Download the Gigantic Accurate Earth Map
Warning: This truly is a gigantic map in size and will strain your PC. At 232 x 112 = 25984 plots, it is significantly bigger than Genghis Kai's Giant Earth Map (210 x 90 = 18900 plots) and slightly bigger than Carter's Earth Map (192 x 120 = 23040 plots). In other words, you will need a good amount of RAM to run this map!
About this map:
The Gigantic Accurate Earth Map has the same design philosophy as my older, smaller
Accurate Earth Map. It uses a cylindrical equal-area projection to represent all the continents and oceans with their correct size relative to each other, and I spent a great amount of time placing the terrains, rivers and resources as accurately as possible. The bigger size of this map, 232 x 112 plots compared to "only" 132 x 64 of the old one, allowed for an even finer scale. Here is a bigger screenshot for a closer look at the Gigantic Accurate Earth Map:
Obviously, it is impossible to make a perfectly accurate Earth map for Civilization. The Earth is a globe, so any representation of its surface on a plane is a compromise of one form or another, accurately representing some of the properties of the Earth's surface at the expense of distorting others. That is why geographers have invented various different map projections for different purposes.
Rather than a boast of perfect accuracy, calling my maps "Accurate Earth Maps" is simply a declaration of intention and design philosophy. Unlike many other Earth maps for Civilization IV (including the official one), mine do not feature an artificially enlarged Europe and Japan or an artificially reduced Pacific ocean. Instead, I went for as much geographical accuracy as possible, within the limitations of the game. The result are some Earth maps that, in my view, are very interesting and unique. And while they don't allow you to cram half a dozen civilizations into Europe, they make for a great game in other ways.
Because cities and the plots they occupy are in many ways the core of the game, I decided that preserving area was the most important aspect of geographical accuracy in Civilization, rather than preserving shape or distance. I used a cylindrical equal-area projection with standard parallels at 37.3 degrees north and south of the equator (sometimes known as the "Hobo-Dyer projection"). All continents and oceans are depicted with their correct areas relative to each other. Australia really is three quarters the size of Europe, Africa really is 14 times the size of Greenland, and so on.
I did a lot of research on terrain, river and natural resources placement. I used a vegetation map from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) for the biomes, and
The World Ultras Homepage for a list of all the mountains with a prominence of more than 1500 meters (which in my map became mountains instead of mere hills). For resources, I used essays like
Forecasting Coal Production Until 2100 by Evans and Mohr to get figures of worldwide coal reserves at the beginning of the industrial age, and then distributed that resource accordingly. I placed oases at geographically appropriate locations like Tafilalt in Morocco or (a bit of an inside joke, but accurate nonetheless) Las Vegas in the US.
I created the map using
Civ 4 Map Editor and
MapView 2.0. As a basis for the map, I primarily used the maps from the
Natural Earth III website, which I converted to the cylindrical equal-area projection with a map projection program called
Geocart 3 and overlayed one on top of the other with
Adobe Photoshop Elements.
As you can see, a lot of work went into this map. I hope that you like the result. Have fun, and don't hesitate to send feedback and comments!
Inside the .zip archive:
There are nine maps inside the .rar archive. Three for basic Civilization IV, three for the Warlords expansion, and three for the Beyond the Sword expansion. For each version of the game, there is one "blank" map with no civilizations set, one that has 18 civilizations already set up around the globe, and one that has 12 civilizations already set up in Eurasia and North Africa, but none in sub-Saharan Africa or the Americas, to give you more of a new world to explore and more of that
Guns, Germs and Steel feeling.
Most of the civilizations start out in their historically accurate starting locations. For the maps for basic Civilization and Warlords, I also had to place some in non-accurate starting locations to get a better distribution, like the English in South Africa or the French in Indochina. The 18 civilization version for Beyond the Sword has the following civilizations, all in their accurate starting locations: Arabian, Aztec, Babylonian, Carthaginian, Celtic, Chinese, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Greek, Incan, Indian, Japanese, Khmer, Malinese, Mayan, Mongolian, Native American, and Zulu. The 12 civilization version for Beyond the Sword has: Arabian, Babylonian, Carthaginian, Celtic, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Indian, Japanese, Khmer, Mongolian, and Ottoman (the Ottomans start out in Central Asia, which actually makes sense for a Turkic civilization).
To use the maps, you need to extract the appropriate files to the appropriate PublicMaps folder. For basic Civilization IV, extract the *.Civ4WorldBuilderSave files to the PublicMaps folder inside your Civilization IV directory. For Warlords, extract the *.CivWarlordsWBSave files to the Warlords\PublicMaps folder. For Beyond the Sword, extract the *.CivBeyondSwordWBSave files to the Beyond the Sword\Public Maps folder.