[Development] Map Suggestions

[Mazzini]

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

 

[Cacaso]

New terrain types:

• Arctic Coast: 2 commerce (like coast but -1 food)
• Atoll: 2 food 1 commerce, +100% improvement time (land tile representing Pacific atolls)
• Lagoon: 1 food 2 commerce, costs 2 moves, +50% defense (land tile looking like water, representing e.g. the Venetian lagoon)
• Moorland: 1 food, +1 commerce next to rivers (transition between grass and tundra to have less grassland in northern climates)
• Salt Flats: 1 production 2 commerce, +1 commerce next to rivers, costs 2 moves, +25% improvement time (desert alternative for variety)
• Salt Lake: 3 commerce (explicit terrain type representing salt lakes as opposed to freshwater lakes)
• Savanna: 1 food, +1 commerce next to rivers (transitional terrain between plains and grassland, less fertile rainforests)
• Semidesert: 1 production, +1 commerce next to rivers, founding cities requires river or coast (passable and slightly more productive desert alternative)
• Steppe: 1 production, +1 food next to rivers, founding cities requires river or coast (less fertile than plains, benefits for light cavalry)

Terrain type changes:

• Desert, Tundra, Ice: impassable unless made passable by feature, cultural control, or unit ability

New feature types:

• Savanna: +1 food, needs to be removed for most improvements (make subtropical regions more fertile but less improvable)
• Taiga: -1 food, +1 production, +50% defense, costs 2 moves, +0.5 health, can only be removed with late tech (block exploitation of most northern climate regions)

New feature varieties (graphical variations of the same feature):

• Forest: snowy, mediterranean, bamboo
• Marsh: swamp, reeds, jungle
• Island: cold, mediterranean, desert

New resources:

• Millet: +1 food +1 health (1 city), +2 food with Farm
• Obsidian: +1 production, +2 commerce with Mine (copper alternative for some early units)
• Rare Earths: +1 commerce, +3 commerce with Mine, revealed with Metallurgy, enabled with Electronics (required by some lategame improvements and buildings)
• Citrus: +1 food +1 health (2 cities), +3 food with Orchard
• Dates: +1 food +1 health (2 cities), +3 food with Orchard
• Olives: +1 food +1 health (2 cities), +3 food with Orchard
• Cocoa: +1 food +1 happiness (3 cities), +1 food +2 commerce with Plantation
• Opium: +1 commerce +1 happiness (3 cities), +3 commerce with Plantation
• Rubber: +1 production, +2 production with Plantation (maybe required by some lategame buildings and units)
• Jade: +1 commerce +1 happiness (3 cities), -1 production +3 commerce with Quarry
• Salt: +1 commerce +1 health (3 cities), +1 food -1 production +2 commerce with Quarry
• Amber: +1 commerce +1 happiness (3 cities), +3 food with Mine or Harvesting Boat
• Dye: can also occur on water and be improved with Harvesting Boat

Resource varieties (instances of the same resource that are represented graphically differently on the map):

• Crab: crab (default), shrimp
• Dye: indigo (default), henna, murex, cochineal
• Gems: gems (default), diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, turquoise
• Citrus: lemons (default), oranges
• Sheep: sheep (default), llama
• Ivory: Asian elephant (default), African elephant
• Cows: Holstein (default), brown
• Spices: pepper (default), saffron, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla
• Pigs: pink (default), furry

Note that a lot of the effects of these additions are not defined and implemented yet, especially things like interactions with buildings and units. They have only added to the extent required to incorporate them into the map.

Hi Leo,
There are some points that I think could be analyzed in these variant resources.

Ivory: Asian elephant (default), African elephant - I think it could be interesting to add the Walrus variant as well, as this resource could be applied in places with little diversity of resources that are the tundra tiles, in areas like Greenland, Svalbard (in this if you add an island tile with the resource or add it to the north of the mainland), some parts of siberia/northern russia, bering strait/alaska and also some islands in canada.
To see possible locations I suggest looking at this map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walrus#/media/File:Odobenus_rosmarus_distribution.png

I think it would be very interesting to have this variant of resource ivory, in colonization MODs there are animated images of the walrus animal, so I think it would be possible to search from there and just add them to the map in these locations.

