[Development] Alternative Map during 1.17

[1SDANi]

We already have an improvement that is just for one resource (Paddy Fields)

Paddy Farm, Whaling Boats, Offshore Platform, and Well.

The latter two are land and sea improvements for a single resource, so it's kind of like they're improvements that are just for half a resource.

 

[TJDowling]

Paddy Farm, Whaling Boats, Offshore Platform, and Well.

The latter two are land and sea improvements for a single resource, so it's kind of like they're improvements that are just for half a resource.

See! Totally reasonable it's not even half a resource like oil! That said, three of those were from vanilla, the paddy farm provides the precedent for adding an improvement.

 

[Leoreth]

Okay, here's another attempt:

Spoiler :

I corrected some city locations, added steppes in Inner Mongolia, decided on Beijing 1N1W plus river, and moved a lot of resources around. For city locations, I tried to achieve the following goals:
- named tiles are preferable to non-named tiles (especially regarding food)
- no supercities are possible, especially not on non-named tiles
- if two named locations are next to each other, there should always be some upside of one over the other

There's also some little things like Horses in Beijing's cross to encourage the city for the strategic resource, likewise iron is further west to keep Chang'an necessary to reach it.

With the current setup deciding on one city over the other usually means deciding where to overlap and who to steal resources from. Correct me if I have created some unintentionally powerful locations.

 

[Bautos42]

This is more or less the city locations I had in mind when working on this map, except for Lanzhou and Yinchuan, which I'd both move 1SW (the sheep could be moved accordingly)

 

[Leoreth]

That's good to know, especially in case of Beijing. I thought that some of the unforested spots were conspicuous though. When it comes to a city on the western end of the Ordos plateau, I think Lanzhou should be encouraged over Yinchuan, so moving it too far southwest gets it out of the way of most of the good terrain.

 

[Leoreth]

New update:
- adjusted terrain in China (see previous post)
- opened a tile for settling Yakutsk
- moved Wine in Portugal 1N to make 1S the new preferred Lisbon tile (and future spawn tile)
- adjusted terrain in Australia (see below)

Spoiler :

- mostly added additional mining resources based on suggestions
- added oasis in Central Australia to enable Alice Springs
- added jungles and marshes around the Gulf of Carpentaria
- changed some desert into semidesert
- this also showcases the salt lake and salt flats that have been added earlier but were never shown

Once again Australia benefits a lot from the new terrain types.

 

[TJDowling]

Okay, here's another attempt:

Spoiler :

View attachment 526962View attachment 526963 View attachment 526964

I corrected some city locations, added steppes in Inner Mongolia, decided on Beijing 1N1W plus river, and moved a lot of resources around. For city locations, I tried to achieve the following goals:
- named tiles are preferable to non-named tiles (especially regarding food)
- no supercities are possible, especially not on non-named tiles
- if two named locations are next to each other, there should always be some upside of one over the other

There's also some little things like Horses in Beijing's cross to encourage the city for the strategic resource, likewise iron is further west to keep Chang'an necessary to reach it.

With the current setup deciding on one city over the other usually means deciding where to overlap and who to steal resources from. Correct me if I have created some unintentionally powerful locations.

Have you decided against a Hong Kong lagoon tile?

 

[Leoreth]

Yeah, I don't think it works really.

 

[Publicola]

If China spawns on the Luoyang/Xi'an tile, then I think you really need to add or shuffle resources to make it a worthy capital city. I'm looking at that map, and my first thought is that I'd take a turn to move the starting settler to the grass hills at Jinan. Wheat, Fish, Stone, and three luxuries? I'd take that deal every time.

 

[soul-breathing]

If China spawns on the Luoyang/Xi'an tile, then I think you really need to add or shuffle resources to make it a worthy capital city. I'm looking at that map, and my first thought is that I'd take a turn to move the starting settler to the grass hills at Jinan. Wheat, Fish, Stone, and three luxuries? I'd take that deal every time.

There could be an independent city in Luoyang, and settler spawns in Xi'an. Then spawns an independent city in Shandong around bc1000.

 

[hnrysml]

Please add river tiles for the locations of Sydney and Melbourne. Melbourne's river isn't a large one but it's historically very important, and has one of the worlds largest ports situated at its mouth. Sydney is situated on a massive natural harbour, and there are significant rivers adjacent to the city.
I feel like the map doesn't really adequately show how wet the east coast of Australia is, north of Sydney, also, so a river or two would be a helpful abstraction to display this.

The southernmost tile of Tasmania should be moved one west for Hobart to exist in a historical location, as if the player is inclined to settle Tasmania, Hobart is the most apt choice.

