Accurate Earth Map in development

[Yakk]

Shield as terrain type is iffy -- I'm just saying that "rocky terrain" needs to be noted.

NWFLD being a huge green plain just highlighted that: that would make it kick ass high-population farming, when in reality most of it is a very marginal place to build, with most of the food coming via fishing not farming.

I guess you could make most of it tundra, and have lots of fish off the coast... (The grand banks of NWFLD is some of the best fishing grounds in the entire world)

...

The importation of the potatoe was of huge strategic importance. It grows very well at high climate levels, and is surprisingly nutritious. It was probably key in turning the UK into a world power by changing the island from a food importer to a food exporter... Other root veggies are less important.

 

[kevinman4404]

@Yakk: I'll have a look at newfoundland.

About your mountain model: I do this already to a small extent, however I am doing fewer peaks than most would for a map with this size. For example, on average, at Mt. Everest, that specific range of peaks is only maybe 1.4 peaks wide.

About the Bedrock/Canadian Shield idea: The thinsoil is already this to some extent. However I am being more worldly than that, just because I don't know the geography of northern places like Russia, and if it's the same there.

I have found that the thinsoil looks closer to the grassland than the tundra texture, so I will make it look rockier. When it is done it'll be sure to please.

The setup of my thinsoil texture on the map is similar to what you and Frekk have described.

@Frekk: I got the idea for thinsoil based on climate. I find that there are enough textures, and one is not more frequent than another, so I have used the "speckling" idea that Yakk suggested with peaks/hills. Grassland is grassland, tundra is tundra. Boreal forest is thinsoil. Mixed forest is a slightly randomized/speckled smatter of thinsoil and grassland, sitting atop the areas of Canada/Russia that are mixed forest.

@Lutz, welcome, thank you for your views. Until canals are creatable (maybe in my mod someday), you are able to pass through Panama diagonally, or maybe I'll just have it so there's a city you can pass through. In the case of diagonal passage, you could choose to block it up with ships; if it'll be based on city passage you can always close borders (I think). Suez canal will also be one of the two, probably the latter.

Floodplains will of course be incorportated, but on a more detailed, seasonal scale (see mod page, link will soon be on first post).

For the other two requests, realize that this map is quite huge, so you shouldn't have to worry about them. For example, the map is big enough that the real-life peaks do not cut the Americas in half, and Europe is rich enough in real life that it's rich and balanced in the game.

~~~

I am now done all of Asia, INCLUDING Russia, and all of Europe! Funny how I always do the opposite of what I say I'm gonna do

~~~

West Turkey: note: I forgot a tobacco in the NW of the Asian part of the country

Greece and Bulgaria: note: Sorry about the river glitch. It was fixed, as you can see in the pic farther below

Romania and W. Ukraine:

Hungary, Austria and Albania:

All the above areas with no trees:

Bonus Image: Sichuan Pendl (some sort of valley) in China: (without trees)

PS this post is a bit late, so don't mind if I missed your post, whoever just posted

EDIT: you've probably noticed that I use occasional jungle tiles around the mediterranean. I was originally planning on making a mediterranean treeset, but that seems a little intimidating on further investigation. Instead, I'll make a new set of tree data so that I can use those jungles in the mediteranean with the same stats as deciduous trees.

Enjoy

 

[frekk]

NWFLD being a huge green plain just highlighted that: that would make it kick ass high-population farming, when in reality most of it is a very marginal place to build, with most of the food coming via fishing not farming.

I guess you could make most of it tundra, and have lots of fish off the coast... (The grand banks of NWFLD is some of the best fishing grounds in the entire world)

Tundra ... or thinsoil. Sort of depends on the stats. If thinsoil can't be farmed or only provides 1 food with a farm, then thinsoil would be OK for Nfld.

Doing Newfoundland right would require some careful planning. It's important to get it right, too, since it plays a huge role in the early colonization of the New World. The Grand Banks is what originally drew the English to the New World. It drew the French and the Basques too, long before furs, tobacco, or anything else.

But even with the fish, Newfoundland has never sustained a large population. In the game, fish provide an awful lot of food. And they are fairly common, nobody would go to a new continent just to get their hands on fish.