Cows: Holstein (default), brown - Maybe add a third variant which would be all white/gray cows, to represent breeds like Nellore and Brahma, which are very common in beef cattle production, in places like india, brazil, USA .


Crab: crab (default), shrimp - perhaps change the name of this resource to crustacean, as this would represent both crabs and shrimps, but in this case as it would be just the nomenclature, then I think crab can be kept, if it is not very well accepted by the public .


As for the new resources:
- I think the salt resource could go from +1 food when improved to +2 food when improved, as it usually appears in areas with lower food availability like desert/semi-desert/salt plain tiles, and so if the salt resource not being able to have 2 food on a tile this tile would not even be able to "sustain" itself without relying on the help of other tiles because each population consumes 2 food per turn, so how is it in areas that are already weak in food availability I think that giving a +2 food when improved would be nice. because the use of salt to preserve food is very important and in the past (before refrigeration) it was almost mandatory to be able to preserve food such as meat. so i think salt could give food +2 not because it is a food itself, like wheat or rice but because it allows to preserve a lot of food. and I think it would be gameplay wise to boost this resource so that some cities in more desert areas can at least work on the salt tile without depending on the food produced in other tiles, I think it won't be too much boost, but it will make viable.

- As for the ambar resource, I think there was an error, it will give +3 food, I believe it should be +3 trade, right?

- The millet, dates and olive resources will be very useful because they will bring more food precisely to areas that have little food availability, it will help a lot in areas close to the Mediterranean. mainly because they are areas with a lot of deserts and when it is not desert there are many hills plains, it will help a lot in the area of italy, greece, egypt, arabia. nice addition.

As for the savanna feature:
- Will it be able to coexist with improvments like farm, plantations and pastures? or when building these improvements this feature will be removed and then the tile loses the +1 food bonus. Will this feature be able to spread like forests?

 

[Dracosolon]

For Ivory it could make sense to distinguish between Ivory (which would just provide ) and Elephant (which would also enable War Elephants). The true Elephant resource would then be limited to Asia (and North Africa until it'd disappear at a certain point).

Though rather than walruses, why not seals instead? But then the polar regions shouldn't be too rich anyway.

 

[Leoreth]

Ivory: Asian elephant (default), African elephant - I think it could be interesting to add the Walrus variant as well, as this resource could be applied in places with little diversity of resources that are the tundra tiles, in areas like Greenland, Svalbard (in this if you add an island tile with the resource or add it to the north of the mainland), some parts of siberia/northern russia, bering strait/alaska and also some islands in canada.
To see possible locations I suggest looking at this map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walrus#/media/File:Odobenus_rosmarus_distribution.png

I think it would be very interesting to have this variant of resource ivory, in colonization MODs there are animated images of the walrus animal, so I think it would be possible to search from there and just add them to the map in these locations.

Yeah, I have considered this. The issue is that I do not want to deal with walrus resources enabling War Elephant units.

Cows: Holstein (default), brown - Maybe add a third variant which would be all white/gray cows, to represent breeds like Nellore and Brahma, which are very common in beef cattle production, in places like india, brazil, USA .

I cannot create art myself. If you have art for this I can include it.

- I think the salt resource could go from +1 food when improved to +2 food when improved, as it usually appears in areas with lower food availability like desert/semi-desert/salt plain tiles, and so if the salt resource not being able to have 2 food on a tile this tile would not even be able to "sustain" itself without relying on the help of other tiles because each population consumes 2 food per turn, so how is it in areas that are already weak in food availability I think that giving a +2 food when improved would be nice. because the use of salt to preserve food is very important and in the past (before refrigeration) it was almost mandatory to be able to preserve food such as meat. so i think salt could give food +2 not because it is a food itself, like wheat or rice but because it allows to preserve a lot of food. and I think it would be gameplay wise to boost this resource so that some cities in more desert areas can at least work on the salt tile without depending on the food produced in other tiles, I think it won't be too much boost, but it will make viable.

