[Development] Map Suggestions

[Tab911]

Update:

Spoiler Floodplains :

Green tiles are proposed floodplains. I added two forests in Southern China and changed the Beijing tile to plains. The highlighted tile in the second pic is added coal in Hunan.

Spoiler Hotan River :

Kashgar is the historical city here but this makes for a viable Hotan if a player wants. Hotan better reflects the modern day Chinese borders more than Kashgar, players should have the option to raise one and settle the other.

 

[Crimean Lord]

Update:

Spoiler Floodplains :

View attachment 548869
View attachment 548870

Green tiles are proposed floodplains. I added two forests in Southern China and changed the Beijing tile to plains. The highlighted tile in the second pic is added coal in Hunan.

Spoiler Hotan River :

View attachment 548871

Kashgar is the historical city here but this makes for a viable Hotan if a player wants. Hotan better reflects the modern day Chinese borders more than Kashgar, players should have the option to raise one and settle the other.

Great ideas!
By the way if China will have a lot of foodplains in the future Map: is it mean that Chinese need UP or UB which DECREASE negative effects from them ?

 

[merijn_v1]

Would something like this be a good model for a cochineal dye variety?

Spoiler :

 

[stormogulen]

Some suggestions on Madagascar and other islands in the Indian Ocean.

Spoiler Madagascar, Reunion, Mauritius :

Terrain changes on Madagascar: savanna instead of plains under the tropical forests in the northwest, semidesert on the xeric shrubland ecoregions in the southwest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecoregions_of_Madagascar#Terrestrial_ecoregions). Also various forest changes. Savanna + rainforests on Reunion and Mauritius (both have climates and vegetation types that vary widely depending on altitude etc. so I'm not sure it's necessarily the most correct choice, but I think it should be reasonable).

Marked some suggested plantation resource spawns. The vanilla on Madagascar should really be a spawn rather than preplaced and probably placed in the north instead of the south (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sava_Region). The rare earth might need adjusting, assuming Antananarivo is to be placed there.

Spoiler Seychelles :

Small suggestion on Seychelles: rainforest vegetation and cinnamon spawn.

Spoiler Socotra :

As for Socotra, I changed it to semidesert (climate arid but close to semi-arid) + savanna trees which makes it look a bit less boring and seems appropriate for the trees found there anyway (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-44235159). Added incense: frankincense and myrrh are part of its flora, and were exploited already in ancient times (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2012/06/socotra/).

 

[Steb]

I mostly support these changes to the Indian Ocean islands. I have some additional suggestions:

• Réunion and Mauritius need to be hills. I'm not sure if they are already, it's hard to tell.
• Madagascar could get a second vanilla in the plantation era; it leads global production by far today.
• The island NW of Madagascar (next to the amber) represents the Comoros, correct? It should be covered with rainforest.
• Socotra looks nice as a vegetated semidesert, but I don't think incense production was particularly important there. I'd remove the resource.
• I noticed that Socotra, in real life, is closer to the Horn of Africa than to the Arabian peninsula (see map below). It might need to be moved 1S. In fact, our Horn of Africa isn't very pronounced and doesn't reach east as far as in real life, where its tip is at the same longitude as Qatar. Maybe we need to add a tile at the tip. In that case, Socotra would probably be fine where it is.

Spoiler :

 

[soul-breathing]

@Tab911 These Flood plains may make China too overpowered.

 

[merijn_v1]

This is how my current cochineal dye variety looks ingame. I wanted to see how the size of the insects compared to the cacti ingame. I think they should be a bit larger to emphasize them a bit more.

Spoiler :

 

[Leoreth]

Right. I think the cacti can be smaller too, look at the cotton plants for comparison.

 

[merijn_v1]

V2

First I made the insects 1.5x bigger. Then, I scaled the whole model about 3/4x. This is the result.

EDIT:
I see that the image compression makes the insects appear less saturized. Ingame they look much better.

Spoiler :

 

[Publicola]

By the way if China will have a lot of foodplains in the future Map: is it mean that Chinese need UP or UB which DECREASE negative effects from them ?

@Tab911 These Flood plains may make China too overpowered.

In theory, with the new map and code update, we should be able to give China some nearby rival civs so they'd have to deal with much more active gameplay, and limit their Core region so that conquering/owning the entirety of China would cost stability

 

[Leoreth]

V2

First I made the insects 1.5x bigger. Then, I scaled the whole model about 3/4x. This is the result.

EDIT:
I see that the image compression makes the insects appear less saturized. Ingame they look much better.

Spoiler :

Cactus size seems good, but I'd have less insects and make them much bigger, judging from these screenshots.

 

[merijn_v1]

Okay. I will make a new version with bigger insects.

I pushed v2 version to the marsh branch, so it can be viewed ingame in the meanwhile.

 

[Leoreth]

Oh sorry, I lost track of the marshes thing. I played around with it myself for a while and it just doesn't work with the grass texture I think, I'd rather keep using the coast alpha channel and accept that it cannot be placed on a few tiles.

