Alternative Map during 1.18

[BigSchwartzzz]

• The second wave was during the European colonization of the New World. The game currently spawns two sugars in the Caribbean and two sugars in Brazil in 1700 AD. I think this is very late - I have seen mentions of early sugar cultivation in the Caribbean in the early 1500s. So a 1500 AD spawn makes more sense to me. Sugarcane also seems to have been important in the Guyanas.
• What about North America? Does it make sense to have sugar e.g. in Florida?

I'm wondering if it's possible to have the sugar spawn in the new world triggered by the Conquistador event.

Regarding Florida I wouldn't. No city there was relevant until air conditioning anyway. The US is so resource rich anyway in game so I think it's fine to not focus on Florida specifically. You could put a FloridaMan resource there though.

I'm going to spit ball something else though, dumb idea, if it is at all possible. Not pre plot certain resources. Allow the map to have a zone where X amount of resources will spawn and have it randomized. So for example, the location of the sugar resource won't be on the same Caribbean island every time. In India it might be all over the place, too.

 

[mccp77]

Spoiler :

View attachment 660341

I am currently working on resource spawns and noticed that sugar is quite rare in the world so far. These are all the sugar resources that exist on the map on game start (there's also one on Madeira, but I will get to it). It's actually quite accurate regarding the historical spread of sugarcane at 3000 BC though. However I still have some concerns:

• I think there should be a few more resources in this range still. It's odd that there are only three in India and none in southern India. Would it make sense to add one around there?
• Likewise it looks odd that no sugar exists in Indonesia. The current map had a source in Sumatra.
• Historically it seems there were two waves of sugarcane spreading west. During the Caliphate, it was introduced to the Muslim world and heavily cultivated in Mesopotamia and Egypt. However this is currently not represented in the game at all. So I think at least one resource each should spawn there around 700 AD.
• The second wave was during the European colonization of the New World. The game currently spawns two sugars in the Caribbean and two sugars in Brazil in 1700 AD. I think this is very late - I have seen mentions of early sugar cultivation in the Caribbean in the early 1500s. So a 1500 AD spawn makes more sense to me. Sugarcane also seems to have been important in the Guyanas.
• What about North America? Does it make sense to have sugar e.g. in Florida?
• Like mentioned above there is sugar in Madeira at game start, which is actually reflecting the sugar introduced by Europeans. I think it makes sense to spawn it slightly earlier than the New World sugar i.e. about 1400 AD.
• There are also three sugar spawns in East and South Africa in 1100 AD currently - I do not think these are accurate. All I could find about sugar cultivation in sub-Saharan Africa mentions it being introduced by the British. Is there any reason why this is here? Otherwise I would not carry it forward into the new map.
• Should there be sugar in Madagascar? It seems it got introduced there during the Polynesian migration.
• Also currently sugar spawns in Hawaii in 1850 AD. I think this is fine.

Does this make sense? Anything else I am missing?

We could haggle over decades in terms of dates, but yes, yes, yes, and yes again! All of this makes perfect sense. Nice attention to detail, I'm so excited!

 

[Cacaso]

I found this image, which shows the sugar expansion on the WIKI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sugar#Sugar_cultivation_in_the_New_World

Looking at historical reasons I think you can add sugar in Mesopotamia (spawn in 500AD) and Egypt (spawn in 600AD). Maybe if there is a lack of resource in areas like Tunisia / Carthage and in the south of Italy, I think could add a resource there. if there is space, and it is not already very resource rich.

I agree with putting a sugar resource in Madagascar that would increase value of this area and it's historic, I think it would be interesting to also add it on the island of Mauritius, so that this area has some settle value, because without having a resource it's almost a waste to found one town in 1tile islands. As Steb said, I also think there is a historical reason to have this resource there.

In the Africa, I thought it was strange to have sugar in South Africa. Now in the East of the African continent, I think there could be 2 or 3 sugar resources, in areas of current Tanzania and Mozambique, because historically Portugal (during colonialism age) established in this colony a sugar plantation system with local slave labor . The sugar activity, along with cocoa and slave trade were the 3 main activities of colonial Mozambique.

And regarding the areas of the Americas.
- I don't think there's need to have sugar resource in Florida. Not historically very important in the region and USA is already very resource rich, USA can get its sugar in Hawaii.
- the Caribbean islands were very important in the cultivation of sugar on the planet, so I think that just 2 resources is too little. we could choose where to put them, places like Cuba, Haiti, rest of the island of hispaniola, Jamaica, netherlands antilles (Barbados and virgin islands), all had historically relevant productions, so I think it deserved more than 2 resources.
- In South America, a place that has been forgotten is Colombia/Gran-colombia, as it was a country that also had relevant sugar production in areas close to its Caribbean coast, perhaps it would be cool to add a resource there. Dutch Suriname too, deserves 1 resource. In Brazil you can have a resource in the northeast near Recife and another in São Paulo.

