New map project

[Wessel V1]

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

If all civs are represented, yes. I think however that it is more likely to see a true Holy Roman Empire or a true Napoleon conquest, or even an AI attempt of a Charlemagne empire. These could happen in the normal mod but not in a even bigger mod.

But my main statement is that IF we make a new map, it should not be a bigger one. It is not realistic to presume that the entire mod, until 1800, is ever bug free and fun to play. Even if this was true, purely hypothetical, you'll never be able to play more than just a few games, with just a few civs. Where's the fun of super many civs if you can never play them all? It might be more fun if you want epic games, but history has proven many times that is unrealistic do demand, opposing to a smaller map, again, that's IF we want another map. A smaller map is easier to code, easier to test, gives more varied results, can have more precise algorithms, etc. We spent ages to come this far, so if there is ever going to be another map, I think it is wiser to play the small map at day, and dream about the fantastic big map at night. RFC is too much map oriented to be superlarge. We have to be realistic, a much larger map is wasted effort that is not going to attract many more people compared to the number of man hours put in it. I'd love to see it, I start a game with it, and therefore it is also to me more attractive than a smaller map, just for the idea. Yet, it won't happen. A smaller map might happen, is equally fun yet different, so better to consider working on.

 

[AbsintheRed]

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 intend to work on this in the background, while development for RFCE 1.0 continues
I have no idea how can this "take us back into the stone age"

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.

Maybe worth it, maybe not. I'm still willing to do it
Will see how far I will get in the next few months

But my main statement is that IF we make a new map, it should not be a bigger one.

I'm really starting to get tired of this
I will start working on a new map, and it will be bigger. I have absolutely no interest in a smaller map

3Miro and I agreed that after we get a stable release of 1.0 we should include many new features and civs from RFCE++, this future version currently has a work name of RFCE 2.0
But most of those new feautres/civs were not included in the main version exactly because the lack of space. Thus we need a bigger map for this

 

[AbsintheRed]

Now, I would like us to decide the exact map and projections to use as the base of the new RFCE map
And of course, the exact size. Current map is 100*73, so the x/y rate should be close to 4/3
How much bigger should the map be?

 

[Wessel V1]

I'm really starting to get tired of this
I will start working on a new map, and it will be bigger. I have absolutely no interest in a smaller map

All I'm saying is that history proves that it will NOT be accomplished. If you show me the opposite, fine, but if this project reaches a dead end, I think it was a great waste of time that could have been spent elsewhere.

 

[dragodon64]

Now, I would like us to decide the exact map and projections to use as the base of the new RFCE map
And of course, the exact size. Current map is 100*73, so the x/y rate should be close to 4/3
How much bigger should the map be?

If that's the way you wanna go, then I'll support you.

I think width has more to offer the map than height. Do you think 120*80 is too stretched out? If so, 120*85 or 120*90 might be better.

 

[Kartoffelvampir]

@absintheRed:

If you want to make a bigger map, you should aim for a map that allows you to turn the minimal city distance back to 2. This would make the City-Names easier, (3x3 spots for a City instead of 2x2) and the map will look much less crowded.

 

[AbsintheRed]

If that's the way you wanna go, then I'll support you.

I think width has more to offer the map than height. Do you think 120*80 is too stretched out? If so, 120*85 or 120*90 might be better.

From these I would go somewhere along the lines of 120*90
I plan to include Iceland and the Spanish/Portuguese islands the same way they are now, so around 4/3 seems quite good
The northern and southern borders of the map should also remain the same, IMO they work quite well.
On the other hand I'm toying with the idea of expanding eastwards a few tiles
Would allow for a much realistic place of Damascus, and would be better for the Ottomans if the eastern part of the Black Sea was accessible. I always missed a few Ottoman-Russian conflicts from the mod
We can add more dense forests/swamps to NE and E Russia and more deserts to Arabia, so neither of the civs could get extra land
Any thoughts on this?

@absintheRed:

If you want to make a bigger map, you should aim for a map that allows you to turn the minimal city distance back to 2. This would make the City-Names easier, (3x3 spots for a City instead of 2x2) and the map will look much less crowded.

