[Development] Eurasian Map (205x156)

[Boli]

I am currently building a new map following the Two Point Equidistant projection covering Asia, Europe (Eurasia) and the coastline of Africa and Austraia; yes its a huge map.. but I like huge maps

Unfortunatly with the projection I have chosen I have come up with a problem; Too many civs, and important civs (at least from my point of view) in Europe and vast areas in Asia empty. Please see my attachments and you'll see what I mean; excuse the crudity of the images but they are my "working images" I am building before I start creation in World Builder/ MapView.

You can see the difference in size between Europe and Asia; so this brings me up in somewhat of a quandry.If I where to flood the map with every civ available to me then the civs in europe will only have 2 or 3 cities at best whereas the civs in asia can spread out much more and pretty much dominate the map. In the last map I created (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=376908) I had aimed for a .. somewhat equal placement of civs which meant most.. if not all the civs had a chance at winning; 18 equal(ish) civ playing field.

I need to decide on a balance of sorts with this new map and to be quite frank I'm not exactly sure how to proceed and looking for some feedback

ideas so far:

* Flood places like india/China with jungles and stack floodplains and specials in Europe

Advantages: Europe will initally be ahead and the eastern civs will experiance a slot start

Disadvantages: Europe is pretty hemmed in on this map even if I massively increase ship movement speed that is still a long way to travel to colonise and only a couple of civs will break out into the world. The East will catch up sharply and pretty much dominate.
​

Super Courthouses/and/or civics Available to Western Civs to reduce corruption and encourage expansive play for the western civs

Advantages: Will allow western civs to expand without fear of their empire collasping due to over stretching

Disadvantages: If a western Civ was able to vastly colonise large areas within a short time they will quickly dominate the world.
Playing an eastern civ will be very frustrating as you either expand with a small (if any army) or kepe it small . You will be at a disadvantage later in the game either way.​

Multiple Tribes of the same civ

Similar to my thread in (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=408656) - why i brought it up. create "4 china's" and then they will be competing for space as much as Europe and only later in the game will they cease fighting and merge into one unit.

Advantages If they are set to pernament war they will fight it out untill one remains and other civs will take advantage of this pretty much how the "real world" worked

Disadvantages they could simply end up ruining their economy and collapse completly being nothing more than barbarian civs for other people to mop up. Plus I dont; have the coding skill to allow the severla tribes to merge peacefully.​

And there indeed is where I am stuck. I'm building a nice looking map... but it could end up completly unplayable as you either have too much space and win... or too little and die. - unless I play the game with only like 5 civs which I certainlly do NOT want.

What I want is for the European countries to be powerful enough with the small space they are given, but at the same time allow the eastern civs to expand more... although with equal / lesser scienctific advancement - just altering the coruption index in the XML coudl cause many more problems with either no civ being able to hod onto more than 10 cities or rampant expansion from the eastern civs.

Thoughts please... I welcome all feedback

 

[Jabarto]

Hey, this looks good!

I've struggled with a lot of the same problems that you now have, but I'm only just now looking into solutions. I like the multiple tribes of the same civ idea, but I"m speaking a priori, so keep that in mind.

 

[kiwitt]

What I did in my map was to add lot's of specialists into the Cities.

FreeSpecialistType=SPECIALIST_GREAT_PRIEST
FreeSpecialistType=SPECIALIST_GREAT_MERCHANT
FreeSpecialistType=SPECIALIST_GREAT_ENGINEER
FreeSpecialistType=SPECIALIST_GREAT_SCIENTIST
FreeSpecialistType=SPECIALIST_GREAT_ARTIST

You research the civs and determine their strengths and then boost their cities with lots of theses. You could even have 10,20,30 or whatever in the cities and they would receive all the bonuses accordingly.

 

[Boli]

I like the idea of free spcialists! - hopefully can sort them so they unlock at certain technologies otherwise it could be a tad nuts at the start

Actually looking into the map creation; it seems its possible to do a 400z300 version of this map o_O this shoud allow a better spread of cities in europe - as long as I'm heavy handed with desert and tundra regions in the east it should concentrate the cities to belts and pockets of population rather than one large city sprawl.

Hmmm, "East vs West".. might make a decent senerio

 

[Boli]

UPDATE:

I have ended up increasing the scale to a whopping 240x180 (ish); this gives european civs enough room to grow to a solid 5-8 cities without collasping and I have finally finishes transcripting the map into worldbuilder.

Now I have the map there I am in the process of carefully adding terrain to the map (its all grassland right now) and I am starting to think ahead to what I can do with the number of Civs.

So far:

1. Britain (England)
2. Germany
3. Netherlands
4. France
5. Italy
6. Spain
7. Scandinavia
8. Poland / Lithuania
9. Hungary
10. Greece
11. Ottomons
12. Ukraine
13. Caucasus / Georgia
14. Babylonia
15. Israel
16. Eygpt
17. Persia
18. Russia
19. Tibet
20. Korea
21. Japan
22. Khmer Empire
23. Australian
24. Ethopia
25. Carthage

Siberian Peoples (A, B, C)
China (D, E, F)
Monologian Peoples (G, H)
Indian Peoples (I, J, K, L)
Indoneasian Peoples ( N, O, P, Q, R)
Tartar / Kashk Peoples's (S, T)
African Peoples (U, V, W, X)
Arabian People's (Y, Z)

Still wonder how to split the map up into playable and detailed sections... guess I'll be able to work out how many after creation.


