Alternative Map for DOC

That's true but not entirely comparable because Europe is enlarged and the Netherlands have to sustain an entire civilization. I too would like Pittsburgh on the map, but your solution looks a bit too invasive to justify it. But I haven't tried my own hand at it.

Likewise, a northern Boston is odd to me. I tried for far too long to get Boston, New York, Philadelphia & Washington on the map but it looked awful.

With the extra tiles, Detroit & Pittsburgh can each get a full ring while NY & Boston still have 5+ tiles to the north to work plus coasts.
 

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I think most of my suggestions about Canada from earlier were integrated, but a couple of small things I did notice:

Have you considered moving the bend/end of the Ottawa River 1E (more geographically accurate) or are you intentionally keeping it there so that Toronto gets a river (which wouldn't be terribly accurate, but would buff the city)?

Also, have you considered adding in marshes to represent the Hudson Bay Lowlands?
I concur, 2 or 3 marsh tiles west of James Bay would be appropriate and correctly make the region very unproductive. Also, it seems the corn is on the most accurate spot for Toronto—it might do good to move it east, also allowing Montreal to reach it.

Are you intending to make the resource distribution as sparse as it is (compared to the current smaller map)?
It is more accurate, but I think it would be better to give Montreal more room given that Quebec is pretty close from the east, and it also does give room to settle Ottawa if you really want to have all four main cities there represented.
City placement decisions are best made by the players during a game, and I think it makes sense that the canonical spot for Toronto does not have a resource, given that many players dislike settling on resources.
Well, placing/leaving the corn there would have the canonical location of Toronto as the tile 1W of it (and moving the corn east would put it on the canonical location of Ottawa). Anyway it doesn't really matter either way, let's let Leoreth decide.
Am I reading this correctly as consensus that the hill 1W of the current corn is an acceptable location for Toronto? Then I would leave things as they are, having Toronto there minimises overlap with Montreal and does not take away from anything in the west. In this case I would also like to keep the river as is because of the mentioned benefits to the city.
 
Not sure if I agree. I understand the reasons, but it feels wrong to me. I think it's because it makes Toronto look like a port on Lake Huron instead of Lake Ontario, and because it's on a hill—the region in and around Toronto is very flat. Can you at least make it flatland and move the hill north?

Can multiple spots be considered canonical locations? Both 1E and 1S would also be accurate for Toronto and I don't think other cities in these areas particularly deserve representation anyway.
 
Depends on your understanding of canonical. In the end the AI should favour one of these locations for the city. But of course all of them can be Toronto in the CNM.
 
Depends on your understanding of canonical. In the end the AI should favour one of these locations for the city. But of course all of them can be Toronto in the CNM.
Why? Couldn't the same weight be given to all three tiles in the settler map (maybe less for the one with a resource), to get variance in AI choice?
 
Because we need to weigh the consequences of each decision for example overlap with other cities. The AI will already avoid founding on food resources so that's less of a problem.
 
Marshes at the Hudson Bay:
Spoiler :
Civ4ScreenShot0345.JPG


ozqar's Mesoamerican suggestions:
Spoiler :
Civ4ScreenShot0344.JPG

It's probably easier to list the deviations from the proposal:
- Cocoa was already present on the map, so I simply converted one of the proposed Spice locations to it
- decided to keep the one tile in Belize
- didn't add the Fish in the Gulf of California, it was too much food, especially in the configuration suggested some cities could reach three seafood tiles. For the same reason I moved the Crab SE, I figured it is best if it also feeds Tzintzuntzan or Guadalajara. The Fish near Acapulco is there by the way, it's just not showing up in Ctrl+R.
- likewise, placed the Crab in the Gulf of Mexico 1E so the intended Tikal tile has access to it. Otherwise founding 1N would have been too much better in comparison
- slightly different Corn locations, near Tenochtitlan I placed them further apart mostly for aesthetic reasons. In both cases I wanted the Corn to be on flatlands.
- kept the Stone in the suggested location. The essential point here is that it is close to Monte Alban so the Maya have to fight them for it to build the Temple of Kukulkan

As this is the 3000 BC map, I did not implement any of your post-colonial suggestions (except I already placed the Coal because it only comes into play later anyway), so feel free to remind me when resource spawns etc. are implemented. Also please tell me if I forgot or misapplied anything.
 
