New map project

[Wessel V1]

I'm not so sure about that projection... I think in our current map especially Italy looks much better. This makes me think of another Europe map, but I prefer ours.

 

[dragodon64]

About an hour with Google-Earth and Gimp results in this. The tiles are not exactly 100x73, but this should be embed into a slightly larger map to account for the Atlantic Islands and Iceland.

PS: I can very easily adjust the grid density if I have to.

Wow, I really like this. Iberia and N Africa are totally fixed. Also, I hope that "depression" east of Sinope will be put into Anatolia, the current map has a flat northeastern coastline.

I certainly have no objections to this.

Btw, is the new map intended to be 73 tall and 100 wide?

 

[3Miro]

I'm not so sure about that projection... I think in our current map especially Italy looks much better. This makes me think of another Europe map, but I prefer ours.

What is it that you don't like about Italy? If I center Google-Earth right on Italy I get more or less the same.

On my image, Germany is potentially the messiest one since that is where the 5 images combine. On the other hand we only have one huge junk of land and we can adjust mountains and rivers afterwards.

 

[Michael Vick]

I also like 3Miro's map, after including the Atlantic Islands, it should be perfect. This is worth spending time on.

 

[Wessel V1]

I don't know, it just doesn't feel right. France seems too thin, Tunisia goes down too much, Italy is very short. The Netherlands go up almost vertical. And Sicily... well, that's obvious I think. I'm not too fond of this. There are good things, but the flat google maps projection works better then I think.

 

[3Miro]

I don't know, it just doesn't feel right. France seems too thin, Tunisia goes down too much, Italy is very short. The Netherlands go up almost vertical. And Sicily... well, that's obvious I think. I'm not too fond of this. There are good things, but the flat google maps projection works better then I think.

IMO Europe is too big to do an accurate map without too much distortion. All my images were taken at the same zoom level and adjusted so that North is strait up. Get Google-Earth and check the parallels and meridians, the tilt of Italy is correct, Sicily shouldn't be connected, but other than that it is correct. You are right about France, it should be a bit wider. I can try to fix this.

I am not married to the image and I don't mind if we do something else, this is just a suggestion.

 

[Caliom]

Wessel, i totally agree with you. You are so right. Bigger is not always better. The more i think about it the more i like to see RFCE with a smaller map.

And i also agree with Michael Vick, when he says that there will always be modders. I hope that one day we will have more than one map for RFCE. I don't want to argue about the right mapsize now, but i want to ask the question if we can make it easier for modders to include their own map?
There seems to be a lot of stuff in the python files, that reference specific tiles on the map. War maps, flip zones, crusades, etc. Let us simplifiy some stuff here and make life easier for modders. Do we really need tile-accurate war maps and flip zones any more? Won't the provinces do it just as well? And wouldn't this be more comprehensible for players too? If things get a bit simplified.

 

[Michael Vick]

I don't know, it just doesn't feel right. France seems too thin, Tunisia goes down too much, Italy is very short. The Netherlands go up almost vertical. And Sicily... well, that's obvious I think. I'm not too fond of this. There are good things, but the flat google maps projection works better then I think.

Right, I agree that all those areas look awkward because that's were they were spliced. When it gets translated to Civ IV tiles though, I think all of the weird areas will get straightened out.

 

[AbsintheRed]

One of the maps that I used was the one Michael Vick has on his Iberia thread. I also used maps from Google-Earth. What I did was to get a screenshot of the map and then add the lines with Gimp.

The problem with this approach was that you get too much distortion around the edges, Russia and Scandinavia mostly. That's why I think doing 4 maps would be better.

About an hour with Google-Earth and Gimp results in this. The tiles are not exactly 100x73, but this should be embed into a slightly larger map to account for the Atlantic Islands and Iceland.

PS: I can very easily adjust the grid density if I have to.

Looks good for a start, altough there are some issues with it as it was pointed out
I will also try to play with it

 

[AbsintheRed]

Btw, I remember some talk a while back about making "bridges" by which land units could cross at Gallipoli, Gibraltar, Denmark, etc. What was the resolution of that discussion?

