[Development] Map Suggestions

[Steb]

I took a look at the Arctic. I felt like Baffin Island was too blocky but once I removed the sea ice around it it felt okay, so no changes there. Instead I have four suggestions/observations:

• Iceland is free of sea ice year-round, so there should be no sea ice touching the island.
• One of the islands features in Hudson's Bay is the wrong color.
• There is ice (the feature) on several land tiles on the northernmost row. Is this intentional?
• Lastly, there are two land tiles north of the Boothia Peninsula that I would like to see converted into arctic coast with ice. I think it'd be nice if the Northwest Passage is a theoretical possibility (with submarines or climate change) and there are only these two tiles (W and E of the green cursor; note that I removed all the ice in the screenshot) that would have to be changed for this to become true.

Spoiler :

 

[Leoreth]

I don't think the ice on land is intentional, it's easy to misclick and not see it afterwards.

 

[Enyavar]

Ice on land can completely block land units from moving over it. This can be used intentionally...

But I remember that you are going to disable arctic troop movement anyway. Would be interesting to have some selected units capable of moving in the arctic, though.

 

[merijn_v1]

@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.

Are you planning to use the version with dates? Aside from adding the dates, I also removed removed all parts that are made transparent to hide them. If you will not use the version with dates, I will reupload an improved version with only the transparent parts removed.

I can also make other variants if desired.

 

[Leoreth]

Yeah, I do. Sorry, I got sidetracked with all this icon stuff and forgot about it.

 

[stormogulen]

Very small suggestion on Scandinavia after the recent edits:

Spoiler :

I reopened a path through the mountains between Sweden and Norway close to Trondheim and put a copper there representing the Røros mines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Røros). The southern Swedish copper is changed to an iron, representing bog and lake iron extraction in the area by the Vikings and medieval Danes.

 

[Steb]

I don’t know if this counts as a major coastline change, but I think you never did anything to Hawaii, and yet I feel that enlarging the archipelago would be a welcome modification.

First, working from the complete map you posted on August 10, there is an island south-southeast of Hawaii. This can’t be anything other than Christmas Island, or Kiritimati, the largest island in Kiribati and this general area. But in real life Christmas Island is directly south of Hawaii, not at all to its east. There is nothing southeast of Hawaii in real life. So, compared to the only island in its vicinity, Hawaii is too far to the west. (This is also true compared to other islands such as New Zealand.)

Compared to the Samoa/Tonga/Niue area, Christmas Island is not east enough, which shows just how much the Pacific Ocean is distorted and difficult to work with. Therefore I don’t propose moving this island. Hawaii, on the other hand, could be moved east.

Or it could be enlarged by adding Big Island southeast of the current forested hill. I think it should be a one tile island, like Viti Levu in Fiji which is of similar size. It could be a peak or a jungle/forested grass hill. The two existing islands would be Kauai and Oahu (both grass hills, as they are very humid) with Maui and its surrounding islands represented as an island feature between Oahu and Big Island.

I’m not sure if the new island should be 2S2E or 1S2E, I suggest you choose whichever looks best.

My reasons for this enlargement are:

• It would shift the archipelago’s center of mass east
• Except for New Zealand, Hawaii has by far the largest land area of anything in Polynesia and this should be reflected
• It also had/has more population than other islands
• Having a much smaller Hawaii now than in the smaller map is weird (it was oversized in that map, to be sure, but still)
• It would be more rewarding when playing as Polynesia to discover a large archipelago, as must have happened to the real life Polynesians compared to discovering smaller islands. I remember playing and being happy to reach larger land, able to support a more productive city.
• It would reduce the need for the artificial line of coast tiles that make the islands reachable from Christmas Island
• The shape of the archipelago would be more recognizable
• There would be more room for a resource or a natural wonder if those things are desirable

The main argument I can see against is that it would be closer to Baja California, but that doesn’t seem very problematic to me. Besides, even if you don’t like the enlargement idea, I think you should still move Hawaii east a bit, and turn the plains to grasslands.

