[Beyond the Sword] History In The Making

[Anthropoid]

I DLed that Grave Earth map, and counted it as being a 123 x 68 tile map. For dimensions of ~25K miles east-west and ~10K miles north-south that gives us a scale of roughly (25K/123=203.2 10K/68=147 central value [203.2+147]=) 175 miles per tile. While I recognize that it is a game, and realism must be compromised for the sake of playability (namely, processing volume!) I think that two other contributing factors are: (i) most people just don't like the prospect of making a truly enormous map and (ii) the right people may not have yet put much thought into how the game operations code could be tweaked to make huge maps with lots of stuff process more quickly. I can fill the gap of factor (i). I have wanted to make a TRULY enormous Earth map-=-=THE MOTHER OF ALL EARTH MAPS! -=-=-for a long time.

I talked about this in Genghis Kai's Colossal Earth map thread.

I'm linking to page 11 where I post my shpiel about the most hugiferous possible maps, blah, blah. If you read 11 - 12 or so you'll get the full story . . .

The thing that irritates me about most C3C world maps is they are way too small. The idea of their being "one tile" space between Washington and Baltimore is preposterous for a "world map." I know why it happens this way: limit to ~500 cities in C3C (or at least earlier unpatched versions of it). Also, I know that, when a map gets truly huge, it slows down the game, but that just means buy a faster/bigger chip and more memory!

The key thing to consider here is this: what are the two closest-lying very-large cities that any Earth world map MUST have on it in order to do justice to Earth?

Washington and Baltimore downtowns are about 39 miles apart according to map quest . . .

Using the figures of 25,000 for east-west, and 10,000 for north-south (allowing circumnavigation of the Old and New Worlds with max latitudes of about 77 north and 64 south), in order to render an Earth map with tiles that are 7.5 miles on a side, we'd need the following size map (in tiles):

1334 tiles north-south axis
3334 tiles east-west axis

If we use the more precise figures of 24,900 and 9750 we get

1300 tiles north-south axis
3320 tiles east-west axis

Anyone know what the maximum map size is in the Civ4 mapmaker editor?

Anyone have any idea what would HAPPEN in terms of game speed if you had a Civ4 map of this scale, WITH all 2006 major cities, and infrastructure, and then added the units? Would it require Deep Blue or something to run it? . . .

I'd love to hear what you guys think is max possible. Maybe if some things were changed in the code for how the game works the turn times could be 'overclocked' sort of? I know that El Justo when he made his The Cold War mod originally had atrocious turn times. He changed some things in the C3C editor and it dropped turn times by about a factor fo 4 or 5 IIRC.

You guys tell me how big it can be, and I'll commit to making it! It might take me 6 months or a year, but I WILL make it!

 

[DrewBledsoe]

I DLed that Grave Earth map, and counted it as being a 123 x 68 tile map. For dimensions of ~25K miles east-west and ~10K miles north-south that gives us a scale of roughly (25K/123=203.2 10K/68=147 central value [203.2+147]=) 175 miles per tile. While I recognize that it is a game, and realism must be compromised for the sake of playability (namely, processing volume!) I think that two other contributing factors are: (i) most people just don't like the prospect of making a truly enormous map and (ii) the right people may not have yet put much thought into how the game operations code could be tweaked to make huge maps with lots of stuff process more quickly. I can fill the gap of factor (i). I have wanted to make a TRULY enormous Earth map-=-=THE MOTHER OF ALL EARTH MAPS! -=-=-for a long time.

I talked about this in Genghis Kai's Colossal Earth map thread.

I'm linking to page 11 where I post my shpiel about the most hugiferous possible maps, blah, blah. If you read 11 - 12 or so you'll get the full story . . .



I'd love to hear what you guys think is max possible. Maybe if some things were changed in the code for how the game works the turn times could be 'overclocked' sort of? I know that El Justo when he made his The Cold War mod originally had atrocious turn times. He changed some things in the C3C editor and it dropped turn times by about a factor fo 4 or 5 IIRC.

You guys tell me how big it can be, and I'll commit to making it! It might take me 6 months or a year, but I WILL make it!

Without getting my maps out, I'd suspect Europe and Japan have quite close large cities too. Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield are all within 40 miles of Manchester, and all have 3/4 mill population plus (for example)....Japan also has a lot of densely populated cities close together.

Besides being probably incredibly slow, the main problem with such a map, (and my god there would be dozens) is mvmt. It would take forever to get anywhere. So you'd have to say give a "2 move troop in standard" probably 5-10 times as many moves. This would make things even slower, as the ai would have to figure out such a bigger string of possible mvs.