EDIT: I am goign to be using a mod which allows like 50 civs

 

[Boli]

I've finally finished creating the basic map (I'll screenshot when I'm at home)... I finally managed to sort it so the game was patched and didn't crash at version 3.19 and 40 civs... so that's the number I'm going to use

I'm shocked at how... HUGE some of the parts of the map are ... its gonna be fun, So now I need to sort it so at least each part of the map is "playable".

So far this is my plan:

Chinese Unification

3 China's - I'm going to use the dynastic Family names: Qing, Han, Ming and initially they will be as normal civ's developing as 3 separate entities but i'm going to try and sort an event out in like 800 AD or something which causes them to go to total war against each other.

Chinese Unification
- You are tasked by your people to unify the chinese lands under one ruler; the 3 dynasties of imperial China will become one. Unfortunally your other Dynastic rivals have had the same idea.

The *idea* is it will be set as pernament war which will only end once two china's are subjugated by a third; thus creating a large china ravaged by war; but finally united. Hopefully this will allow a large country such as china to exist eventually, but not completly dominate the game.

As a player your main task woud be to survive the revolution as quickly and efficiently as possible so you do not drag too far behind the rest of the world.



Indian Conflict

This will be separated into 3 civs as well;

India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (or Burma, unsure bout the third)

But unlike China will not be forced into a war. Instead I'm just going to flag them as hated enemies so they will constantly fight/bicker with each other. The land is full of grasslands, plains and deserts in the north and a lot of jungle. It will be hard to create a solid infrastructure in this place; the jungles alone will create problems and not aid construction.


Russian Expansion

Russia is an absolutely huge country, and has been for most of its history; but I am going to split it into many countries for whilst imperial russia has always sought to expand and dominate the other countries have generally wanted nothing more than their independance

- Russia

There will be the three more advanced countries:

- Kazakh Khanate
- Ukraine
- Georgia

And the three more tribal countries; I am going to restrict these countries so they cannot build a worker; or much in the way of infrastructure at all - bascially barbarian minor civilisations; however the land they will control won't be that great tbh so *hopefully* other civs do not rush in to control.

- Siberia
- Outer Mongolia
- Manchuria

You can see the attachment as to what I estimate for their influence and expansion. As for Russian expansion; I'm going to make it *easier* for Russia to expand - but it won't be a certainty. I'm unsure of the details the few ideas I have are:

- If Russia takes capital of area all cities fall under jusrictriction. This will only apply to those few countries listed.
- Reducing maintence from number of cities
- Ideally I don't want any of this happening too soon or all at once so I may have to run an event which drastically reduces russia's opinion of each area in turn

*shrugs* this is still a work in progress.


European Dominance

In general European countries have always performed above what their small size allowed so I was thinking of a unique building which will give significant bonuses to the countries

For example I was thinking "Workshop of the world" unlocked in industrial era or England which gives all water tiles "1 hammer"; so their production sours ahead of eveyrone else (being how they are on an island) and allows tiny colines on small islands to become very productive and prosperous.

likewise for Spain, England, Italy and France once the renaesance hits another unquie buiding becomes unlocked which only they can build giving a significant bonus to trade

Sleeping Tigers

In a similar vein to Europe I was going to give a building open to the eastern civs (Japan, Korea, Khmer) which woudl drastically increase scientific achivements once they unlocked the modern era


All in all I *think* I'm on the right track... but first things first I need to get the mod / map up and running with te right civs so I can get playtesting.

Ideally I just wanted this a single map file but oweing to the sheer SIZE and SCALE of the map it just won't be playable on the normal rules; but I'll be sure to make the map avial in its most basic form as well - I can actually do that now thinking about it

 

[Boli]

As promised screenies of my development

 

[Boli]

After a quick playthrough it seems many of my fears are unfounded without any change to the rules... the countries such as China and India are developing at the same rate... less in fact if you allow raging barbarians. as they cannot occupy and defend borders as well as I would like.

The complete Civs with leaderheads and unqie units are as follows (I'll have to find who made them to give them credits sometime )

ISRAEL
ARABIA
KHMER
EGYPT
FRANCE
GERMANY
GREECE
ETHOPIA
MALYASIA
INDIA
JAPAN
BABYLON
MONGOLIA
PERSIA
ROME
RUSSIA
SPAIN
VIKING
KOREA
NEPAL
AUSTRA-HUNGARY
POLAND
CARTHAGE
GOKTURK
MALI
OTTOMON
ZULU
ENGLAND
INDONESIA
INDONESIA
INDONESIA
AFGHAN

The Civ's I am using and are NOT complete but just in for playtesting purposes are:

Unsurte how to handle these 3 right now they are not exactly unquie :/

CHINA (Ming Dynasty)
CHINA (Qing Dynasty)
CHINA (Han Dynasty)

These I can't find relavent Civ's or having trouble merging them into the mod :/

UKRAINE
PAKISTAN
BURMA

These are minor civs and it looks like minor civs are the wayt to go I may make a few more civs minor flagged

SIBERIA (MINOR Civ)
AUSTRALIAN Tribes (MINOR Civ)


Attached is JUST the map file I am using, if you wish to playtest it yourself at this point You'll have to quickly edit the text file as to accept say "mongols" as the other civs you may or may not have. likewise patch to 3.19 and use the 40 civ .dll file.

I don;t expect anyone to do that but if you want to have a look at my map here it is

nb: yes I *know* banglasdesh area needs to be toned down