Alternative Map for DOC

[1SDANi]

Just so everyone knows, if we give Sweden a land connection it'll either end up being very difficult for Holy Rome to capture Copenhagen, or very easy to conquer Scandinavia, at least without major changes to what units Holy Rome and the Vikings start with and/or changing up city placement/buildings.

Source: A pretty badly made mod I made when I had no idea how to mod. Take my warning with a grain of salt.

 

[star15389]

Obviously this isn't what should be done, but it would be really great if Denmark could be connected to Sweden but not Germany

 

[Leoreth]

That's an AI issue in my opinion.

 

[DC123456789]

Aesthetically, diagonal connections already come very close to narrow straits, even though they are not passable to ships. I looked into the code but the pathing rules are baked pretty deep into it, and stuff like pathfinding comes from the engine so I don't want to mess with them.

What I plan to do though is to make cities that border to different bodies of water passable even without open borders. So as long as Copenhagen exists those two seas would remain connected.

Doesn't RFCE do this for the Dardenelles and the Sound?

 

[AtlantaMarty]

Here's my proposal that I'm the most proud of - Bautos please ignore my earlier proposals from the summer - they're just a less refined version of this one

View attachment 483552

In that case, here's my proposal for Iberia and France
I also think you should use Jules Auburn's changes to/extra column in Germany and Poland, but I had issues copying that into my map of changes

Here's my rationale
Geographical
1. In Bautos42's original map, the northern French coastline was too steep - mine is closer to the actual shape of the coastline
2. In the original map, Iberia was also too short - it had an extra column but had the same number of rows as the current DoC map - this remedies that by allowing an extra row of tiles in Iberia, so it essentially fixes two inaccuracies/distortions in Europe

Gameplay
1. Even with the northern French coastline stretched out, you still can't really fit in Brussels without overcrowding, whereas adding the extra tile to Iberia reduces crowding between Madrid and Lisbon and also allows a fairly comfortable Bilbao
2. All 5 French cities planned for this map (Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, and Brest or Rennes) still fit comfortably here
3. Concerns were raised that this would make Spain's game too easy vis-a-vis stability - these can be solved by making Barcelona and Bilbao historical area instead of core - given the recent popularity of both Basque and Catalan nationalism, it also makes sense from an accuracy perspective.

 

[Hussarknight]

Tried to play the map, but almost all the civs spawn in the wrong places including me when I tried the Harappans and the Indonesians

 

[Leoreth]

It's just the map, it's not playable and not meant to be.

 

[Hussarknight]

It's just the map, it's not playable and not meant to be.

Unfortunately, cause it looked so nice. But unbalanced with India having even more grassland floodplains.

 

[Leoreth]

The grassland flood plains were meant to compensate for the limited space in the old map. So they could certainly be reduced in the larger map.

 

[HNation]

This map is mostly very good, thank you to Bautos42 for creating it. Finally, we can have cities like Munich, Oporto, and maybe even Salzburg? Salzburg might be a little too much crowding, but it's probably more important than Prague, given its connection to Mozart. (Or maybe I'm biased because I'm a musician, but if you ever do make it to Salzburg, I highly recommend seeing Mozart's house.)

I'd make it so you can circumnavigate Iceland - right now it looks like the ice is blocking the northwestern coast.

Spain, Portugal, and Western France all look like they have been vertically compressed, I would recommend moving Britain and possibly Ireland north by one tile and reworking them to beef them up a little. I'd also recommend adding a little bit of grassland to Southern Spain.

The Aral Sea looks a little bit squarish, but I doubt there's a way to improve on that.

The Caucasus Mountains look a little too straightly diagonal, but I don't know enough about that region to suggest improvements.

Mesopotamia could probably no accommodate Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul all at once, if Leoreth was so inclined.

Copying over the Moorland from Rhye's and Fall of Europe and the Semidesert from Sword of Islam are interesting ideas that would improve the accuracy and appearance of the map, but I don't know if having more terrain types would negatively impact speed and performance.

Indochina looks like it has been stretched on the southeastern axis somewhat, but this might be intentional in order to create more room for the Khmer and Siamese civilizations.

New Zealand looks somewhat fat, but I don't know enough about this region to suggest anything.

James Bay looks a little too skinny, but making it two tiles wide might make it too fat.

California looks like it has been horizontally compressed.

 

[Tigranes]

Looks good. I really like the diagonally connected Zealand, it allows easier connection to continental Europe for the Vikings and gives them control over the Baltic Sea.