Because we need to weigh the consequences of each decision for example overlap with other cities. The AI will already avoid founding on food resources so that's less of a problem.
I'm really not sure I get the point of this design principle, but all right. The hill location is growing on me anyway, except that I'll insist just once more that it shouldn't be a hill.
 
I'm not sure Korea should get horses? In the Imjin War the Koreans had a lack of cavalry, unlike both the Chinese, and the Japanese; the latter's cavalry charges were one of the reasons their campaigns were initially successful.
Earlier, it was also unable to successfully combat the mongol armies on numerous occasions except when they used the sea and the many islands, off the mainland, tactically. I couldn't find much information on the composition of armies here but I can infer that horses wouldn't have been of much use on a large scale to the Koreans here.

Edit: Perhaps there should be horses and livestock in the Jurchen homeland to the north of the Korean peninsula, this area had historically come under Korean control at several times in history
 
Am I reading this correctly as consensus that the hill 1W of the current corn is an acceptable location for Toronto? Then I would leave things as they are, having Toronto there minimises overlap with Montreal and does not take away from anything in the west. In this case I would also like to keep the river as is because of the mentioned benefits to the city.

I guess I'm fine with the placement there between the two lakes. I'm less fine with the Ottawa River not bending sooner, it looks weird. In my mind, it delineates the border of Ontario/Quebec which messes with my head. Does Toronto really need the river? Is there a way to compensate for it if it isn't present? Also I agree with Steb, it should not be a hill. Eastern Ontario has no good hills and Toronto is certainly not hilly.
 
ozqar's Mesoamerican suggestions:

It's probably easier to list the deviations from the proposal:
- Cocoa was already present on the map, so I simply converted one of the proposed Spice locations to it
- decided to keep the one tile in Belize
- didn't add the Fish in the Gulf of California, it was too much food, especially in the configuration suggested some cities could reach three seafood tiles. For the same reason I moved the Crab SE, I figured it is best if it also feeds Tzintzuntzan or Guadalajara. The Fish near Acapulco is there by the way, it's just not showing up in Ctrl+R.
- likewise, placed the Crab in the Gulf of Mexico 1E so the intended Tikal tile has access to it. Otherwise founding 1N would have been too much better in comparison
- slightly different Corn locations, near Tenochtitlan I placed them further apart mostly for aesthetic reasons. In both cases I wanted the Corn to be on flatlands.
- kept the Stone in the suggested location. The essential point here is that it is close to Monte Alban so the Maya have to fight them for it to build the Temple of Kukulkan

As this is the 3000 BC map, I did not implement any of your post-colonial suggestions (except I already placed the Coal because it only comes into play later anyway), so feel free to remind me when resource spawns etc. are implemented. Also please tell me if I forgot or misapplied anything.

Looks amazing! Maybe there are two minor things to consider:
- Changing the cocoa north of Mexico City to spices (it's what would grow there, cacao is not suitable for that area; cacao will only grow in very humid areas and usually near the coast)
- Changing the incense in the south coast 1W, so that tile (the one with the spices now) is the intended one for Monte Alban and so that so Veracruz can be settled 1E of the stone

I'll keep in mind the post-colonial resources when we get to that!
 
I'm not sure Korea should get horses? In the Imjin War the Koreans had a lack of cavalry, unlike both the Chinese, and the Japanese; the latter's cavalry charges were one of the reasons their campaigns were initially successful.
Earlier, it was also unable to successfully combat the mongol armies on numerous occasions except when they used the sea and the many islands, off the mainland, tactically. I couldn't find much information on the composition of armies here but I can infer that horses wouldn't have been of much use on a large scale to the Koreans here.

