Saph's Mediterranean: Mare Nostrum (TSL)

Can you build a civilization that brings peace and prosperity to rival the historic Pax Romana?

Design Features

• Conquer the Mediterranean:
  This map covers Western/Southern/Eastern Europe, West Asia (Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, northern Arabia, Egypt) and coastal North Africa.
• Larger playable area:
  To maintain a balance between realism and fun gameplay, this map is designed to increase playable tiles: no more massive oceans taking up valuable map space, no more vast areas of the map dominated by the Sahara, no more massive Eastern Europe with only one or two civs.
• More balanced proportions:
  The proportions of various regions have been adjusted to bring balance to TSL: bigger areas such as Benelux and Greece where many civs start, and smaller Iberia, Anatolia and Eastern parts of the map where fewer civs start.
• Toggleable navigable rivers:
  Each of the rivers Rhine, Elbe, Danube, Nile, and Tigris-Euphrates can be turned from normal rivers to coastal tiles during set-up, allowing naval units to traverse deep into land while creating obstacles for land units.
• Choke points:
  In addition to the presence of navigable rivers, choke points are also created by careful placement of mountain tiles on land, and island tiles at sea. Plan your tactical maneuvers carefully!
• Accurate rivers:
  Hundreds of rivers and tributaries are placed according to their real life locations (as accurately as it can be done on a hex grid).
• Accurate terrains:
  Mountains and hills are placed based on real elevation data, and grass/plains/desert are placed based on USDA soil quality data.
• True Starting Locations:
  25 official civs, 15 city states and 8 natural wonders are placed at their real world locations.
• Custom civs & city states:
  TSL are included for 47 custom civs and 44 custom city states. (If you would like any other modded civs to be added, please leave a comment!)
• Map generated floodplains:
  This YnAMP-based map has map-generated river floodplains, so dam construction and flooding events are possible.

Details

Map size: Full map is 112 x 62 (Huge). See all map sections.

Required Mod: Gedemon's Yet (not) Another Maps Pack

Recommended Mods:

• Religion Expanded: This adds enough beliefs to vanilla's 20 so that you won't get locked if you are playing with more than 20 civs but haven't chosen a belief.
• Prismatic - Color and Jersey Overhaul: This adds enough jersey colors so that you can play with more than 20 civs in one game. Otherwise some civs will get transparent colors.

Official civs with TSL

• Arabia (starts at Cairo, or Medina if Egypt is present)
• Babylon
• Byzantium
• Egypt: Cleopatra AND Ramses (starts at Thebes)*
• England: Victoria/Elizabeth AND Eleanor (starts at Poitiers)*
• France: Catherine AND Eleanor (starts at Poitiers)*
• Gaul
• Georgia
• Germany: Barbarossa (starts at Aachen, or Berlin if Gaul is present) AND Ludwig (starts at Munich)*
• Greece: Gorgo AND Pericles *
• Hungary
• Macedon
• Netherlands
• Ottoman (starts at Istanbul, or Bursa if Byzantium is present)
• Persia (starts at Susa, or Ecbatana if Sumer is present)
• Phoenicia (starts at Tyre, or Carthage on map sections without Tyre)
• Poland
• Portugal
• Rome
• Scotland
• Scythia
• Spain
• Sumer

* Note: Turning off "No Duplicate Civilizations" during set-up will allow you to have different leaders of the same civ on the map at the same time.

Official city states with TSL

Amsterdam (if without R&F), Venice, Brussels, Carthage (if without GS), Geneva, Hattusa (X Merrick's Hittites / Gedemo Hittites), Jerusalem (X Kingdom of Jerusalem), Preslav (X Merrick's Bulgaria), Valletta, Yerevan, Armagh, Granada, Akkad (X CIVITAS Akkad), Bologna, Cardiff, Fez, Vatican City (X Rome)

Note: City states with (X civ/leader) will not spawn if the civ/leader specified is present

Custom Civs & City States

47 custom civs and 44 custom city states have TSL on this map. See this discussion thread for a list.

Game Set-up

To play with advanced YnAMP settings, you need to

1. Have this mod and Yet (not) Another Map Pack installed and enabled ingame
2. Single Player --> Create Game --> Load Database (next to the BACK button) and wait for the game to load
3. Once loaded, you will be back to the main menu
4. Single Player --> Create Game (You should see a tick next to CREATE GAME at the top.) --> Choose Map Type --> Saph's Mediterranean: Mare Nostrum --> Advanced Setup

Recommended Settings

1. Turn on Only Civilizations/City States with TSL (or Turn off if you want to play with custom city states)
2. Adjust the number of civs, city states & religions in the game to your liking.
3. Manually pick the civs to play as/against or leave them random.
4. Select Natural Wonders: Leave it at Everything / Uncheck the ones that you don't want to appear
5. Coastal Lowland: Choose Map Generator for random placement / Matching flatlands for more dramatic flooding / Empty for no lowlands
6. Rivers Flooding: Choose Map Generator / Empty for no floodplains & flooding (and hence no dams)
7. Resource Quantity: Your own preference (Resources are map-generated; this map does not contain pre-placed resources.)
8. Civilization Placement: Choose True Starting Locations for accurate historical placement / Map Generator for random placement
9. Enforce TSL: AI if you don't want the AI to stray from their TSLs
10. Use Leaders TSL when available & Use Alternative TSL if required and available: On
11. Allow random placement for civs without TSL: Off (You can turn it on if you want random placement for civs not in the list above)
12. Navigable Rivers: Check the rivers that you want to turn into coastal tiles for naval units.
13. Real City Naming: On (This is only for the capitals for several civs which do not start at their actual real life capitals e.g. Arabia at Medina & Germany at Berlin)
14. No Duplicate Civilizations: Off, if you want to have, for example both Gorgo and Pericles, at the same time.

Special Thanks

This map is made possible by Gedemon's YnAMP & Zobtzler's YnABMC.