 

[SBlack]

Not to go all the way off topic in city name thread I deleted it my suggestion and copy pasted it here.

I think that both Sarajevo and Banja Luka tile should be green hill with forest.
To add more to my reasoning, ancient Illyria throughout the later roman empire was very militarized and known for high quality and large number of its soldiers (from the 3rd century praetorian guard was mostly recruited from Illyrian legions and more sources mention that best soldiers of late empire came from Illyria). This way some more productivity can be given to Sirmium and forests would help churn out more legionnaires.
In more recent times Belgrade would be pressed between Austrian (Vojvodina should be AH core and serve to help Budapest) and Greek cores, and Bucarest or Sofia from east.
Adding even one more tile would help and place which is in reality green and forested would look realistic.
europe-forest-map.jpg

 

[Steb]

I have been working on city names in eastern Canada, and I realized that the lake in Labrador is too far west. Not a huge issue, obviously, but could it be moved 1E?

Spoiler :

 

[Steb]

I have been looking at city names in Mesoamerica (results to be posted later) and I have two suggestions:
- The Veracruz wikipedia article says vanilla is from that region, so it would be nice to move one of the vanilla resources closer to Veracruz
- I have been struggling to find a settlement for the jade tile in southwestern Mexico, and it seems like it's a very mountainous area. North of that would be the best spot for the important pre-Columbian city of Tzintzuntzan, but right now there is a mountain. So I suggest moving the mountain 1S and put the jade somewhere else.

 

[ozqar]

I have been looking at city names in Mesoamerica (results to be posted later) and I have two suggestions:
- The Veracruz wikipedia article says vanilla is from that region, so it would be nice to move one of the vanilla resources closer to Veracruz
- I have been struggling to find a settlement for the jade tile in southwestern Mexico, and it seems like it's a very mountainous area. North of that would be the best spot for the important pre-Columbian city of Tzintzuntzan, but right now there is a mountain. So I suggest moving the mountain 1S and put the jade somewhere else.

Hey Steb, vanilla is indeed from Veracruz, was domesticated by the Totonac culture in what is now northern Veracruz, so if you want to be super precise, the best spot for it would be 1NE of Tenochtitlan. Where it is now (2N1E of Tenochtitlan) is not completely out of place. I understand the maize is there to be quickly accessible by Tenochtitlan.

Cotton, btw, was also originally domesticated in the region, precisely in the Tehuacan valley, which would be 1S2E of Tenochtitlan (where the stone is; also exactly the place where maize was originally domesticated). In its current coastal location, it's quite alright since that has been a major producing region.

The incense (copal), chocolate, jade, and gold on the southern coast are all spot on. What could be changed though, is moving the dye to 1SE of Tenochtitlan, as that was the main area for cochineal production all the way to the 17th C or so. Rubber 1E of Tenochtitlan is not native to the region, to be accurate it would have to be in one of the rainforest tiles in Guatemala, but I recall it was placed there so it was reachable from Tenochtitlan. While I think there's no much point in moving those resources, I wanted to bring these things up in case we do consider moving them around.

About that mountain blocking Tzintzuntzan, perhaps we should just get rid of it, same as the mountain 1S of Tenochtitlan. The whole southern region of Mexico is mountainous, but none of the peaks there are really that high (except for a couple of volcanoes that could go 1E of Tenochtitlan*), and all along those ranges it's full of towns and ancient prehispanic sites.

* But to clarify on that, that spot 1E of Tenochtitlan has also super high population, it would be the spot for Tlaxcala, Puebla and Xalapa, all major cities at different points in history.

The jade tile could be the city of Caxitlan, capital of the ancient Colliman kingdom, and could be renamed to Colima in Spanish/Mexican times. Check out the map I'm attaching, it's loaded with info on the mesoamerican states at the time of the Spanish arrival.

 

[Steb]

About that mountain blocking Tzintzuntzan, perhaps we should just get rid of it, same as the mountain 1S of Tenochtitlan. The whole southern region of Mexico is mountainous, but none of the peaks there are really that high (except for a couple of volcanoes that could go 1E of Tenochtitlan*), and all along those ranges it's full of towns and ancient prehispanic sites.

