MapEdit Question on Resizing

[Konig15]

I have either an insurmountable or painfully easy stoppage on a project that I might actually be able to pull off skill-wise, a tribute to Fading Lights, my favorite Civ 2 scenario ever. Problem is, I suck at map creation, and the whole Europe map not appropriate here. So I decided the Kommeni map would do nicely it just needs to be upscaled to modern bigness. So I took the old map and

Ta da!

Not the full map, but you can JUST see the land in the upper right.
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I need to resize the LAND. Why this big? Well, I like big maps and I cannot lie. The other reason is to make sure to leave the impression that this is a HUGE area, windswept and hard to defend AND I need to have all the Italian trading enclaves as assets to seize. Putting the "Roman Empire" back together after the fourth Crusade needs to be hard, cause it was shattered GOOD among many MANY factions.

Also, there are LOTS of good base maps I could use for lots of good stuff, but only if I can resize them without too much issue. Now I understand they'd need more touchups than a Drag Queen pageant show after a Dallas blackout in August, but that's SMALL potatoes for someone whose artistic talent is tracing at best.

Maybe I missed the function, maybe it's with another program...I hope?

 

[JPetroski]

I don't follow what you're asking here? I believe you are using Mercator's mapEdit software? You can snip off sections of the map with no problem. You can increase the size but you'll get one terrain type (such as water). I know you can take images (bmp) in the Civ2 Palette and convert them to maps. The software also allows you to create a bmp. If you're trying to, say, double the size of a map and keep the general terrain, you'd need to save it as a bmp then double the size of it in a photo editing software/paint. Then load it back up into mapEdit and convert to a civ2 map from the bmp.

I hope I answered your question but I'm not clear what you were asking, so...

 

[Konig15]

No. OK, let me rephrase. I need the original map but sctreched to the current dimensions. I don't even need it to be GOOD, just something I can edit back into shape. The original map was 86X127 and the new expanded map is 144X227. I need the point of the map that was at 8^X127 in the old map to be at 144X227 with everything in between expanded and filled in.In this case that aera would be the Empty Quarter. It's not an expanded map in that it goes further east into central Asia but a higher resolution version of the old map with more tiles per square mile (or fewer square miles per tile)

See, in order to make a scenario you MUST start with a map, and I can't make maps. So I either need someone to make a map for me or I need a utility to resize maps for me. Or to be blunt, I can't create scenarios. I need the maps in place before I can do anything else.

 

[JPetroski]

Ok so then the only way I'm aware to do it is how I explained above. Use Mercator's mapEdit utility to convert a map into a bmp, then expand the size as desired in paint, then save that .bmp as a civ2 map again in the mapEdit utility, load it up, and start fixing it (because it will probably be quite "splotchy" but at least gets you started.

 

[Konig15]

OK I've been using MapEdit 2.0, I can't find a link to 2.1, the website doesn't for this CivEvo doesn't seem to have MapEdit of any type, and with MapEdit, I see no option to save a map as a BMP file. Not saying it's not there, I'm just not seeing it.

 

[JPetroski]

You need to select it from the drop down in "Save As"

 

[Konig15]

You need to select it from the drop down in "Save As"

View attachment 599218

All right....that is one ugly map but I think I can work with it. I know the grassland/desert/ocean thing is screwed, but a terrain swap of grassland and ocean got the coasts back. Now I need to see about the damage to the mountains but nearly everything's covered in rivers. Does the Mapedit have a way to remove all rivers? At this point, I'd rather manually put them back in, striking them all out at once would be a lot faster with something like Map edit rather than with the Civ 2 map editor. If it's possible.

And hey, thank you! I finally have a project base I can start from. Now I just gotta see about the mountains and hills and compare and rebuild from there. So once the rivers are dealt with I think I'm off to the races.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Here's something that might help you. This script will take a map and re-create it (on the same map) so that 1 tile becomes 4 tiles or 9 tiles.

You must have TOTPPv16 (the most recent version).

Open your map in Test of Time, and save the game (this script can't be undone, so if you don't get what you want, you must load the game again, and follow these instructions once more).

Use CTRL+Shift+F3 to open the console, then use the Load Script button to open mapStretch.lua. Choose 2 coordinates, 1 in the top left of the portion of the map you want to expand, the other in the bottom right. Suppose you choose (4,8) and (100,50). Suppose you want each tile to become 4 tiles (i.e. a 2x2 diamond). Then, you type this into the console:

copyMapPortion(4,8,100,50,2)

Press return and the map will be changed. (You can use ctrl+shift+3 to export the map to a .mp file).