That's not quite true, it often also occurs on grassland terrain e.g. in Europe or North America. I think the food aspect of salt is better represented with its health bonus than its food bonus. Note that a 3 cities health resource is relatively rare: grain, meat and seafood only affect 1-2 cities.

- As for the ambar resource, I think there was an error, it will give +3 food, I believe it should be +3 trade, right?

You're right, I fixed the error.

As for the savanna feature:
- Will it be able to coexist with improvments like farm, plantations and pastures? or when building these improvements this feature will be removed and then the tile loses the +1 food bonus. Will this feature be able to spread like forests?

No, it works just like a forest that you need to remove before being able to build an improvement on the tile (with the exception of Camps). It however does not grant production on removal. I don't think I have defined an automatic spread for it either.

The idea of the feature is to make that sort of terrain good when unimproved but harder to improve. The areas generally covered by Savanna were not easily developed in history.

 

[LukeAtmey]

Hi, can I please have access to the map? https://github.com/PsyykeL

 

[Leoreth]

Added.

 

[1SDANi]

Can I be added to the map branch please? https://github.com/1SDANi/

 

[Enyavar]

Wow, that map. Love it.

I was checking where the lagoons are placed, and can find only a few spots which makes the feature quite rare. What I noticed:
- Venice (lagoon): The swamp lagoon looks amazing
- New Orleans (river delta): This plain water lagoon actually looks even more amazing, with the river next to it
- Porto Alegre (lagoon): Ayup.
- Chesapeake (estuary, Washington/Richmond): should be located 1 SW of its current position
- Lake Texcoco (swamp lake): Looks neat, especially if the defense bonus applies once there is a city on top
- Maracaibo Bay (bay/lake): Easy to miss, pretty accurate
- one in Micronesia (? could be an atoll, not sure from the visual)

Now, the following lagoons I'd like to see in order of importance:
- Lagos (lagoon, Lagos)
- Ébrié (lagoon, Abidja)
- Pearl River (estuary, HongKong)
- Bissau (several large mangrove estuaries - maybe a Savannah lagoon +1 island feature at the coast? Yes the West African coast is exciting)
- Yangze estuary (Shanghai)

Not sure about Lagoons in Southeast Asia, I feel that some might be missing. Possibly the Ganges River delta with Bangladesh?
Also not sure if it's possible to have medieval terrain shifts that would turn two un-settleable swamp lagoon tiles at the Persian Gulf / Euphrates mouth, into the flatland tiles like they are in the map as displayed.

 

[Steb]

Wow, that map. Love it.

I was checking where the lagoons are placed, and can find only a few spots which makes the feature quite rare. What I noticed:
- Venice (lagoon): The swamp lagoon looks amazing
- New Orleans (river delta): This plain water lagoon actually looks even more amazing, with the river next to it
- Porto Alegre (lagoon): Ayup.
- Chesapeake (estuary, Washington/Richmond): should be located 1 SW of its current position
- Lake Texcoco (swamp lake): Looks neat, especially if the defense bonus applies once there is a city on top
- Maracaibo Bay (bay/lake): Easy to miss, pretty accurate
- one in Micronesia (? could be an atoll, not sure from the visual)

Yeah, the lagoons are great. There was some involved discussion at some point in this thread (I think this was one of the last posts), and if I recall well, the following possible locations for lagoons were discussed and rejected: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Hamburg, St. Petersburg, Königsberg, and Hong Kong. One thing that was brought up is that we don't necessarily want every "water city" to be on a lagoon.

The one you identify as Chesapeake is actually New York harbor. I personally don't really like it, I think it's a stretch to say New York was build on water (even if some of it is reclaimed land). I think it should just be a regular land tile.

