[MAP] Accurate Earth Equatorial Islands 232x112 Equal-Area Hobo-Dyer Gall-Peters map

[Expansist]

Accurate Earth Equatorial Islands 232x112 map is a huge major improvement to Laskaris’ Giant Accurate Earth equal-area Hobo-Dyer 232x112 map emphasizing geographical physical scientific accuracy, which only Gall-Peters & Hobo-Dyer projections provide as only true ways to project a sphere on a rectangle, that is how every planet should be mapped if globe view not possible.

The major improvements are:

- Dozens of missing islands were added, especially in Equatorial & tropical latitudes. 10 km * 10 km = 100 km2 is more than enough to place a big multi-floor city with many millions population, which can be fed by fishing boats around – so many missing islands deserve to be on an Accurate map, they make the game much more interesting, abundance of uninhabited islands where you can always place something. Resources were added proportionate to island sizes – tiny islands have no resources, while the bigger the islands in reality and/or the more populous – the more seafood they have to represent the more population they can host & grow faster.

- The map was lifted 3 tiles up, which makes it the first map I know with the Equator placed where in really is, exactly in the center, between 55 & 56 lines in 0 – 111 tiles array vertically. Also as polar ice caps add space on globe view, any map should have width more than 2 heights. This added the whole missing 7th continent of Antarctica, making the map even more accurate, & slightly changing all the existing continents shapes. We are mostly interested in Equatorial & tropical latitudes which feed & host wast majority of a planet’s population, icy deserts near poles can feed negligible population numbers very inefficiently & present almost no interest, the closer to Equator the more important land. Also some missing significant rivers were added on several continents.

- The map was made much more habitable especially in Equatorial & tropical latitudes to represent truth about environmental carrying capacity & possible population density by adding more modern resources where they were developed later, and by making hills where they should be instead of small mountains. Mountains are huge areas which are so elevated that humans will have altitude disease suffering from low air pressure thus don’t want to settle there – like Andes, Tibet, Appalachians – but small mountains are hills that can be worked, only mountains higher than 3000 m beyond sea level and taking more than half of a tile area were left as mountains, everything smaller or lower were changed to hills to allow them to be workable & allow to place cities on very edges of continents & islands to make sure NO potentially workable tile was made unworkable just because of incorrect city placement – if a mountain is for example 10% of a tile area it should be modeled as hills not mountains because people can still populate & work most of the tile. Also more lately developed resources were placed in such way than by the time new world Natives settle far enough in the areas to utilize horse resource – old world already has researched Astronomy & sailed ships to bring those modern resources to new continents, so we do NOT need dynamic resources causing so much confusion, we can model all the civs development just by placing modern resources in such way that natives take enough time to acquire them when those resources were historically brought from old world. Also by distributing resources we looked quantitative amounts, how much each country has metal ores, oil, etc., not just location of mines – which made resources distribution more quantitatively proportional to reality.

The minor improvements are:

- Minor civs as barbarians, tribal villages, and animals were added, making the map already a fully playable historical scenario, because in reality humans were almost everywhere in productive climate, and there was almost no productive land empty that you can just settle without conquest.

- Civilizations were changed: Indonesians were made from Maya as there is Indonesia is very big very fertile & productive are with population almost like entire USA; Natives were remade to represent Polynesians as somebody needs to inhabit so many islands and so interesting to look at development of almost completely marine civilization; Kilwa was made from Ethiopia to populate the whole huge African west coast by Black Africans, while Egypt represents all Nilotic civs (Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, etc.); Babylonia was merged with Arabia as Baghdad was the capital of the Caliphate for long time, which allowed to add huge major historical civ of Persia which is much older than Arabia & bigger territory & influenced so many other civs; all western europe civilizations were merged in Roman Empire as they all are its descendants & pretty similar culturally, which allowed to add another major historic civ – USSR which was 1/6 of Earth & had more than half of the world sphere of influence, which in ancient times also represents earlier Slavic & Scythian tribes. Thus, now we have 5 out of 18 civs with capitals below Equator, which makes the more accurate world much more evenly populated then when there were only 2 out of 18, civs are more evenly distributed globally.

