Australia, Empty Australia

[blizzrd]

(I posted this in the suggestions thread a long while ago but Leoreth might have missed it)

I suggest changes to the Australian resources for the following reasons:

1. Great Barrier Reef. Currently the world's largest coral reef (running along the entire coast of Queensland) is not at all represented. I think that a Clam and a Fish should be added to the coastal waters of northern Queensland to represent the enourmous abundance of marine life in this region.

2. Wine. South Australia's Barossa Valley is easily the largest winery area in Australia. I suggest that the current Uranium hill in this area should become a Wine hill and the Uranium should be relocated into the desert to the north of Lake Eyre, to represent the massive uranium reserves located in the Olympic Dam area.

3. Gold. Kalgoorlie in West Australia is the gold mining capital of Australia, but for some reason Rhye has placed Gold on a desert hill which is several tiles too far to the north of Kalgoorlie. I suggest removing Gold from the current hill and adding a desert hill with Gold two tiles further to the south. There is no historical basis for the current location of this gold resource.

4. Copper. The grassland copper at the southern tip of the Gulf of Carpentaria should be one tile futher to the south, to represent Mt Isa. The Mt Isa tile could perhaps be plains rather than desert.

5. Another copper issue, whilst not strictly in Australia, is that the island of Bougainville (to the east of New Guinea) should really have a copper resource on it.

6. The forests at the northern tip of the Cape York peninsula should all be rainforest.

Australia is a leading producer of minerals for the world:
http://www.ga.gov.au/minerals/basics.html

and

http://www.ga.gov.au/cedda/maps/1085

EDIT: To be precise Australia should have coal.

There already is coal on the east coast of Australia. You need to discover the appropriate technology for it to appear is all that you are missing.

__________________

 

[Arwon]

Some of the resources are off too, the gold for example should be a bit further south, where Kalgoorlie is.

It could be representing Telfer of course, roughly the right location for that.

 

[Pavel Chichikov]

"Mooving foward"

 

[civ_king]

The Dutch are probably the best civ to settle in Australia as they combine the factors of having the ships and the stability map for it.

 

[Leoreth]

Suggestions noted. Will be among the first things I'll do after the game works again.

 

[blizzrd]

 

[banestrider]

Here is an Australia I put together from various different websites put out by the Australian Government.

This is an Australia post English settlement as i have added crops and cattle that are not found naturally in Australia.

Minerals have been placed not just in places they are found but where they are large deposits of them. Naturally Western Australia has the most natural resources as in real life this is the case.

I have also added Rivers. The Swan River in WA, The Brisbane River in Qld, and the various rivers the flow into Lake Eyre. These rivers around Lake Eyre also represent the underground rivers that run through the area permanently rather then the rivers on the surface that only run when there has been rain.

I have also made various changes to the mountains, hills, grasslands and plains so that they more resemble the maps provided by the Australian Government.

References: http://www.abs.gov.au/agcensus2011
http://www.australianminesatlas.gov.au/
http://www.mapsofworld.com/australia/thematic-maps/agriculture/

 

[mykeedee]

The Dutch are probably the best civ to settle in Australia as they combine the factors of having the ships and the stability map for it.

England?

 

[Arwon]

Here is an Australia I put together from various different websites put out by the Australian Government.

This is an Australia post English settlement as i have added crops and cattle that are not found naturally in Australia.

Minerals have been placed not just in places they are found but where they are large deposits of them. Naturally Western Australia has the most natural resources as in real life this is the case.

I have also added Rivers. The Swan River in WA, The Brisbane River in Qld, and the various rivers the flow into Lake Eyre. These rivers around Lake Eyre also represent the underground rivers that run through the area permanently rather then the rivers on the surface that only run when there has been rain.

I have also made various changes to the mountains, hills, grasslands and plains so that they more resemble the maps provided by the Australian Government.

References: http://www.abs.gov.au/agcensus2011
http://www.australianminesatlas.gov.au/
http://www.mapsofworld.com/australia/thematic-maps/agriculture/

Nearly got it, my suggested changes:

Completely get rid of Lake Eyre and associated water (it's just not significant, reliable or useful)

Remove the Central Australian marble

In SW Australia move the wheat to where the aluminium is and move the aluminium one tile south. The largest bauxite mine in the world is at Dwellingup, essentially in the Greater Perth Area, while the WA Wheat Belt extends north and west of the city.

Move the cotton in Victoria to Cubbie Station in Queensland (3 tiles inland of Brisbane, where the three cattle triangulate)

Might also consider offshore oil in the Timor Sea.

 

[civ_king]

England?

England doesn't have ocean going ships

 

[Jusos2108]

Also please add an oasis near Perth, so that there can be irrigated farms.

 

[banestrider]

Nearly got it, my suggested changes:

Completely get rid of Lake Eyre and associated water (it's just not significant, reliable or useful)

Remove the Central Australian marble

In SW Australia move the wheat to where the aluminium is and move the aluminium one tile south. The largest bauxite mine in the world is at Dwellingup, essentially in the Greater Perth Area, while the WA Wheat Belt extends north and west of the city.