The whale south of the Murray estuary should be moved one east or south east as the first Europeans in that region were whalers and seal hunters that operated around Portland (before settlement), significantly east of the Murray estuary.

The gold should be one south west to better represent the main locations of the Victorian Gold Rush.

I can make a lot of suggestions for agricultural resources that should spawn between 1800-1900, and another point, although iirc this isn't the thread for that.

 

[FraggleJock]

The problem I see with Australian rivers is they have such laughably low water flows that the Civ method of attaching both a fresh water source and industrial power boost to river access will always mess with Australia as our rivers are weak fresh water and very poor on the Industrial and transportation side, so it is a choice whether to give an undeserved industrial boost or not.. It would be nice if there was a Natural Harbour/Aquifer terrain feature for cities like Melbourne and Sydney that provided freshwater + commerce to that tile.
Keeping true to the Robinson projection is pretty harsh on the southern states too. On this map I'd never build a city in Victoria at all, Tasmania would get a city on the copper. Wollongong would supercede Sydney and Victor Harbor would be at the Murray Mouth.

 

[TJDowling]

I mean considering how late Australia is settled (if at all) it seems like an undeserved production/commerce boost isn't that big a deal.

 

[merijn_v1]

The problem I see with Australian rivers is they have such laughably low water flows that the Civ method of attaching both a fresh water source and industrial power boost to river access will always mess with Australia as our rivers are weak fresh water and very poor on the Industrial and transportation side, so it is a choice whether to give an undeserved industrial boost or not.. It would be nice if there was a Natural Harbour/Aquifer terrain feature for cities like Melbourne and Sydney that provided freshwater + commerce to that tile.

I don't see why you are against the river near Sydney. You don't want a river, but you want something that does everything a river already does ingame.

The river will provide fresh water. These days, rivers provide 80% of the fresh water in Greater Sydney, so it is pretty accurate if the river provides the fresh water. It may be different historically, but it seems unlikely to me. And I doubt that Natural Harbours are (historically) a source of fresh water, due to their connection to the sea which makes them usually salt water.

Furthermore, rivers provide commerce to adjacent tiles. (which you want your new terrain feature to have)

I don't think that the industrial power that this river will provide is an issue. Rivers in Civ IV are industrial powerhouses because of the levee. Adding the 1 tile river and thus allowing the levee will provide only 4 additional hammers to the BFC. And there are more rivers that are not industrial areas IRL but can be ingame because of the levee.

And I think the river will do a good job of representing the ria of Port Jackson aesthetically.

So in my view you want to create a new feature for something that is already in the game and does the job you want the new feature to do a lot better.

 

[FraggleJock]

Actually I would not want the feature to have any effect beyond the tile it was situated on, think of it more like a free city building auto built in limited locations. A landlocked city on a less iconic watercourse like Beijing could also use such a feature.

 

[Leoreth]

New update: adjusted terrain in Indonesia:

Spoiler :

- reduced size of Halmahera (Ambon) to one tile, moved southeastern tile of Sulawesi 1E to better approximate its shape
- moved gold from New Guinea to Sulawesi
- placed spices on the Ambon tile to give more spices to the Spice Islands
- moved Spice Island pearls south to be in range of the Aru islands
- added additional island tiles in the Lesser Sunda islands
- added pig in New Guinea
- changed some rainforests in New Guinea to jungles to make the island harder to settle
- removed rice from Sulawesi and Borneo, cities on these islands should remain small and resource oriented as opposed to the large cities in Sumatra and Java
- added more jungles and rainforests on Borneo to make the island less hospitable to settlement
- added spices on Borneo (pepper was produced there)
- moved spices on Sumatra north to make settling Panai more attractive
- moved fish around northern Sumatra to the east coast to encourage Medan, Panai, Kedah over a city at the west coast

 

[Leoreth]

I'm going to turn my attention to the United States next (I'll review some of the feedback on China and Australia first though), so before I start I'd like to make sure we are all on the same page about the locations of its major (current and historical) cities:

Spoiler :

I tried to give a selection of cities that are either: currently large, were large/important during the westward expansion of the US (e.g. Cincinnati and St. Louis were more important in the past than their current size suggests) or cover specific areas of the map. I know there are suggestions around that reshape parts of the map but I'd like a general consensus of where everything is currently before I could consider implementing that.

 

[Temujin8k]

I think Atlanta should be 1S and New York should be 1E.

 

[Leoreth]

With the shape of the map that tile approximates the tip of New York State better, plus it gives a bit more space to New England. Tried to move Atlanta north to uncrowd the coast for a similar reason but looking at it again that's probably a stretch.

 

[merijn_v1]

I support New York being move 1E, because I think it should be east of the Hudson River. I also think that Chicago should be 1N.