[Development] Map Suggestions

[Steb]

It looks really good but should Thebes really be a coastal city? What is the argument for it?

It's less an argument for coastal Thebes than an argument for why coastal Thebes is fine, given that it leads to a more accurate map.

Specifically:

• If you look at a map of Egypt, the Eastern Desert is really not that wide, and at the scale of our map it shouldn't be more than 1 tile wide in the Thebes area. (Don't be fooled by the current DoC map which has a very exaggeratedly wide Eastern Desert.)
• This also means that in real life, Thebes is not super far from the Red Sea. And indeed there was a route, the Wadi Hammamat, that connected the Red Sea and the Nile near Thebes from ancient times.
• Even if Ancient Egypt was obviously more centered on the Nile than the Red Sea, it did use the Red Sea for trade with more southern lands as well as Asia (there was possibly trade with India and maybe even China). It also built a precursor to the Suez canal.
• As a result, it's not a very different situation than other cities that are non-coastal IRL but that we have next to the sea in our map, for scale and gameplay reasons.
• Speaking of gameplay, coastal Thebes has some advantages as well. It makes it unnecessary to build a quasi-useless desert sea port if you want ships or trade connections in the Red Sea, which as I said are historical. It also makes the Thebes tile more attractive, which is good from the point of view of encouraging the most important cities for settlement (since Egypt may now spawn at Memphis).

The only one disadvantage I see is that the Great Lighthouse might be built there instead of Alexandria, but this is a very weak argument.

 

[Dracosolon]

The only one disadvantage I see is that the Great Lighthouse might be built there instead of Alexandria, but this is a very weak argument.

Historically Alexandria should have both the Great Lighthouse and the Great Library (which rarely happens in current playthroughs, since your starting city will be such a production powerhouse), and that outcome might be made slightly more likely thanks to the northern Stone.

My main objection would be that this eastward shift mostly benefits the Sahara, not exactly a high priority area. But you could maybe argue that it's been shrinked down enough times already.

 

[Steb]

My main objection would be that this eastward shift mostly benefits the Sahara, not exactly a high priority area. But you could maybe argue that it's been shrinked down enough times already.

Yeah enlarging the Sahara is certainly not an argument in favor of shifting the Nile east, but it's not like the Eastern Desert is important in and of itself either.

The two main arguments for that shift east IMO are:

• More accurate delta & isthmus area: in real life the Suez canal connects with the delta waterways
• Potentially, makes it slightly easier for interactions to happen between Egypt and Western Asia, of which there should be a lot (Egyptian conquest of the Levant, and the conquest of Egypt by Assyria, Persia, Arabia, etc.)

 

[Krieger-FS]

I'd also argue that the more western position, besides being more inaccurate, also don't offer much in gameplay terms, since the land "gained" is the Eastern Desert. The tiles are not productive (it is more desert!) and the extra space don't allow a reasonable/useful Red Sea city to be settled.

While I agree the eastward shift mostly benefits the Sahara, it also allow a more comfortable co-existence between Alexandria and a Cyrenaican city.

 

[ozqar]

Just to weigh in on this, the problem here is that having Thebes on the Red Sea Coast would potentially shift Egypt trade and exploration to the Red Sea, which AFAIK is not where the main focus was for the many centuries the game is meant to represent. So yes, there was trade in the Red Sea, but Egypt (over the complete game span) was much more involved in Mediterranean trade. This is not the same case as with the many other cities that are placed in coastal locations in the map, while not really coastal in real life, because in all of those cases the sea access was to the same area. And, while I understand the want to have a more accurate representation of the Nile, I think the Sahara is one of those places where if we lose a row or two of tiles, it doesn't matter that much, so if the Nile is a bit westward in the game, I'd think that's ok to encourage a more historical gameplay.

(Edited for clarity)

 

[Steb]

Just to weigh in on this, the problem here is that having Thebes on the Red Sea Coast would potentially shift Egypt trade and exploration to the Red Sea, which AFAIK is not where the main focus was for the many centuries the game is meant to represent. So yes, there was trade in the Red Sea, but Egypt (over the complete game span) was much more involved in Mediterranean trade. This is not the many other cities that are placed in coastal locations in the map, while not really coastal in real life, because in all of those cases the sea access was to the same area. And, while I understand the want to have a more accurate representation of the Nile, I think the Sahara is one of those places where if we lose a row or two of tiles, it doesn't matter that much, so if the Nile is a bit westward in the game, I'd think that's ok to encourage a more historical gameplay.