But have a go by all means .....then you'll need to write a whole new rule set, including much slower techhing (to compensate for amount of cities), rebalanced civics etc.etc.etc.......good luck

 

[davbenbak]

Here's the GraveEarth map with Civs from "around" 1600ad. They include:
Holy Roman, England, Russia, France, Mongol, China, Japan, Khmer, India, Spain, Ottoman, Arabia, Mali, Ethiopia, Inca, America, Native American and Aztec.

Player colors may be off. Let me know. Not "completely" play tested but posted Monday Central Standard Time U.S. as "maybe" promised due to request.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/32481/GraveEarth1600.rar

 

[Agent327]

Cool!!!

(What do you mean quote "maybe" promised unquote? You said you'd do it, so I thought I'd ask how things were progressing, 's all.)

 

[LetMyPeopleGo]

I'm new to this mod, so earlier I posted about Slavery being
crippled a bit, now I found out Serfdom is crippled too, I mean a lot of negative effects so I assume it's for balancing purposes, otherwise why should more advanced civics limit your growth, right?

Will you release the latest patch with Maylon's mod included?

 

[seitan2102]

Now that i' ve reached Future era i' m getting a lot of MAF (Memory Allocation Failure). I' ve lowered the graphics to medium, others to even low but still i get a MAF ecery 4-5 turns of gameplay.

Ι even clear the cashe. So dissapointed... 2GB of ram and a dual core proccesor. Think it's my 6600GT Nvidia to cause this...

I'll see to the matter i guess...

 

[Kalimakhus]

Now that i' ve reached Future era i' m getting a lot of MAF (Memory Allocation Failure). I' ve lowered the graphics to medium, others to even low but still i get a MAF ecery 4-5 turns of gameplay.

Ι even clear the cashe. So dissapointed... 2GB of ram and a dual core proccesor. Think it's my 6600GT Nvidia to cause this...

I'll see to the matter i guess...

Well, a display card can be part of the problem only if it uses system memory. Otherwise it is all about RAM. If you don't intend to invest in a hardware upgrade soon you may satisfy yourself with playing smaller maps for the time being. Also the Odyssey speed can cause a problem as everybody just build too many cities, units, and buildings. Another way to go is to set your Autosave to 1 turn apart. You will get more MAFs but you can always reload where you last left the game. Conversely turning autosave off altogether gets you less MAFs. Just remember to save on your own, and when it happens be patient enough to replay the lost turns. Good Luck.

 

[seitan2102]

@Kalimakhus

I' m a fanatic when it comes to... saves. I save the game in every turn myself anyway. The problem isn't lost turns but that i have to turn off the pc every 5 turns to clear the RAM. Damn... 2gb and not enough! Maybe i'll get 2 more...



The map i play currently is Terra2.

 

[LetMyPeopleGo]

Last nag concerning enhanced city radius,
I think that if a culture level of 30 triggers
the first expansion while playing marathon,
then a culture level of 300 or 1,500 at the most
should suffice for the secong expansion.

Culture level of 150,000 is way to much IMHO, even
Maylon's setting for 38,000 (or 36,000) is too much.

The whole purpose of extended city raduis is (again IMHO) to allow players playing huge maps to cover more territory with a reasonable city count.
Enhanced city radius is map size related, not game length, i.e. Epic, Marathon, or odyssey. It's almost impossible to plan a city placement based on such high culture figures, anyway I'm tweaking CIV4CultureLevelInfo.xml
to my liking but any idea is welcomed.

Just waiting for Grave to include that mod again.

 

[Anthropoid]

Without getting my maps out, I'd suspect Europe and Japan have quite close large cities too. Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield are all within 40 miles of Manchester, and all have 3/4 mill population plus (for example)....Japan also has a lot of densely populated cities close together.

Besides being probably incredibly slow, the main problem with such a map, (and my god there would be dozens) is mvmt. It would take forever to get anywhere. So you'd have to say give a "2 move troop in standard" probably 5-10 times as many moves. This would make things even slower, as the ai would have to figure out such a bigger string of possible mvs.

But have a go by all means .....then you'll need to write a whole new rule set, including much slower techhing (to compensate for amount of cities), rebalanced civics etc.etc.etc.......good luck

Honestly I don't expect that a map that is 1300 x 3300 tiles = (4,316,000 total tiles on the map) would EVER work with existing technology and this game engine. So I'm not actually proposing that.

I am point out however that that would be the IDEAL for maximum realism based on a rule of thumb like Washington-Baltimore or Essen-Dusseldorf, etc.

