[Development] Map Suggestions

[Finbros]

Continue.

Now, when we have rivers as references, we can place historically significant towns (not necessary "canonical" in terms of appropriate thread) as second-order landmarks. They'll be used for resources placement (we want big cities when there are big cities IRL, and we dislike settling on resources, isn't it?) and for additional map tuning.

Western ex-USSR (Batics, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldavia) and some border areas.
(City names mostly Russian and shouldn't be used in actual city map as is)

Sketch of citymap:

Red - approximate modern state borders, blue - river fixes, yellow patches - hills, cyan - swamps.

Actual fixes:

Baltics region:

Finnish Bay
A) Placed isles in Finnish Bay 1W from SPB for Kronstadt and Kotlin

Estonia.
B,C) We can place cows between Tallin and Narva (accessible both from Saint-Petersburg and Riga) and remove them from Pskov tile.

Latvia.
Strange, but no amber is accessible from Riga. I suppose D1) moving northernmost amber 1SE, to Riga Bay, or, D2) if it is supposed to be accessible from Gothland, add fourth amber directly in Riga Bay.

Lithuania.
E) I'd prefer keeping Vilnus and Kaunas tiles forestless, for settling them with Poland settlers ASAP.

Konigsberg/Kaliningrad.
F) Placed Romnicka Forest (famous hunt place in Prussian times, significant ecoregion now) as forest with deers 1E from K. Also, it is additional food source in overcrowded Baltics.

Belarus.

G) Placed taiga tile in Poland border, representing relict Bialoweza forest.
H) Fixed Neman river.
I) Moved pigs from Minsk 1W.
J) Moved hill 1NE, under Minsk .
K) Idk about iron under Grodno. Probably it represents Navasiolkaŭskaje deposit of iron, but it was discovered only recently and doesn't used even now. I suppose to remove it, unless it is placed here for balance purposes.
L) There are great deposits of potash (~1/4 of worldwide production) and salt south of Minsk, I placed salt 1SE, though it is not accurate. Don't place them if necessary.
M) Swamps moved north.

At 1800 potatoes should spawn here and there.
I suppose N) tiles 1NW from Minsk and 1S from Gomel. ((79;66) and (81;63))

Ukraine and Moldova.

O) Placed uranium in Zheltye Vody (significant Soviet center for uranium ore extraction and processing); P) moved wheat from this tile 1W.
Q) Iron from Tarnopol (Krivbass before map upscaling, I suppose) moved back to Krivoi Rog tile.
R) Pigs moved 2E (Tarnopol), for Kiev/Odessa.
S) Forest moved 1E, representing Herodotus' ancient Hylaea forest. Maybe, it should be placed only in 3000BC scenario.
T) Also we can have horses here, for Cuman and Crimean nomads, cossack hosts, and modern Askania-Nova nature park.
U) I'm in doubt with Rare Earthes in Kharkov. Their deposits are insignificant and mines are nearly abandoned after Soviet times. They can represent Kharkov as Soviet center electronics and precision engineering, though.
V) Probably, corn should spawn somewhere at 1700. Northern Odessa tile (80; 60), I think.
W) Added Prut river and fixed Dniestr.
X) Added wine 1W from Ismail, representing Moldovian wineyards.

Also, I tried steppe terrain and thought that it is nearly unusable, except some very special cases (tselina in northern Kazakhstan, probably).
If I use it at real East European steppe, I'll make Ukraine and southern Russia unproductive and nearly uninhabitable, though IRL it is a very productive land.

My proposition: Steppe: all improvements, 0 food, 0 hammers, +1 food next to river (or near all fresh water, if it is possible), +1 gold next to rivers.
Then, we can cover all the Eurasian Steppe with relevant terrain, and in river-rich areas (Black Sea Coast, lower Volga, Zhetsu) steppe will be just plain without hammers, but in dry areas such as Northern Kazakhstan, Caspian Coast and Xinjang it'll be more similar to semideserts.

