ARCHIVED: Steampunk Worlds - Map Creation Thread

[KingArthur]

@jlvfr and Moosezilla. Yes Blue is working on a map that includes the planet Mongo, Venus, Mars etc. I agree with Balthasar that he should be reserved for that map.

@Balthasar. I did notice the resemblence between Catherine and Victoria. I think we should amalgamate Scotland and England into one AI-only civ: Great Britain. What do you think? That leaves 3 factions for the "Earth" area: League of Gentlemen, Secret Evil Society and GB.

@HT. Fu Manchu will be in just not as head of the Evil faction (might change depending on what leaderhead we can come up with for Moriarty). In fact the more characters we can up with the better as the plan is to include a lot character units in the mod in the same way as EFZI2.

 

[Balthasar]

I think we should amalgamate Scotland and England into one AI-only civ: Great Britain. What do you think? That leaves 3 factions for the "Earth" area: League of Gentlemen, Secret Evil Society and GB.

I'm all in favor except for one thing: the reason I divided the island in the first place was that I ran out of city slots. Can we just reassign the Scottish cities to Great Britain without penalty? Otherwise you, as King of the Britons, will have to decide which British and Scottish Cities are to be eliminated. No club rivalries are allowed to be considered when making your decision!

Also, we should consider the names "Gentlemen of the Night" or "Blackcoats" (see discussion a few posts back) as the name of the criminal organization, since these names have solid pedigree, and I could whip up a nifty (and annotated!) Civilopedia entry for either one.

 

[KingArthur]

I'm almost certain you can reassign any number of cities to another civ up to the maximum city limit. The starting city names don't even have to be in the city list unless you want the convenience of plotting them out directly via editor without having to rename each city.

I think Blackcoats would make a nice unit name but less so for the faction name. And I think Gentlemen of the Night is too close to League of Gentlemen for the good faction. I need to think about that one.

 

[Blue Monkey]

"Brotherhood of Shadows"?

 

[KingArthur]

Does no one like the name Secret Evil Society then? Tell me, I can take it (The name actually comes from the Civ 2 Jules Verne scenario).

Maybe we need a vote- I'm a democratic kind of guy.

A. Blackcoats
B. Gentlemen of the Night
C. Brotherhood of Shadows
D. Secret Evil Society
E. Hilary Clinton

 

[Virote_Considon]

I like the Secret Evil Society. There's just a Victorian ring to it...

 

[KingArthur]

Thank you for your Vote Virote.

 

[Blue Monkey]

I like the Secret Evil Society. There's just a Victorian ring to it...

It would sound even more evilly Victorian were it translated into French.

 

[KingArthur]

Quick trawl of the Online Translators
Société mauvaise secrète
Méchante Société Secrète
La Société Diabolique secrète - my favourite!

 

[Virote_Considon]

Their plan is to 1. turn Britain into a republic, 2. take over the world, and 3. make the British speak French!


EDIT: Although that storyline looks kinda like a pre-Victorian, Napoleonic-type storyline...

 

[Blue Monkey]

La Société Diabolique secrète

 

[Balthasar]

I would vote, as I said, for the Black Coats, aka, the Gentlemen of the Night because of it's Victorian pedigree. But since we've embarked on creating our own mythology, allow me to add my own neo-Victorian flourish:

"La Société Diabolique Secrète (The Secret Evil Society): originally founded by elite members of Les Habits Noirs (the Black Coats) in France, it's symbol, and calling card, was a black rose. When the Black Coats were brought to England by the master criminal John Devil in the 1830's under the nome de plume The Gentlemen's Society, the Société Diabolique acted as an invisible 'board of directors' of the group. Some years later Professor Moriarty resurrected and rebuilt the group and during this time it was often, and erroneously, called The Black Rose Society or The Black Rose. Because this elite group was known only (or more accurately, suspected to exist) by certain members of Scotland Yard, it's existence has not been chronicled in popular literature, although some members of the group have become known to the public by the infamy of their individual misdeeds. Even less is known of the actual activities of the Société, save for the fact that they have always recruited only the créme de la créme of the criminal world, so that its members are invariably the most evil, treacherous, dangerous, and talented criminal minds of their time."

Voila!?

 

[Blue Monkey]

Looks like a proper 'pedia entry to me! By the by, there's an "old school" pub in Boston, Mass. called "The Black Rose" that has vague associations with early anarchists.

 

[KingArthur]

Great writing there Balthasar and a fantastic start to the civilopedia. Fancy doing some more entries?

 

[Balthasar]

Great writing there Balthasar and a fantastic start to the civilopedia. Fancy doing some more entries?

I'd be happy to.

Edit: I've begun putting these in the Civilizations thread here.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Been laying around the last three days fighting a summer cold & fever. When I've been coherent enough (not trying to close the drinkable yogurt with the aspirin cap) I've been reading Vandermeer's SP anthology & listening to Vernian Process. So, while recouping today I had a breakthrough on the Earth part of the "Other Worlds" map. Here's version 3. I think at this scale there's room for most of the civs in the original post, minus a few for the planetary civs.