- Each civ starting x = … starting y = … were changed in the code accordingly to the updated map, but as the map has 2*2 = 4 times more tiles than biggest standard map – each civ now has 3-4 cities on start, to populate the much bigger world timely. Also, religions are per-distributed, to make historically accurate blocks of allies & opponents, Hinduism represents any paganism, and Taoism represents all Native American religions because they were calendar based & worshiped Sun & planets, Native American believes were most close to Taoism from all the religions included in the game.

- Max Turns = … line in the code was deleted, so now you can use any game speed & game won’t end in 500 turns, max turns auto determined, 750 for Epic, 1500 for Marathon, etc.

Mirror to download: https://cloud.mail.ru/public/4nBp/155FhXyZc

Accurate Earth Equatorial Islands 232x112 map is already completely ready playable historical scenario for Civ4 BTS, but I propose to use this map for all RFC based mods & modmods. Can anybody please adjust each civs starting locations, techs, units, flipping areas, continent areas, scheduled events locations, etc. to adjust RFC based (mod)mods for this map, or at least tell me which software is best to use for this purpose?​

 

[HNation]

This looks cool and I'll try it out, but what's the point of a smaller Europe and a bigger Africa and South America when the vast majority of important parts of RFC happen in Eurasia?

 

[Expansist]

This looks cool and I'll try it out, but what's the point of a smaller Europe and a bigger Africa and South America when the vast majority of important parts of RFC happen in Eurasia?

Dear HNation,
Thank you for your support and kind comment. Well, this is the real size of Europe as you can see, this is just the reality, scientific truth... Also, current RFC is extremely eurocentric distortion of historic process, also quite deviant from what really shapes history... If you make realistic sizes proportion of the world - you will see how many non-european Civilizations current RFC is missing... Modern history science recognizes only 6 Cradles of Civilizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_of_civilization - 1 in Africa, 1 in South America, 1 in Central America, 3 in Asia - and... Zero in Europe! Africa & South America had advanced Civilizations with developed agriculture, fishing, sailing, writing, stone pyramids, astronomical knowledge, etc. at the time when Europeans were wild hunters-gatherers a few thousands years away from any Civilization... Andean & Nylotic Civilizations are much more ancient than any European! And so many great non-european Civilizations are missing in RFC - if you look not only european but whole world history, the historical process will look much different... And also European superpowers would never develop that fast without huge parts of the world much bigger than whole Europe being their colonies, so parts of the world that had low Civilization density but highly fertile climate thus high carrying capacity & higher than average population density - still contributed to global balance of forces a lot... If you make equal-area map of realistic size proportions & resource distribution thus carrying capacity - you will find so many missing parts of World History...

I know only 3 true Projections of a sphere to a rectangle: Gall-Peters, Hobo-Dyer, Behrmann. They are pretty similar you probably won't even distinguish which of they was used is somebody made an Equal-Area Civ4 BTS RFC map based on which of them - the only difference are the "standard parallels", which mean x vs y axis scale, but the differences are slight. The worst & most lieful of all projections are Mercantor / Robinson where Greenland is the size of Africa. While in reality Africa is about 15 times bigger than Greenland in reality, Greenland is less than 1/3 of Australia size, Australia is 3/4 of Europe, Africa is roughly 2/3 the size of Asia, Africa is like 3 Europes, South America is like 2 Europes (Europe is till Ural mountains & Caucasus mountains, western europe is less than half of its area). Real areas of continents:

Oceania - 8,511,000km²
Europe - 10,180,000km²
Antarctica - 14,200,000km²
South America - 17,814,000km²
North America - 24,239,000km²
Africa - 30,244,000km²
Asia - 44,579,000km²

The ratio of number of tiles should be proportionate, except near-polar regions which are partially covered by ice caps on globe view thus last 15° like +90° to +75° & -75° to -90° latitudes should be cut because they go under polar ice caps on globe view (but we still see edges of Antarctica this way), thus widths must be about 2.2 heights of a map for Civilization game.
The only really important parameter when projecting a sphere on a globe is equal surface area because surface produce everything - shapes are very much distorted no matter how you project a sphere on a rectangle, it is simple impossible to have accurate shapes no matter what unless you have a globe. Just forget Mercator/Robinson forever as medieval eurocentric lie, only 1 modern accurate map is needed - the Equal-Area map (Gall-Peters or Hobo-Dyer or Behrmann), you probably won't even distinguish between them with resolution such small as 144*68 map, but Hobo-Dyer is the most preferable from 3 known true option, only one map, because Hobo-Dyer has widths more than 2 heights::
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobo–Dyer_projection

Best regards,
Expansist

 

[TwoF]

Our game map is formed by the need to make the historical process more representative while maintaining the ability to play for civilizations. You are promoting the idea of changing the game map for the sake of greater accuracy. Why? This is not a simulation or a history or geography textbook.

1 in Africa, 1 in South America, 1 in Central America, 3 in Asia - and... Zero in Europe!

It has always amazed me how the idea of equality between the West and the rest of the world is progressing in Western society. Imagine that – resurrecting ancient Roman and Greek achievements, multiplying them through the technological revolution, breaking free from the grips of savagery and barbarism, doing what no one else on the planet had done, and then, thanks to the gifts of progress, subjugating the whole world. Yet 100 years later, they claim that masked dances somewhere in Africa or South America are the same as Chopin's sonatas or Hollywood.
And now it turns out that Europe isn’t important at all, because there wasn’t a single ancient civilization there. Well, I hope DoC follows in the footsteps of Humankind and adds a couple of unknown tribes. For a more accurate representation of history, of course.

 

[UniqueUsername]

map emphasizing geographical physical scientific accuracy, which only Gall-Peters & Hobo-Dyer projections provide as only true ways to project a sphere on a rectangle,

A "true" projection of a sphere on a rectangle is not possible, as everybody with some knowledge about cartography knows.
Equal-area-projections distort the shapes of the continents. Conformal projections like Mercator are correct about the shape of the continents, but distort size. It's mathematically impossible to have both, size and shape of the landmasses, displayed correct on a map - unless your map is a globe.

We are mostly interested in Equatorial & tropical latitudes which feed & host wast majority of a planet’s population, icy deserts near poles can feed negligible population numbers very inefficiently & present almost no interest, the closer to Equator the more important land.

Probably that's why all military and economic leading countries of our planet are on the equator, like the US, China, Russia, France, Germany, Italy, UK, Canada, India, Japan.
Jokes aside, countries that are on the equator are for example Ecuador (obviously), Colombia, D.R. Congo, Uganda, Somalia and Indonesia. I guess, the first nation that will do the "space victory" of Civ 4 in reality will not be among these.
Technically, Brazil is among the countries at the equator, but only with a very small part in the north. The famous cities of Brazil and it's most populated regions are far south of the equator.

Just forget Mercator/Robinson forever as medieval eurocentric lie

It's none of these.
Mercator's map was created 1569, that's by definiton not medieval.
It's not eurocentric. While Europe is a bit larger on Mercator maps than in reality, that is also true for every other area on the same latitude. Areas on the map look larger than they are in reality the closer you come to the poles, while they are smaller than in reality close to the equator. The southern parts of South America, Australia, New Zealand, Asia and South Africa are larger than in reality on Mercator maps. As you pointed out by yourself, Greenland is much larger on the map than it is in reality. Why would an eurocentric cartographer enlarge Greenland? The eurocentric-claim is not only not true, it doesn't make any sense.
Mercator's projection is not a lie, but conformal. This was done because the map was used to navigate on ships. Real navigation on the real oceans. The idea that the map was only created in order to make Europe look larger on the map is top level stupidity that can only grow in the anti-intellectual reality-distortion-circles of today's universities. You can not navigate with equal-area-projection maps! They are not conformal. But obviously that is to hard to understand for political activists.

 

[Expansist]

A "true" projection of a sphere on a rectangle is not possible, as everybody with some knowledge about cartography knows.
Equal-area-projections distort the shapes of the continents. Conformal projections like Mercator are correct about the shape of the continents, but distort size. It's mathematically impossible to have both, size and shape of the landmasses, displayed correct on a map - unless your map is a globe.


Probably that's why all military and economic leading countries of our planet are on the equator, like the US, China, Russia, France, Germany, Italy, UK, Canada, India, Japan.
Jokes aside, countries that are on the equator are for example Ecuador (obviously), Colombia, D.R. Congo, Uganda, Somalia and Indonesia. I guess, the first nation that will do the "space victory" of Civ 4 in reality will not be among these.
Technically, Brazil is among the countries at the equator, but only with a very small part in the north. The famous cities of Brazil and it's most populated regions are far south of the equator.


It's none of these.
Mercator's map was created 1569, that's by definiton not medieval.
It's not eurocentric. While Europe is a bit larger on Mercator maps than in reality, that is also true for every other area on the same latitude. Areas on the map look larger than they are in reality the closer you come to the poles, while they are smaller than in reality close to the equator. The southern parts of South America, Australia, New Zealand, Asia and South Africa are larger than in reality on Mercator maps. As you pointed out by yourself, Greenland is much larger on the map than it is in reality. Why would an eurocentric cartographer enlarge Greenland? The eurocentric-claim is not only not true, it doesn't make any sense.
Mercator's projection is not a lie, but conformal. This was done because the map was used to navigate on ships. Real navigation on the real oceans. The idea that the map was only created in order to make Europe look larger on the map is top level stupidity that can only grow in the anti-intellectual reality-distortion-circles of today's universities. You can not navigate with equal-area-projection maps! They are not conformal. But obviously that is to hard to understand for political activists.

1) Yes, ANY projection of a sphere on a rectangle will cause a lot distortion, that is obvious. It is anyhow impossible to maintain shapes when projecting a sphere on rectangle. Surface area determines population & everything - that is why we can only talk about truth in surface area proportions, because ANY projection of sphere on rectangle distorts shapes a lot.
In Civilization game what is more important - ratio between x-y scaling, or total number of tiles? Total number of tiles - determine everything: food = population thus every aspect of power including diplomatic votes, production, commerce, all resources, thus military scientific industrial etc., every aspect of power - while changing relative x-y scale with maintaining same total number of tiles - changes almost nothing. Same on real map, the more surface area thus more population, surface area determines everything while relative stretching determines almost nothing.

2) Why couldn't Equatorial countries win the Space Race? Easily if they maintain high birthrate over long time and re Expansive, are big enough by territory & population, and successfully perform Communist Revolutions - Marxism-Leninism provides the most rapid development of industrialization science military etc. ever in the history of humankind, industrialization that leading capitalists like Britain and Netherlands did in 200 years - USSR did in 20 years, that was absolute record in the history of humankind! And with help of Communist friends worldwide, African countries developed from extreme poverty primitive tribalism to industrial countries also very fast also in decades, but many of them were destroyed & looted again by capitalists after USSR was destroyed from inside by espionage intelligence services of those whom we are not allowed to name... Countries become rich by looting other countries, by military successes - which causes snowball positive feedback runaway acceleration effects, small advantage over time can grow in geometric proportion... There is a good book explaining how metropolies drastically very severely intentionally slowed down the development of their colonies, for example "How Europe underdeveloped Africa" by Walter Rodney, read if you are not familiar how this mechanics of colonisation shapes history:
https://arxiujosepserradell.cat/wp-...corded-Books-Inc.Rodney-Walter-z-lib.org_.pdf
Europe would never be able to provide such rapid development without looting colonizing exploiting most of the world, while humankind as whole would be much more numerous and develop faster towards Terraforming & inhabiting other planets if judeo-christian europeans did NOT loot destroy depopulate most of the world... Even the dynamics of vassalage is not realistic - in Civilization game Master gets extra expenses and only can demand a few resources from Vassal, while in reality Master or Metropoly gets all the best extra taxes unfair trade buying very cheap selling very expensive things to Vassals or Colonies, so in reality it is more opposite - when one state becomes vassal of another, Master incomes significantly increase while Vassal incomes significantly decreased, that what usually happened in reality - maybe except case when Master has Communist paradigms, because Communists invested very much in industrializing & empowering peripheries in all dimensions... Space Program is huge incredible amount of work for millions billions trillions etc. of physically good workers, Terraforming another planet is bigger work than everything that humankind have done yet during all our history... There is no way a small state could develop Space Program fast - only big military scientifically industrially numerous rapidly growing Empires did so, and European Empires were huge - they just didn't show their colonies all over the world in their calculations, but without colonies & banking looting all world they would never be able to develop that fast... Power is always in numbers, the Dialectical Law of Transformation of Quantity into Quality is the most fundamental Law of Dialectical Materialism, and the most important for Terraforming & Cosmic Expansion... Btw regarding Space Program - Civilization game is very much underestimating the complexity and labour requirements of Space Program, what in Civ4 is Interstellar Colonization - in reality that amount of hammers proportionate to other things might be enough to put a small greenhouse with a few human on Mars, while Interstellar Colonization, Terraforming & inhabiting other planets - is orders of magnitude bigger scale of efforts...
So, if anybody was successful to make any Socialist state on Equator with large territory and population (size of European Empires you must count with colonies, they don't work in vacuum - Europe is very poor in natural resources, tiny area and tiny population compared to Africa, South America, Indonesia - even Russia is much richer in natural resources that entire Europe) that survived long enough - I could easily imagine, even envision and plan rapid industrialization within couple generations, rapid population growth, Expansion, and Space Race Victory by being first to colonize other Planets and Planetary Systems for Empires like Socialist Congo Empire, Socialist Kilwan Swahili Empire (all coast of East Africa), Islamic Socialist Indonesian Republic, Tawantinsuyu (Incan) Revolutionary Movement (all west coast of South America, so Equador is just one city-province in it), Socialist Republic of Brazil even with its today's present territory, etc... European imperialism historians way overestimated accomplishments of their lords and way underestimated the development of the rest of the world in all dimensions... Space Victory - is work of unprecedented scale, and is mainly the game of numbers, not only current but also including time derivatives (rates of change of anything), and after numbers are sufficient - Space Program development rates become mainly the question of Political Will of a Government that controls sufficient population numbers & territories...

3) Just compare RFC map size of Europe with real size of Europe on the map I posted in first message - on RFC map Europe is about twice bigger than it is while Africa is about twice smaller than it is, that is way too much distortion, in terms of surface are Mercator projection lies way too much. It is extremely Eurocentric because near poles only Europe has significant population density while other near-poles areas are icy deserts & tundras with negligible population density, most of this planet population are in Equatorial and tropical latitudes... Also areas near both poles are almost useless, they have low photosynthetically active radiation density and high cost of living, while on Equator is the highest photosynthetically active radiation density thus much more productive efficient agriculture and lowest cost of living of better quality. On Equator you can get more than x10 times food per Ha or any other unit of surface area than in Siberia where I was born, all year round with much less efforts, on Equator need no heating no capital housing no clothes no conservation storage because all food fresh from roots etc., so it is economically efficient to move most of global population towards Equator into Equatorial and tropical latitudes. To account for photosynthetically active radiation power thus agricultural production per unit area and renewable electric power potential, if we map productivity and potential of population various parts of the world can feed - it will be even not just Gall-Peters or Hobo-Dyer map projection, but those coefficients about squared, most map Africa & South America & Indonesia while negligible stripes near poles...
We CAN navigate ships with Equal-are maps, no problems in that - just need to account for some coefficients depending on latitudes to find shortest roots. But ANY projection of a sphere on a rectangle distorts a lot - you will also need to apply some coefficients on ANY map including Mercator. I once flew on airplane from London to Los Angeles and the ground trace of plane was surprising for those who used to think in rectangular map forgetting Earth is globe, the distortion near poles is huge for ANY map including Mercator, so just don't worry about shapes stretching it is inevitable on any projection of sphere on a globe - as I explained above, surface area proportion is all that matters...