Baltic Sea is a sea, not a lake. We already have to make concessions in case of the Black Sea and Constantinople, because of absolutely unprecedented importance of that spot and that city. Copenhagen should not be elevated to that level -- as to deny Russian Saint Petersburg caravel an access to England, for example. Or what is more important to have London-Petersburg sea trade route.

I have seen a mod that allows ships to cross diagonally connected coastal tiles (which they should as a general rule, because land units can certainly do it with land tiles, like original Corsica of this map). But I don't remember which mod was that, perhaps someone can help us to find it or alternatively perhaps it is possible to make diagonally connected sea tiles actually connected. One should be able to leave Baltic Sea without passing through Copenhagen!

 

[Jarlaxe Baenre]

Baltic Sea is a sea, not a lake. We already have to make concessions in case of the Black Sea and Constantinople, because of absolutely unprecedented importance of that spot and that city. Copenhagen should not be elevated to that level -- as to deny Russian Saint Petersburg caravel an access to England, for example. Or what is more important to have London-Petersburg sea trade route.

I have seen a mod that allows ships to cross diagonally connected coastal tiles (which they should as a general rule, because land units can certainly do it). But I don't remember which mod was that, perhaps someone can help us to find it or alternatively perhaps it is possible to make diagonally connected sea tiles actually connected. One should be able to leave Baltic Sea without passing through Copenhagen!

You're thinking of RFCE, which implemented that to solve this exact issue.

 

[Tigranes]

You're thinking of RFCE, which implemented that to solve this exact issue.

Oh wow, really? Do you know if Sea trade routes are affected by that? Let me double check how it works there. I wonder how much codding went into that...

Edit, yes! One can trade across 2 diagonal tiles! We really need this for the new map, please!

 

[HNation]

I just read through this whole thread cause the bigger map excites me - I've always loved Dawn of Civilization, but felt that the map was way too small. Here are the proposals I like and think would be good to include. (I just quoted parts of the posts to keep my post from being too large, but I like the entire proposals, not just the excerpts I quoted here)

I would start by moving Ireland north one tile.

I also fixed the Philippine archipelago since it looks weird for me and as a Filipino it bothers me somehow.

I'm not really all that familiar with the area, but thinking of something like this:

Took a look at Canada today as well. The size-3 cities represent the actually important Canadian cities, while the size 1 cities are more just space-fillers that are important in their area and could be considered the "canonical" settlements but are pretty much irrelevant in the greater picture of the country. In some cases where there are two nearby cities of similar size/importance which could easily alternate, I chose the larger one and represented the smaller with a town and a label/landmark (specifically, Regina and Edmonton).

The shape of Italy in that seems off to me in that Northern Italy has 1 too many land tiles on the eastern side, and I don't see the point to enlarging Sicily.
Here's my proposal - added 1 extra tile to East-Central Italy (in addition to the already discussed move of Sardinia and Corsica).

The ideal solution would be extending Asia Minor to the West by 1 column, and shifting all of Europe 1W. (This is also good because it allows Sinope without overcrowding) This would look more realistic, and allow Trebizond to be in a more accurate place without crowding Armenia as much.

Here's how it would look if Europe was shifted one tile west, without further editing:
Now, I say "without further editing" because I took the liberty of playing around with Northern Europe, especially around the Baltic.

Yeah, I could imagine up to three new terrain types.

In that case, here's my proposal for Iberia and France

New design:

 

[Leoreth]

I have also started keeping a doc with links to the most important comments/suggestions.

 

[Lokki242]

sorry, this may be dumb, but where can we download the most current version of the alternative map? Just to peruse?

 

[Leon Michiel]

If we can't find a way to put a windmill on a Dutch historic tile, I'm not playing it.

 

[citis]

Some minor rebalances over Greece:

Spoiler :

1) Removed rivers (greek rivers aren't navigable). Added Vardar river.
2) Proper placement of resources (especially wine in Peloponese and Crete)
3) Mount Olympus is in its proper place, also added hills (except Thessaly and Athens)
4) Reworked islands: Dodecanese are between Crete and Anatolia, Cyclades are next to Athens, Ionian islands are reachable by Ragusa, North Aegean islands are next to Anatolia.

 

[hnrysml]

It looks really good, although I think Belgrade should be 1 north or northwest, at the moment it's on an in-between tile that wouldn't be Sofia (Sredets), Skopjie, or Belgrade imo

 

[ozqar]

Is there any way that map can reasonably fit Sofia, Bucharest and Belgrade at the same time?