[Development] Map Suggestions

So, as Leoreth asked, I've made a new version of South America without making any significant enlargments. The savannah terrain was fantastic on the map and I think that the final result was pretty good.

Before showing the results, I'll explain the main map distortion that I noticed, which may help us locate more accurately the canonical cities and rivers. As you may all have already realized, the main distortion are in Peru, expanded both in South and East directions to give space for the Inca civilization. This distortion pushes the enlarged Altiplano on the same directions, consequently producing distortions mainly in Northern regions of Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, all Bolivian lowlands and Central-West Brazil. An easy way to see this distortion is to make an straight line (in red bellow) from Arica Curve (Northern Chile) to the Brazilian coast.

Spoiler :

South America map.jpg

Doc South America.jpg



In the real world map, you could easily see that Arica is more or less in the same latitute of the border between Brazilian states of Bahia and Espírito Santo, while on our map it is on the same of title of Rio de Janeiro. Besides, I've also made a slighty expansion of Colombian core to East at the cost of mainly the Amazon, without impacts on the Atlantic coast.

Now, my new suggestions. I've added few land/lagoon titles on previous coast titles, namely in Brazil and Venezuela, and also added the resources; the detailed explanations are in my previous posts.

Spoiler :

Civ4ScreenShot0000.JPG

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Civ4ScreenShot0003.JPG

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Civ4ScreenShot0005.JPG



Finally, if anyone wants to see any areas in more detail, let me know that I'll make new screenshots. Also, if anyone wants to make their own suggestions, the game save is bellow.
 

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That's looking great, thanks. Can't wait to apply it.
 
I think the Panama tile should have Rainforest instead of Jungle, so that Spain could settle it on the 16th century. This would create an early Suez Canal, though, so we can take this into consideration.
 
I think the Panama tile should have Rainforest instead of Jungle, so that Spain could settle it on the 16th century. This would create an early Suez Canal, though, so we can take this into consideration.
An early "canal" is appropriate; even though ships couldn't go through Panama, people could. The Spanish conquest of Peru was launched from the colony of Panama, not from the south.
 
I agree with both you. Panama city itself is quite old, founded in 1519.

I didn't make it as an rainforest because I didn't made any changes on Central America and Carribean, except by adding Trinidad and Tobago oil near Venezuela. I confess that I unsuccessfully tried to include Trinidad on map as one title island (with oil on it), but the final results were not good.
 
Okay, so after reading trough the new developments and suggestions, especially on Scandinavia, I got inspired to give a shot at Iceland and Greenland, especially since the former is still the same as in the old map, and so I came up with this:



Green: Moorland; Not much to say about Iceland in regards to this, other than that maybe the moorlands under the Fur resource can be changed to tundra. That would make the terrain distribution more acurate (Iceland is 60% tundra), where I made it with more moorlands to make it more liveable. Greeland had a better climate, so having moorland terrain is a bit more acurate, though I made sure not to overuse it, though still allowing for the settlement of the two colonies of the isle, and to make them a bit more viable. I can be changed to tundra later on in the game.
Grey: Added a peak.
Black: Changed terrain to snow, representing Vatnajökull.
White: Changed terrain to tundra. Could also be turned into a hill though.
Red: Added land; It makes Iceland look more closely like it's real counterpart in terms of shape and size, being bigger than Ireland. With the 3 extra tiles it amounts to 10 tiles total, 1 more than Ireland. As a bonus, theres room for 2 cities now, Reykjavík and either Husavík or Akureyri, depending on when the second city would be founded.

I forgot to mark it, but I also removed some Ice around Greenland (1S of Herjolfnes) and Iceland, making it possible to circunavigate it.



On the resource side, I've kept the minerals as they were, and added Fur in northern Iceland, representing the Artic Fox, I've also marked later spawns of food resources. Thoses marked with an asterisk could be cut, so as to make the cities in the area not as big, though the second sheep in Iceland (1N of Reykjavík) could be replaced by Potatoes in the late game.

In Greeland, I've added fish near Sandnes/Nuuk, representing Norse fishing and hunting expeditions to Disko Bay, but other than that, resources have been left as they were.



Alternatively, the peak 1N of Herjolfsnes can be changed to plains, allowing for Brattahlid to be settled, with a 1-Tile river representing the fjords of the area (which is something that could also be added in Sandnes).

Small note, I made a mistake in the river in Iceland, it should reach the sea in the south instead of west, so the direction of the last tile should be changed.
 
Finally, if anyone wants to see any areas in more detail, let me know that I'll make new screenshots. Also, if anyone wants to make their own suggestions, the game save is bellow.
Working from the save would be the most convenient, but it's not compatible with my current state of the branch. Can you open the game, go into world builder and save it from there? Working from the wbsave is the easiest way for me here and it's always compatible.

Edit: nevermind, found a compatible commit and will go from there.
 
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Nice Iceland. The resolution of the pictures is poor though so it’s hard to read the labels.

I think the size is fine. I like having the barren highlands in the middle, and the shape is nicer than before. However, I think Iceland is a good candidate for one of these regions where the larger scale of Europe transitions into the regular scale of the rest of the world, so it doesn’t really have to be larger than Ireland.