The best way I can think to represent this, is to create a new fish resource, cod. Situated in abundance, maybe 5-6 instances, off the coast of Newfoundland, *but* only 1 or 2 tiles actually close enough for a city to benefit from, the rest 3 tiles offshore. Close enough to the city that it will be within cultural boundaries, and there will be 1 or 2 cod providing just enough food to make a settlement viable, but not enough actually within reach of the city's harvestable tiles for a metropolis or anything to grow there. Cod is found in places apart from the Grand Banks, but I would really limit its appearance elsewhere ... just as fish are found in more or less any coastal or freshwater area but the resource only represents the largest and best fishing grounds.


Kevinman: Central/Eastern Europe looks really great!! May I recommend a gold resource for Hungary? In the medieval era Hungary had huge gold mines, and there are still deposits being tapped in the general area (a big one in Romania currently).

 

[kevinman4404]

Glad you liked it. Ghenghis Kai is kindly emailing me his resource statistics. My atlas neglected to include gold on the legend for European mineral resources, so I'm going to use his data for whatever I'm missing.

I'm sure there will be Hungarian gold, probably a lot more than that... In my history atlas I see gold in Europe quite a bit.

~~~

Working on rounding the gold resource's nif. I will then use the modified nif for platinum and zinc. I don't know what I'll do for phosphates, since it's a powder I think. Nickel will look somewhat like iron, wolfram will take after aluminimum with the proper texture and tin will be lightened.

~~~

Hopefully you won't worry too much about Newfoundland. I have plans to carefully control how big a city can grow in whatever areas, through modding. Failing that, I will create a dedicated cod resource.

EDIT: The images above are missing a lot of mineral resources. In fact, I'm missing all the mineral resources (minus picture of Greece/Bulgaria) my bad. I'll list them here so I don't have to reshoot the pic with the forest off then replot my forest... serbia-lead, iron, uranium, 0or1 coal; bosnia- aluminum and coal; Romania- 2or3oil, 0or1coal, 0or1gas, leadx2, zinc; Ukraine: ironx3, uranium, mercury, oil and gas galore; Austria: iron; Hungary: Aluminumx2; Bulgaria- 1 coal. Plus any gold. I might as well put up another pic of all but Greece, I'll do that next update.

Kevin

 

[frekk]

About the Bedrock/Canadian Shield idea: The thinsoil is already this to some extent. However I am being more worldly than that, just because I don't know the geography of northern places like Russia, and if it's the same there.

It's fairly similar, except that most of the Russian taiga is a drainage basin rather than a watershed. It's mostly at or below sea level. This means that it's swampier and has a bit more soil, though still not much. It's the same type of poor soil, podsols, which is an acidic, nutrient-poor soil created by conifers (the needles make the soil acidic). In addition to acidification, both regions suffer from leeching, which is the water drawing out nutrients from the soil. In warmer climates, with so much water, there would be so much flora living, dying, and quickly decaying, there would be plenty of nutrients to replenish what the water takes. But in cooler climates, the cold slows down decay and the flora is not as rich, so the nutrients aren't replenished as fast as they're leeched.

 

[kevinman4404]

My gosh I am on a roll, here are all of the missing mineral resources:

Top Left: Alternative gold resource. In real life gold is rounded and smoother than the original nif.
Top Right: Platinum, using the new nif.
Middle Left: Wolfram (Tungsten).
Middle Right: Mercury.
Bottom Left: Nickel. Grey with a golden tinge.
Bottom Right: Nutrients (Phosphates, zinc, potassium).