I also think that some 1 tile islands in the Pacific Ocean like Marquesas - Samoa/Fiji - Tahiti could also have a resource on each so that there's something to be gained by settling these 1 tile islands, because if you don't have even a single resource they become almost useless for any EuropeanCIV/Other CIV that has these islands in its settle map, because they will be very far from the capital and then they will have a high maintenance cost and increase the overall maintenance cost of all other cities.

looking at this second image i think the 4th resource sugar from india could be placed near the city of bombay.

 

[Krieger-FS]

Also agree with all ideas. I’d just make few points about it:

• New World: you don’t mention specific spawns, but I’d absolutely include in the Caribbean at least in Cuba, Hispaniola (maybe even two on each island), Jamaica (could become Aluminum later) and in Lesser Antilles. On the mainland, we could argue for one sugar in Mexico, near Veracruz. In South America, we definitely need at least one in Colombia (preferably near the Pacific coast) and in the Guianas (maybe in Suriname); in Brazil, I do think we can add at least three, if not more: two in the Northeast, near Recife, and one-two in the Southeast, near São Paulo.
• East and South Africa: in the latter, sugar was indeed introduced by the British, so we can set one resource to spawn around 1800s near Natal. In East Africa, I’ve found some sources that pointed sugar plantations in the Kilwa Sultanate in Zanzibar and some nearby areas in the mainland; Portugal also developed some sugar plantations by late 19th century in Mozambique.
• About Madagascar, I do think it would be neat to have a sugar resource related with the Polynesian migration. However, sugar production seems to only have become relevant during French colonial rule; it is currently the second most important crop produced by the country. Mauritius also deserve one, as stated before.

 

[Leoreth]

Great feedback, thanks.

Something else that occurred to me I should probably mention is that I changed the game's calendar to be 20% longer. In other words, normal speed is now 600 turns instead of 500 turns (epic 750 -> 900, marathon 1500 -> 1800). Most of the additional turns were allocated to the early game, especially the classical era. I tried my best to also allocate more turns to the ancient era but that turned out to be difficult.

I also improved the consistency between different game speeds. They were very different in how quick the game progressed through the timeline depending on the period of the game you are in - this expressed itself in counterintutive tech progression because the date was out of sync with how the game generally develops (which is balanced around normal speed). It's not possible to completely avoid this problem, but it should be a lot better now.

My methodology here was to (somewhat arbitrarily) divide the game into eras by assigning them a default start and end year. Then I did my best to assign the same number of turns (multiplied by the respective scaling factor) to each game speed. Here's what it looks like for normal speed as an example:

Spoiler :

By this metric, the ancient era gained 10 turns, the classical era gained 49 turns, the medieval era gained 5 turns, the Renaissance era gained 7 turns, the industrial era gained 17 turns, and the global era gained 7 turns. So the early game has been significantly extended.

 

[Logoncal]

The classical era gaining 49 turns means that you have ACTUAL action between the Argead empire, Persians and the Romans.
How would that impact UHVs, such as Rome?

 

[Leoreth]

In general all UHVs will have to be rebalanced to account for the new map, and in the process of that they can also be balanced to account for the available number of turns (which is why I am doing these two changes together in the first place). For Rome I would assume that means it allows to move their starting date to a more historically accurate year (foundation of the republic) while also requiring a more encompassing set of goal areas/cities. The idea is definitely to keep it challenging, but with the extra number of turns the challenge can also mean that it's less of a rush to get everything asap to have any chance at all. There is also the added challenge that comes from the larger map itself, which requires more turns just to move units to some target areas.

 

[Dracosolon]

Yeah most UHVs will have to be reexamined for the big map anyway, but that's a lower priority. For Rome in particular I think there's also the possibility of weakening its initial setup (it starts with all of Italy when Rome held a much smaller territories for the first centuries of its existence), but that might make it too vunerable of a target for the savvy human playing a neighboring civ so a later start coinciding with the Republic also makes sense.

Lengthening the Classical Era is also important for various civs introduced on the big map, though I expected the Ancient Era to be a bigger beneficiary of this change given that several of these civs would start during it, and because the Ancient Era is extremely fast in the current version. Was the main reason just that there isn't that much to build during it, or something else?

