Earth with Modern City Placement

[Tiberias]

The attached is the standard Civ4 Earth map, only with modern cities placed on it. Special thanks to Rhye for the very good Civ4 Earth map (official site: http://rhye.civfanatics.net/index.php?nev=civ4earth).

What I needed for a scenario I am working on, however, was Earth, but with the modern cities. Placing a reasonable number of modern cities was more work than I thought it would be--which is why I am making this map available, as a starting point for other modders. I will admit to borrowing a few of the city locations from the 1000 AD map, although a couple of my city placements differ from that map for various reasons.

Important: This is not a playable map, it is a starting point for modders! Rather than try to assign a civilization to each of the cities, I have assigned all of them to the Barbarian, except one to the Americans, so that the map is loadable. Assigning cities to their appropriate Civs is not possible, as several modern nations (Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Australia) are not represented in the default Civ selection. Assigning Civs is as easy as changing the CityOwner= attribute in the text version of the map (after the Civs have been set up, of course.)

I am interested in feedback on the map, hence why I am posting it. Here are my considerations for the city placement:

• I wanted a reasonable number of cities, I think I ended up with eighty cities or so.
• I attempted to represent the major population centers. However, strictly following the largest population concentrations would result in cities being extremely tightly bunched in certain regions (primarily China and India), which perversely would reduce their maximum growth rate and size. Consequently, I've attempted to maintain a certain minimum distance, in order to keep population centers viable.
• Population centers which fall within the natural radius of a larger population center have not been included, e.g. Baltimore not being included as it is too close to Washington D.C., etc.
• I've given a bias to cities that are more influential over those which are larger, e.g., Hong Kong over Guangzhou.
• Within those constraints, I've tried to develop a more populated feel to the more populated areas, and a more empty feel to the more empty areas; China, Korea, and India are filled out, the U.S. and Europe moderately so, and interior Canada, Brazil, etc., are quite empty.
• In spite of the above, I've added some cities to Central Asia, simply to head off the typical Siberian Land Rush; the marginal areas are still empty, however.
• I've set Population to 1; I don't have a systematic way of assigning sizes based on current population figures, although if anyone has suggestions I'd be interested to hear them.
• Used the internationalized tags where available.
• I have not developed the land around the cities, primarily because I am guessing that modders will want to know what the original terrain is. Improving the terrain within city radii is typically a safe bet. The one complication is that, to be "accurate", Towns should probably be added where large adjoining population centers sit (Baltimore next to Washington, G-X next to Hong Kong, etc.)
• I have left the terrain unchanged, excepting a little bit of bulldozing of a mountain in Iran to make way for Tehran.
• Not sure what to do with Suez; maybe move Cairo and turn it into a canal city?
• I have removed the huts; this is the modern world, there aren't primitive tribes sitting around waiting to give someone 100 gold just for showing up.
• I'd really like to do realistic railroads, but that would be a LOT of work. At this point it may simply be safe to go fill in railroads within city radii, join up the cities, and add a few of the critical railroads like the Trans-Siberian. If anyone knows of any good world railroad maps, please let me know.

Interested in any feedback you might have, especially areas where there might be inaccuracies.

View attachment Earth with Modern Cities v1.zip

 

[Tiberias]

As a postscript, I realize this is a fairly bare-bones map, which might raise questions of what the "value-add" may be (consultant-speak, sorry.) I also realize that a lot of modern world mods use their own Earth maps, a few smaller than the default, but most of them of the bigger-is-better school . Hopefully this will help for making a quick-and-dirty first pass map, where modders can very quickly assign out cities, set population levels and add forces, and see if their scenario works, then later on move it to another map.

Edit: Features that will be included in the new map; I'll post updates as I have them.

• Population Levels. I have a scale that I will be using to set population levels; it's not 100% accurate, but it puts the cities in scale with each other.
• Railroads. I found a very good atlas, albeit a print atlas, but I'm using it for road and railroad layout. Again, not 100% accurate but it will get the "feel" for which areas have railroads, which have a mix, which have only roads, and which don't have anything.
• More Cities--I'll be adding a few in the Americas, a few in Europe, and several in Africa and Central Asia. Again, I want to be very careful about not increasing the city density to the point where the real-world big cities die while real-world tiny outposts grow like weeds.
• Development. I'm developing out the city radii roughly corresponding to the current pattern of development.
• City Buildings. What I'm doing is filling in a default set of buildings for each city; modders can tweak by removing buildings or adding UBs, which is faster than trying to go through and set up a whole set of buildings for each city.

 

[Bastian-Bux]

I'm using your map as a base for a modern world map. To avoid the "settler rush" I'm adding enough cities to fill up all white areas.

Now you might ask, how to avoid Rio Branco (a town in central Amazonas) to become a rival to Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) too quickly?

Well, surrounded by djungle (noc improvements) and with no buildings whatsoever, Rio Branco is more of a drag on the latinamerican economy then anything else. Getting it up to at least paying its own expenses will be costly.

Here my first version, with 10 major civs and 5 minors. Till now only the americas are plastered with cities. Suggestions are welcome.