Tell me if I need to make any improvements to these.

~~~Planning on...~~~

Redoing Balkans pictures
Showing the Great Lakes proposition
Counting my resources to make sure they fit on the 80 resources gamefont card

EDIT: I HAVE 85 RESOURCES on my list, after doing some trimming. I need this narrowed down to 80. So if you find anything on my mod page resource list (link on first post) that you feel is unneccessary, please let me know and I'll weigh your views into my decision.

EDIT: Nevermind. It allows 84, and I found 2 I could combine (crabs and shrimp graphical modification, would even be animated). Not that anyone is going to play my map with animations on

Kevin

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

WoC allows limitless resources.

 

[Nahtanoj]

Cool map so far! Alaska still misses that kind of "tail" (I don't know if that penisula has a name, but a city called Chignik is on it) and some islands in the Bering Street. South of Australia Tasmania is missing. Keep on working on the map, I'm looking forward to play it!

Aleutian islands

 

[Nahtanoj]

just stopped by this map looks neat!

but can i see cuba haiti or the whole carribiean?

and how thin is the straight of gibratrar

 

[Gooblah]

Amazing. Simply Amazing. I'm astounded by the quality and work you've put into this. You guys rock!

Anyways, for the Canal Improvement..

Assuming you're using BTS, just mod the Fort Graphics to look more Canal-esque. I was thinking having "water" in the middle of the Fort, with mini locks or ships, but it'll be a tad hard, I think.

 

[frekk]

Hmm ... then forts would look funny when you used them for other things.

Maybe someone could do forts with a water moat around them, such that it connected when two forts were adjacent ...

 

[Nahtanoj]

is there going to be a vanilla version for patch 1.61

or is it just for bts and wl

 

[kevinman4404]

I really don't like not having some update when I post, but oh well, I really need to get some sleep tonight...

@Snipperrabbit- could you explain? Does it have a bigger gamefont? The idea is maybe you can have infinite, but if you don't have a big enough gamefont card, you won't be able to give your new resources icons because there are only so many spaces on the card...

@Gooblah- really glad you like it I will try to have some sort of canal lock wonder, or canal fort improvement (or both)

@Frekk- what do you mean?

@Nahtanoj- sorry to have to tell you it's only for BTS, if you're running vanilla... The level of content this map provides is too much for vanilla... however... the map is a vanilla file actually... but for the map to work the way it does, you are going to need BTS

minimum compatability with vanilla, and none at all with warlords. So my answer is, the map file is... however there's no possible way you could play a map with 100s of civs at once on vanilla. You would need the mod (BTS) to regulate when the civs come and go, among other things.

plus, everyone should have bts, one way or another you get bts and warlords for the price of one, and I imagine the price has gone down

I will get up some pics of the carribean, as with the other photos I am overdue on, tommorow. The strait is 1 tile wide. Obviously it is accurate and good for gameplay's sake that the two are very close to touching.

~~~

The map should be more or less finished this sunday, then small technicalities/exactness will last until the release date of four months from now. I still have some resources I have to do; poultry I'm going to end up modelling from scratch, or buying...

Kevin

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

here's a link for limitless resources.

You will want to ask mr.genie if he wants to help you getting the ressource part of his code.

I will show you later today how to add slots in the tga.

 

[Nahtanoj]

I really don't like not having some update when I post, but oh well, I really need to get some sleep tonight...

@Snipperrabbit- could you explain? Does it have a bigger gamefont? The idea is maybe you can have infinite, but if you don't have a big enough gamefont card, you won't be able to give your new resources icons because there are only so many spaces on the card...

@Gooblah- really glad you like it I will try to have some sort of canal lock wonder, or canal fort improvement (or both)

@Frekk- what do you mean?

@Nahtanoj- sorry to have to tell you it's only for BTS, if you're running vanilla... The level of content this map provides is too much for vanilla... however... the map is a vanilla file actually... but for the map to work the way it does, you are going to need BTS

minimum compatability with vanilla, and none at all with warlords. So my answer is, the map file is... however there's no possible way you could play a map with 100s of civs at once on vanilla. You would need the mod (BTS) to regulate when the civs come and go, among other things.

plus, everyone should have bts, one way or another you get bts and warlords for the price of one, and I imagine the price has gone down

