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Aanar's Europe v0.1 BETA
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Size: Huge (180 x 180)
Civs: 16
Barbarians: Restless
All other map settings are set to the default.
Feel free to modify this map to your liking and use it for your own scenarios. Please acknowledge me as the original creator. I will plan on updating this map as time allows. Send feedback to "apalecek@tcinternet.net" or reply to this post.
1) Introduction and Scope
This Civilization III map is based on a conical projection of Europe. The area was chosen because 8 out of the 16 Civilizations originate around Europe. It includes Iceland to the north, all of Norway (there is navigable sea squares to Archangel), Portrugal to the west, the Ural Mountains (which cut across the northeast corner of the map, the Sahara desert to the south, and the tip of the Persian Gulf to the southwest. Note that this basically centers around the greatest extent of the Roman Empire. Start locations are placed for London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Athens, Moscow, Thebes, Babylon, Madrid, Morocco, Veinna, Turkey, Oslo, Kiev, Helsinki, and Warsaw.
2) Map Theory
I used a highly detailed physical map of Europe from an Atlas. This is not a cylindrical projection, which would maintain straight lines north-south and east-west but the distortion to the north would be too great for my liking. A primary goal was to maintain land area. This means that the map will look smashed in the mini-map because distance up and down is as close to the same as distance right and left as possible. In order for England, Rome, and Greece (in particular) to have enough land to get started with, the huge map size (180 x 180) was chosen. The downside (depending on your point of view) is that this covers an awful lot of land and will likely result in very long games.
Another goal was to have a nice detailed map. In general, as many rivers were put in (in their correct locations) as possible. Historically, all most all cities began on the shore of a river. As far as gameplay, this will mean high commerce and difficulty moving before the Construction tech.
In large flat areas (particularily Russia), many faint strings of hills were highlighted with hill tiles, while relatively flat areas in otherwise hilly or mountainous terrain where given grasslands (i.e. Switzerland, Greece). The reasoning behind this was to provide a more varied and playable map. Elevation above sea level was not considered at all when deciding which terrain tile to use (if this were done, Spain would likely be solid hills and completely useless to attempt to build cities on).
Areas of plains and grasslands were kept reasonably realistic, though one or the other was used on occasion to achieve better land shaping (i.e. Italy).
Canals where not placed as rivers. However I did represent artificial lakes as coast tiles (where they were large enough to receive an enitre tile) to break up the landscape a bit even though most of them have only been built in recent history. This is primarily evident along the Volga River.
Note that I'm posting this as a Beta as more work is yet to be done especially on start locations, terrain, bonus resource squares, resource and luxury location, etc. For the most part the terrain is finished barring playability issues, except for rivers to be finished in the north east corner.
Aanar's Europe v0.1 BETA
--------------------------------
Size: Huge (180 x 180)
Civs: 16
Barbarians: Restless
All other map settings are set to the default.
Feel free to modify this map to your liking and use it for your own scenarios. Please acknowledge me as the original creator. I will plan on updating this map as time allows. Send feedback to "apalecek@tcinternet.net" or reply to this post.
1) Introduction and Scope
This Civilization III map is based on a conical projection of Europe. The area was chosen because 8 out of the 16 Civilizations originate around Europe. It includes Iceland to the north, all of Norway (there is navigable sea squares to Archangel), Portrugal to the west, the Ural Mountains (which cut across the northeast corner of the map, the Sahara desert to the south, and the tip of the Persian Gulf to the southwest. Note that this basically centers around the greatest extent of the Roman Empire. Start locations are placed for London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Athens, Moscow, Thebes, Babylon, Madrid, Morocco, Veinna, Turkey, Oslo, Kiev, Helsinki, and Warsaw.
2) Map Theory
I used a highly detailed physical map of Europe from an Atlas. This is not a cylindrical projection, which would maintain straight lines north-south and east-west but the distortion to the north would be too great for my liking. A primary goal was to maintain land area. This means that the map will look smashed in the mini-map because distance up and down is as close to the same as distance right and left as possible. In order for England, Rome, and Greece (in particular) to have enough land to get started with, the huge map size (180 x 180) was chosen. The downside (depending on your point of view) is that this covers an awful lot of land and will likely result in very long games.
Another goal was to have a nice detailed map. In general, as many rivers were put in (in their correct locations) as possible. Historically, all most all cities began on the shore of a river. As far as gameplay, this will mean high commerce and difficulty moving before the Construction tech.
In large flat areas (particularily Russia), many faint strings of hills were highlighted with hill tiles, while relatively flat areas in otherwise hilly or mountainous terrain where given grasslands (i.e. Switzerland, Greece). The reasoning behind this was to provide a more varied and playable map. Elevation above sea level was not considered at all when deciding which terrain tile to use (if this were done, Spain would likely be solid hills and completely useless to attempt to build cities on).
Areas of plains and grasslands were kept reasonably realistic, though one or the other was used on occasion to achieve better land shaping (i.e. Italy).
Canals where not placed as rivers. However I did represent artificial lakes as coast tiles (where they were large enough to receive an enitre tile) to break up the landscape a bit even though most of them have only been built in recent history. This is primarily evident along the Volga River.
Note that I'm posting this as a Beta as more work is yet to be done especially on start locations, terrain, bonus resource squares, resource and luxury location, etc. For the most part the terrain is finished barring playability issues, except for rivers to be finished in the north east corner.