 

[Leoreth]

Thank you for all your detailed proposals. Russia / Eastern Europe was a mess in the old map and it's great to finally be able to make it realistic. All the maps with annotations and reasoning you provide are perfect context for when I include it later.

Just one question, for your proposed river changes, do you note in the map when an existing river piece should be removed? Your comments sometimes imply this but the map makes no note of it.

About steppe, would it be accurate if e.g. the Eurasian steppe is less fertile? I'm not sure right now.

 

[Finbros]

Just one question, for your proposed river changes, do you note in the map when an existing river piece should be removed?

No, but when I finish (probably I'll stop for some time after Urals, because I'm not very familiar with Siberian geography), I will upload saved map.

About steppe, would it be accurate if e.g. the Eurasian steppe is less fertile? I'm not sure right now.

IRL eastern european steppes, at least until northern shore of Black Sea more fertile due to their chernozems, yes.
They are harder to cultivate, and, historically, nomad raids and regular war desolation made extensive farming there nearly impossible until XVII-XVIII century, but after the fall of the Crimean Khanate these regions produced most of Russian Empire/Soviet grain.
If steppes will represent them, their parameters should look more like plain, not semidesert.

So really, it's all about question: what biome should steppe terrain represent?



With current properties they represent well "dry steppes" of Central Asia when "temperate steppes" should be made from plains.
I suppose using them for "temperate steppe" of Eurasia, also getting visually different continious Great Steppe of real history.
(New World is a different thing, but productive steppes can be used at Argentine pampas and at US Midwest, probably)

Of course, we can still use plains for "temperate steppes", and semidesert works fine for "dry steppes" and "semiarid deserts", but what purpose steppes will have then?

 

[Leoreth]

In general I think biomes can only be expressed in Civ4 through a combination of terrain type and feature type and maybe even resources. But my intent was mostly to model Central Asian steppe, i.e. the "temperate steppe" biome here. As you mentioned, that can include other regions besides Central Asia in the New World etc.

Chernozems are best represented by the presence of grain resources in my opinion.

 

[Finbros]

Next.

Central Russia.

Sketch (colors do anything better!)

Red - reference borders, blue - yet another fix of northern rivers, orange patches - hilly areas.
Color lines - biomes, from up to down:
- taiga/coniferous forests above cyan line;
- mixed forests above green line;
- broadleaf forests and grasslands above brown line;
- steppes above beige line;
- semiarid deserts and dry steppes below.

After enlarging of West Asia, Russia is sort of overstretched - region between Don and middle Volga looks too loose, I think. Don't think that it is really bad, though.

Fixes:
Saint-Petersburg and Novgorod region:

- added iron in Olonets. Realistic Karelian iron ores should be at Petrozavodsk tile, but I placed it in Olonets - this tile located both in BFC of Novgorod (representing medieval iron trade of Novgorod), St.Petersburg (Peter the Great iron mines in soutern Karelia) and Cherepovets (modern industrial center with heavy focus on ore enriching).
- aluminium near Cherepovets moved 1E (where is RL Boksitogorsk) both to more realistic location and from St.Petersburg BFC.
- furs near Novgorod moved 1N2E, still in Novgorod

- added quasi-lake of Ilmen', sort of historically significant but too small to waste a whole tile for it.
- Valdaj hills
- moorlands 50/50 with grasslands (except St.Petersburg BFC)

Not to forget for "canonical cities thread": geograhically Novgorod should be on the marked tile, but 1E tile (*Novgorod) is more gamey: less messing with Saint-Petersburg.

Vologda and Perm region:

- northern rivers moved again.
- another quasi-lake of Belozero. By the way, this crude hack seems legit at this case: Sukhona River flow backwards at springs.
- furs moved 1NE, to be accessible from Arkhangelsk/Kholmogory.
- previously placed salt of Sol'vychegodsk moved 1E from Kotlas. Drawing northern areas before reference points in Central Russia was bad idea =(

- aluminium north of Perm (Northern Ural bauxite province) moved 1N.
- salt of great deposites of Solikamsk placed here.
- made Perm spot more habitable. This city recently got its first million of peoples, btw.