I was already giving this some thoughts, but not sure if it's a good idea
The problem is that this way we would need a considerably bigger map than I planned if we want to have room for those extra civs and cities from RFCE++
For example for Bohemia and Serbia. Would also make very hard to add a 3rd Dutch city, which I intend to do
I'm now thinking along the lines of about 1.5* the current tiles, this would probably need a much bigger map

 

[dragodon64]

From these I would go somewhere along the lines of 120*90
I plan to include Iceland and the Spanish/Portuguese islands the same way they are now, so around 4/3 seems quite good
The northern and southern borders of the map should also remain the same, IMO they work quite well.
On the other hand I'm toying with the idea of expanding eastwards a few tiles
Would allow for a much realistic place of Damascus, and would be better for the Ottomans if the eastern part of the Black Sea was accessible. I always missed a few Ottoman-Russian conflicts from the mod
We can add more dense forests/swamps to NE and E Russia and more deserts to Arabia, so neither of the civs could get extra land
Any thoughts on this?

More land to the east is what I was hinting at. A sliver of the Caucusus would be really good, imo. Better Damascus and better Sarai-Batu (although this is not as important as better Damascus).

I'm not really sure if Trebizond is currently on the map (I see a different name in the NE Anatolian city), but it should definitely be pre-built on an extended map.

One thing I'm really hoping for is 3-4 more tiles of the Nile. If Egypt could get in 3 cities there... I'm drooling thinking about it.

I was already giving this some thoughts, but not sure if it's a good idea
The problem is that this way we would need a considerably bigger map than I planned if we want to have room for those extra civs and cities from RFCE++
For example for Bohemia and Serbia. Would also make very hard to add a 3rd Dutch city, which I intend to do
I'm now thinking along the lines of about 1.5* the current tiles, this would probably need a much bigger map

I agree, best keep cities 2x2. While packing resources is nice, it's still very difficult for the Dutch to get 2 massive cities, and almost impossible for them to get 3 decent ones without conquering.

 

[Caliom]

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

You are probably right. Then it makes no sense to aim for different map sizes now. But there are other things to make mapmaking easier. If you have any ideas let me know. I'd like to try things out.

 

[AbsintheRed]

More land to the east is what I was hinting at.

One thing I'm really hoping for is 3-4 more tiles of the Nile. If Egypt could get in 3 cities there... I'm drooling thinking about it.

I agree, best keep cities 2x2. While packing resources is nice, it's still very difficult for the Dutch to get 2 massive cities, and almost impossible for them to get 3 decent ones without conquering.

I'm not sure about any of these yet
Would like to here more opinions on them, especially from the other modders
3Miro, Merijn, Morholt?

 

[AbsintheRed]

You are probably right. Then it makes no sense to aim for different map sizes now.

Yeah, I'm afraid we cannot have the same RFC based game shipped with different map sizes
So we have to keep different installs if we want another map(s)
Though there won't be any real difference in this case, it's more or less the same way as we currently have RFCE and RFCE++

But there are other things to make mapmaking easier. If you have any ideas let me know. I'd like to try things out

Thanks! Will think about it

 

[Michael Vick]

What about getting it out to Baghdad and Nizhny Novgorod? In my opinion that's really where Europe ends and Asia starts. This would mean a much more realistic and powerful Arabia. Islam and Orthodoxy would get more influence, a Georgia civ... Dragodon, I am drooling as well.

 

[ezzlar]

Absinthe: How are you going to deal with overexpansion and huge accumulations of resources for production and units? This mod could turn into a mega turtle (both speed and SoD:s doing nothing).

Many players like the first few hundred of years when the pace is quite quick.

 

[AdrienIer]

I don't see where the problem is, really... Absinthered seems to be intent on doing this, so we'd better help him with good ideas than trying to talk him out of it. For my part, I think that RFCE would benefit 2 (or 3) different map size (if possible) for different computers and gameplay styles. If someone wants to make a smaller map and work on making it balanced, it would probably be good for slow computers, and people who don't like their maps too big.
You don't have to play on the maps you don't like...

 

[Morholt]

I'm not sure about any of these yet
Would like to here more opinions on them, especially from the other modders
3Miro, Merijn, Morholt?

More land to the east might be good, especially for the middle east. More to the south seems like a waste - you would get more Nile, but also loads and loads more desert doing nothing but slowing the game down.

2x2 cities is good, it allows some extra flexibility to the player and the AI can be controlled with settlermaps. Besides there's also the tech penalty to make the player want to not spam cities too much.

I wrote a bit about this in the Iberia redesign thread, but basically don't use Google Earth. It is a picture of a globe on a 2d surface, which is pretty much the worst possible projection. There are loads of better projections, I would go with one that is either equal-area or nearly so.

And to make it clear: anything in RFCE++ is cool to use in any variant of RFCE.