Move the cotton in Victoria to Cubbie Station in Queensland (3 tiles inland of Brisbane, where the three cattle triangulate)

Might also consider offshore oil in the Timor Sea.

Lake Eyre is the largest lake in Australia when it has water in it. Also underground water is where most of this part of Australia gets it water. This is why I added the rivers. They provide water without improving the food out put. Therefore making settling this area not a complete loss.

The marble is out there because when I was in Alice Springs I was told there was a marble deposits not far out of town.

I know Cubbie Station is a large cotton farm. However, there is more cotton grown on the Murry River then on Cubbie Station. Well according to the Government Agricultural department anyway.

I was wondering if there should be peeks in Australia at all. Toowoomba is practically on top of the peek one tile west of Brisbane and is Australia's second largest inland city after Canberra. Also the great dividing range is possible on of the more fertile areas in Australia. Therefore should the peeks be taken out and replaced with just hills??????

 

[great.taurus]

I was wondering if there should be peeks in Australia at all. Toowoomba is practically on top of the peek one tile west of Brisbane and is Australia's second largest inland city after Canberra. Also the great dividing range is possible on of the more fertile areas in Australia. Therefore should the peeks be taken out and replaced with just hills??????

I would think so.

They look more like hills than mountains in reality, anyway.

 

[banestrider]

Revised versions of Australia.

Made the Murray/Darling basin bigger so now it is about the right size of the actual one.

Added tobacco to Cape York as I am informed that there are large tobacco farms up there.

Added the Cooper Basin Oil fields and Australia's largest offshore Oil deposits at Barrow Island (off the coast of WA).

Made one version with Peeks and one without.

 

[awesome]

Maybe there can even be some aborigine native/barbarian units

 

[Locutus_Morti]

Every now and then a Barbarian warrior spawns. That's really sufficient ATM.

 

[Hightower]

I think that map has a lot of the same problems the current Scandinavia map does; namely, it's too rich. Esperance, Broome, Mt. Isa, Carnarvon, Cooktown, these are tiny towns even today. (Also not sure why you chose Cooktown over Cairns, which is a somewhat respectably sized city in the same general area.)

If anything, the map should make places like those more inhospitable rather than less. The problem isn't that there aren't enough city sites in Australia. It's that Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide are not very good city sites with relatively few resources. If you add some stronger resources to those sites, that would be enough to make Australia interesting. Darwin and Hobart are about right, given that they're both pretty small cities anyway, though moving some of the resources in northern Australia into the Darwin radius would make it a better city than other, essentially unsettled, areas in northern Australia.

You could then put some production resources in central Australia to encourage a player to build Alice Springs or something to capture them within their territory, though Alice Springs itself should be unable to grow above size 3 at most.

 

[great.taurus]

Agreed. I would be inclined to exchange some of those food resources for more mineral resources, as well as maybe expanding the desert a tad.

It would give Australia that "low population, high wealth" type feel.

 

[banestrider]

This is the real problem. Most of Australia's natural minerals are not in high population areas. people sometime live on the coast with there families and migrate to the mines to do 4 week shifts. This is just something that can't be recreated in this game. SO either have to move the minerals in the game to the cities were they are not located or just have to have unrealistic population in the 'smaller' towns and cities.

The other solution that would be almost impossible to code is that cities that are not the capitals of each of the states have to gift food so that they remain low population and the capitals city sites remain high.

 

[Yudishtira]

This is the real problem. Most of Australia's natural minerals are not in high population areas. people sometime live on the coast with there families and migrate to the mines to do 4 week shifts. This is just something that can't be recreated in this game. SO either have to move the minerals in the game to the cities were they are not located or just have to have unrealistic population in the 'smaller' towns and cities.

The other solution that would be almost impossible to code is that cities that are not the capitals of each of the states have to gift food so that they remain low population and the capitals city sites remain high.

Well how big is a BFC (in miles/kilometres diameter)? Both Sydney and Melbourne had goldfields which I'm sure would be in their BFC. Similarly for Adelaide's and "Sydney's" (ie. the Hunter) wine regions (admittedly introduced). Sydney certainly has coal. Sheep and cattle were introduced, but they certainly thrived (especially sheep where Australia almost cornered the world wool market). The east coast certainly also has fish, shellfish and whale resources (probably elsewhere too).

But there are certainly a lot of remote mineral resources: iron in the north-west, gold and other things in the south-west inland (Kalgoorlie), south-east inland (Broken Hill) silver and...; north and west of that gems (opals); and uranium in a couple of places (north-central inland is one)

Since the game may not adequately model the insane speculator-driven price-hikes for commodities in the (so-called) real world, these remote locations may not be viable city locations in the game. I almost hope so...

I'm no expert, but that's not an exhaustive list by any means. Of course, otoh I'm sure a lot of other places have their resources under-represented in the game too.