Those kind of bridges are out of the question, as the AI can't really handle them well
Also, the AI is much more competent now, even in naval invasions to some degree, so there is no real need for them

On the other hand, I intend to include the straits in the new map.
Diagonal land tiles passable by naval units in Oresund, Bosporus, Dardanelles

 

[yogiebere]

Yeah I like this a lot! But as a RFC:E 2.0 of course. If you doubled the dimension on everything, there would be more room for all those RFC++ things. Maybe some Switzerland additions? (you could now have 1 or 2 swiss cities). Islands wouldn't just be filler 1x1 spots now.

The major problem I forsee though is just the immense size of it all. Armies would take dozens of turns to get to the enemy. Some solutions:
1. Increase move of units (I don't really see a huge problem with a 2-move swordsman, other than the fact that it's very unorthodox for civ4)
2. Double the turns (this would suck though, cus then games would take forever!)
3. Also increasing movement on roads could be good in combo with move increases (maybe in addition to the +1 at vaulted arches, another +1 at replaceable parts and steam engines)

 

[AbsintheRed]

Wessel, i totally agree with you. You are so right. Bigger is not always better. The more i think about it the more i like to see RFCE with a smaller map.

I see your and all the others concern, but as I said, one of the main reasons to have a bigger map is to be able to include a few more important civs
I strongly feel that a slightly bigger map would mean much improvement to many of those new civs and features (especially the HRE) in RFCE++

Just to make it clear, again: RFCE 1.0 will be more or less the current version, just more polished and balanced. Development won't stop for it after the release of course. Noone will force anyone to play on the bigger map
But I really like the idea of adding all those extra features from RFCE++, and I'm willing to spend time on it to have them on a map they deserve
So I will start the map for this after we settle on the size and the projection we should base it on.
I have no interest in a smaller map at all. An RFCE game with half this many tiles and with only the ~12 biggest civs doesn't sound really appealing, at least for me.

And i also agree with Michael Vick, when he says that there will always be modders. I hope that one day we will have more than one map for RFCE. I don't want to argue about the right mapsize now, but i want to ask the question if we can make it easier for modders to include their own map?
There seems to be a lot of stuff in the python files, that reference specific tiles on the map. War maps, flip zones, crusades, etc. Let us simplifiy some stuff here and make life easier for modders. Do we really need tile-accurate war maps and flip zones any more? Won't the provinces do it just as well? And wouldn't this be more comprehensible for players too? If things get a bit simplified.

Changing most of these things to povinces would certainly be more flexible, but I'm afraid that won't be enough
3Miro will correct me if I'm wrong, bug AFAIK in RFC you cannot play on different map sizes without dll changes

 

[AbsintheRed]

Yeah I like this a lot! But as a RFC:E 2.0 of course. If you doubled the dimension on everything, there would be more room for all those RFC++ things. Maybe some Switzerland additions? (you could now have 1 or 2 swiss cities). Islands wouldn't just be filler 1x1 spots now.

The major problem I forsee though is just the immense size of it all. Armies would take dozens of turns to get to the enemy. Some solutions:
1. Increase move of units (I don't really see a huge problem with a 2-move swordsman, other than the fact that it's very unorthodox for civ4)
2. Double the turns (this would suck though, cus then games would take forever!)
3. Also increasing movement on roads could be good in combo with move increases (maybe in addition to the +1 at vaulted arches, another +1 at replaceable parts and steam engines)

Having a that huge map is absolutely out of the question, sry
Doubling both dimensions on the map would result in 4* this much cities, improvements, etc
That would totally kill the mod, won't be playable on most computers
Also, it could easily go very boring in most games, even with the new additions

Right now we have 7300 tiles, from which somewhere between 3500-4000 are land tiles (3280 in provinces + the desert tiles in the Sahara)
For me, about 10000-12000 tiles seems about right. Totally 5000-6500 land tiles. About 4000-5000 actually useable tiles

 

[dragodon64]

Having a that huge map is absolutely out of the question, sry
Doubling both dimensions on the map would result in 4* this much cities, improvements, etc
That would totally kill the mod, won't be playable on most computers
Also, it could easily go very boring in most games, even with the new additions

Right now we have 7300 tiles, from which somewhere between 3500-4000 are land tiles (3280 in provinces + the desert tiles in the Sahara)
For me, about 10000-12000 tiles seems about right. Totally 5000-6500 land tiles. About 4000-5000 actually useable tiles

For the sake of comparison, you wouldn't happen to have SoI's numbers on hand, would you? That map has very little water, but it does have massive swaths of desert and mountain. And half of the green land is in India.