Agreed. Mesoamerica is dense in population, resources, and states, so getting rid of the two mountains would ease things a bit.

The jade tile could be the city of Caxitlan, capital of the ancient Colliman kingdom, and could be renamed to Colima in Spanish/Mexican times. Check out the map I'm attaching, it's loaded with info on the mesoamerican states at the time of the Spanish arrival.

Nice map that I had not seen, thanks! I used it to update my suggestions.

 

[JHLee]

A suggestion to move the Yalu River 1 tile west, and add 1-length river to represent the Taedong River.
The benefits:
- Better representation of the western coast of the Peninsula (marked in the maps in yellow lines)
- Pyongyang is not next to the Yalu River IRL, so this change fixes that.
- Pyongyang remains as a favorable spot to settle since it is still next to a river.

 

[Novicenoble]

I guess the Han river should go south of Seoul. The river between Seoul and Kaesong should be the Imjin river.

And I'd not like to see the Kaesong can be used as a canal. AFAIK there was no peninsula penetrating canal in Korea. Maybe we can add a hill tile at the northeast of the Kaesong tile.

 

[canexpthat]

I still wish we could lagoon Hong Kong but I can't figure out a way to make it decent.

EDIT: Honestly, that part of China/Southeast Asia really bothers me, the Pearl River comes out right above Hainan on the map, which is incredibly inaccurate.

Hainan is a really prominent feature of that region, but I don't think it's historically extremely important. If the placement of Hainan vs the Pearl River Delta is a bother to the eye, might I suggest just getting rid of Hainan or turning it into the island feature. It's nice to have Hainan visually as a 1x1 land tile, of course, but the Pearl River Delta takes precedence, I'd say. Although from the post here (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/development-map-suggestions.632861/page-25#post-15471285), it looks like the Pearl River meats the sea 1 tile to the east of Hainan.

I took a look at the Arctic. I felt like Baffin Island was too blocky but once I removed the sea ice around it it felt okay, so no changes there. Instead I have four suggestions/observations:

• Iceland is free of sea ice year-round, so there should be no sea ice touching the island.
• One of the islands features in Hudson's Bay is the wrong color.
• There is ice (the feature) on several land tiles on the northernmost row. Is this intentional?
• Lastly, there are two land tiles north of the Boothia Peninsula that I would like to see converted into arctic coast with ice. I think it'd be nice if the Northwest Passage is a theoretical possibility (with submarines or climate change) and there are only these two tiles (W and E of the green cursor; note that I removed all the ice in the screenshot) that would have to be changed for this to become true.

Spoiler :

View attachment 533431

This is more of a crazy thought, but seasonal ice in the extreme latitudes would be interesting. You could simulate Russia having 0 warmwater ports, causing Russia to really want warmwater ports and go invading southern regions for it. IIRC, their only warmwater port is in the Black Sea, thus all the conflict with Ukraine.

 

[ozqar]

I'd like to propose some map changes to Central America and the Caribbean. I think they're minor changes (effort-wise), but I think they make the region look much better. Nobody had paid attention to this region before, so hopefully these can still be taken into account.

1) Change the Guatemalan mountain and the mountain south of Mexico City to hills. While these are mountainous areas, they're heavily populated and really part of the heart of the highland aztec/mexican/mayan areas. The Guatemala mountain in particular is blocking the site of both Kaminaljuyu and Guatemala City.
2) Change the shape of the Central American isthmus by moving four tiles from the east coast to the west coast, and changing the lake into land. I reflects the shape of the land there much better, and it puts land in the more populated (western coast) as opposed to the barely settled (throughout history, up to today) eastern coast. This should strengthen the mayan core area. I think the lake was a very nice touch, but it's real location is farther south, where the land is too narrow to show it.
3) Add one tile to northeastern Cuba, to better reflect the shape of the island, and make the Bahamas a two-tile island (which I think would look great as two atoll tiles).
4) Move Hispaniola and Puerto Rico 1SW, to align them better with Jamaica, Belize, and the Maracaibo lagoon in Venezuela. For Hispaniola, I propose to add a tile north (to get the shape of an inverted T), which I think makes the island look better.