 

[Logoncal]

In general all UHVs will have to be rebalanced to account for the new map, and in the process of that they can also be balanced to account for the available number of turns (which is why I am doing these two changes together in the first place). For Rome I would assume that means it allows to move their starting date to a more historically accurate year (foundation of the republic) while also requiring a more encompassing set of goal areas/cities. The idea is definitely to keep it challenging, but with the extra number of turns the challenge can also mean that it's less of a rush to get everything asap to have any chance at all. There is also the added challenge that comes from the larger map itself, which requires more turns just to move units to some target areas.

I wonder, would you revise other starting dates?

for instance, France (earlier to coincide with the foundation of the Kingdom of the Franks), England (could start at 1066, at the Norman conquest).

Also, from my experience, Austria falls into irrelevancy too fast post Prussian spawn. Maybe in the new map, Prussia flips only the Brandenburg-Prussia territory, leaving the Western part with HRE/Austria.

Do you have anything in mind for changes for the Italians too? They mostly tend to be nothing more than a speedbump.

 

[Leoreth]

Yeah most UHVs will have to be reexamined for the big map anyway, but that's a lower priority. For Rome in particular I think there's also the possibility of weakening its initial setup (it starts with all of Italy when Rome held a much smaller territories for the first centuries of its existence), but that might make it too vunerable of a target for the savvy human playing a neighboring civ so a later start coinciding with the Republic also makes sense.

Lengthening the Classical Era is also important for various civs introduced on the big map, though I expected the Ancient Era to be a bigger beneficiary of this change given that several of these civs would start during it, and because the Ancient Era is extremely fast in the current version. Was the main reason just that there isn't that much to build during it, or something else?

I alluded to this in my earlier post, it is actually quite difficult to add additional turns to the ancient era. This might seem counterintuitive but keep in mind that two values are required to remain constant no matter what you do: the number of turns needs to be 600 and the number of years needs to be 5020. So if you want to add turns to the ancient era, you need to take them from somewhere later in the game. However, because the year increment is higher in the ancient era, you have now kept the number of turns constant but added more years to the timeline.

If you want to do this maneuver for another era you can shift things around on the other end of it to compensate. But being the first era, Ancient has no other end to do anything like that. Even doing something seemingly drastic like starting the ancient era with a 20 year turn increment actually does not have a big impact on its number of turns.

I wonder, would you revise other starting dates?

for instance, France (earlier to coincide with the foundation of the Kingdom of the Franks), England (could start at 1066, at the Norman conquest).

Also, from my experience, Austria falls into irrelevancy too fast post Prussian spawn. Maybe in the new map, Prussia flips only the Brandenburg-Prussia territory, leaving the Western part with HRE/Austria.

Do you have anything in mind for changes for the Italians too? They mostly tend to be nothing more than a speedbump.

Changes of start dates are definitely possible, currently I am considering this for:

• Rome
• Khmer
• France
• Mali
• Maya
• Korea

And probably something else I am forgetting right now. If you check the core area posted for Prussia in this thread, you will already see that I have reduced it to exclude parts of southern Germany.

 

[Logoncal]

And probably something else I am forgetting right now. If you check the core area posted for Prussia in this thread, you will already see that I have reduced it to exclude parts of southern Germany.

I havent been able to check your updates, time constraint. Nice touch.

 

[Dracosolon]

Okay, that explanation makes sense. But wait, the new timeline goes from 5 years/turn from -200 to 0 then to 10 years again after that?

 

[mccp77]

Some tweaks that I was able to find related to late-stage imperialism that are so minor that they may or may not be worth the effort. These are meant to be in addition to the other stuff that I found above. Generally they were less obvious b/c it took me 3 sweeps to find them. I am so so so so sorry for the length :'(

Most can be put in 1 of 3 "buckets" (all personal preferences of mine and ignorable)

(a) my personal belief that post-WW1 mandates should be on war maps but not settler maps b/c European empires were genuinely unstable/experiencing resistance by the inter-war period.
(b) my preference for 19th century invasions and spheres of influence (Tibet, Afghanistan, Southern China) to be on war maps
(c) the Pacific islands being incorrect (but not a big deal gameplay wise b/c they are so rarely settled)

1. Argentina:
- Might add Easter Island (+ Chile b/c the island is Chilean) on settler maps.

2. Germany:
- Might currently have the incorrect Samoan island (I believe), should have the top island of that 4 island cluster. (Very possible that I could be reading the map wrong.)

