civvver
Deity
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2007
- Messages
- 5,855
Ok, I ripped off the king of the world name in the hopes of showcasing what I find to be an excellent civ4 mod.
I've recently come to love the Giant Earth Map mod, which you can find here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=276594
I thought that I would play a public game, if there's interest. I know that there are a couple of earth-map threads already going (Atilla, King of the World), which is why I'm not sure if another one will garner much interest. But I am hoping to draw more attention to this wonderful mod, and play a fun game in the process. So here goes.
Initial thoughts on GEM
I've always loved earth based maps but hated how small Europe was, when there's so much action going on there. I also love extra civ mods like having 34 civs, but the earth map for that crams them together in some places and gives others awful starts, and just didn't fully appeal to me. Then I found GEM.
GEM is a gigantic map (it's 90x210, 85% larger than huge), with Europe and Asia upscaled. This upscaling makes a dramatic difference, allowing a cluster of European and Asian civs without feeling too cramped like other earth maps. There's also an obscene amount of resources on this map and no civ has a bad start, though some are amazingly good and make the others seem very lackluster by comparison. Thus the map is not totally well balanced, but every civ can compete just fine in the hands of the player.
There's also quite a few changes to mechanics. Some I'd rather not have, but I don't want to go about modding a mod. For example, prophet specialists generate food instead of money (I wouldn't have made this change). Most of the changes are for flavor. Specialists are all a bit stronger, flood plains only give +2 food (for balance because they're all over this map on grassland tiles), and longbows having a strength of 5 are probably the biggest ones to be aware of. Also trade routes are not automatically acquired when you research say currency, but now are added via buildings like a marketplace adds +1 trade route. It makes sense, but can really effect your strategy if you don't know what's going on. You can read the full list of changes on the GEM forum.
The one drastic change is all units have a base movement of 2. So axemen move 2, chariots move 3. This was added in the latest release because the map is so large warfare was becoming tedious. I think you'll find the overall impact isn't too drastic though due to the size of the map, although rushing your immediate neighbor once you acquire a new tech is easier.
With the map in mind, some general items to be aware of are specialists rock due to the extensive amount of food and thus pyramids become even more powerful (is that possible?), and Parthenon and mausoleum get a bump in priority for me. Depending on where you start barbarians will be non existent or a huge nuisance. Europe for example fills up quickly so France will never see barbs being inland from the frontier, but Korea on the outskirts of Asia will be pounded mercilessly, and it's just not feasible to fogbust all that damn tundra to the north. Shrines will generate insane amounts of income (100+ for two different religions is not uncommon). There's tons of rivers so state property and watermills are useful, but there's also a lot of resources so corporations keep pace easily (though the amount per resource has been dialed back otherwise you could literally net +25 food from cereal mills without too much trouble).
There's also two main scenarios: the ancient and modern maps. Each has different leaders for civs that have more than one leader, usually by chronology (example: America on ancient uses Washington because he is the oldest leader, and FDR is on the modern map being the most modern leader). The ancient map has no horses in the America's and no corn in the old world, while the modern map does, and has more resources in general.
And now the start!
I decided to play the modern map as France, lead by Napoleon. I picked them because any European civ is fairly straightforward and easy to play on this map, making for a fun forum game. Also Napoleon has a great mix of wartime and economic traits.
Here's the start. I entered the world builder so you can see the surrounding area and get a feel for the map. It's a scenario so we know exactly what's coming anyway! We might as well have a discussion about where to start. I'm leaning towards settling in place, for quick access to the horses, although I have settled 1 west before trading production for food for a massive GP farm.
My initial plan is going to be chariot rush as many European civs as I can. This will crash my economy completely by about the 4th of 5th civ, but I plan to beeline writing to run some scientists and research code of laws and put my organized trait to use. What I'm hoping is that Augustus builds the pyramids for me in Rome. He almost always gets them first on this map, but sometimes he gets distracted with building great wall or great lighthouse instead. I won't have time to build any wonders initially.
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
You may have trouble identifying the resources at first because the mod also uses some new artwork, but the metal in my BFC is iron, and the things that look like orange feathers are wheat, while corn looks like a giant kernel of corn.
One final word, this mod requires a pretty intense pc. I built a new one last year, but before that I tried playing it on a dual core athalon 2.0ghz, 1gb of ram pc that was about 5 years old and it failed miserably. I'm playing on a quad core i5 3ghz with 4gb of ram and windows7 now and it runs fine, but you might have trouble if your pc is more than a few years old. You should be able to tell after the first 20 turns or so though how it is going to do.