 

[AbsintheRed]

More land to the east might be good, especially for the middle east. More to the south seems like a waste - you would get more Nile, but also loads and loads more desert doing nothing but slowing the game down.

2x2 cities is good, it allows some extra flexibility to the player and the AI can be controlled with settlermaps. Besides there's also the tech penalty to make the player want to not spam cities too much.

I wrote a bit about this in the Iberia redesign thread, but basically don't use Google Earth. It is a picture of a globe on a 2d surface, which is pretty much the worst possible projection. There are loads of better projections, I would go with one that is either equal-area or nearly so.

And to make it clear: anything in RFCE++ is cool to use in any variant of RFCE.

I more or less agree with everything
A few tiles to the south would only mean 2-3 tiles, certainly no more. But maybe that's unnecessary too
Not yet sure on the 2*2 cities either, 3*3 also has some advantages

I was reading about projections in the last few days, not yet sure which one to use
It will most likely be a compromise projection like Robinson or Winkel tripel, but one of the closer ones to an equal-area projection
But let's get back to this after I finished the map for RFCE 1.0, want to finish that before I start thinking about the next one

 

[AbsintheRed]

So, let's get back on this
The first 2 questions for the RFCE II map:
The exact boundaries and the size of the map

This was my last post regarding this:

From these I would go somewhere along the lines of 120*90
I plan to include Iceland and the Spanish/Portuguese islands the same way they are now, so around 4/3 seems quite good
The northern and southern borders of the map should also remain the same, IMO they work quite well.
On the other hand I'm toying with the idea of expanding eastwards a few tiles
Would allow for a much realistic place of Damascus, and would be better for the Ottomans if the eastern part of the Black Sea was accessible. I always missed a few Ottoman-Russian conflicts from the mod
We can add more dense forests/swamps to NE and E Russia and more deserts to Arabia, so neither of the civs could get extra land
Any thoughts on this?

Keep in mind, that RFCE II will most likely include the speed tweaks from the K-mod
This means that dispite the bigger size and the additional civs, hopefully it won't be too much slower than the current RFCE 1.0
Maybe it will perform better than the current RFCE++

 

[BenZL43]

How's the new map project going? Have you start anything yet? *curious*

 

[AbsintheRed]

In the RFCE 1.0 map, there is a huge distortion (3-4 tiles) between the vertical coordinates of Scandinavia and the Baltics or the British Islands
It's not really affecting gameplay of course, but still a little disturbing
Had to be this way, because otherwise too small area of Scandinavia could have been added to the map

So, on second thought, maybe we should set the northerns borders a few tiles N for RFCE II
It would allow a more realistic placement of Scandinavia

The western borders are probably fine, I don't think it's a real problem that the Azores and Iceland are just representations of their real location

The southern border might be expanded, but only by very little (2-3 tiles top), mostly for the sake of Egypt
There is no point in adding all those desert tiles for nothing

The main question is the eastern border. Should we have the eastern coast of the Black Sea on the map?
Keep in mind, that we shouldn't stress it this too far either. Certainly no new civs in the Mezopotamia area or anything similar, it would make things overly complicated
RFCE II is mainly following the patterns of RFCE++


EDIT: This would mean, that for the RFCE 1.0 map (73*100), we have about 6-8 horizontal and 6-8 vertical tiles added. Maybe even less
That makes the map around 80 * 107 without actually making the playable area bigger
100*130 tiles would make 5/4 more tiles both vertically and horizontically, so around 25/16 tiles for a specific region (ie: each civs actual area)
I don't think it's a good idea to go above 130*100, which might already stretch the boundaries of the lategame performance of the mod on weaker comps.

 

[AdrienIer]

Yes I think that this new bigger map will make it possible to correct all the little map problems of the current one, including the placement of Scandinavia, the useless Egypt (it was quite a powerhouse during most of the mod's timescale), and important cities sometimes too close to each other (Madrid-Toledo or Vienna-Pressburg).

100*130 seems fine (at least for a start, it might be possible to change later if it appears too small or too big).

The problem with including Georgia is that you'd be also including areas like Mosul into the map. It has the advantage of letting us redo the levant (make it more SOI-like), but this new expansion of the map to the east (and to the north) has the disadvantage of limiting the actual size shift of the map (only 10-15 tiles north and east really added to the current map). Especially since most of the tiles added in the North will be Ocean, most of the ones added in the South will be desert and those in the east will mostly be desert or tundra/dense forest.