New map project

[Michael Vick]

What is the current feeling on Germany/HRE? Are we taking from RFCE++? As I just posted in that forum, I think Germany should be city states, that are conquerable, or perhaps have a mechanism where unions can happen between these indies and civs in the HRE, perhaps most likely with Prussia and Austria. Or just those two, and have it be a UP.

Along the same lines, are people thinking of including unions? I love that mechanism in RFCE++.

Or should this be in another thread, and this just be map-related?

RFCE 2 is including all of the features of RFCE++, including unions. I love the idea of city states, the only other entity big enough to be a German full civ other than Prussia and Austria is Bavaria. The rest should be either city states or independents. The "Germany" concept we have now can definitely be improved upon, while we won't necessarily include every little duchy and archbishopric, we can do better than the current two civs in Germany while we have four in Italy.

 

[urban]

I'm just going to put in a vote that we don't include the Caucasus, and instead make the area between russia and the sea larger. This was we get more room for minor civs in the main play area. Wasn't that the idea behind RFCE2?

 

[AbsintheRed]

I'm just going to put in a vote that we don't include the Caucasus, and instead make the area between russia and the sea larger. This was we get more room for minor civs in the main play area. Wasn't that the idea behind RFCE2?

The WIP map I'm experimenting with has 96 tiles vertically
The 1.0 map had 73 tiles, on a very similar vertical representation. So it's a 32% increase
Horizontally (only checking the common areas with the 1.0 map) the new map will have about 130 (1.0 area) + 16 tiles (eastern additions, if we decide to do that).
1.0 map has 100 tiles, so that's also 30% tile number increase on the 1.0 area.

I don't want to further increase tile density, civs will already have about 70% more territory, cities, everything.
Small civs can have twice as many cities with a carefully planned map
OTOH for bigger civs this will already be more than enough additional micromanagement to handle

My point is, that those extra eastern tiles won't affect how much more room will the smaller civs get in the crowded areas
This means that we will either have a ~ 96*130 map without Caucasus, Khazaria, etc
Or have a ~ 96*146 map with those additions

So it's only a matter of design/gameplay decision, and currently we are in favor of adding those additional cities and civs.
They were at least indirectly important in the shaping of Europe's history - the same way North African territories and civs were

 

[urban]

AtR, that makes more sense, especially now that I look at the new maps.

 

[Ambassador]

Have you thought about the idea, not to enlarge the map proportionally but instead to highlight some regions at the expense of others? In my opinion the whole region east of Poland could be smaller and instead the Middle European war theater (Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Balkans) should be enlarged.

 

[merijn_v1]

This would look too weird. I prefer a larger map over a distorted map.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Have you thought about the idea, not to enlarge the map proportionally but instead to highlight some regions at the expense of others? In my opinion the whole region east of Poland could be smaller and instead the Middle European war theater (Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Balkans) should be enlarged.

I want to keep the map as realistic as possible

 

[AbsintheRed]

I'm pretty upset with BtS right now
The tile grid used by Firaxis is much more distorted than I initially thought... about 0.88*1 instead of being close to squares :/
This makes map conversions from pre-made pics so annoying

So, quick question:
What is more important, tiles represening the same distance vertically and horizontically, or the aesthatic look of the map?

 

[Morholt]

I'd prefer representing same distance horizontally and vertically. I like to place an ice feature every 10x10 squares and put a corresponding grid on the picture, makes it easier.

 

[AbsintheRed]

A little more detail, I'm not sure if I was clear enough:
I always assumed that Firaxis made their tiles squares, or something really close to a square
And when anyone looks at any Civ IV map, it would be natural that tile distances are the same horizontically and vertically, isn't it? It only make sense this way; just think of unit movements, city founding distance, etc
Unfortunately that's not the case, in Civ IV 10 tile distance vertically equals about 9 tile distance horizontically. I guess it was made this way because of the way zooming works, but I'm still pretty upset about it

So, our 2 choices mean:
- Either the tile grid will be distorted.
So, I will use a grid to the Firaxis version, and the map will look exactly the same as in the previews in the end.
But this means distances between tiles will be strange

- Or we keep the square tile grid I used on the example maps.
The result of this will be that the main map will look stretched in the end.
Because every 1*1 square will be represented by about an 0.9*1 tile, it will look like the preview map stretched vertically to it's 0.9
Tile distances will work correctly

 

[AbsintheRed]

Btw, you can check the second version - when using an a square tile grid
(very base version, only the shape of the coastline matters)
When you look at the map, you can see that everything looks a little stretched vertically, despite the fact that all the distances are correct
It's even more obvious when looking at the minimap

 

[Morholt]

I think it looks fine actually. And at least on my screen the minimap is rendered at 186x121 which is the same ratio as 146x96 so there's no distortion there. If you turn on free camera and look straight down, or go to globe view, aren't the squares square then?

 

[AbsintheRed]

I think it looks fine actually. And at least on my screen the minimap is rendered at 186x121 which is the same ratio as 146x96 so there's no distortion there. If you turn on free camera and look straight down, or go to globe view, aren't the squares square then?

No, I meant that ~ 0.9 * 1 "square" size when you look straight down - or when you are in globe view
I'm curious how your minimap looks though, can you post a screenshot?

Also, I would like to hear some other opinions on the map I posted
If most players think it's fine, I will continue it with this grid size

EDIT: Nevermind the minimap, based on GIMP it's 186*121 for me too
But checked again, and the ingame tiles are somewhere between 0.85*1 and 0.9*1 IMO, so the main question still stands :/

 

[ezzlar]

Why not make the current area, but just bigger? But with more low yielding land?

 

[AbsintheRed]

Why not make the current area, but just bigger? But with more low yielding land?

And how does that solve the grid size inaccuracy?
It's "only" a display issue, as the pixel number is ok when checking in GIMP
Anyway, it's quite annoying that the map look stretched on different resolutions...

 

[ezzlar]

Sorry, it doesn´t solve that problem. More of a general idea.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Sorry, it doesn´t solve that problem. More of a general idea.

Oh, ok then
Anyway, I don't really want to further increase the current area
If you check the WIP map, there is already significantly more room for the crowded civs
If we decide to further increase it, I'm afraid it will result in serious performance issues

Whether to include the additional eastern territories or not, is a different question
As I said earlier:

The WIP map I'm experimenting with has 96 tiles vertically
The 1.0 map had 73 tiles, on a very similar vertical representation. So it's a 32% increase
Horizontally (only checking the common areas with the 1.0 map) the new map will have about 130 (1.0 area) + 16 tiles (eastern additions, if we decide to do that).
1.0 map has 100 tiles, so that's also 30% tile number increase on the 1.0 area.

I don't want to further increase tile density, civs will already have about 70% more territory, cities, everything.
Small civs can have twice as many cities with a carefully planned map
OTOH for bigger civs this will already be more than enough additional micromanagement to handle

My point is, that those extra eastern tiles won't affect how much more room will the smaller civs get in the crowded areas
This means that we will either have a ~ 96*130 map without Caucasus, Khazaria, etc
Or have a ~ 96*146 map with those additions

So it's only a matter of design/gameplay decision, and currently we are in favor of adding those additional cities and civs.
They were at least indirectly important in the shaping of Europe's history - the same way North African territories and civs were

 

[merijn_v1]

I like the general shape of the map. I don't think that the map should be any larger, because it would create too much space between civs. (Even if we add that ones from ++)

 

[artyom]

i'd love to see a bigger map even though it will have an impact on performance late game

 

[The Flame8]

Whatever allows more civs to be in without late game slow and crashing works for me =)