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Aanar's Europe, Small Edition
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Map size: small
Players: 11
Barbarians: Raging
All rules are default
Play as England, Spain, France, Germany, Rome, Greece, Russia, Norway, Latvia, Austira-Hungry, or Ukraine.
Well after being completely bogged down with my huge map, I decided to try a small one. This map uses the same projection as my huge one, only with more of it cropped off (no more huge Sahara). I started with England, France, Rome, Germany, Greece, and Russia and then added additional civilizations to balance it out. (Otherwise the other civs grow too fast and England is left in the dust.)
With 11 civs on a small map, the game leans toward the military conquest. If you want to play more peacefully, the start locations which are realtively isolated would be best for you - England, Spain, Greece, or Norway.
The barbarians are set to "raging" mainly to make colonizing North Africa more difficult as well as to make conquering Ireland no breeze.
Resources are placed so that all capitals have 2 cattle and 1 grain and have reasonable access to 3 luxuries. If you play it to conquer, you'll find the resources are too plentiful because I tried to balance them so all start locations would have some.
I placed more empisis on resource balance than having them in the correct places. Note that "Ivory" represents wool and "Silk" represents Fine Timber. I tried changing the name in the editor, but it messed some things up. If someone has time to do a mod for this and the other civs on this map, that'd be great.
The main question I asked when working on balance was, "If I got a certain start location, would I play it, or re-start cause I thought it sucked?". I tested all start locations to at least 1000 BC just to make sure there werent' any glitches (I had to correct a few rivers that looked like you should be able to irrigate off of, but couldn't). I played through a few games on Monarch with little difficulty. Emporer is close, and no idea how hard it would be on Diety.
No, you can't set which civs start where. If it's important to you, I believe there is a save game editor that will let you do it posted on one of these forums.
Note that Ocean tiles were used in many places in the Mediterranean because cultural borders like to overlap sea and coast, but have a harder time with Ocean. Nothing more annoying than trying to sail your fleet around only to get, "Please remove your troops from our borders."
I put mountains along the top and bottom edges because otherwise the AI will put cities right on the edge, which can on occasion crash the game. There's also a trench to prevent walking around the map. Trouble is barbarians will keep popping on it and sailing in it (oh well) and you could drive an Aircraft Carrier up to it in the Atlantic and bomb Moscow (sigh).
Anyway, imo this map is quite fun. I enjoy playing it over and over so I think that's a good sign.
Picture of the mini-map:
(The funny looking edges are due to the trench)
Here are some shots from the editor.
Picture of England:
Picture of Spain:
Picture of Norway:
Picture of Greece:
Picture of Italy
(Note that I bumped Sicily one square northwest to make it an island.)
Things I'm debating:
1) Which civs to put between Russia, Germany, and Greece. As it is now with Hungry, Ukraine, and Latvia, Germany especially often loses the race to found cities. Perhaps only 2 civs in that area would be enough, but which two? Before I added Latvia, Russia and Norway grew quite a bit bigger than everyone else.
2) Put a civ in North Africa? Colonizing North Africa can be quite imprortant due to the strategic resources there, which gives an advantage to the start locations to the south and especially Spain.
3) Rome might need a boost somehow since often Greece will colonize Sicily and sometimes even southern Italy. The AI would rather put cities up in southern Germany as it is now.
4) Attach Ireland to England? This would make that start location quite a bit more playable. In several test games, France, Germany, Norway, or Spain will colonize Ireland and the Shetland Islands before England. I tried to avoid this by giving England more goody huts to hopefully speed their way to map making. If I (or someone else) gets around to making a mod, perhaps either starting England with Map Making or a Galley would be reasonable.
Version 1 attached:
Aanar's Europe, Small Edition
-----------------------------
Map size: small
Players: 11
Barbarians: Raging
All rules are default
Play as England, Spain, France, Germany, Rome, Greece, Russia, Norway, Latvia, Austira-Hungry, or Ukraine.
Well after being completely bogged down with my huge map, I decided to try a small one. This map uses the same projection as my huge one, only with more of it cropped off (no more huge Sahara). I started with England, France, Rome, Germany, Greece, and Russia and then added additional civilizations to balance it out. (Otherwise the other civs grow too fast and England is left in the dust.)
With 11 civs on a small map, the game leans toward the military conquest. If you want to play more peacefully, the start locations which are realtively isolated would be best for you - England, Spain, Greece, or Norway.
The barbarians are set to "raging" mainly to make colonizing North Africa more difficult as well as to make conquering Ireland no breeze.
Resources are placed so that all capitals have 2 cattle and 1 grain and have reasonable access to 3 luxuries. If you play it to conquer, you'll find the resources are too plentiful because I tried to balance them so all start locations would have some.
I placed more empisis on resource balance than having them in the correct places. Note that "Ivory" represents wool and "Silk" represents Fine Timber. I tried changing the name in the editor, but it messed some things up. If someone has time to do a mod for this and the other civs on this map, that'd be great.
The main question I asked when working on balance was, "If I got a certain start location, would I play it, or re-start cause I thought it sucked?". I tested all start locations to at least 1000 BC just to make sure there werent' any glitches (I had to correct a few rivers that looked like you should be able to irrigate off of, but couldn't). I played through a few games on Monarch with little difficulty. Emporer is close, and no idea how hard it would be on Diety.
No, you can't set which civs start where. If it's important to you, I believe there is a save game editor that will let you do it posted on one of these forums.
Note that Ocean tiles were used in many places in the Mediterranean because cultural borders like to overlap sea and coast, but have a harder time with Ocean. Nothing more annoying than trying to sail your fleet around only to get, "Please remove your troops from our borders."
I put mountains along the top and bottom edges because otherwise the AI will put cities right on the edge, which can on occasion crash the game. There's also a trench to prevent walking around the map. Trouble is barbarians will keep popping on it and sailing in it (oh well) and you could drive an Aircraft Carrier up to it in the Atlantic and bomb Moscow (sigh).
Anyway, imo this map is quite fun. I enjoy playing it over and over so I think that's a good sign.
Picture of the mini-map:
(The funny looking edges are due to the trench)
Here are some shots from the editor.
Picture of England:
Picture of Spain:
Picture of Norway:
Picture of Greece:
Picture of Italy
(Note that I bumped Sicily one square northwest to make it an island.)
Things I'm debating:
1) Which civs to put between Russia, Germany, and Greece. As it is now with Hungry, Ukraine, and Latvia, Germany especially often loses the race to found cities. Perhaps only 2 civs in that area would be enough, but which two? Before I added Latvia, Russia and Norway grew quite a bit bigger than everyone else.
2) Put a civ in North Africa? Colonizing North Africa can be quite imprortant due to the strategic resources there, which gives an advantage to the start locations to the south and especially Spain.
3) Rome might need a boost somehow since often Greece will colonize Sicily and sometimes even southern Italy. The AI would rather put cities up in southern Germany as it is now.
4) Attach Ireland to England? This would make that start location quite a bit more playable. In several test games, France, Germany, Norway, or Spain will colonize Ireland and the Shetland Islands before England. I tried to avoid this by giving England more goody huts to hopefully speed their way to map making. If I (or someone else) gets around to making a mod, perhaps either starting England with Map Making or a Galley would be reasonable.
Version 1 attached:
