Accurate Earth Map in development

[haju]

This is very nice. So you have 50 % map finished? or this is beginning? I am waiting for more updates. Very nice job

 

[kevinman4404]

Haju- thanks for following my humble map =D

well, I'm not really sure how far i am, because it depends what i put into it. I could go as far as finishing terrain types (plains grassland etc) and do the mountains and hills, then place resources and slap down some civs. Or I could add volcanoes, both active and inactive, coral areas, and three or more new terrains [2 of which are now involved, taken from other mods], as well as snow cover that advances/recedes every four turns. Or I could make this into the biggest (and most computer consuming) resource under the heavens.

Probably the last one, though I will probably also have just a bare map with some civs, as well as the small mod version which just has stuff to make the map more dynamic.

In terms of the first concept, simple map, I would be 1/3 done.



***

now to see if i can get this big bugger of a map into civ4 without crashing lol

thanks for watching

 

[meatwad4289]

i like that snow thing every 4 turns or so thats kinda cool, I'd put it more than 4 turns tho..or even set it so the snow melts after 4 or so turns, and it randomly hasa blizzard sometime in the next 30 turns. putting snow on there for 4 turns or more.

 

[kevinman4404]

blizzards would be incorporated as random events, and the 4 turns is per month's movement there are 6 stages up and down and each has 4 turns to it... somewhere like NY would get 4 turns (1 stage) while southern greenland 44 turns (11 stages) per 48. It changes every 4 turns or so (each month so I dont have t write too much python), advacing and receding to give 0-44 per 48 turns (one year) of snow cover, plus the areas that are permanently covered. Its supposed to simulate reallife snowcove throughout the year.

the 400x300 map will not run on my current system specs. Im gonna need to find a way around it, and Im upgrading my computer soon anyways, Ill see if that works. Meanwhile I'll keep working on it and further the smaller version of the map.

 

[haju]

Smaller? But not smaller than 300x200 ? Anyways if you do map it will be the biggest map ever for BTS.

 

[kevinman4404]

small is 200 x 150, works fine but i cant squeeze my 250 or so dynamic civs into it.

large (my favourite, except for the fact it wont load) is 400x300

ill prolly make a medium 300x225 if i cant load the 400x300 with my new computer equipment, but i wudnt be able to load this size now.

 

[kevinman4404]

XD favourite update so far: the added 3 terrain types have been finished/borrowed:

BARRENS for icy stoney hell (borrowed from moon mod)
WASTELAND for semi-arid desert (borrowed from dark terrain mod and improved the quality)
STEPPE for, well, steppe (custommade)

That is the order in which they are shown:

Starts are listed in some previous post. These will have great prominence on my map and wll give my larger map much needed variety.

That graphic problem that you prolly noticed will soon be fixed

Enjoy!

 

[kevinman4404]

A small-esque update: the deserts have been fixed. They will seem larger later with the addition of half-desert- wasteland, as well as barrens.

Next update should have antarctica and some pacific islands added.

One after that will hopefully be an in-game native american preview showing off some new terrain, improvements and hopefully a new bison resource.

Enjoy

 

[kevinman4404]

Why don't I ever follow what I say I'll do next? Anyways this is the BIGGEST update yet.

Added: Hawaii, Antarctica, Southern Ice Shelf, and all plains

Omitted: Some northern plains were controversially omitted, because they are too dark in colour for me to implement them. I'll probably add a mud or soil-like terrain to be brown land on sattelites. So Russia seems a tad blank for now. Also there will be no Aleuts- I have tried to make it work and it is impossible with this map.

Also there are some errors I won't point out because noone will probably notice them anyways

Picture:

I can't take my eyes off it looks like im looking at it from space or something. If there is anything you want me to improve that I've done so far, or you have any suggestions, please let me know!