3. France:
- Might add Marquesas and Society Islands on settler maps.

4. England:
- Might remove German Pacific territories from their settler maps. Keep these on their war maps only.
- Might add (the added) German Samoa to their war map (if I didn't screw up my map reading ).
- Might remove Tanzania from settler map, keep on war map
- Might remove Namibia except for Walvis Bay from settler map, keep on war map
- Might remove Iraq from settler map, keep on war maps
- Might remove Jordan/Transjordan from settler map, keep on war maps
- Might remove Palestine from settler maps (unless in reference to Middle Ages crusader states), keep on war maps. (post-WW1 instability culprit #1)
- Might add Tibet (in addition to the Central China/China recommendation above) to war map.
- Might add Afghanistan (if it exists on map -- hard to tell) to war map

5. Japan:
- Might add Aleutian Island (furthest west tip of Alaska) to war map
- Might add Australia north of the "Brisbane Line" or all of Australia (IJN drew up invasion plans). At least let's bomb Darwin

6. France:
- Might add Southern China to war map (sphere of influence)
- Might remove any non-Crusader states from Syria and Lebanon (not sure if green there is supposed to represent Middle Ages or post-1914) from settler map, keep on war map.

7. Italy:
- Might add the portion of Southern Anatolia allotted to them by the Treaty of Sèvres to their war map

 

[Leoreth]

Okay, that explanation makes sense. But wait, the new timeline goes from 5 years/turn from -200 to 0 then to 10 years again after that?

It does.

 

[Enyavar]

• The second wave was during the European colonization of the New World. The game currently spawns two sugars in the Caribbean and two sugars in Brazil in 1700 AD. I think this is very late - I have seen mentions of early sugar cultivation in the Caribbean in the early 1500s. So a 1500 AD spawn makes more sense to me. Sugarcane also seems to have been important in the Guyanas.
• What about North America? Does it make sense to have sugar e.g. in Florida?
• Like mentioned above there is sugar in Madeira at game start, which is actually reflecting the sugar introduced by Europeans. I think it makes sense to spawn it slightly earlier than the New World sugar i.e. about 1400 AD.

Sugar spreading to the new world by 1500 only makes sense if Old Worlders actually discover the Americas by that time. That is not guaranteed in every game. And even if say the Spaniards make it by 1500, I doubt that they had hugely profitable sugar plantations right at the start.

I think you should either go with a more conservative date like 1550 or 1580, or make it tile-specific (sugar spreads "x turns after the first Old world power has discovered the tile)
Or make the discovery of the new world an actual world news event (and spawn new world resources accordingly, X turns after that event). Similar to the circumsailing event, this could include a reward: The first five powers to reach the shorelines of the Caribbean get a temporary commerce boosts for each coastal city; and the first power may choose one free historical colony in the Americas.

 

[LukeAtmey]

So are you all decided on what your first game is going to be once this is released? I know this isn't helping my overhype anxiety but I can't help myself, hah!

I think any colonial civ will likely be my first play through. It's going to be so interesting to see how the power dynamics will turn out in a new Europe and how much more of a struggle I'm expecting the New World colonization to be as there'll be ton of new space. The bigger map will also help create a more immersive WW2 in Europe I think. Also the new shape of China looks pretty great so I'm looking forward to doing that run as well!

 

[Leoreth]

It's been a while since the last update. Although I haven't always had time to work on the mod, a lot has happened.

Most importantly, I have entirely reimplemented the barbarians/minors module. I redid the list of minor cities and barbarians to spawn from scratch and did a lot of additional research to represent more historical groups of barbarians. I especially paid attention to previously underrepresented regions like south, southeast, and east Asia.

In addition to that I improved the logic that creates these cities and units to be more responsive to the game situation. Barbarians stop spawning if there are already a lot of them on the map or no major civilization occupies the target area. For minor cities, they periodically receive additional defenders and updated buildings depending on the games overall tech level, to make them both less of a pushover but also more valuable to take.

A similar mechanism has been introduced for collapsed civilizations: independent cities in the core area of a collapsed civilization that can still respawn later on in the game also receive additional units and buildings.

I have also focused on addressing the new resources and incorporating them more fully into the game. This has led to some changes to the buildings in the game:

Changed buildings:

• Granary: removed health from Corn, Wheat, Rice, added +1 health from Salt
• Weaver: now requires Leverage, added +1 health from Silk, removed artist slot
• Market: removed +1 happiness from Silk, Fur, Whale, Ivory
• Harbour: added +1 health from Fish, Clam, Crab, Whale
• Forge: removed +1 happiness from Gems
• Cathedral: removed +1 happiness from Incense
• Pharmacy: removed +1 health from Spices, Banana, added +1 health from Incense, Opium
• Manufactory: now requires Companies
• Coffee House: removed +1 happiness from Sugar, added +1 happiness from Cocoa
• Wharf: removed +1 health from Fish, Clam, Crab
• Distillery: removed resource yields, removed -1 health, added +1 happiness from Potato, Sugar
• Industrial Park: +10% production each from Aluminium, Oil, Rubber