 

[merijn_v1]

No problem. Somehow I thought that you already merged that branch. So it was free again for me to recycle it as a branch for viewing WIP models ingame. You can still use that branch if you want to see v2 ingame. (Just ignore the marsh terrain for now)

IMO it looks much better ingame than on the screenshot. But I’ll admit that bigger insects will probably look better. I had a temporary version in which I enlarged the insects, but did not shrink the whole model yet. I quite liked the size of the insects. But they are shrunken with the cacti as well, making their relative size to the the cacti larger, while having about the same absolute size. As said, I will make a new version with larger insects.

 

[soul-breathing]

In theory, with the new map and code update, we should be able to give China some nearby rival civs so they'd have to deal with much more active gameplay, and limit their Core region so that conquering/owning the entirety of China would cost stability

Yes the core area of China needs to be decrease. But it's hard to add new civs in this area to debuff China, because in history China is a unified nation in most periods. Maybe Xiongnu or Jurchen?

 

[Publicola]

Yes the core area of China needs to be decrease. But it's hard to add new civs in this area to debuff China, because in history China is a unified nation in most periods. Maybe Xiongnu or Jurchen?

Sure, but both of those are nomadic northern peoples.

I was thinking more like the Baiyue from southern China, dating from the Warring States period through to the Han-era Nanyue state that dominated Southern China and ultimately gave its name to Vietnam. We might also tie it to the historic Wu state (of Spring & Autumn) and Eastern Wu (of Three Kingdoms), as Wu and Yue were closely allied throughout most of early Chinese history, and treated as a foreign barbarian state by the northern Chinese (such as the historian Sima Qian). If we do include Wu, then we could in fact use Sun Tzu as the initial leaderhead for this civ, since he was born and lived in Wu during the Warring States period.

 

[merijn_v1]

v3

Larger insects.

Spoiler :

 

[Leoreth]

No problem. Somehow I thought that you already merged that branch. So it was free again for me to recycle it as a branch for viewing WIP models ingame. You can still use that branch if you want to see v2 ingame. (Just ignore the marsh terrain for now)

IMO it looks much better ingame than on the screenshot. But I’ll admit that bigger insects will probably look better. I had a temporary version in which I enlarged the insects, but did not shrink the whole model yet. I quite liked the size of the insects. But they are shrunken with the cacti as well, making their relative size to the the cacti larger, while having about the same absolute size. As said, I will make a new version with larger insects.

Sounds good. I'll also look at that ingame when you're done.

Sure, but both of those are nomadic northern peoples.

I was thinking more like the Baiyue from southern China, dating from the Warring States period through to the Han-era Nanyue state that dominated Southern China and ultimately gave its name to Vietnam. We might also tie it to the historic Wu state (of Spring & Autumn) and Eastern Wu (of Three Kingdoms), as Wu and Yue were closely allied throughout most of early Chinese history, and treated as a foreign barbarian state by the northern Chinese (such as the historian Sima Qian). If we do include Wu, then we could in fact use Sun Tzu as the initial leaderhead for this civ, since he was born and lived in Wu during the Warring States period.

I think we had this conversation before. History does not really line up with the desired balance goals here in my opinion. Yue states (and Wu if you want) are only relevant contemporaneously with the Qin/Han periods. In the game, that is probably the time period where the player is still working to expand across the Chinese region anyway (which would be historical). I am not opposed to put in Yue barbarian spawns or even cities (Panyu seems like a good candidate here) as a problem to manage in that era. But historically, even though the Yangtze and Southern China was long under Chinese control by then, major population growth and economic development did not occur there until the Song period afaik and should be deterred in game in a similar way. Barbarians of any kind, especially Yue, would be ahistorical at that point. I much prefer to make the terrain in that area less desirable by delaying resource spawns, especially food resources, until then. This also factors into the floodplains suggestion above; while I'm still considering it, the problem with floodplains is that they encourage cottage building. I'd rather not have China be cottage heavy relative to its territory, so if we need more population in certain parts I'd rather place additional rice resources. Neither of these two concerns are reflected by the current map, but I think it's better to wait until spawns of any kind are implemented and until civs are playable to see how China behaves and where it needs nerfs and (delayed) buffs.

Of course China proper has the best land in the whole game, especially for such an early spawn, and it will again be a challenge to balance that. I think China doing well as long as it is in full control of all that land and has developed enough infrastructure is historical. Stagnation during stability is more a Ming/Qing phenomenon (I know that they were still the richest part of the world until the tail end of the 19th century, but with the game mechanics translating economy into tech, they were behind from that perspective), so I do not want to give them abysmal modifiers before at least that period.

In general, I think the early game challenge for China should be to keep your economy working while continuing to expand (like vanilla BtS on high difficulties). Another part of the challenge is barbarians, having a strong enough military to defend yourself should be a significant drain on your resources that is diverted from improvements and buildings. Stability is the other part, I could see the Chinese core start growing over time so that initially retaining control of the Yellow River area is already taxing. I see most of the first millennium in Chinese history as going very well while you are stable, with a "reset" during the civil war periods in between (and same for the Jurchen/Mongol conquests). Managing stability should be very important as a Chinese player and if necessary, I should work on a way to implement setbacks like that better for the player.

 

[Leoreth]

v3

Larger insects.

Spoiler :

Nice, is it pushed?

 

[merijn_v1]

Now it is. This version is in my regular map branch though. I also made a PR with it. V2 is still in the marsh branch, in case you also want to look at that one.