Main changes:

• The Southern Underworld is shrunk a bit, but Pellucidar remains the same size.
• Agartha is moved to the Boreal region.
• Many parts of the map are out of proportion - England is quite prominent, for example, & Africa is foreshortened. I'm aiming for a sort of "world leadership = larger" idea. Japan is important because of their important contributions in the realm of automata.
• Had to sacrifice the Pacific for the Atlantic connection. Alaska to Kamchatka is only doable "over the Pole".
• There's room for some remnants of Mu (Nan Madol?), Dilmun, Skull Island, & even an island I think of as a cross between Kôr, Adamawara & Nevèrÿon.
• Barsoom & Amtor are more distant from Earth, and are about 150% their previous size
• Luna & Mongo are smaller than before.

Here's a larger version with an overlain grid for those who want to get a sense of the game scale for various regions. It's roughly 210 tiles across by 260 down.

thumbnail

 

[Vuldacon]

What little I have been able to look over due to my Extremely SLOW Dial Up connection, there are some very interesting things you are all putting together here. Concerning the Name "La Société Diabolique Secrète"...how about just "League of Diabolical Men"? Is there really a need to state "secret" in their name? Perhaps I am omitting the Flavor that is desired...

 

[Balthasar]

What little I have been able to look over due to my Extremely SLOW Dial Up connection, there are some very interesting things you are all putting together here. Concerning the Name "La Société Diabolique Secrète"...how about just "League of Diabolical Men"? Is there really a need to state "secret" in their name? Perhaps I am omitting the Flavor that is desired...

Dude, pony up for the broadband - it's better value than socks! Read back just a few posts from here and you'll see how it develops. Actually, in conversations I have with group members, we call it the Evil Secret Society or ESS. The good guys are the League of Gentlemen, or LOG.

To catch you up, there are actually three mods in development here, all being overseen by King Arthur, who is the Group Leader:

The Lost Worlds is set in the Victorian Age (1837-1900, roughly) and covers the same sort of territory found in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Space: 1889. It leans heavily on Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs and A Conan Doyle for inspiration, but includes many characters that appear in the fiction of that day. I am project director, but everyone's in on the act; Blue Monkey did some beautiful Tech Icons for us, and King Arthur is about ready with the Tech Tree and Unit List.

The Other Worlds project, (not really named by Blue Monkey yet) is the "sequel" and covers the early 20th century, (1890-1950?) with some overlap. If I understand it correctly, it picks up where the Lost Worlds leaves off, taking us to Venus and Mongo, and includes Flash Gordon, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, George Orwell, etc.
Blue Monkey is the project director, and as you can see above, will have a beautiful and ambitious map for us to play.

Steampunk: Earth (the prequel) will be set in a whole-earth map. Not much development yet: King Arthur is project director for this one.

I'm sure there will be lots of overlaps on these (airships, mystics, strange contraptions), and we welcome lots of participation, with map ideas, unit ideas, graphics ideas and just general kibbitzing happening in the various threads. We're currently looking for Unit Makers most of all.

I think that covers it.

 

[Vuldacon]

Balthasar... Thanks for the Update but as for High Speed Internet, you are assuming that I have an Option. I have dealt with SLOW Dial Up for 12 Years and it is NOT available for me to get any High Speed service where I live.

I have many things I would like to Upload that I have done but SLOW speed prevents my desire to try. It requires about 2 minutes just to load a page for the this site. As for Larger Graphics that are uploaded to the Threads...that requires far too long to mess with.

I wish you success and Good Luck with your endeavors concerning this Game and Be Happy you have High Speed Internet to do it with

P. S., I could give you a few "pointers" concerning any .pcx file for the game IF you are interested...all in the details.

 

[Blue Monkey]

The Other Worlds project, (not really named by Blue Monkey yet) is the "sequel" and covers the early 20th century, (1890-1950?) with some overlap. If I understand it correctly, it picks up where the Lost Worlds leaves off, taking us to Venus and Mongo, and includes Flash Gordon, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, George Orwell, etc.
Blue Monkey is the project director, and as you can see above, will have a beautiful and ambitious map for us to play.

I don't envision this version of the SP mod moving technology any further forward from steam than Tesla - steam-powered tesla-cannon armed juggernauts are scary enough. Actually, I picture it more as culminating with the Belle Époque & the Great War. Great War in this case possibly involving more than one world. A "Scramble for Planets" rather than a "Scramble for Africa". The Great Game writ large. I chose that culmination because it matches up Stableford's trilogy that ends with Carnival of Destruction. Having just previously read Difference Engine it made me really think about the tipping point from a steam utopia to a punk dystopia.

Mongo is a bit anachronistic. I felt that Barsoom made a better, playable, civ than Wells' Martians (although some of their machinery might be an interesting late-era UU), yet there needed to be at least one of the "celestial" civs capable of countering Earth spacefarers with their aetheric flying machines. Plus, Ming & Fu Manchu have one of those "separated at birth" things going on. I never really bought him as an "Evil Oriental" either. So, I thought, what if the hidden puppet master were off-planet. I also liked the idea from the movie of minor inhabited moons (my very first SF reading, at about age 8, was the Mushroom Planet series).

If there's Pellucidar & Barsoom, then there's room for Amtor. Here's a small image of the look of the terrain (An Amazing Stories back cover):

It didn't seem fair not to have at least a hint of Arne Saknussemm's route, so for the true 19th century vision of a Hollow Earth I needed to get a map that let me have 2 underworlds, Agartha via the north entry & Pellucidar in the south.


I do, on the other hand have ideas for another, separate mod project encompassing the whole secret history of the world, with eras going roughly Atlantean/Lemurian, Hermetic/Rosicrucian, SteamPunk, and Retrofuture/Raygun Gothic.