(terrain and forest mostly untouched)

Moscow and Upper Volga region:

- cows moved from Vladimir tile to a Mologa, as in current map
- wheat moved from now hilly Orel to Lipetsk.
- added horses 2E1S
- removed aluminium near Kaluga. Probably it represent scarce deposites of Belgorod Oblast, that has nearly no use except local nowadays.
- iron from Elets (Kursk Magnetic Anomaly) moved 1S.
- sheeps under Nizniy Novgorod split in two, one placed at Ivanovo (Moscow BFC), and one moved 1N
- oil from Samara tile removed, later I'll place in again somewhere east in Bashkiria/Tatarstan.

Overview of Central Russia after changes:

P.S. I forgot, potatoes should spawn at West Russia here and there after 1800 AD.
I suppose:
1W from Moscow (84;66), Tikhvin (83;69) and, probably, Kovrov (88; 66)

South Russia, Caucasus, Volga-Kama and South Ural remains.

 

[Alexius08]

Why put Volgograd east of the Volga? Isn't it supposed to be on the western side?

 

[hnrysml]

Based on Finbros suggestions in their second to last post, perhaps we could have a two or three food resources spawn later around the Ukraine and Crimea, to make them not very desirable for the human or AI player to settle early on?


Coincidentally, I have been playing RFCE recently, as Kievan Rus', and then Novgorod, and I found it to be a wholely dissatisfying experience, as the city names were often either non-existent, names of modern cities, or historical names but in the wrong place. I ended up doing a lot of research and deliberation for historical city placement, and looking at Finbros suggestions, there seems to be a good balance of city names for both localities that were significant in the Kievan Rus' era, and ones that were significant in the modern era. That leads me to a question for Leoreth, would they prefer to prioritise locality names for important places in the modern era, or ones that perhaps are no longer significant, or maybe don't exist anymore, but were more important earlier?

For example, I noticed many of the city names in RFCE along the Dnieper River were places that didn't exist until the 1700s or later, or if the settlements existed there they were never under control of any Russian government until this time. However, in game, this would be a desirable region to settle for the player, granting access to the Black Sea and South-eastern Europe, and likely to be in the core. What do we do about these kinds of situations, that are common for large empires especially?

(I'm sorry if this post is kinda rambling and not concise, I've just woken up, please ask me to clarify my point or such if needed)

 

[Leoreth]

Interesting question. It's important to take into account when a city would be first founded in this area in the game and that the resulting name is not immersion breaking. So if a city name for the area is known from this earliest possible period it should be used. We can make more extensive use of city renames to represent more modern names.

This also raises the question of how settlement in ahistorical areas is incentivised. I think Russia isn't very well modeled currently in that regard, which its huge core and the historical area that covers the whole extent of the Russian Empire. If we take the current Russia as a continuity of the Kievan Rus via Musocvy to the Russian Empire as it is right now, then the core should probably be in the western principalities from Kiev to Novgorod, and then later shift to Moscow. Historical regions should exclude the steppes and as you suggest, it should have less resources at the start.

But other than discouraging settlement we cannot do much, there still needs to be an entry in the city map, so if nothing else is know we need to choose an anachronistically early one.

 

[hnrysml]

My ideal solution would be to secure funding for the DoC Archaeology Team to find answers to our questions, using field research and first-hand sources.

 

[Leoreth]

Do you want to set up the kickstarter or should I?

 

[Leoreth]

On a different note, the moorland terrain looks really nice considering I created it in like 15 minutes using colour filters in GIMP.

 

[Finbros]

Why put Volgograd east of the Volga? Isn't it supposed to be on the western side?

Mostly for keeping it out of area of Volga-Don channel. On actual city map, probably, it should occupy 2 or 4 tiles.
(and I thought that it occupies both banks)

perhaps we could have a two or three food resources spawn later around the Ukraine and Crimea, to make them not very desirable for the human or AI player to settle early on?

