1. Size you want it. (your call, as long as it is one of the following sizes:
duell: 20x40
tiny: 24x48
small: 32x64
standard: 40x80
large: 52x104
huge: 72x144
The standard map would be the prefered size, to allow gameplay even with extensive mods
2. For Warlords (yes)
3. Resources included, (excluded, I'll do them myself)
4. Must have a Pic of exactly what you want. (attached a not good enough pic of the projection, but you can get more infos from different world projections).
5. Do you want it X/Y axis or not. (X/Y, with ice in the arctis, but a glaciated antarctis to allow subs to cross the arctis)
6. Forrest, alittle or alot. (A lot, remember in 4000BC many parts of earth where forested that ain't today)
7. Mountains, alot or use more hills. (As in reality)
8. # of players. (1 is enough for now, I'll include the 29 others myself ^^)
9. Rivers, alittle or alot^, (as in reality, any river that is at least 300km / 200 miles long, should show up)
10. Goodie Huts: Alot or alittle? (None, if needed I'll do them myself)
Reason:
There are many nice earth maps out there. BUT: most of them are either following a rather useless projection (say mercator frex), are over or undersized, or have other downfalls.
The Craster projection is in my opinion the best projection for a civ earth map:
1) its cylindrical. While the Eckert IV might be more "aesthetical", the Civ4 maps are cylindrical, and thus to start with such a projection will yield the best results.
2) its area-equal. And area (the land plots) is what counts in Civ. What good is a map that has a Greenland the size of Africa (mercator projection)?
3) its length true around 37° north and south. So its not as displeasing to the eye as the peters projection, nor does it suffer from the downfalls of a equatorial length true projection. Also 37° is the latitude of the mediterranean theatre, the persian, indian and south chinese craddles of civilzation and so on.
All in all a standard size (40x80) earth map based on the Craster projection would be a very good all around earth representation. Other sizes would be nice also, though for me of less importance.