Edit: Perhaps there should be horses and livestock in the Jurchen homeland to the north of the Korean peninsula, this area had historically come under Korean control at several times in history
That's what I was going to propose. From what I can tell the early Korean military used a lot of light cavalry, later this did not seem to be the case. Likewise, early Korean dynasties like Goguryeo controlled parts of Manchuria so it makes sense to put the Horses there.

Looks amazing! Maybe there are two minor things to consider:
- Changing the cocoa north of Mexico City to spices (it's what would grow there, cacao is not suitable for that area; cacao will only grow in very humid areas and usually near the coast)
- Changing the incense in the south coast 1W, so that tile (the one with the spices now) is the intended one for Monte Alban and so that so Veracruz can be settled 1E of the stone

I'll keep in mind the post-colonial resources when we get to that!
- So how about swapping the current Spices and Cocoa in my map?
- I prefer the current (free) tile for Monte Alban, less overlap with Tenochtitlan and more with the Mayan core. I don't think Monte Alban can coexist with Veracruz anyway. So if anything we need to make sure this city is removed some way.
 
So if anything we need to make sure this city is removed some way.

SimCity style disasters seems appropriate to me for this. :D
 
I like the location of the other spices and cacao resources, it's just that one north of Mexico City that looks out of place. If you want three cacao resources then just moving the existing one 1SE would look better. But this is really a minor issue. Another thing I'm noticing is that the coal in the North would be better 1W, there it would still be in the correct area and would allow using the plains tile for something else (a farm? a town?) and allow the desert tile it's moved to to be used for a mine.

About Monte Alban, yeah, maybe it should collapse at some point, to free up space for Veracruz? I think Veracruz needs to be there to provide a sea access on the Gulf side with decent production (Mérida has very low production). However, I also imagine that I would want, nevertheless, some city in one of the three southern pacific tiles (ie, the incense, or 1w, or 1e) to get access to the fish and use all those sea tiles for commerce, even if it's at the expense of one or two tiles from Mexico City or from Tenochtitlan. So even if Monte Alban was destroyed, after having Veracruz I'd still want to found either Acapulco (1W of incense) or Oaxaca (on incense). In that sense, we might as well have Dani Baa on current incense spot from the start and allow it to become Oaxaca after the conquest (the ruins of Monte Alban are practically a suburb of the city of Oaxaca).

Edit: Just reread, about swapping spices and cocoa - yes, that could also work!
 
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What does Leoreth have against St. Petersburg ;_;
 
I like the location of the other spices and cacao resources, it's just that one north of Mexico City that looks out of place. If you want three cacao resources then just moving the existing one 1SE would look better. But this is really a minor issue. Another thing I'm noticing is that the coal in the North would be better 1W, there it would still be in the correct area and would allow using the plains tile for something else (a farm? a town?) and allow the desert tile it's moved to to be used for a mine.

About Monte Alban, yeah, maybe it should collapse at some point, to free up space for Veracruz? I think Veracruz needs to be there to provide a sea access on the Gulf side with decent production (Mérida has very low production). However, I also imagine that I would want, nevertheless, some city in one of the three southern pacific tiles (ie, the incense, or 1w, or 1e) to get access to the fish and use all those sea tiles for commerce, even if it's at the expense of one or two tiles from Mexico City or from Tenochtitlan. So even if Monte Alban was destroyed, after having Veracruz I'd still want to found either Acapulco (1W of incense) or Oaxaca (on incense). In that sense, we might as well have Dani Baa on current incense spot from the start and allow it to become Oaxaca after the conquest (the ruins of Monte Alban are practically a suburb of the city of Oaxaca).

Edit: Just reread, about swapping spices and cocoa - yes, that could also work!
Yeah, I meant swapping the two in Mexico. I also considered moving it 1SW but I would like to avoid resource overcrowding in the region.

I think the Monte Alban spot works just as well for Oaxaca.

What does Leoreth have against St. Petersburg ;_;
What I do have for St. Petersburg is the desire to have it founded in the Renaissance.
 
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