I've recently come to love the Giant Earth Map mod, which you can find here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=276594
I thought that I would play a public game, if there's interest. I know that there are a couple of earth-map threads already going (Atilla, King of the World), which is why I'm not sure if another one will garner much interest. But I am hoping to draw more attention to this wonderful mod, and play a fun game in the process. So here goes.
Initial thoughts on GEM
I've always loved earth based maps but hated how small Europe was, when there's so much action going on there. I also love extra civ mods like having 34 civs, but the earth map for that crams them together in some places and gives others awful starts, and just didn't fully appeal to me. Then I found GEM.
GEM is a gigantic map (it's 90x210, 85% larger than huge), with Europe and Asia upscaled. This upscaling makes a dramatic difference, allowing a cluster of European and Asian civs without feeling too cramped like other earth maps. There's also an obscene amount of resources on this map and no civ has a bad start, though some are amazingly good and make the others seem very lackluster by comparison. Thus the map is not totally well balanced, but every civ can compete just fine in the hands of the player.
There's also quite a few changes to mechanics. Some I'd rather not have, but I don't want to go about modding a mod. For example, prophet specialists generate food instead of money (I wouldn't have made this change). Most of the changes are for flavor. Specialists are all a bit stronger, flood plains only give +2 food (for balance because they're all over this map on grassland tiles), and longbows having a strength of 5 are probably the biggest ones to be aware of. Also trade routes are not automatically acquired when you research say currency, but now are added via buildings like a marketplace adds +1 trade route. It makes sense, but can really effect your strategy if you don't know what's going on. You can read the full list of changes on the GEM forum.
The one drastic change is all units have a base movement of 2. So axemen move 2, chariots move 3. This was added in the latest release because the map is so large warfare was becoming tedious. I think you'll find the overall impact isn't too drastic though due to the size of the map, although rushing your immediate neighbor once you acquire a new tech is easier.
With the map in mind, some general items to be aware of are specialists rock due to the extensive amount of food and thus pyramids become even more powerful (is that possible?), and Parthenon and mausoleum get a bump in priority for me. Depending on where you start barbarians will be non existent or a huge nuisance. Europe for example fills up quickly so France will never see barbs being inland from the frontier, but Korea on the outskirts of Asia will be pounded mercilessly, and it's just not feasible to fogbust all that damn tundra to the north. Shrines will generate insane amounts of income (100+ for two different religions is not uncommon). There's tons of rivers so state property and watermills are useful, but there's also a lot of resources so corporations keep pace easily (though the amount per resource has been dialed back otherwise you could literally net +25 food from cereal mills without too much trouble).
There's also two main scenarios: the ancient and modern maps. Each has different leaders for civs that have more than one leader, usually by chronology (example: America on ancient uses Washington because he is the oldest leader, and FDR is on the modern map being the most modern leader). The ancient map has no horses in the America's and no corn in the old world, while the modern map does, and has more resources in general.
And now the start!
I decided to play the modern map as France, lead by Napoleon. I picked them because any European civ is fairly straightforward and easy to play on this map, making for a fun forum game. Also Napoleon has a great mix of wartime and economic traits.
Here's the start. I entered the world builder so you can see the surrounding area and get a feel for the map. It's a scenario so we know exactly what's coming anyway! We might as well have a discussion about where to start. I'm leaning towards settling in place, for quick access to the horses, although I have settled 1 west before trading production for food for a massive GP farm.
My initial plan is going to be chariot rush as many European civs as I can. This will crash my economy completely by about the 4th of 5th civ, but I plan to beeline writing to run some scientists and research code of laws and put my organized trait to use. What I'm hoping is that Augustus builds the pyramids for me in Rome. He almost always gets them first on this map, but sometimes he gets distracted with building great wall or great lighthouse instead. I won't have time to build any wonders initially.
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
You may have trouble identifying the resources at first because the mod also uses some new artwork, but the metal in my BFC is iron, and the things that look like orange feathers are wheat, while corn looks like a giant kernel of corn.
One final word, this mod requires a pretty intense pc. I built a new one last year, but before that I tried playing it on a dual core athalon 2.0ghz, 1gb of ram pc that was about 5 years old and it failed miserably. I'm playing on a quad core i5 3ghz with 4gb of ram and windows7 now and it runs fine, but you might have trouble if your pc is more than a few years old. You should be able to tell after the first 20 turns or so though how it is going to do.