The current big Earth maps that I'm aware of are in the 68 x 123 = 8364 ballpark. That is approximately 5.2% and 3.5% of the ideal size for maximum representation of modern cities for the short and long axes respectively.

While 4 million tiles may be WAAY too big to ever be doable, 8 thousand tiles just seems like way too few to get close enough to adequately represent the Earth, and in particular modern Earth scenarrios. What I'm asking is: What is the happy medium between the way too big and the present standard which I find too small? What do people think the system could handle? What do people think would be too big for the current game dynamics?

I'm not saying I want or intend to make an Earth map with 4 million tiles on it. I'm just saying "Hey guys look. If we were to create an Earth map that allowed all (or most) of the big cities of modern Earth to be on it, we'd need to get up in that ballpark. The question is: where is the balance between what will work, and what is the smallest size that will show a definite benefit to the types of scenarios which would benefit from a larger Earth map?

Maybe the idea of even 50,000 tiles is absolutely preposterous for this game engine and existing PCs? I dunno? Or maybe real issues would not develope until you got up around 2,000,000 tiles?

With respect to the game balance issues you point out (movement, civics, tech cost, etc.) I see the map as being the groundwork on which the rest of it would be developed. After all, if such a map does not exist, there is no impetus for the modders to develop the mod to make the map playable. I do not necessarily envision such a map as being 'automatically' useful for epic games. But what about a Cold War scenario? What about a WWII Global sceanario? What about a War on Terror scenario? or for that matter what about a "Next War" futuristic scenario? All such scenarios would benefit from a much larger Earth map. Maybe 3K x 1.3K tile dimensions is way beyond what is necessary to benefit such scenarios (or an Epic game); but I think 123 x 68 is erring in the other direction = inadequate to appropriately represent global dynamics in the post Age of Englightenment world.

The example that I draw on primarily is El Justo's TCW mod. He and his guys resorted to a more inclusive Earth map for one rendition of that mod because they came to the realization that having only 3 or 4 cities to represent many of the major nations (e.g., England, Iraq, Turkey, Spain, etc.) was a serious impediment to a good representation of the era. Also I believe Rocoteh and his WWII Global group resorted to a map of considerably larger size at some point for similar reasons.

Heck, even 300 x 165 could open all sorts of possibilities that are not possible with 123 x 68! The biggest maps I remember for C3C were in the ballpark of 300 tiles on a side IIRC, and I made some maps that had that much blue background. Unfortunately, it seems that all the graphical bells and whistles of Civ4 have stunted map sizes. But not being a modder or a PC gamer guru, I don't have any idea where the boundary of the max possible size is. Maybe even 300 x 165 is just not possible?

If what can actually be ACHIEVED given existing technology, game engine (and yes game balance) is only 10% of that ideal (330 x 130) well that is still better than a 123 x 68 map.

If I can get consensus from folks about what they think will work, then I will make the map.

 

[Grave]

Damn! I just started playing this game and I have to say that it is really good! The only thing I miss in here is a few more units (I tried Rise of Mankind and it had more than enough things, I think!). Right now, I'm going mad because ALL my cities are either unhappy, unhealthy or both! I'm doing my best, but I don't seem to be able to do it! The only thing that stopped it (although for a few turns) was the rushing with Slavery, something I never had to use at normal BtS! Anyway, really good mod!

Thanks!

After intalling patch 1.52 I've noticed that
Maylon's expanded city mod is not included.
How can I undo it and go back to ver 1.5? is it o.k. to overwrite with the
same files from version 1.5?

If you still have v1.5, you can just delete the HISTORY IN THE MAKING folder in your MODS folder, then re-install.

Why have you crippled Slavery so mutch?
I think we cannot look at ancient history through
modern eyes, none of the ancient empires would have
flourished without slavery, maybe in modern era with
the beginning of emancipation you should penalize slavery
(if such a thing is possible), forced labor and slavery
weren't always synonyms. Slavery wasn't the resule just
of POW forced labor, slavery was a well known form of life
for people who couldn't survive otherwise, with no land
of their own or other means of survivel after their former
landlord prince or king have lost a war.

Slavery isn't "crippled" at all. That +50% Worker speed pays dividends when you start expanding. Plus you can still sacrifice population to build things. Yes, it does have some sever drawbacks, but I think it all balances out.

Not to mention with certain penalties, it's a good idea to newer civics as they become available... unless you like building Improvements much faster.

I talked about this in Genghis Kai's Colossal Earth map thread.

I'm linking to page 11 where I post my shpiel about the most hugiferous possible maps, blah, blah. If you read 11 - 12 or so you'll get the full story . . .