Why do you think it would shift the focus to the Red Sea? What would that even mean?

The player (or the AI) doesn't have to build ships on the Red Sea, and probably wouldn't since that wouldn't be super useful. At least, unless they built a city in the isthmus to transport those ships to the Mediterranean — which would historically represent the Canal of the Pharaohs. Meanwhile, most city trade routes would probably be with Phoenician or Greek cities, but the possibility that there are some with Persia or India or Ethiopia through maritime trade is cool. Exploration of Africa or Asia from the Red Sea would also be historical, but if we really don't want that, we could add cape tiles. I don't see what else would happen with a coastal Thebes (which, to add, may not even be founded in all games!).

Also, I'm not convinced that the Mediterranean played a larger role for pre-Hellenistic Egypt than the Red Sea did. Before Alexandria, Egypt did have Mediterranean ports, but my intuitive understanding is that they didn't play a major role.

 

[ozqar]

I was just thinking that a city on the nile, with large population and production, that had access to the Red Sea would be able to build a considerable number of boats on that coast. Obviously that doesn't impede the founding of a different city on the Mediterranean coast, but it does provide a feasible opportunity to invest production there (instead of in the Mediterranean).

A cape feature on the Red Sea would solve this problem, except that I think that players (and AI) should have the opportunity to explore the Red Sea more, just that it should be the not so frequent and more intended, as in cases where the player actively goes and founds a city on the Red Sea Coast, despite not having access to the Nile, to get that access.

Finally, I was considering Egypt's history including and past the Hellenistic period. I know that the civ is mostly meant to be the pre-Hellenistic period, but given that the map won't change, I thought it should encourage historical gameplay through the whole duration of the game.

 

[Steb]

I was just thinking that a city on the nile, with large population and production, that had access to the Red Sea would be able to build a considerable number of boats on that coast. Obviously that doesn't impede the founding of a different city on the Mediterranean coast, but it does provide a feasible opportunity to invest production there (instead of in the Mediterranean).

A cape feature on the Red Sea would solve this problem, except that I think that players (and AI) should have the opportunity to explore the Red Sea more, just that it should be the not so frequent and more intended, as in cases where the player actively goes and founds a city on the Red Sea Coast, despite not having access to the Nile, to get that access.

Finally, I was considering Egypt's history including and past the Hellenistic period. I know that the civ is mostly meant to be the pre-Hellenistic period, but given that the map won't change, I thought it should encourage historical gameplay through the whole duration of the game.

Well, I think the Red Sea gained even more importance during the Hellenistic and Roman eras, in which the two important ports of Myos Hormos and Berenice Troglodytica were built. Certainly the transfer of power to Alexandria meant that Ptolemaic Egypt became more Mediterranean-facing, but the Red Sea was important throughout Ancient Egypt. And again, all of this remains optional even with a city on both the Nile and the coast. I'm pretty sure there'll be plenty more useful stuff to build in Thebes than ships to wander around the Red Sea and Arabia.

 

[Publicola]

I'm very much in favor of ensuring that Egypt has a connection to the Red Sea. One of the most important trade fleets in ancient Egypt was Hatshepsut's trade expedition to the land of Punt, either in Arabia or in the horn of Africa, and the trade connection with Punt remained through most of Egyptian history. Likewise, one of the most important voyages of the ancient world was an Egyptian-funded Phoenician fleet that circumnavigated Africa (as described by Herodotus); this expedition started in the Red Sea.

To be fair, I'm inclined to keep Egypt isolated from the Indian Ocean proper, particularly to keep it from establishing a direct trade connection to Babylon and India. On the other hand, trade across the Indian Ocean was heavily used during the Islamic Golden Age, and Egypt was a major player in that trade. So ancient Egypt should be isolated, while medieval Egypt should be connected -- perhaps we could add a 'cape' feature to block the end of the Red Sea, and remove the cape feature after a technology or specific turn/year? That should take care of both ends, while allowing ancient Egypt to at least access the Red Sea and the 'land of Punt'.

 

[Krieger-FS]

I do understand and agree with much of the arguments presented here and have to say that initially I was also leaning against a coastal Thebes. But, honestly, the cost of avoiding it seem a bit excessive in my mind: the problem with the westward shift is not particularly another shrink of Sahara, but how we changed the almost entirety of Nile position to a more inaccurate place – affecting particularly the delta area and the distance between Alexandria and Cyrenaica – because of a single extra row of desert to ensure an inland Thebes. Honestly, seems like we are little bit of Königsberging things here.