Micronesia does have a lagoon, representing the location of Nan Madol on the large-ish island of Pohnpei, which is fully surrounded by lagoons IRL.

Now, the following lagoons I'd like to see in order of importance:
- Lagos (lagoon, Lagos)
- Ébrié (lagoon, Abidja)
- Pearl River (estuary, HongKong)
- Bissau (several large mangrove estuaries - maybe a Savannah lagoon +1 island feature at the coast? Yes the West African coast is exciting)
- Yangze estuary (Shanghai)

Not sure about Lagoons in Southeast Asia, I feel that some might be missing. Possibly the Ganges River delta with Bangladesh?
Also not sure if it's possible to have medieval terrain shifts that would turn two un-settleable swamp lagoon tiles at the Persian Gulf / Euphrates mouth, into the flatland tiles like they are in the map as displayed.

I do agree that Lagos could use a lagoon, as its name directly suggests. From Google Maps, it looks like Lagos has a fair amount of canals. I think it is also justified for Abidjan. The West African coastline is full of lagoons in real life, and these two places are definitely the best spots to put them, considering that they eventually led to the birth of gigantic cities. On the map they would be these two tiles:

Spoiler :

I can't recall if these two cities were seriously discussed. One issue might be that they negatively affect the look and feel of the African coastline. I think if they are initially forested, it would look fine.

Other than that, I'm not a big fan of using lagoons to represent estuaries, except where the estuaries create notable lagoon- or lake-like structures. So I'd say no to Hong Kong, Bissau, the Ganges delta, and the Mesopotamian estuary.

On the other hand, the Shanghai area does seem like it could warrant a lagoon, considering what the area looks like:

Spoiler :

I wonder if the best might be to turn the lake tile immediately west of Shanghai — Lake Tai — into a lagoon tile. It would allow the important city of Suzhou ("the Venice of the East") to be an alternative to Shanghai in some games, and it might look better than the current lake tile that sits awkwardly next to the river.

Still, I could imagine an argument that Lake Tai is notable in its own right and should remain a lake tile. I also don't think that Shanghai itself should be on a lagoon tile, and having a lagoon tile next to it may or may not be desirable. Worth experimenting with, I'd say.

Elsewhere in Asia, Bangkok could be argued for, but it's more of a river city than a lagoon city. In India, Cochin/Kochi would maybe be an appropriate lagoon tile; I haven't researched it much.

 

[Enyavar]

Okay, I agree that New York is not a lagoon-city, and I don't understand the rationale behind that. If New York counts, I'd argue that all other kinds of other places are also legit "lagoons", including Hong Kong, Ganges and Mesopotamia. Your reasoning why these places are not great lagoons, is understandable.

Agreed to the position of Abidjan (jungle-lagoon); with Lagos I would have suggested 1S of the tile you indicated (non-forested lagoon), that makes the look and feel of the African coastline less strange. Or, if we go veeeery loosely with the position of Lagos, we could place it 1SE of the tile you indicated (jungle-lagoon): conflate the Lagoon of Lagos with the Niger delta and the Rivers state.

I feel that Bissau however, is not properly representated by the grassland savanah tile. The very least that should be placed next to the coast is an island.

 

[Steb]

Okay, I agree that New York is not a lagoon-city, and I don't understand the rationale behind that. If New York counts, I'd argue that all other kinds of other places are also legit "lagoons", including Hong Kong, Ganges and Mesopotamia. Your reasoning why these places are not great lagoons, is understandable.

Agreed to the position of Abidjan (jungle-lagoon); with Lagos I would have suggested 1S of the tile you indicated (non-forested lagoon), that makes the look and feel of the African coastline less strange. Or, if we go veeeery loosely with the position of Lagos, we could place it 1SE of the tile you indicated (jungle-lagoon): conflate the Lagoon of Lagos with the Niger delta and the Rivers state.

I feel that Bissau however, is not properly representated by the grassland savanah tile. The very least that should be placed next to the coast is an island.