EDIT: If your original map selection is too big, the script will still work, just the portions that are off the map won't show. If the map selection is too small, ocean will be left over.

 

[Knighttime]

@Konig15 I've been digging into the topic of European maps lately for my Medieval Millennium mod. I might be able to make you a brand new map, covering any region of your choice, in whatever size you want. (It wouldn't be as much work for me as you might think, because of how I can leverage the work I've already done.) You might get decent results by up-scaling the one you found, but honestly I think a map created from scratch in the correct size would be even better.

If you're interested, here's the info I'd need:

1. What latitude/longitude region, exactly, do you want the map to cover? (The best way to get precise lat/long coordinates is probably to query points on Google Maps or Google Earth.)
2. Do you want this to be a maximum-size "gigamap", with 32,767 tiles or as close to it as possible? If not just let me know how big you want.
3. Do you intend to use the game's basic terrain types? That would be the easiest for me, but if you know you want custom terrain types, let me know and we can discuss.

Limitations (just so you're not disappointed later):

1. You'd probably be on your own for adding rivers, sorry.
2. Forest cover is very dependent on the historical era, and furthermore the game's basic terrains don't provide any good option for the pine forests in the far north (boreal or taiga) or at higher elevations -- setting those as "Forest" allows clearing them to highly productive "Grassland" which is unrealistic. So I might ignore forests and let you add those where you wish.

No pressure, of course -- you can certainly proceed with what you've already found, and the tips/tools provided by JPetroski and Prof. Garfield, and I won't be offended. Just thought I'd make the offer since it's closely connected to something I've already been working on. (Also, you can PM me if you'd rather respond privately instead of in this thread.)

(EDIT: I see now that the inline image you provided is what I would call "the fertile crescent", although the map you attached is what I would call "Mediterranean region". Neither is really Europe but that's fine by me. This is why I asked for latitude/longitude coordinates of the map corners, because that's the clearest way to express your ideal map region.)

 

[Konig15]

@Konig15 SNIP

(EDIT: I see now that the inline image you provided is what I would call "the fertile crescent", although the map you attached is what I would call "Mediterranean region". Neither is really Europe but that's fine by me. This is why I asked for latitude/longitude coordinates of the map corners, because that's the clearest way to express your ideal map region.)

Hey! Thank you for the offer! I'm sorry for not responding sooner but I've been having dental problems and associated sleeping problems for weeks (caused by acceptance weirdly enough) so I've been involved in very exhausting personal issues for the last two weeks.

So since you are willing to make me a map, I have a suggestion, which you are free to take or reject. I want a gigamap but think of it more as a utility map, with the basic terrains that can be cut up for multiple scenarios I AND OTHERS can use for near east/Western Asia scenarios, anything from AGe of Empires I for CIv 2 all the way up to Fallout Resource Wars, War War I Med. Theater, the conquests of Alexander the Great, the last Byzantine/Sansidid War or a Crusader States Scenario that allows you to conquer Arabia and into Persia.

The scale I want is basically enough so I can make the Italian trade ports (except Galata, which will probably have to be a sea unit or something) primary objectives for Byzantine conquest, something that MUST be done to rebuild the economy. Problem is I'm the rankest of rank amateurs and when I think of scale, it's mostly to make hermetically sealing the empire from Turkish gazis and pirates an impossibility, requiring you to be VERY active and aggressive in patrols both by land and sea.

If you've ever played Stellaris, they took out two of the three forms of hyperspace travel in that game to hyperspace would allow choke points where you could build big expensive time-consuming fortresses and be done with it, and for me that negated the whole point of the distance of space. Here every province needs to fend for itself whether or not it actually can or it's gonna be stepped to death by Turkish raiders.