You guys tell me how big it can be, and I'll commit to making it! It might take me 6 months or a year, but I WILL make it!

I'm not a real big fan of GIGANTIC SUPER-ENORMOUS maps, myself.

For one, most people can't play them because they use alot of computer horsepower to run. Even with my rig, the Planetary map takes some time to load.

I think the standard "Huge" map size is just about right, as far as game play goes.

Here's the GraveEarth map with Civs from "around" 1600ad. They include:
Holy Roman, England, Russia, France, Mongol, China, Japan, Khmer, India, Spain, Ottoman, Arabia, Mali, Ethiopia, Inca, America, Native American and Aztec.

Player colors may be off. Let me know. Not "completely" play tested but posted Monday Central Standard Time U.S. as "maybe" promised due to request.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/32481/GraveEarth1600.rar

Nice!

I'll have a look at it later this week, and I can always post it up in this thread... unless you want to make your own thread for it, in which case I can hyperlink to it.

Will you release the latest patch with Maylon's mod included?

Just waiting for Grave to include that mod again.

I don't think Mylon's Expanded City Radius will make it back in for a while. I selected a few people via PM who were getting unexplained CTD's with Mylon's Expanded City Radius to test the new version he has out to see if they still get CTD's.

Unfortunately, they do.

So until that CTD can be fixed, I'm going to hold off on adding Expanded City Radius. I may add it later, but not in the forseeable future.

Now that i' ve reached Future era i' m getting a lot of MAF (Memory Allocation Failure). I' ve lowered the graphics to medium, others to even low but still i get a MAF ecery 4-5 turns of gameplay.

Ι even clear the cashe. So dissapointed... 2GB of ram and a dual core proccesor. Think it's my 6600GT Nvidia to cause this...

I'll see to the matter i guess...

It's probably your video card. HiTM is a little more resource demanding. I have a Pentium E6700 processor, nVidia 8800GTS and 2GB of PC6400 RAM. Everything is running smooth.

Have you tried switching to using one unit graphic instead of the group of units? It's in the Options menu.

Also, what size map do you play on? That plays a big part, too.

If I can get consensus from folks about what they think will work, then I will make the map.

Right now I have about 3-4 good designs for a fictional global map. I'm only going to work on one at a time, though.

The one I'm working on now, I have one small continent finished.

 

[Grave]

This is a little preview of the map I'm currently working on. One attachment is the Civ4 map, the other is the map I based it off of. I found it while doing a Google search on "ficticious maps".

What I'm trying to do is get some very distinct, detailed regions and a world that has various different terrains.

This map is slightly larger than a "Huge" map... somewhere between "Huge" and "Planetary".

 

[trevort]

What do I need (techs, buildings, etc.) to get inquisitors?

 

[Anthropoid]

Looks like a neat map. I like to design a map for one of two purposes. Either an MP map, in which all humans have opportunities; maybe not equal, but they all have some. Or an SP map, in which one, or maybe two of the start locations are 'tailored' to be the human locations, and the rest are set up to be AI of various roles. I find that if you approach an SP map in this way, and design it to a Noble or perhaps Prince level difficulty, you can actually produce very interesting and challenging maps, where an Epic or Marathon length game remains fairly interesting throughout, without having to resort to the extreme AI perks of the higher difficulties.

So, with this general approach in mind, I have found that my most success came when I started not with a landmass, but with a set of civs in mind, and a sort of checklist of challenges that the human played civ would face at various junctures in history. The map and landmass I would then derive from this 'story line.' Having some training in geology and ecology, I always try to make the general distribution of land forms more-or-less congruent with nature (to the extent Civ maps allow that), but designing the map to serve the story line I think tends to produce good maps.

Working from a landmass instead of a civ lineup at start is not mutually exclusive from this approach, but deciding about the civ lineup and 'theme' for the game would be my first step.

 

[Anthropoid]

My apologies if this is really not something anyone in this thread is interested in, but indulge me for one last (brief) post on this topic of the ideal big map for late game purposes.

The core of Civ are cities. This raises the question of "how many 'cities' are there on Earth today?" Obviously we'd have to define what we mean by 'city;' we might want to say that it was population agglomerations that exceed a certain number in count. The data exists to say how many there are for various counts.

If we pick greater than or equal to a half a million people per community, then the number of 'cities' on Earth today is (evidently) right at about 760 'cities.'

If we pick >=750,000, that list linked to above indicates that 483 'cities' on Earth. If we pick >=1,000,000 then the number is 336.