Lagos is clearly in the deepest part of the Bight of Benin (that convave bend on the coastline), though. That's also the tile identified as Lagos in the city name suggestion spreadsheet.

Agreed that Guinea-Bissau is very poorly represented at the moment! There are a lot of rivers in that area, so I think there should be at least one more river, in addition to an islands tile representing the Bissagos archipelago. This would probably work best:

Spoiler :

Note that my suggested river in this image represents ambiguously both the Geba and the Casamance, which I think is fine. There's no way to have both, but both are navigable.

 

[LostPenguin]

Can I be added to the private repo to access the map branch? Many thanks!

WenhanLyu - Overview

WenhanLyu has 4 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.

github.com

 

[stormogulen]

Hope it's not too late for some minor terrain suggestions.

Spoiler Angola :

-Added additional hills in inner Angola representing the Bié Plateaue.

-For aesthetics, made inner Angola overall greener with more savanna instead of plains, giving more contrast with the dry coastal and southern areas. The highlands near Huambo might be fertile enough to justify some grassland hills so I marked a couple there.

-I read a bit about Angolan Rare Earths, and the links I found refer to findings near Longonjo. A more accurate placement for that would be on one of the two tiles I marked as grassland.

-It would make sense to spawn coffee somewhere in northern Angola around 1800 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_production_in_Angola). It could for example go on the "coastal savanna tile" or 1E of that.

Spoiler Namibia etc. :

-Added coastal hills in SW Angola (Serra da Chela) and NW Namibia (Baynes Mountains). It gives a more continuous Great Escarpment around southern Africa and breaks up the monotonous coastal plains a bit.

-Added savanna trees near the Etosha Pan representing local mopane woodlands (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angolan_mopane_woodlands) and makalani palms.

-Added hills west of the Okavango delta (Tsodilo Hills).

-Added slightly more semidesert in Namibia and Botswana. The hill in Namibia could be plains to allow founding Windhoek, but it looks a bit weird IMO.

 

[stormogulen]

Now some minor suggestions on Siberia.

Spoiler North Yenisey :

-Opened spots for Norilsk and the historical town Turukhansk.

-Opened the most accurate (I think) spot for Yeniseysk.

-Made the area overall less habitable with more tundra and marshes. In general the more significant settlements in the area are located along the Yenisey river. Even those are mostly tiny though.

Spoiler Tunguska area :

-Made the area north of the Angara river less habitable with more tundra instead of moorland. IRL it's one of the most desolate areas of the world. Much of it belongs to Evenkia which has ~0.02 inhabitants per square kilometer. I opened a spot for its capital Tura although it doesn't really seem necessary. (As a somewhat related sidenote: in the so-called Tunguska event of 1908 an asteroid exploded near the horse tile with a force comparable to a termonuclear bomb. It caused 0 confirmed casualties and 3 suspected. And flattened about 80 million trees.)

-Removed marshes preventing Ust-Ilimsk and Bratsk from being settled.

Spoiler Krasnoyarsk area :

-This part of the suggestion is not so precise but I think there can be more plains/steppe terrain and mixed forests around Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk. The natural vegetation in these areas is forest steppe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Siberian_forest_steppe), and the areas are quite productive in terms of agriculture due to the presence of chernozem soil.

-Added a wheat near Krasnoyarsk which could use a bit more food. Could spawn around 1600-1650 if its presence earlier on is a problem.

-Added a peak and moorland hill between Novokuznetsk and Abakan to represent the Kuznetsk Alatau range.

Spoiler Tuva area :

-Moved steppe near Tuva 1W since west-central Tuva has steppe areas, for example where its capital Kyzyl is located. East and northeast of that are the Eastern Sayan mountains covered by mostly mountain forests, so I put some moorland/grassland forests there (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayan_montane_conifer_forests).

-Added a deer 2W of Irkutsk. I got the idea when I read a hypothesis that the reindeer was originally domesticated in the Sayan Mountains. Maybe Irkutsk could use the food.