I think you guys presented good historical and gameplay arguments here. I’d also remember the famous Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, which described in detail the intensive Indian Ocean trade during Roman times that even involved East Asian ports. As we all agree here, Egypt always had a strong connection with the Red Sea and its trade, even though the Mediterranean became more important from the Hellenistic era on. So, we all agree that the player, and the AI, should have the opportunity to reasonably represent this historical fact.

Regarding the extra effort for the player and AI to have the opportunity of exploring Red Sea and establishing trade routes there, let’s us be real: in the most western Nile location, Egypt, being the AI or the player, mostly likely won’t be settling cities there, because the area is terrible in production and would make it too cramped, taking away more useful workable tiles from Nile cities. Thus, things will reduce to a situation where we do represent this Red Sea connection with Thebes, or we simply won’t have it, which is, as we discussed, ahistorical.

About Thebes focus on building ships, I’d say that I’m not so sure about that. Right now, Egypt is far isolated in early game and just face troubles against Greek and Roman conquerors, besides an occasional Medjay. Because things are so peaceful, you can afford ignoring military units and defense for a long time, focusing on other things: just see how the AI loves spamming useless cities in Epic or Marathon games. But on the new map things probably will become quite different. First, Egypt will start with Memphis and Thebes is likely to be settled later, so it is less time/production for exploring the Red Sea in the ancient era. Second, with the new civ additions, things may become more troubled: Assyria probably will be hostile to Egypt (and probably we should also make Persia more hostile, because right now it seems that they never go to war) and Nubia will be right next door, and certainly will set its eyes on Thebes, as they did historically. So, I don’t know if things will be so peaceful that the city will afford spamming galleys there, especially earlier on.

While I do think that adding a cape feature is an interesting and easy solution, I’ve come to think that it may be even unnecessary, given that the sea trade with Mesopotamia, Persia and India, and the Red Sea to Indian Ocean exploration, is historically attested at least from Alexander time, so the cape should disappear quite early on. Nonetheless, if added, we probably should include next to Aden, which, IIRC, it is a single water tile between it and the Horn of Africa and could easily block the strait.

(Edit for clarity)

 

[Lennon789]

Playing as the Aztecs, a lot of the historical territory does not have city names assigned to the tiles. This leads to the founding of Teotihuacan in places like Texas and Panama. I propose that the native Civilizations of the New World (Maya, Aztec, and Inca) settle cities named after the indigeneous group that lived in the area. For instance, when the Aztecs settle a city on modern-day Houston (see attached image), they would found a city named "Karankawa", as this was the indigeneous group that lived along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in southern Texas.

 

[HighFunctioningAlcoholic]

Y'all might care a little too much about Egypt...

 

[Dracosolon]

Y'all might care a little too much about Egypt...

yeah they're going the extra Nile

 

[Steb]

I think there should be an islands feature just north of Cape York, between Australia and New Guinea, representing the Torres Strait islands, which are inhabited by a unique indigenous people.

 

[psyblade]

Not really a map suggestion, but I noticed that the Armenia/Azerbaijan/Georgia area of the new map is much better than it used to be, and might even serve as a core for a civ.

 

[1SDANi]

My github is https://github.com/1SDANi/

 

[Alamart]

My github is https://github.com/Alamart1683

 

[stormogulen]

I think I've mentioned this in passing before, but it seems to me that the forests in the "Atlantic" parts of Europe are currently weighted too much towards conifer trees. It's probably true that conifers somewhat predominate nowadays, but that is mostly because they were heavily planted in the last few centuries due to the economic benefits of softwood. The natural vegetation on the other hand was strongly dominated by broadleaf trees. Probably we could both change some of the existing forests to the broadleaf type and add some additional forests if gameplay balance allows it.

To make it a bit more concrete I'm referring to the western light green area in the attached picture below:

Spoiler Natural Vegetation :

 

[Publicola]

That could easily be a texture variant (like the trees used for tundra, with a 'dusting' of snow on them) with no impact on gameplay or the effects, but we have similar variants for similar resources and other terrain types, so this seems like a great idea to me. Given that modern conifer forests are mostly planted, you could even represent the change in forest type by ensuring that whenever a worker plants a forest as an action, the resultant forest growth uses the existing conifer texture.

 

[Mgundry]

Thanks Leoreth for your efforts on the mod and this map. Glad you have refused to enlarge Europe, which I feel should be even smaller and dense, hence the amount of conflict and colonialism over the years.