Extremely large historically inspired fantasy world map!

Psilonemo

Chieftain
Joined
Apr 7, 2022
Messages
53
Hello fellow VP players!

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I've been working on a historically inspired but fantasy 180x112 world map for the last 6 months in my spare time. Each tile and all its features were edited by hand. This map is a gift to the VP community and my way of thanking the main devs & submodders who made Civ 5 VP such an enjoyable experience.

As much as I would have liked to make bigger, more detailed maps, the SDK cannot handle bigger maps, and the game simply is not capable of launching larger maps without crashing. This is the first map I have ever created. Please forgive the occasional misplaced rivers, geographical absurdities, or completely unbalanced continental positions. For those of you who would like to play test the map immediately, I have uploaded three scenarios with 22 vanilla civilizations and 41 city-states. The third scenario called "RomanGlory" basically places Rome in an overpowered position. I implore you to learn how to use the SDK yourself to edit the scenarios and tailor your experience.

Tip: In the scenario screen, you can duplicate the same city-state in order to create multiple start positions. This makes it so a single city-state starts with more than one city. You can use this mechanic to decrease the total number of city-states but strengthen each city-state's power and significance.

I cannot create a dozen different scenarios to satisfy the tastes of everybody, so my recommendation is that you simply download the SDK and edit the scenario yourself to your liking. All you have to do is tweak game speed, game rules, civilizations, city-states, and starting positions. Placing cities, borders, or settlers will make the game crash, so stick to doing nothing but placing start positions. In case you would like to place resources in a completely different way I have also uploaded an "Empty" version with no start positions and resources.

Please feel free to use my map for your own but do place a link to this original thread in case you plan to upload this somewhere like the workshop.

The map has worldwrap, so there are no boundaries and all seas connect from one end to the other. Below are two images that show as much as I could capture with the SDK app. (The map was so big that I couldn't show the upper and lower edges where there are ice sheets.

The "Old World"
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The "New World"
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I highly recommend optimizing your video settings as best as you can and get a hardware upgrade if you're using the VRAM of a potato. Running this map gets very slow, laggy, and occasionally crashes once you enter the mid-game where every faction has at least 5 to 10 cities.

Have fun!

(EDIT)
The Roman Glory Scenario is continuously under development and updates. Gradual improvements to river placements, terrain, resource placements, and so forth, will occur over time.
 

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shoshone feels like they have way too much land and will over perform, maybe consider adding the America?
I really wanted to add more factions to the Pseudo-Americas, but I was limited by the 22 civ limit on the SDK. There is no easy way to skirt around this hard-coded limit besides knowing some DLL. :( This will have to be tweaked on the end of the users. If somebody somehow figures out how to create something like a 26 civ, 35 city state scenario, that would be great. My thoughts were to add Assyria, iroquois, the maya, and poland to better balance the map.
 
I really wanted to add more factions to the Pseudo-Americas, but I was limited by the 22 civ limit on the SDK. There is no easy way to skirt around this hard-coded limit besides knowing some DLL. :( This will have to be tweaked on the end of the users. If somebody somehow figures out how to create something like a 26 civ, 35 city state scenario, that would be great. My thoughts were to add Assyria, iroquois, the maya, and poland to better balance the map.
Such things require Lua knowledge and some database trickery. YnAEMP does a similar thing where civ placements are handled by the map script.
 
Just downloaded, and though I haven't tried it yet, I love these sorts of pseudo-historical maps. Do more!
 
Just downloaded, and though I haven't tried it yet, I love these sorts of pseudo-historical maps. Do more!
I'm going to upload an updated version of my scenario soon! I had to play test it for 500 turns just to discover a lot of the mistakes on the map.
I highly recommend playing this map with custom gamespeed mods. It's such a fun experience having an intercontinental empire already by the classical era.
 
Uploading an updated Roman Glory scenario with a generally polished and tweaked map made to function with the Pontoon Bridges and 3rd and 4th Unique Components mod. Beware, they are extremely OP. Highly suggest fighting against them rather than as them. If you have issues with the map try uploading it again with your own SDK (thereby resetting the mods loaded) and saving it. It should remove all content from mods you do not have activated and make the map compatible with your setup.

(Updated map below and in the original post)
 
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I really wanted to add more factions to the Pseudo-Americas, but I was limited by the 22 civ limit on the SDK.
The solution is clear: abolish France.
(Partly joking, partly serious. I think you need to have +1 in North America)
 
After another 50 hours of playtesting as various factions, I edited the Roman Glory scenario further and edited various coastal areas, rivers, mountain ranges, and islands. The pseudo-mediterranean was completely overhauled. This map should make for great fun against AI Rome.

Rome itself has become some combination of byzantium in the sense that they are between two landmasses and is positioned to be extremely well defensible. It might as well be impossible to besiege... all part of the challenge fighting against them with the AI. Strongly recommend playing as England, Russia, Carthage, and Korea for relatively safe, and any of the American factions for a safe start. All the rest will be exposed to immediate war.

(Updated map posted in original post)
 
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I had to update the roman glory map again with more fixes, polishes, and with compatibility for the new VP patch in mind.
 
I've dabbled with scenerios myself. Honestly I think this is the type of end game play that pros will be wanting eventually. I would like setting up historically accurate (or fantasy Maps) with civilizations that are already established. Then Pros can choose civilizations that have obvious disadvantages. I believe this would be extremely fun.
 
I'm always play testing my maps to improve and polish them. Carthage, Egypt, France, and Assyria/Babylon always end up leading due to their particular advantages, so I'm evening out the odds by placing civs in fairer start locations. At some point I'm going to create a complete fantasy map with every playable civilization but with no historical inspiration whatsoever and make it compatible with many of VP's upcoming modmods like unique city-states and expanded events. It's going to be the ultimate experience.
 
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Recent test runs with my own set of mods have been more or less "balanced" and enjoyable to play. The AI is very competitive and sometimes on a rare occasion places cities like they would have historically. AI city placements have been fine tuned into predictable positions after dozens of test runs and adjustments. Some AIs have been given advantages to make each and every faction a distinct experience.
 
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