to expand...

Agree with the Frankfurt part completelly, Frankfurt needs to be moved S in order to represent the huge coal and iron production of the German Empire, otherwise it will go to other hands...I think the caucasus need oil on land as to represent it's strategical importance, and yes the oil in Hungary should be moved one S. Anyway great job you did Leoreth, now Europe can breath!

sebzilla said:

The animals in Denmark should probably stay as pigs rather than cows. What with bacon being Denmark's third biggest export.

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More than butter? *stereotype alert*

Leoreth said:

That's basically the goal. The wheat tile is wrong though, it should either be the current oil tile or 1W of it.

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Well yeah, the deer tile is correct, but then it would be too close to Vienna. If it was set to spawn at 895 (when Hungary was founded) Vienna's culture would always cover it, and it would never spawn. The oil tile looks too far south, in my opinion- it's about as far away as the wheat tile from its actual location. Of course, it would be close to Krakow, so I can see a rationale to putting it on the oil.

Leoreth said:

ugh to cities on horses.

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Then perhaps change Pastures so that they are actually useful in late game (by late game I mean after Replaceable Parts)?

Budapest is pretty much situated at the Danube while it flows in north-south direction.

Leoreth said:

More than butter? *stereotype alert*

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Apparently

http://atlas.media.mit.edu/country/dnk/

Are these map changes already available in the current SVN version?

I was actually thinking about the lovely Danish bacon when we discussed replacing the pigs with cows The Danish butter and bacon-adventure didn't start until the 19th century though, and cows makes just as fine sense as pigs before that time. So thumbs up from a Danish Bacon-lover

As mentioned earlier, I really likes these changes, a huge improvement over the current map and way more realistic - especially the Luleå-area is way better now. Only issue I can think of is Stockholm not really being worth settling - 1S seems to be better, in combination with Luleå, but I can't think of a solution for it, and I may be mistaken. Oh well. And the placement of Bergen is quite weird, given that in reality it's basicly on a straight line west of Oslo - but I guess there's not much to do about that as well.

I agree that the new fish in Denmark should be moved 1N - another option is to change the tile 2W of Oslo into a coast tile (which wouldn't look inaccurate, given the placement of the cities) and put the fish there - the Swedish pigs could then be moved to Scania 1S of the copper instead. To not have a single Norwegian city depending on a sea resource is indeed a bit strange, Bergen/Trondheim should get a clam or crab for sure as well.

With regards to oil, another one could for sure be placed somewhere. I have no idea where, but Norway is the worlds 6th largest oil exporting nation today, so it doesn't seem unreasonable. Would probably result in the poor Norwegians being conquered by human US players going for UHV, but oh well, that's what you get for snatching all the good oil fields from your Scandinavian brotherpeople. Damn Norwegians. *goes into a corner and cries*

Edit: judging from a map of the North Sea oil fields, it looks like 4W of Oslo or 4W1N are the most logical placements of an oil resource, if we are to put one more there.

I believe pasturing cows provides a production bonus, whereas pasturing pigs doesn't. Denmark needs all the production it can get IMO.