-Added some steppe north of Irkutsk since there area has forest steppe.

-Restored a coal in the area (Irkutsk basin), but it's not really obligatory (maybe about the 5th most important coal basin historically in Russia). Could alternatively get an aluminium to represent Irkutsk's large smelter and aviation industry. Irkutsk is quite a powerful industrial city and it would make sense if the area shines more in the late game than in the early.

Spoiler Western Siberia :

-Opened a spot for the tiny but historical town Beryozovo.

-A bit east of Omsk there is the pretty large but shallow Lake Chany. I'm not sure if dumping a freshwater lake there is a good idea. If not, a lagoon + marsh solution might work.

 

[hnrysml]

Yeah, the lagoons are great. There was some involved discussion at some point in this thread (I think this was one of the last posts), and if I recall well, the following possible locations for lagoons were discussed and rejected: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Hamburg, St. Petersburg, Königsberg, and Hong Kong. One thing that was brought up is that we don't necessarily want every "water city" to be on a lagoon.

Believe it or not, Königsberg was actually accepted by Leoreth in the end as a lagoon location, I remember this fondly because it was the end of the long "Königsberg" crisis with which this forum was confronted.

Königsberg is at the Vistula Lagoon but not really built on top of it, but representing the lagoon is a nice idea at least, even if it's just lagoon + marsh. I have to look at the area anyway to account for the Baltic Sea proportions so I will try some possibilities.

Edit: actually, let me correct that. The city is right between the Vistula Lagoon and the Curonian Spit, both of which qualify as lagoons, which to me is a good justification to make the city tile a lagoon entirely. Map suggesters rejoice, it is the Return of the König(sberg).

Lest we forget hhnnnngg Königsberg:

hhhnnnngg Königsberg

 

[Dracosolon]

How did this Königsberg mess even start anyway?

 

[1SDANi]

How did this Königsberg mess even start anyway?

The glorious hnnng Konigsberg message that hnrysml quoted in part, which was a reaction to Leoreth getting tired of people thinking "no Konigsberg" means "convince me to add Konigsberg", and especially of the convoluted strategies people suggested to facilitate its inclusion such as moving the entire continent of Africa 1 tile south so Europe can have an additional row of tiles (though to be fair, AtlantaMarty's Africa suggestion wasn't about Konigsberg, it was about Italy and Spain, but it was similar enough to how the Konigsberg suggestions tended to go for Leoreth to use Konigsberg as an example as to why it's generally a bad idea to suggest that we should take an entire land mass and push it somewhere else)

Here's my idea:

Spoiler :

Move Africa fourty tiles south. Also move America fourty tiles west. Make bigger Europe. It's fine if Japan is in LA's BFC I think.

My rationale:

Spoiler :

hhhnnnngg Königsberg

 

[Steb]

Believe it or not, Königsberg was actually accepted by Leoreth in the end as a lagoon location, I remember this fondly because it was the end of the long "Königsberg" crisis with which this forum was confronted.

Lest we forget hhnnnngg Königsberg:

I'm pretty sure it was temporarily considered, but rejected in the end, though? The current map overview thread shows only a water tile with amber where the putative lagoon tile would be.

Thanks for the hhhnnnngg reminder and the subsequent laugh

 

[Leoreth]

Believe it or not, Königsberg was actually accepted by Leoreth in the end as a lagoon location, I remember this fondly because it was the end of the long "Königsberg" crisis with which this forum was confronted.

 

[Temüjin VIII]

Leo, do you still accept minor map adjustments? Just reshaping river courses.

I'm not sure if this has been proposed before, but while working on some city names, I realized that I think the rivers of Hindustan would look more accurate if we adjust the shape of the Ganges River and stretch the Yamuna River 1 tile north. I also included some preplaced cities for reference.

Spoiler Proposed Ganges and Yamuna River changes :

Reference: (map from Wikipedia article on Ganges River)

Spoiler Ganges river basin map :