I don't think that it is good idea.
Firstly, I dislike resource spawning, because it ruins fun of city placement planning and
Secondary, cities founded here long before times of Muscovy. (Crimean Greek colonies tracked down to times of antiquity)

Brief medieval history of this places look like:
- IX - XI centuries - Slavic/Byzantium/Khazar/Bulgar trade cities founded here: Kiev and Oleshye, Chersonesus and Tmutarakan, Sarkel and Ithil, Suar and Bolghar etc etc.
- XIII century - Mongol invasion. All cities below Kiev and Old Ryazan (including) are ruined to ashes.
- XII-XIV cc - Golden Horde times: cities founded here instead the ruined ones: Qazan, Mukhsha, Ukek, Sarai (Old and New), Azov etc, etc.
- XIV-XV cc - conquests of Timur, river piracy of Novgorod, fall of Golden Horde and wars between its remnants. All cities between Qazan and Astrakhan ruined to ashes.
- XV-XVI cc - Russian colonization. cities what? yes, founded here. Now it's modern Penza, Samara, Saratov, Voronezh, Tsaritsyn etc etc

So, I think, we should just slightly increase Mongol, Turkic and barb pressure and encourage AI to destroy cities in these regions, not capture them.
And if player or AI can manage this pressure, it will just lead to a small alternate history: what if Rus stopped Mongols like Hungary/Poland did and secures its positions in steppe earlier? If this will take place not too often, it is not worse than not so uncommon Portugal Aztecs, France Peru or Netherlands New Zealand.


And I don't think much about city map now, so city names now mostly references to modern city names. (Ulyanovsk instead of Simbirsk and Volgograd instead of Tsaritsyn).
If it is needed, I can work on it after fixing of actual map, but I heard that there will be some changes in its format.

 

[Leoreth]

Why does your timeline sound like it's narrated by Bill Wurtz

Anyway, about city names, don't worry about the planned changes, the only thing to keep in mind that there will be only one global map for city names instead of one for every language. The desired state of that map is to list the earliest possible name for a tile and handle historical name changes elsewhere, but that shouldn't be too much of a concern when you're doing research. Your method of annotating screenshot tiles with the intended names is very useful, I think everyone should format their suggestions this way.

 

[ozqar]

I think that, for reference and ease of work, the "standard map" should name the most modern city name? That's what will be easiest to research and identify visually by everyone. Is it possible to make it the other way around with the code and the naming, that the game changes the modern names to older ones depending on the founding date?

 

[Steb]

I've been thinking there should be two standard global maps, one with "recent" cities and another with "ancient" cities, where they exist. So for instance, in Italy, the modern map would have Italian cities (which are then translated to other languages as necessary) and the ancient map would have Roman cities. Which map gets used depends on the civ and era.

This would be useful for cases where the major ancient cities in a given region are not the same as the major modern cities. E.g. Babylon and Baghdad, Ephesos and Izmir, etc. I think it'd be easier to keep track of such cases with two maps.

 

[Leoreth]

No, more than one map makes things way too complicated. We have this problem right now and it's the reason why nobody wants to make changes to them.

From an implementation perspective, it's easier to start with the oldest, then have a criterion for using a different name instead. For example if we're looking at the Babylon tile, it's always Babylon unless it's already Baghdad or the civ is acquired by (say) a civ with Islam as a state religion. It's always easier to check for the presence of a set of criteria that triggers the change instead of checking for their absence and then use the original name.

For the most common renaming scenarios (certain era/tech/owner etc.) you could easily define additional dictionaries to keep track of it, e.g.

dEraRenames = {
    "Constantinopolis": (iEraIndustrial, "Istanbul"),
    "Edo": (iEraIndustrial, "Toukyou"),
    "Chang'an": (iEraMedieval, "Xi'an")
}

This would come into play before the name is translated into the owner's language so it's relatively easy to do.