I just want to make sure that Italy up to the Savoy Region is in this map so if you do SUPER well, you can move on Italy the way the Ottomans did and take the Ottoman's place, same thing with North Africa with enough depth that

Now, as far as coordinates I can give you, I cannot but I can make requests based on locations
In the west, the Algerian City of Constantine with no black squares in it's city radius if possible
In the North, at least Azov or Rostov on Don in Russia again no black spaces if possible
To the south Mecca. In a perfect world, I'd love the whole of Arabia for completeness but I wouldn't blame you for wanting to punch me for a request like that
To the east, the eastern banks of the whole of the Caspian Sea

That is essentially the Kommi map slightly upsized in scope of the earth while I think a Byzantine focused scenario would do best from a lot of zoom in, for a general ulity perspective it might be better to only slightly zoom into allowing the total conquest of Arabia and much larger portions of Central Asia for scenarios I myself have not thought about, but could possibly include an updated Great Game scenario possibly with a Cold War sequel.

If this sounds unreasonable or somewhat reasonable with some things being dropped or amended, I'm happy to work with you.

I'm hoping to get a map made that could be useful to a lot of different scenarios. I don't know how many new scenarios people are coming in but the maps are a big hurdle to get over. Probably not as much as learning lua but lua you can do one bite at a time and it more experimentation freindly.

Also if you're interested I could use a Giga treatment for the USA map from American Kingdoms and USA 2012, where the map as-is is great, it just needs to be expanded to go down to the Panama Canal/ Caribbean basin and north into Canada. Which I want for a Fallout project and if I ever get past these ones, a Worldwar scenario (based on the Harry Turtledove series). But if there's only one request, let's focus on the Med Basin/West Asia one first.

And because this post was long, just the seven basic terrian types as used in vanilla files would be fine for my purposes because I'm more than willing to change those around as I need them.

 

[Knighttime]

I want a gigamap but think of it more as a utility map, with the basic terrains that can be cut up for multiple scenarios I AND OTHERS can use for near east/Western Asia scenarios, anything from AGe of Empires I for CIv 2 all the way up to Fallout Resource Wars, War War I Med. Theater, the conquests of Alexander the Great, the last Byzantine/Sansidid War or a Crusader States Scenario that allows you to conquer Arabia and into Persia.

Well, you (and anyone else) would certainly be welcome to use this map -- or portions of it -- for as many scenarios as you want. But creating a fresh map from scratch for each scenario, customized with the ideal boundaries and resolution (i.e., total number of map tiles), seems like it would give the best results.

Now, as far as coordinates I can give you, I cannot but I can make requests based on locations
In the west, the Algerian City of Constantine with no black squares in it's city radius if possible
In the North, at least Azov or Rostov on Don in Russia again no black spaces if possible
To the south Mecca. In a perfect world, I'd love the whole of Arabia for completeness but I wouldn't blame you for wanting to punch me for a request like that
To the east, the eastern banks of the whole of the Caspian Sea
...
If this sounds unreasonable or somewhat reasonable with some things being dropped or amended, I'm happy to work with you.

OK, here's a first pass at this region, showing the coastlines (click the image to see it full-size):

This is a 159 x 205 gigamap (32,595 total tiles) which is the best dimensions for the region you described. The white dots are the cities of Constantine, Rostov-on-Don, and Mecca and all of them fit the entire city radius on valid tiles (plus there's another tile outside the city radius on the very edge of the map).

I could certainly include all of the Arabian peninsula instead of cutting it off at Mecca if you really want. But that adds a huge amount of the Sahara Desert as well, plus more land to the east -- basically adding a lot of tiles on the southern half of the map that are unlikely to be usable terrain. And since the map size can't be expanded further (it's already as close to 32,767 tiles as possible), increasing the covered region means that everything you see here would have to fit into fewer tiles -- a lower resolution, you might say. So... it's your call, but this feels to me like a better map region for most purposes. It's kind of a classic "ancient world" map, and the rest of Arabia isn't needed from that point of view.

Before I go further and start adding terrain types, are you happy with this region? Now's the time to make changes!

Also if you're interested I could use a Giga treatment for the USA map from American Kingdoms and USA 2012, where the map as-is is great, it just needs to be expanded to go down to the Panama Canal/ Caribbean basin and north into Canada. Which I want for a Fallout project and if I ever get past these ones, a Worldwar scenario (based on the Harry Turtledove series). But if there's only one request, let's focus on the Med Basin/West Asia one first.

One thing at a time. If I finish this map and you're happy with how it turns out, then perhaps we can talk about another project.

 

[Konig15]

Hey that looks, beautiful man! As for alterations, if you're willing to be patient, if you are willing to be patient I'd like a download and a few days to do test placements in Anatolia, the Greeks Islands and the Levant to see how the city scaping is working because for MY needs the bulk of the action of a Fading Lights 2 scenario is going to be there and I'd need to compare how that spacing feels next to Fading Lights and Kommeni.