 

[Stalin_Bulldog]

Canada appears to be too arable, about a third of the way inland from the Atlantic, north of the great lakes, the land is horrible for planting, just about right up to the lakes, western Canada looks okay, but the coastline should only have a very small portion of arable land, since other than the fraser river valley(Vancouver) that land is quite poor for farming. Otherwise keep up the good work, its looking wonderful

 

[jpinard]

I'm confused by something. You wanted all the landmasses to be perfectly proprotioned, yet you've made Antartica huge beyond belief. Now I know it's the method used for importing the map with evertything else in proportion, but I'd suggest the following:

1. Cut out some of the Southern ocean.

2. Cut out the last 3-10 horizontal rows of Antarctica and rotate/move right a tiny bit.

As you can see in the following image, Antarctica is much more realistic (size-wise) and this would let a few more computers run your map.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

 

[kevinman4404]

Alrighty I've done some work.

My computer can't come anywhere close to running the original 400x300 map (best it can do is 40000 tiles).

So first I made a smaller halfsize map. Then I decided to optimize it by cutting out Antarctica entirely and blowing it up to 250x160, making it the largest and most accurate earth map yet.

Hawaii and Aleutians are squished in there, I know, but theyre there for gameplay's sake only. My only current quam is that the Russian mountains seem annoyingly thicker than the mountains everywhere else, including the alps.

Here is a picture, with land types, rivers, mountains, but no hills or forests:

I do intend on making the coast mimic the real continental shelf, so most areas will have a wider coast. This I will do in-game, though.

I am also adding/changing more terrains:

Ice/Barrens- mostly decorative
Snow
Tundra- one food no prod
Thinsoil Grassland (this is the coniferous line upwards)- two food one prod
Rich Grassland- three food one prod
Fertile Plains- three food one prod (may make no prod)
Arid Plains- two food one prod (may make no prod)
Wasteland (semidesert)- one food, no prod?
Desert- no food, no prod?

In river-fed areas such as the Nile, there will be four seasons:
#1 where just the underlying land is present (desert in this case)
#2 transition, with flood plains present (+2? food)
#3 flood season with floodplains present but grassland underneath alongside the river
#4 backward transition, with flood plains present but back to desert underneat

and back to #1

I still plan on immitating seasonal snowcover

And settler maps for each of the very many civs, so they know where they want to invade. I will have to write a program to do this immense task for me. Maybe using excel.

Please give me any feedback, I'm now editing this in game and would like to do any land changes asap.

 

[Gaius Octavius]

The landmasses may be in perfect proportions, but this map has one fatal flaw that I have found in nearly all Earth maps that have ever been made: the Pacific Ocean is way out of whack. It's virtually the same distance across as the Atlantic!

Sorry, but that bugs me to no end, even though I've heard plenty of good reasons for doing it that way. Pretty decent job otherwise, though.

 

[RPG]

This looks pretty good!

You might want to consider making the main island of Hawaii a bit bigger. There are some islands missing, most obvious is in the Caribbean, & the west coast of Australia looks a bit off to my eye. But all & all, I'd have to say good job! & keep at it, I'd like to play the biggest map ever!

 

[mrhoeivo]

No machine on Earth will be able to run a map that size.

 

[kevinman4404]

@Ocativius: Yeah, that's this map's flaw. Genghis's Earth map is the opposite- stretched land nice pacific. I personally like land accuracy more (especially living in Canada and normally being squished). But it's a matter of preference.

@RPC: I'll add one or two tiles to Hawai'i (main) island. Do realize I'll need to place a volcano on one though

@mrhoeivo: That remains to be seen. I can run this map both ingame and in worldbuilder at this time. We won't know until I have the many civs dominating the globe at the same time. Turn times will be long. However, despite being the biggest world map, it is not far bigger than that of Genghis.

I should know how my computer will fare within a few weeks. I have 3.2GHZ P4, 1GB Ram, 256mb Radeon X300. When I see how my computer does you can compare your computer to mine.

Do realize that this is not the 400x300 map I started off with.