In the screenshot below, I marked the mountain-to-hills changes with yellow culture; all the added land tiles are marked as grasslands with red culture; all the removed land tiles are marked as lagoons with light blue culture. This is just to show the land/sea changes, I didn't pay attention to resource or terrain changes to keep my suggestions simple to identify. I can of course make additional suggestions to look at these issues at a later point.

Spoiler Screenshot: :

 

[Temujin8k]

I'd like to propose some map changes to Central America and the Caribbean. I think they're minor changes (effort-wise), but I think they make the region look much better. Nobody had paid attention to this region before, so hopefully these can still be taken into account.

1) Change the Guatemalan mountain and the mountain south of Mexico City to hills. While these are mountainous areas, they're heavily populated and really part of the heart of the highland aztec/mexican/mayan areas. The Guatemala mountain in particular is blocking the site of both Kaminaljuyu and Guatemala City.
2) Change the shape of the Central American isthmus by moving four tiles from the east coast to the west coast, and changing the lake into land. I reflects the shape of the land there much better, and it puts land in the more populated (western coast) as opposed to the barely settled (throughout history, up to today) eastern coast. This should strengthen the mayan core area. I think the lake was a very nice touch, but it's real location is farther south, where the land is too narrow to show it.
3) Add one tile to northeastern Cuba, to better reflect the shape of the island, and make the Bahamas a two-tile island (which I think would look great as two atoll tiles).
4) Move Hispaniola and Puerto Rico 1SW, to align them better with Jamaica, Belize, and the Maracaibo lagoon in Venezuela. For Hispaniola, I propose to add a tile north (to get the shape of an inverted T), which I think makes the island look better.

In the screenshot below, I marked the mountain-to-hills changes with yellow culture; all the added land tiles are marked as grasslands with red culture; all the removed land tiles are marked as lagoons with light blue culture. This is just to show the land/sea changes, I didn't pay attention to resource or terrain changes to keep my suggestions simple to identify. I can of course make additional suggestions to look at these issues at a later point.

Spoiler Screenshot: :

View attachment 536534

This looks so great for me! I want to think that increasing the land area in the Caribbean in the DoC map significantly incentivizes the colonizers to settle the islands more often--speaking of which, I think there should also be more resource density here.

 

[Leoreth]

The lack of resource density is because the primary Caribbean cash crop is sugar, which does only appear after spreading from the old world.

 

[merijn_v1]

I made a PR with Emerald (gems) an Shrimp (crab) bonus variety.

Emerald:
- I replaced the default gems in Columbia to Emerald. (post)
- I replaced diamond bonus variety near Zambia to Emerald. (Zambia is the 2nd largest producer of emeralds. And the other gems in the area are all diamonds. Making 1 emeralds gives a little more diversity. Maybe the location of the resource should be changed because of this, because the tile isn't where Zambia is IRL, although very close (1-2 tiles away))
- I replaced the default gems in Brazil, near Belo Horizonte to diamond (post)

Shrimp:
- I replaced some crabs with shrimps around South America. (various posts by Krieger-FS)
- I replaced the crab near Boston with shrimp. (post. I think that the shrimp model resembles lobsters better than crab)
- I replaced the Clam near New Orleans with crab+shrimps. (post, The post mentions adding clam near New Orleans to represent the Cajun cuisine shrimps. I think that crab (shrimp) represent that better)
- I replaced some crabs in South East Asia with shrimp.

I also wanted to add lobster as a bonus variety for crab as well, but the model I wanted to use is just a reskinned shrimp. Without pincers the model looks too much like the shrimp for being a nice inclusion. (But maybe I can add them to the model myself.)

 

[Leoreth]

I saw the pull request, will give it a look in the game first before I can merge it.