 

[Tiberias]

Thanks for taking a look. I'm working on a MAJOR upgrade to this. As you figured out, there's too much white space, so I've filled in a number of cities, but keeping with my philosophy of ensuring that the big cities have enough space to support very large populations. As you've also figured out, another key to getting city populations semi-accurate is the relative level of development. The new version has city sizes at scale, land developed, semi-accurate religions, and (it's a lot of work, but I rather like it!) semi-accurate roads and railroads.

It's still a work in progress, but since someone is actually using it, I'll post an interim version later this week. I have the Americas and Europe completed, will be moving on to Africa. East Asia should go quickly (most of it's fully developed), but Central Asia will be a headache.

I'll also take a look at your map. I haven't even tried to do nation layout, so I'm interested at what you've come up with.

 

[Lachlan]

Please make a full playable version

That it a nice new concept

 

[GuitarHero]

This will be the spine for an interesting MOD.

 

[Bastian-Bux]

Well, here we go. I added TONS of cities, so now almost every place worth to settle on the map is settled. As a result you'll find a complete mess in some actually fairly empty areas. So any help, especially concerning sibiria is welcome. Remember: Leaving it completely without cities is an invitation for weird settling.

For now all cities have a population of 1, just enough culture to mark the fat cross, and thats it.

My next step will be to fill the indian and chinese (non tibetan) cities up to the brim, add improvements and probably several boni to those regions as well. Those 13 cities represent almost 40% of the world population, mind you. So all other pop numbers will be derived from those cities.

Attachement: an earth map with 200+ cities, 1 pop and 10 culture each, no improvements

 

[AckAck]

I've noticed that this is a BTS worldbuilder save... any chance it can be made into a Vanilla save?

 

[Tiberias]

Changing it back from BTS to Vanilla shouldn't be too much trouble . . . the version I'm working on now has buildings, so the building list would need to be trimmed. The version I'm working on now also has land developments, but I've actually been careful to avoid BtS developments (Parks and . . . can't remember if there's another.) So it's a matter of opening it up in a text editor and doing a find-and-replace to make the changes, then just changing the extension.

I'll take a look at doing it, after I finish up the version I'm working on . . . after I finish up a deep stack of work in my real life. It'll happen, just not sure when.

Bastian-Bux, I'll take a look at your map. You're absolutely right, in that it needs to be somewhat filled up or the AI Civs will go crazy with settling it. What I'm trying to do on the current version is give existing cities high populations and a lot of land development (and of course a full set of buildings), which should keep the wilderness outposts small so that the historically large population centers will dominate. I've felt for a while that Siberia should be "nerfed" by bringing the Ice way down as well as the Tundra (ditto for Canada), but I don't want to alter Rhye's map so I'm leaving it as-is.

 

[GuitarHero]

Hmm, with new additions this could be a sweet Apocalypse Scenario.

 

[Bastian-Bux]

Well, Siberia and Canada will be very valuable land: once the permafrost has thawed. As there is no way to reflect this properly the only thing is to leave improvements out.

 

[GuitarHero]

Mabye there could be.....
Death
666
4
Recives Defensive bonuses.

War
666
4
Gets +50% per pillaged square.

Pestilence
666
4
Can Spread Black Death.

Famine
666
4
When on a Food Resource or Forest, the Resource or Forest is eliminated.



They could be UUs and Leaders for the Hell Legion Civ
Death: (Agg/Phi)
War: (Agg/Imp)
Famine: (Exp/Org)
Pestilence: (Imp/Exp)

 

[Stecki]

My next step will be to fill the indian and chinese (non tibetan) cities up to the brim, add improvements and probably several boni to those regions as well. Those 13 cities represent almost 40% of the world population, mind you. So all other pop numbers will be derived from those cities.

i made a map were i worked the same way, but i used it even for military relations. pretty much work without playable results. indian and chinese citys had a population up to 40, while there were no european, russian or american citys bigger than 5. some testgames were extremely imbalanced and so i cancelled my "mission" to get realistic relations of power.

 

[Tiberias]

In the current version that I am very slowly working on (insert standard excuses about work and personal life here), what I did was start with Tokyo, get its population as high as I possibly could, then scale all the cities down from there. As it turns out, with a full set of buildings and a full set of resources and fully-developed tiles (and Biology, very important!), Tokyo comes in at a size 33, which is very respectable, and most of the big cities come in at a size 20. Civ city populations are about half the size of their actual populations, but the Civ population number is pure flavor anyway. It's not "realistic", but Civ4 is not supposed to have an ultra-realistic feel to it. It's a game, not a simulation.

I considered adding new resources, but I wanted to use the default map. Even using the regular map (Rhye's older pre-RFC map) and even scaling the city populations, some cities just won't work--I had to cut LA down to a size 22 (and that's even with cheating by farming all the adjacent tiles), Mexico City got cut, and Tehran is going to take a very big cut. That's the way it goes.

What's important, however, is to capture the effect--big cities should be big, rich cities should be rich, productive cities should be productive, and middle-of-nowhere cities should be tiny, and that's what I'm trying to do with my map. So far only N America, C America, S America, and Europe complete--the big hill to get over will be C Asia, once that's finished it'll be quick to finish up.