Thank you for the feedback guys, all updates from now on will be in-game. I'll give pictures of areas as they are completed.

 

[frekk]

This really strange concept seems to have worked for the most part, and usually coincides with other earth maps. However, south america?! It's an exact flip of that of Rhye's South America! I'm guessing he used sattelite? Thing is that image may be green in the center from forests, when plains might be under it? Or do you consider plains having little vegetation?

Plains are, generally speaking, open flat areas with little vegetation.

In the game, plains seem to be used to represent areas that are more arid and less fertile, but not to the degree of deserts.

Neither definition really applies very well to the Amazon basin. It is filled with vegetation and it is extremely well-watered (and potentially highly fertile, once the jungle is cleared away).

 

[frekk]

Canada appears to be too arable, about a third of the way inland from the Atlantic, north of the great lakes, the land is horrible for planting, just about right up to the lakes, western Canada looks okay, but the coastline should only have a very small portion of arable land, since other than the fraser river valley(Vancouver) that land is quite poor for farming. Otherwise keep up the good work, its looking wonderful

Actually some of the best farmlands in Canada - where most of the country's cash crops are grown - are in southern Ontario, south of Toronto. The shores of the great lakes. The areas that are bad for farming are above the Niagara Escarpment, because they are very rocky due to the presence of the Canadian Shield. They get plenty of water, though.

Western Canada looks awful!! Look at all that green extending right up to Alaska!! The arable portions of the Prairies are mostly in the south, the rest is only such a wheatbelt because of all the irrigation built there. It is plains and has at times (eg the dustbowl) been almost desert. (BC, obviously, should be green for the most part because it is on the other side of the Rockies' rain shadow and gets plenty of water).

 

[kevinman4404]

Thank you for the comments.

South America doesn't seem that far off from his... The main differences I see are Pampas region (which are supposed to be plains (real grassland) not civ4 grassland), and a bit of western plains where there is no/cleared rainforest. I'm not entirely sure I was right to implement the latter... I'll have to do some research. Let me know if you know the answer to that.

Canada, yes, at the moment it is unbalanced. Tundra (again, the game fails to address terrain types properly) is a place with almost no plant life. Just lichens and stuff. I traced the biome here.

I have however successfully added in a thinsoil grassland terrain, which will start just above ottawa and, skipping over the plains, at the coast, creap down to Seattle.

I'll give some pictures of the general area soon so you can see if you like it.

(its a mod, not just a map)

Kevin

 

[frekk]

Another thing for Canada that I might mention because it is done wrong in every Earth map I've seen; the east coast. Surprisingly, you've got the coastlines of the Gulf of St. Lawrence done fairly good, which is a first!

Most maps also get the reliefs wrong for this area. The Torngat Mountains of Labrador are never featured, and some central parts of quebec, the gaspe peninsula, newfoundland, and the maritime provinces are usually depicted as flatlands (grasslands, plains, or tundra depending on the map). In reality, these areas - with the exception of some parts of gaspe and nova scotia - feature only a few small areas of tablelands, and are predominantly hills and river valleys.

Labrador should be rendered nearly uninhabitable. It would be fair to extend forested tundra down the coastline near to the Straight of Belle Isle, because this area is very cold and gets almost no precipitation.

Getting the reliefs right for eastern canada is one of the big problems with alot of Earth maps. It usually ends up that the area is far too fertile and far too habitable because it is all tablelands, or they try to fix it by extending tundra all the way down nearly to the St. Lawrence river, which renders it far less habitable than it is. The predominant terrain throughout the whole of the Canadian Shield, in fact, ought to be hills, with the exception of the semi-arctic tablelands on the south shore of Hudson's Bay. There are really on a few tablelands in Canada; the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence lowlands, the area at the south of Hudson's Bay, some tablelands in the arctic areas and the islands, and the Prairies.

There is a fairly good map here of the different major landform zones like the Shield:

http://evolution.itgo.com/canada_geology/intro.html