If I had to choose RIGHT NOW, my gut tells me....actually before I say anything, could I could a download to try to do test placements? Get back to you tops Monday evening (I'm EST).

BTW, how'd you do that so fast? That's AMAZING!

 

[Knighttime]

BTW, how'd you do that so fast? That's AMAZING!

Well, not by manually placing individual tiles, I'll say that much. It probably took me about an hour and a half to get this first pass of coastlines done -- but that's because I spent many hours over the past year or so, figuring out a complex process to automate or script much of the work involved in Civ 2 map generation. That upfront work was long and involved, but now that it's done, I can produce any map much faster than you'd probably expect. (For real maps of earth, I mean, not fictional worlds.)

I have a suggestion, which you are free to take or reject. I want a gigamap but think of it more as a utility map, with the basic terrains that can be cut up for multiple scenarios I AND OTHERS can use for near east/Western Asia scenarios, anything from AGe of Empires I for CIv 2 all the way up to Fallout Resource Wars, War War I Med. Theater, the conquests of Alexander the Great, the last Byzantine/Sansidid War or a Crusader States Scenario that allows you to conquer Arabia and into Persia.

Are you asking for a single large "utility" map because you thought making a map will take me a very long time, so you want to get one you can carve up and reuse in various sections? Because honestly I'd rather make several maps, each one geared towards a specific scenario, instead of one generic one that's never quite right. Now that you realize I can create maps pretty fast, maybe that doesn't seem like such a crazy idea.

... I'd like a download and a few days to do test placements in Anatolia, the Greeks Islands and the Levant to see how the city scaping is working because for MY needs the bulk of the action of a Fading Lights 2 scenario is going to be there and I'd need to compare how that spacing feels next to Fading Lights and Kommeni.

I can't quite tell from what you've written (here and earlier) if this map region is really what you want for your current project, or if your first step is going to be to chop it up and use only a portion of it -- which would be kind of a shame, I think.

But creating a fresh map from scratch for each scenario, customized with the ideal boundaries and resolution (i.e., total number of map tiles), seems like it would give the best results.

One of the issues here is the way map projections work, and the limitations of them. If you took a good Civ map of North America and selected the top left corner of that to create a new map of only the state of Alaska, that probably wouldn't work well at all. There's going to be quite a bit of distortion in that region, and you'd be far better off creating a new map of Alaska from scratch. Same thing here -- I'm accounting for the curvature of the earth to keep distances as accurate as possible in all regions of this map, but that means that only in the center of the map does North-South run truly vertical. So if you break this map up into smaller sections and use just a portion of it, especially near the edges, the accuracy isn't going to be ideal.

That being said, I understand the importance of testing out city spacing in order to determine whether the map size (total number of tiles) is appropriate. So I'm attaching the .MP file for you to test that aspect of it. But please don't hesitate to say if you'd like a smaller region, or a map with fewer tiles, or whatever -- tell me what you honestly want, instead of trying to make this work and hack it up on your own later. Because I'm working with scripts that create a map projection, changing the source region or the resulting map size isn't all that difficult.

 

[Konig15]

Well, not by manually placing individual tiles, I'll say that much. It probably took me about an hour and a half to get this first pass of coastlines done -- but that's because I spent many hours over the past year or so, figuring out a complex process to automate or script much of the work involved in Civ 2 map generation. That upfront work was long and involved, but now that it's done, I can produce any map much faster than you'd probably expect. (For real maps of earth, I mean, not fictional worlds.)

Hi Knighttime, I must apologize for not getting back to you. I've had a an interesting month that started with my car melting down, included a tip to the ER for what seems to be restless leg syndrome and a bunch of other drama. Not fun. But I just tried out the scale of the map you made, it's wonderful to look at even without any land terrian, but it's about the scale of the orginal Fading Lights scenario and I was hoping for something a bit harder to the borders.

If you can, would you be interested in taking that scale and zooming in say 30-40%? as in more zoomed in so bigger islands (like Cyrus certainly Crete) and...how about to make the zoom more possible, you reset the borders at Baku in the east, which will allow for a little bit of Iran and the Persian Gulf and Safaga in the south, as that is the the most northern of the Egpytian ports, seems to be the oldest still inhabited Red Sea ports and the only only with any kind of wikipedia page with a history on them. All the rest are WAY further south and I can't confirm which were historically ports in the Middle Ages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safaga

Would that be an issue?