Not as many as you would've thought eh? We could call these the Fine, Medium, and Coarse Grained Earth Models. The goals here being:

Fine Grained: a map that allows nearly all real Earth cities >=0.5 mill to be represented on the map: enough space for ~760 cities
Medium Grained: ditto except >=0.75 mill; enough space for ~483
Coarse Grained: same but >=1 million sized cities; enough for ~336

When you consider that with all the inevitable towns, and villages, and the fact that arguably mines, camps, plantations ALSO represent small population centers going any finer than the fine grain model listed here is likely to be both overly detailed, unbeneficial for game play, and indeed prohibitive to game operation.

Assuming zero overlap--meaning each 'city' gets 21 tiles for its own we get the following number of total tiles

Fine Grained: 760 * 21 = 15,960
Medium Grained: 483 * 21 = 10,143
Coarse Grained: 336 * 21 = 7,056

However, this does not allow for any areas that are under populated, as (in reality) there are PLENTY of on Earth. I cannot recall for certain, but vaguely memory suggests that it is an actual rather small fraction of Earth that has many people on it . . . 20 to 30 %?? At that rate we would need 3 to 4 times as many tiles as listed above, but given that it is a game, I don't think it is necessarily useful to have so much empty space. To merely double the amounts shown above may be quite adequate, given that at present many maps make due with even less space in which to represent Earth.

So in summary; working at this question from the alternative direction of 'how many cities are there which would need to be represented:' I think it is safe to say that anything in 30,000 to 40,000 tile range is likely to be more than enough to render one of the most stunning and realistic Earth maps ever imagined.

The square root of 30,000 is a mere ~173, so (and correct me if I'm wrong) a map in the 250 x 138 = 34,500 should be enough.

If you wanted to err on the side of allowing uninhabited areas to be bigger, you could go up to 280 x 155 = 43,400

What do you guys think? Would a 280 x 155 size map clog up the works too much?

Again, I'm sorry if this is distracting, and sorry to clog up your thread if this is really not of interest. I would like to do this, and I would like to do it with THIS mod, so I just had to get it out there, and seek feedback.

 

[davbenbak]

@Anthropoid

Thanks for applying logic to what can be an emotional issue. I think it was Frederick the Great that said "Artillery brings dignity to what would otherwise be...." Thanks for focusing the issue.

 

[Agent327]

Again, I'm sorry if this is distracting, and sorry to clog up your thread if this is really not of interest. I would like to do this, and I would like to do it with THIS mod, so I just had to get it out there, and seek feedback.

Not distracting at all, in fact very interesting idea and very clear explanation. I'd say: go ahead!

 

[tomas1931]

Hi

I had no problems with the first version
I installed the mod to the desktop as requested copied it into Bts mod directory added the patch 1.5
after loading the mod the splash screen appears and either she freezes and I have to Ctr-Alt-Del out or she will load the game appears with a flashing background asking me to edit the bug If I do i cant exit out of the bug screen as the exit button does not appear to work If I ignore it and attempt to settle my first city there is a crash to the desk with microsoft warning that the program stopped It does not make a difference what size map i use

I have a duocore pentium with 4gig of physical memory nvidia 8000 series with Direct X 9 and 10 memory 640 megs I use Vista as the operating system I have no saved games as I can start a game I need help

 

[kcoun]

Apologies if this has been asked before (searched and didnt
find it), but how do I turn off Dale's Range Bombard ??

Thanx Gents ... and as I play my first HitM I must say this
is an excellent mod !!

Thx,

 

[Anthropoid]

At the risk of coming across as too prolix, I just want to express my exuberance about this mod! I recall when Warlords, then BTS came out, I composed a kind of wish list of slight changes that I thought would make it more truly "Civ." Eerily, this mod seems to address the majority of the issues I thought of, but did not have the initiative to do anything about. I love it that forts can now overlap other terrain. I LOVE it that forts provide shields, gold, etc. with Monarchy! Not to mention all the other slight changes to the Civics! YES! Now a Feudal Monarchy with Vassalage and Theocracy actually BEHAVES like its real world counterpart. I LOVE the fact that you get a Tech when you conquer a city. I LOVE the arty bombard for Trebuchets and newer. I LOVE the diversified late Mediev and Rennaissance units. I love the improved Tech tree. The added resources. The balanced ecology. The improved interface windows. It is truly rare that a fan mod achieves this level of balance between detail and elegance, game play and realism. It is truly amazing, and I don't think I'll be playing much else for the next year or so. Finally, all the possibilities that Firaxis promised with this new engine seem to be actually visible on the horizon.