Removed buildings:

• Smokehouse

New buildings:

• Tannery (Tanning): +1 health from Deer, +1 happiness from Fur
• Jeweller (Aesthetics): +1 artist slot, +1 happiness from Amber, Gems, Jade, Pearls
• Grocer (Guilds): +1 health from Spices, Banana, Citrus, Olives, Dates
• Abattoir (Refrigeration): +1 health from Cow, Pig
• Grain Silo (Labour Unions): +1 health from Corn, Millet, Wheat
• Zoo (Ecology): +1 happiness from Camel, Fur, Ivory, Whale

Also these additional resource effects:

• Obsidian: also unlocks Light Swordsman, Spearman
• Rare Earths: required to build Solar Plant, Supercomputer, Automated Factory, Fiber Network, contributes to Computer Industry, accelerates construction of Oriental Pearl Tower, Skytree, Large Hadron Collider, ITER, and some colony projects
• Opium: contributes to Silk Route
• Cocoa: contributes to Trading Company
• Millet: contributes to Cereal Industry

I plan to take a break on development for the new map soon, so expect bug fixes for 1.17 to pick up again in a bit.

 

[mccp77]

So are you all decided on what your first game is going to be once this is released? I know this isn't helping my overhype anxiety but I can't help myself, hah!

I think any colonial civ will likely be my first play through. It's going to be so interesting to see how the power dynamics will turn out in a new Europe and how much more of a struggle I'm expecting the New World colonization to be as there'll be ton of new space. The bigger map will also help create a more immersive WW2 in Europe I think. Also the new shape of China looks pretty great so I'm looking forward to doing that run as well!

Without question the first game must be a full history play through on marathon. I'm thinking Assyria -> Rome -> Japan -> Poland -> Germany -> Americans. I found Industrial Japan (player must go get coal on the mainland for them) / Renaissance Poland (not enough good cities) / Industrial Germany (weak economy) always used to be the most UP, so I'm interested to see how they play with the new map proportions now before capping the game off with my usual "America astride the world."

 

[Steb]

• Tannery (Tanning): +1 health from Deer, +1 happiness from Fur
• Jeweller (Aesthetics): +1 artist slot, +1 happiness from Amber, Gems, Jade, Pearls
• Grocer (Guilds): +1 health from Spices, Banana, Citrus, Olives, Dates
• Abattoir (Refrigeration): +1 health from Cow, Pig
• Grain Silo (Labour Unions): +1 health from Corn, Millet, Wheat
• Zoo (Ecology): +1 happiness from Camel, Fur, Ivory, Whale

This has implications for Unique Buildings! The Argentine one is the Refrigeration Factory, meant to represent the meat industry — it could now replace the Abattoir instead of the Supermarket.

The Jeweller might be a better fit for:
- the Mande Mint (currently replacing the Forge), which I'm not sure what it's supposed to represent besides the fact that Mali had a lot of gold
- the Italian Art Studio (currently replacing the Forge)
- the Phoenician Glassmaker (currently replacing the Market; actually maybe it should replace the Forge. Seems wrong that Phoenicia can't build markets!)
None of these are perfect though.

But the most fun opportunity here is to give a Zoo Unique Building to an ancient civilization, called a Menagerie or Royal Menagerie. The obvious suggestion is Assyria, for whom we don't have a great UB idea yet, and which had several emperors that are known to have kept menageries, including Ashur-bel-kala.

 

[HNation]

I alluded to this in my earlier post, it is actually quite difficult to add additional turns to the ancient era. This might seem counterintuitive but keep in mind that two values are required to remain constant no matter what you do: the number of turns needs to be 600 and the number of years needs to be 5020. So if you want to add turns to the ancient era, you need to take them from somewhere later in the game. However, because the year increment is higher in the ancient era, you have now kept the number of turns constant but added more years to the timeline.

Is the years being 5020 a hardcoded limit that can't be changed? I checked, and all UHVs are over by 2000 at the latest. My suggestion is, if it is possible, to get rid of 2000-2020 and redistribute those turns from 1200-1400 so that those two centuries can have 5 years per turn. Given that the Mongols now have to conquer China by 1300 and the map is now 50% bigger, I'm not sure that it will be achievable on Normal Speed if there are only 11 turns to do it in. I also don't think the Mongol spawn can realistically be pushed any earlier. But I know nothing about computer programming or modding (I just make music, I'm working on some more that you could add to DoC if you are interested, so my apologies if this is not actually possible for you to do.