Regarding terrain, I think tundra should definitely outnumber moorland. Everything except Reykjavik and the adjacent tile should be tundra. The amount of forests (3 tiles) feels about right. Also, I’m not sure there should be more than one peak.

In order to make sure Iceland is poor — because it was until very recently — and sparsely populated, I would remove the fur (I couldn’t find any references to a significant fur industry), have between 0 and 1 sheep (probably zero but one could be nice for texture), maybe have only one fish, and keep the whale and aluminum.

I don’t know as much about Greenland, but it would be the place for a walrus ivory resource, if such a resource variant can be made without allowing the Norse to send elephants into battle...
 
Working from the save would be the most convenient, but it's not compatible with my current state of the branch. Can you open the game, go into world builder and save it from there? Working from the wbsave is the easiest way for me here and it's always compatible.

Here it is.
 

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Thank you.
 
I don't think that Praerie buffaloes should be included. For gameplay reasons, I think that there shouldn't be cow resources in the Americas. They should only appear after the Columbian exchange. I think that normal cows are more appropriate for that.
Very off topic and hypothetical but I wanted to mention it anyway. I think it came up when I was briefly working on an Inuit civ that if/when indigenous North American civs were added that they could have a rule that allows them to gain food when they destroy animal units, possibly instead of gaining food from improvements. So perhaps buffalo would hypothetically be better as a roaming barbarian unit that hypothetical indigenous American civs (or even the Aztecs) could interact with.
 
I've been scrolling a bit over the map and I noticed that the resource density around Tenochtitlan (and to a lesser extend Tikal) is very high. I think that it should be a bit less.
 
Nice Iceland. The resolution of the pictures is poor though so it’s hard to read the labels.

I think the size is fine. I like having the barren highlands in the middle, and the shape is nicer than before. However, I think Iceland is a good candidate for one of these regions where the larger scale of Europe transitions into the regular scale of the rest of the world, so it doesn’t really have to be larger than Ireland.

Regarding terrain, I think tundra should definitely outnumber moorland. Everything except Reykjavik and the adjacent tile should be tundra. The amount of forests (3 tiles) feels about right. Also, I’m not sure there should be more than one peak.

In order to make sure Iceland is poor — because it was until very recently — and sparsely populated, I would remove the fur (I couldn’t find any references to a significant fur industry), have between 0 and 1 sheep (probably zero but one could be nice for texture), maybe have only one fish, and keep the whale and aluminum.

I don’t know as much about Greenland, but it would be the place for a walrus ivory resource, if such a resource variant can be made without allowing the Norse to send elephants into battle...
Warlus
 
The Mexican highlands are very densely populated and it is where all precolumbian Mexican civilisations were centered. It is even more extreme in reality than what is possible to represent with this map. And Mexico was a producer of many valuable goods in the Spanish Empire. It might be too much from a gameplay perspective still but let's review that after testing it when the map is playable.
 
I feel this will be unpopular but I thought I'd give it a shot. The southern tip of Africa in our new creation seems too flat compared to real life. I added 4 tiles south and east of Cape Town. I think it adds some variation/productivity to the South African coast. I haven't put much thought into the terrain, it is generally considered mediterrainean AFAIK.

Spoiler :

Cape.png

 
I feel this will be unpopular but I thought I'd give it a shot. The southern tip of Africa in our new creation seems too flat compared to real life. I added 4 tiles south and east of Cape Town. I think it adds some variation/productivity to the South African coast. I haven't put much thought into the terrain, it is generally considered mediterrainean AFAIK.


I don't think that region needs more enlarging. Also, the flatness of the southern tip of Africa is more accurate, although it does look too flat. An alternative solution is to turn two tiles on the eastern portion of this tip from land to water. Something like this, maybe:

Spoiler South Africa :
Civ4ScreenShot0351.png
 
@merijn_v1:
I saw your pull request about adding actual dates to the date palm graphics. However, in the meantime I was getting second thoughts about the dates resource. The issue with it being that dates specifically are only really spread in North Africa and Arabia, which is quite the limited scope and also a region that already can host Olives or Fruit, depending.

I would like a resource that is a bit more broadly about arid tropical fruit, or maybe more general uses of palm trees. I wonder if it makes sense to have just a palm tree resource, that can encapsulate various uses of palm trees, including dates but also e.g. coconut etc. I know that biologically these palms are mostly related in appearance and climate, but it would kind of fit in the sense that it could be placed in regions that are not covered by existing fruit resources:
Spoiler :
coconut-distribution.jpg

Would that work? Thoughts everyone? I don't want to further split dates and coconut etc. into separate resources, but if they are varieties of each other, what should the overall resource be?
 
I think that palms are more closely connected than just appearance and climate. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecaceae#Selected_genera)

At first I was unsure if it was a good idea, because I think that dates and coconuts provide a different role. (fruit vs oil) But I'm starting not to be bothered too much by this. There is something else I am not so sure about. Palms provide a wide variety of uses. Some are clearly represented by increasing food yield (dates, coconut), but others are clearly not and are better represented by commerce or production. However, I think this can be ommited by only concerning palms with edible fruits. Then I think the name "palm fruit" would be nice. At first I thought this would be very generic, but I'm starting to like it more and more.
 
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