 

[Tigranes]

Boy, so many posts in just 1 day.

Guys, the mod is already sluggish with the existing map, we really really don't need bigger map. Moreover, we don't need even talk about map. For how many years this project was developed? Isn't it about the time to wrap up? It's very counter productive to go back to map talk. I really support 3Miro's February plan. Make Beta 14 last Beta, release v. 1.0 and later merge with RFCE++. For the most of the time this mod feels like finished product. Don't take us back to the stone age...

 

[AbsintheRed]

For the sake of comparison, you wouldn't happen to have SoI's numbers on hand, would you? That map has very little water, but it does have massive swaths of desert and mountain. And half of the green land is in India.

SoI's map is similar in size, 70*100, but I don't know any other exact numbers
Probably even our current map have slightly more useable tiles than SoI
That's why we shouldn't go overboard with the size of the new map

 

[AbsintheRed]

Boy, so many posts in just 1 day.

Yeah, this is a popular topic

For how many years this project was developed? Isn't it about the time to wrap up? It's very counter productive to go back to map talk. I really support 3Miro's February plan. Make Beta 14 last Beta, release v. 1.0 and later merge with RFCE++. For the most of the time this mod feels like finished product. Don't take us back to the stone age...

Ehmm, won't say it again. Noone want to make huge changes with the map for 1.0. Read back

 

[Wessel V1]

I see your and all the others concern, but as I said, one of the main reasons to have a bigger map is to be able to include a few more important civs
I strongly feel that a slightly bigger map would mean much improvement to many of those new civs and features (especially the HRE) in RFCE++

Just to make it clear, again: RFCE 1.0 will be more or less the current version, just more polished and balanced. Development won't stop for it after the release of course. Noone will force anyone to play on the bigger map
But I really like the idea of adding all those extra features from RFCE++, and I'm willing to spend time on it to have them on a map they deserve
So I will start the map for this after we settle on the size and the projection we should base it on.
I have no interest in a smaller map at all. An RFCE game with half this many tiles and with only the ~12 biggest civs doesn't sound really appealing, at least for me.

I think you misunderstood the concept. There will be as many civs as there are now, but they end up smaller. This will make them more competitive and gives more varied results. Generally, empires end up smaller. England and France are seemingly very small in RFC, but it 'works' as a whole.

 

[AbsintheRed]

I think you misunderstood the concept. There will be as many civs as there are now, but they end up smaller. This will make them more competitive and gives more varied results. Generally, empires end up smaller. England and France are seemingly very small in RFC, but it 'works' as a whole.

Oh, okay. And I never said it wouldn't have any advantages.
I'm not sure if it would give more varied results, but shorter games and faster gameplay sure sounds nice for players with weaker computers.

Anyway, as I said I don't have any personal interest in this
For me the charm of the mod is in the details, the relative accuracy what we have here compared to most other mods
I would hate to see that even the biggest empires are represented with only 4-5 cities

 

[dragodon64]

Oh, okay. And I never said it wouldn't have any advantages.
I'm not sure if it would give more varied results, but shorter games and faster gameplay sure sounds nice for players with weaker computers.

Anyway, as I said I don't have any personal interest in this
For me the charm of the mod is in the details, the relative accuracy what we have here compared to most other mods
I would hate to see that even the biggest empires are represented with only 4-5 cities

I see where both of you are coming from. I'm a slow player, sometimes it takes me weeks or even months to get into the Renaissance if I start in the Early Middle Ages. I certainly don't want to slow down the game much more. Still, I love detail and geographic accuracy.

I feel that our current map occupies a very nice niche between accuracy and convenience. What's more, we already have it. So instead of investing massive effort to "take us back to the stone age" as Tigranes aptly put it, I think we should focus on spot-fixing certain inaccurate portions of the map and balance the mod overall.

I fully understand that this proposed map revision is not for the Feb 1.0 release. I just believe that a complete overhaul of the map is simply not worth it.