 

[Knighttime]

OK... that revised area is best accommodated with a gigamap of 169 x 193, and I'm attaching the result. I was as generous as possible with the coastlines of Cyprus and Crete, and as a result they actually exceeded your percentage goals: Cyprus went from 25 to 38 land tiles (52% gain) and Crete went all the way from 21 to 34 land tiles (62% gain). If that's too much of an increase, I could easily reduce them a bit while keeping the rest of the map unchanged. More typical would probably be something like Sardinia, which went from 64 to 90 land tiles (41% gain).

 

[Knighttime]

Following up on my previous message:

The number of tiles I listed there for each island is comparing the two maps I created and posted in this thread, Coastlines_1 and Coastlines_2. Today I dug up my copy of Fading Lights and looked at the island sizes on that map (measured in tiles):

Cyprus: Fading Lights = 35, Coastlines_1 = 25, Coastlines_2 = 38
Crete:__Fading Lights = 23, Coastlines_1 = 21, Coastlines_2 = 34

So hopefully this new map is more like what you were hoping to accomplish -- a slightly larger scale and larger islands, but in addition covering a greatly expanded region. Once you've had a chance to experiment a little, let me know if this map scale and region is satisfactory, and then I'll move on to terrain.

Regarding that, Fading Lights made 3 changes to the base terrain types:

1. "Tundra" became "Loam" (very fertile, produces lots of food and trade, used quite a bit along riverbeds and/or near large cities)
2. "Glacier" became "S.Desert" (very unproductive and used sparingly, only in central Turkey I believe)
3. "Jungle" became "Ravine" (totally unproductive, looks like Mountains but has slightly better defensive bonus, used sparingly)

I'm not sure how closely your "tribute to Fading Lights" intends to follow some of those design decisions. Do you have any thoughts about terrain type alterations that I need to take into account when filling in the map? Or should I stick completely with the base types, which would probably be the easiest? (Of course, TOTPP supports 5 additional types... so even if I used all 11 base types in the map, you would still have flexibility to create additional custom types and place them manually.)

 

[Konig15]

Following up on my previous message:

Actually, standard terrains and I'll make adjustments with the other types. So I'm thinking that there's three standard terrains that don't have a bearing in a map like this:
Jungle, Artic, Tundra
Don't use those, and I can save them in reserve. In fact to save you time, I only need hills and mountains. Everything else I'll figure out. If your program could add those and rivers in easily, then fine.

Also....I checked the last iteration and it's only slightly bigger in scale in Anatolia and that's good and bad, and I'm beginning to see the design decisions in Fading Lights, which cuts off Africa at Cairo. Africa's nearly a quarter of the map and it's ALL dead space, even if I allow completely ahistorical desert transformation.

I have an idea though. maybe a bad one. If you're willing, and I understand any reservations, I see three paths forward. I just discovered Google Earth, as opposed to Google Maps which has lat/long bars, so I'll be talking in those

1. The Conservative:
This will all be one map. Bounds are
48N on top to encompass Budapest, as war with Hungary as a whole is inevitable if Bosnia/Croatia is to be recovered and the Adriatic secured
30N to encompass full Gulf of Sidna in Lybia and also include Cairo's southern suburbs and still have a landbridge to Tripoli
48E on the right to encompass Basra if you can fudge the Caucuses so that Baku will fit, otherwise 50E to include Baku
7E to encompass Ananab in Algeria and Turnin and Nice in Italy (Nice being part of Savoy until Italian Unification)

The Radical:
Three maps, the fourth will be a transit map based on Tootall's Vietnam deployment map
To keep things radically simple are going to be 16X30 lat squares
Bound from them are
W. Europe and North Africa
7W to 20W
48N to 30N

Egypt/Arabia
30E to 52'3E
28N to 13N

Eastern Europe/Anatolia
20E to 50E
48N to 28N

As a trial run, I'd gonna say just make the Eastern Europe radical and we'll see how it goes, if you're willing.
All should be in a 2:3 ratio if I did my maths correctly (God help me) and Eastern and Western Europe should be the exact same size in real-world area, Upper Egypt and Arabia slightly smaller, but desert travel is perilous and slow and all. And they SHOULD be seamless in terms of play area. I hope.