 

[Steb]

I think the reason changing the maps right now is complicated is because there are several dozen maps, not because the number of maps is > 1. My point is that it's easier to visualize two maps than one map + renaming rules, so it might actually make editing more convenient. Maybe.

 

[Leoreth]

Of course two maps are easier to manage than 26 or whatever we have now, but it's still easy to create inconsistencies etc. There should be one source of truth for where a city is located. Once we know where Constantinople is, we know where Istanbul is, and there is no reason to also keep track of its location.

 

[Steb]

Right, and I totally agree about your Constantinople example. Let me try to explain what I mean a little better.

The way I see it, we create one main map, based (more or less) on the current world. This map will cover pretty much every tile in the game. Then we create a single second map to keep track of cities that no longer exist (or have become unimportant compared to larger neighboring cities). This second map will not cover the entire world. For instance, there would be nothing on the Rome tile, since that tile is already covered by the first map. However, there would be an entry at Pompei, a city that doesn't occur on the first map but which we may still want to see represented during the early game. Whenever the Romans found a city that has kept its importance until (more or less) today, the first map gets used. When the Romans found a city that stopped being important after antiquity, the second map gets used.

The alternative is to have Pompei on the base map and then add a "renaming" rule to represent the disappearance of Pompei and the emergence of Naples. (I'm using these cities as an example, I'm not sure this is the best way to model the particular Pompei/Naples situation.) What I'm proposing is that renaming rules be reserved for cities actually changing names (e.g. Constantinople), and that cases of ancient cities disappearing or waning (e.g. Pompei, Ephesos, Tikal, Monte Alban, Babylon, Carthage) use the two-map system, which I think may be less awkward and easier to use.

But I'm done arguing this. I'm not particularly attached to the idea, it's just that I thought it might be more efficient.

 

[Finbros]

I think that these cases can be covered by choosing first nams smartly, by date thresholds and/or founder's civ. And later renaming rules should be passed by name, not tile.

For example only:
if town on tile (..,..) founded by Rome before 80 AD - it will be named Pompeii
if town on tile (...,...) founded by Rome after 80 AD - it will be named Neapolis
if town on tile (...,...) founded by Greece - it will be named Neapolis

if Italy acquires a town named Pompeii - it will be renamed to Pompei
if Italy acquires a town named Neapolis - it will be renamed to Naples


Or, e.g. mentioned Volgograd.

we have two Slavic names for this spot, Belaya Vezha (early medieval city, conquered from Khazars) and Tsaritsyn (RA city), one Turkic (Sarkel), one Mongolian (Sarai) and a pack of renamings (Stalingrad and Volgograd), and sequence of them looks like: Sarkel -> Belaya Vezha -> ruination -> Sarai -> abandoning -> Tsaritsyn -> Stalingrad -> Volgograd
so rules should be something like

//naming rules
if town on tile (...,...) founded by Russia before 1400 AD — it will be named Belaya Vezha
if town on tile (...,...) founded by Turks — it will be named Sarkel
if town on tile (...,...) founded by Mongols — it will be named Sarai
otherwise it will be named Tsaritsyn

//renaming rules
if Russia acquires a town named Sarkel — it will be renamed to Belaya Vezha
if Russia acquires a town named Sarai — it will be renamed to Tsaritsyn
if Mongolia acquires a town named Sarkel — it will be renamed to Sarai
if Turkic civ acquires a town named Belaya Vezha or Sarai — it will be renamed to Sarkel
//but Belaya Vezha will never be renamed into Tsaritsyn directly.

if owner of city named Tsaritsyn or Stalingrad adopts Democracy — it will be renamed to Volgograd
if owner of city named Tsaritsyn or Volgograd adopts State Party + Central Planning— it will be renamed to Stalingrad
if owner of city named Volgograd or Stalingrad adopts Monarchy— it will be renamed to Tsaritsyn

(no, I don't really think that in this particular case game must be scripted so heavy)