I will get up some pics of the carribean, as with the other photos I am overdue on, tommorow. The strait is 1 tile wide. Obviously it is accurate and good for gameplay's sake that the two are very close to touching.

~~~

The map should be more or less finished this sunday, then small technicalities/exactness will last until the release date of four months from now. I still have some resources I have to do; poultry I'm going to end up modelling from scratch, or buying...

Kevin

hold on... did you say hundreds of civs?

that wuld be the coolest online game ever!

well im probably not going to get bts for a little bit... im focusing on other games now like revolution and spore so civ 4 can wait for n upgrade

great job on this looks great

 

[kevinman4404]

Well, between 100 and 200 civs, with 30-50 at a time, as history plays out.

(Offtopic) When is spore coming out? I was looking at that like a year ago

(Ontopic) I realize I haven't updated in a couple days, which is unusual for me. I did a complete reinstall of all civ4 games and patches to see if I could get GEM4.2 working.

When I looked at my backup folder, my heart stopped. All I had in there were the BTS screenshots I had taken.

Luckily, I had my previous BTS folder, with all mods including the one I'm doing now and the map, in the recycle bin. This is the ultimate proof that everyone should be recycling as much as possible

I will try to stick to my schedule of having the map 99% done for Sunday night.

Kevin

 

[EviltheMonkey]

(Offtopic) When is spore coming out? I was looking at that like a year ago

You're not going to be happy are you sure you want to know?

Spoiler :

Its been put back to 7th September! I plan to find out the person responsable and do someting unpleasent to them

 

[kevinman4404]

@EviltheMonkey... that sucks... but I figured the game would be pushed back even farther. Do you know what kind of specs you need to run it?

~~~

Screenshots of the Caribbean: (no trees)

Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, A/B, Barbados: 1 coffee, 1 cattle, 3 sugar cane, 1 citrus fruit, 1 gold, 1 nickel

Cuba, Jamaica: 1 coffee, 1 cattle, 1 citrus fruit, 1 coconut, 3 sugar cane, 1 tobacco, 1 iron, 1 aluminum, 1 nickel

Panama: 2 coffee, 1 sugar cane (ignore the one to the north, it belongs to Nicaragua)

Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, El Savador: 1 citrus fruit, 2 sugar cane, 1 gold, 1 silver (sorry about the stray jungle, not sure if there's anything under it)

Southeast Mexico: 1 coffee, 4 sugar cane, 1 silver, 2 oil

Note: If you don't see all of the resources I list, you're not looking hard enough


Most of the above areas, with trees:

~~~

New resource, Jute, in it's natural climate (wetlands, ie in Bangladesh):

~~~

I have now finished Africa, minus forests. I had done hours worth of fixes as well as all of Mexico, but these are mostly lost from a crash that happened right after I took these screenshots.

Kevin

 

[kevinman4404]

Introducing...
A Foolproof Guide to Managing Your Favourite Canal

In most cases, your favourite canal will be a passageway through a one-tile-wide strip of land. Where you want your canal, you build your city... for example in Panama, this would be Colon; at the Suez Canal, it would be Suez. MOD) Until you build a canal improvement, NO ships can go through your city on the way to the other side.

When the canal improvement is built, anyone to whom your borders are open may pass through your city, as if it were a water tile, like in the regular game:

MOD) Note: Borders will no longer extend into the water. Naval borders can be established using ships.

So in that case, when you don't want someone to pass through, you close borders. Since a city is a land tile, and therefore there has a cultural border on it, they will no longer be able to go through the tile. (Pretend the borders in the image only extend to the coast).

Note: Sometimes you will find thin strips of land, with an easy diagonal passage. These are NOT canals, but can be controlled by placing a ship there. Your ship will provide a border that cannot be crossed unless borders are opened to the civ who is trying to pass.

MOD: Now you can have your canals go even further! (Well, eventually). Of course, the idea is that it must be by a river connecting 2 bodies of water. On a river tile, you may build a canal/fort (?) improvement which will act like a city (without population, culture, ongoing costs, etc.), thus allowing ships to pass through the improved river tiles. Of course, being land tiles underneath, you can easily control who uses them by opening or closing borders.

@Frekk, what do you think of this idea? And what do you think this fort would look like?

I had an idea for the artwork; instead of being a fort the improvement would act like a flood plain art-wise, though it would be reskinned so instead of being vegetation it would be a modern, industrial coast texture. I would probably have to use python so that when you build the canal improvement, underneath it adds the reskinned and destat'ed flood plains feature.

But realize I don't know what it would look like in real-life (except the Panama Canal), so I would need to know which art would be more accurate.

~~~

Done all elevations in North America, and done Mexico, Eastern Canada and the Arctic.

Kevin

 

[Shqype]

Pretty sweet man. This just keeps getting better and better.

You're doing a good job and I hope you keep it up!