 

[Knighttime]

Actually, standard terrains and I'll make adjustments with the other types. So I'm thinking that there's three standard terrains that don't have a bearing in a map like this:
Jungle, Artic, Tundra
Don't use those, and I can save them in reserve. In fact to save you time, I only need hills and mountains. Everything else I'll figure out. If your program could add those and rivers in easily, then fine.

I think Glacier could be useful for the extremely high mountain peaks of the Caucasus and maybe some of the Alps, especially if you made it an impassable terrain. I'll probably use it there and you can manually change those few tiles to Mountains if you prefer. Along those lines, Tundra (with a different name and graphic) might be useful for high-elevation Plains, to limit their potential for food production (reflecting the shorter growing season). Since I'm already integrating elevation data (required for Mountains and Hills), this would be straightforward. I agree I don't really need Jungle for this map and will skip it.

Also....I checked the last iteration and it's only slightly bigger in scale in Anatolia and that's good and bad, and I'm beginning to see the design decisions in Fading Lights, which cuts off Africa at Cairo. Africa's nearly a quarter of the map and it's ALL dead space, even if I allow completely ahistorical desert transformation.

I can eliminate more of Africa, if that's what you want. (If you recall, you originally asked about including all of Arabia and I pushed for the cutoff at Mecca, now moved up to Safaga.)

I have an idea though. maybe a bad one. If you're willing, and I understand any reservations, I see three paths forward.

If #1 is "The Conservative" and #2 is "The Radical", what's the #3 path?

1. The Conservative:
This will all be one map. Bounds are
48N on top to encompass Budapest, as war with Hungary as a whole is inevitable if Bosnia/Croatia is to be recovered and the Adriatic secured
30N to encompass full Gulf of Sidna in Lybia and also include Cairo's southern suburbs and still have a landbridge to Tripoli
48E on the right to encompass Basra if you can fudge the Caucuses so that Baku will fit, otherwise 50E to include Baku
7E to encompass Ananab in Algeria and Turnin and Nice in Italy (Nice being part of Savoy until Italian Unification)

"fudge the Caucuses so that Baku will fit" -- Well, my system is set up to build accurate, real-world maps. I recognize that deliberate map distortions could play a role in improving the gameplay value of a scenario, so I'm not opposed to that idea in theory, but my map-creation system simply isn't set up to provide that as a reasonable option, sorry.

To get Budapest and Cairo to have all city radius tiles as valid map tiles, you might have to use 48.25N in the north and 29.25N in the south. That's a range of 19 degrees latitude, compared to the last map which covers 22.125 degrees. Similarly to get Nice to have all city radius tiles as valid map tiles, you'll probably have to use 6.5E, and I had to use 50.75 for Baku on the last map.

How confident are you that this reduced region will enable sufficient increase in the overall map scale? Basically you have two competing goals and you seem unsure how to balance them. Is there a specific goal you can define for the scale or size in a region like Anatolia or Greece? I'm willing to do a third map attempt here, but how can I know that you won't just want to shift the edges yet again?

The Radical:
Three maps, the fourth will be a transit map based on Tootall's Vietnam deployment map

Tootall's transit maps are a remarkable innovation from the days before TOTPP and Lua. They can certainly be used in a Lua scenario as well (he did this very effectively in Napoleon), but just so you're aware, it's also possible to accomplish the same goals using Lua without an extra map. Unit transit and scheduled future appearances can now be managed virtually in memory, without needing to create and show them making progress on a specialized map, and in fact that's the way I handled the concept of "battle survivors" in my Medieval Millennium scenario.

It is theoretically possible, using Lua, for a TOT scenario to utilize multiple maps that are logically arranged side-by-side. However, I haven't personally seen or played a scenario that implements this. (I know @JPetroski was working on one at some point, so he may have further thoughts on feasibility.) There would definitely have to be Lua events that managed the transit of units between maps (from the right edge of one to the left edge of another, for example) since this is not how TOT natively uses multiple maps. It's not clear to me, at this point, if the AI will behave logically in this configuration or if AI units will tend to get stuck in a loop going back and forth between two maps. At minimum, I can pretty much guarantee that the AI will not understand how to seek objectives on another map, or how to effectively leverage assets on one map to achieve goals on another. So this might lead to writing more Lua events, to prod the AI along a desired path, or to correct for its glaring deficiencies.

I understand that three maps has an intrinsic appeal because it lets you "have your cake and eat it too" -- you can cover a large region, and with a larger scale. But I really feel like it's going to set you back a lot in terms of having a ready-to-release scenario. If Lua seems challenging to you at this point (based on your comments in another thread), I really don't think you'll do yourself any favors by committing to a design path that adds quite a bit of Lua work to the project scope. So I recommend the single-map approach as the most practical and efficient for this project. Does that make sense?

 

[Konig15]

It is theoretically possible, using Lua, for a TOT scenario to utilize multiple maps that are logically arranged side-by-side. However, I haven't personally seen or played a scenario that implements this. (I know @JPetroski was working on one at some point, so he may have further thoughts on feasibility.) There would definitely have to be Lua events that managed the transit of units between maps (from the right edge of one to the left edge of another, for example) since this is not how TOT natively uses multiple maps. It's not clear to me, at this point, if the AI will behave logically in this configuration or if AI units will tend to get stuck in a loop going back and forth between two maps. At minimum, I can pretty much guarantee that the AI will not understand how to seek objectives on another map, or how to effectively leverage assets on one map to achieve goals on another. So this might lead to writing more Lua events, to prod the AI along a desired path, or to correct for its glaring deficiencies.

I understand that three maps has an intrinsic appeal because it lets you "have your cake and eat it too" -- you can cover a large region, and with a larger scale. But I really feel like it's going to set you back a lot in terms of having a ready-to-release scenario. If Lua seems challenging to you at this point (based on your comments in another thread), I really don't think you'll do yourself any favors by committing to a design path that adds quite a bit of Lua work to the project scope. So I recommend the single-map approach as the most practical and efficient for this project. Does that make sense?

Oh I totally get that. That is actually why I was requesting the Eastern Europe first as a trial run. See, a workable, alpha version will have to be just the Eastern Europe one, even if I have to in practice cut off the Albanian coast and such for the moment. But if this is a Byzantine recovery scenario, re-establishing economic ties east is VITALLY important, which is why I wanted Baku and Basa and the Red Sea ports and Oman if nothing else. But I get most of that with just the one map.

And you're right Lua can absolutely do transit map duty.....if I can figure the fudging thing out. Believe me, I want to. I've seen the transfer city mechanic do WONDERS in Nappy 3 and if this could be combined with new civilizations, I could have the seven civ slots be recycled as areas of the map are reconquered. But...I have to figure that out.

Since you are doing me a MASSIVE favor with all of this, I will leave the map terrains at your discretion, if you want to add rivers, both as ocean or river tile overlay, I give utter leeway. And when/if I get this done, even the one map version, I'll be happy to post your original map in the file, unless you want to post it elsewhere on your own.

I do have questions about map design that are not completely relevant here, maybe for another thread? I dunno, but about alternate uses for terrain (like replacing mountains with a mountain version of new terrain so the original mountain terrain can be used as a terrain for special deposits of say Uranium or Oil, only allowing the renamed Hydo plant to built in that city, creating must defend at all costs strategic points), things like that.

EDIT: actually can you try and move the Easter Europe map from (50E to 20E) to 50E to 19E and still maintain the 2:3 ratio so the maps can link eventually?

 

[Knighttime]

Here's the single map (what you called "The Conservative") with your latest round of revised edges. Continuing the comparison I provided earlier:

Cyprus: Fading Lights = 35, Coastlines_1 = 25, Coastlines_2 = 38, Coastlines_3 = 46
Crete:__Fading Lights = 23, Coastlines_1 = 21, Coastlines_2 = 34, Coastlines_3 = 41

It's not so easy to count tiles in Anatolia and you didn't provide specific goals for it anyway, so you'll have to review it on your own. It looks like the scale of this map is about 20% larger than the previous one though.

I'm going to keep going with the process of populating the terrain types on this version of the map, and I'll post it in this thread as soon as it's ready. To be honest, after three iterations, I have to admit that I'm about ready to wrap up my work on this project, so I'd like to finish the work I offered to do originally and then let you take over.

Along those lines, I'm going to hold off on your three-map idea ("The Radical"), including starting with a map of Eastern Europe only, for the time being. If you can build a working "alpha version" scenario with this map (well, once I attach the final one with terrains, I mean) that also demonstrates your capacity to create Lua events, and still want to pursue a transition to three maps at that point, then please reach out to me again and we can discuss further.