Realistic Terra-Map, Tiny, 52x32, 15Civs

[narmox]

Finally! A small Earth map! Kudos and starting a game as soon as at all possible!!!

<-- see, that's me now.

There is another very good tiny earth map called "radical earth" , in this very forum too. Its landmasses are more distorted in order to give more balance to every civ (esp in Europe ==> more space, and in the americas ==> less space).

This one here's major point is the Terra-like play of having a completely uncivilized new world

 

[vanatteveldt]

Great map! I play on my laptop so appreciate the map size, and I think the radical map is too distorted to fit my idea of terra.

I like the crowdedness, really changes the gameplay as expansion by settling is just impossible.

I played my first game as monarch, normal, france, and was able to quickly take out spain, germany and rome by chop-rushing axemen. Russia and England were more resilient but caved in after catapults and macemen. And then I shipped over three galleons of troops to the new world and conquered the whole thing lock, stock and barrel. The only tricky city was the Azteks (probably because it was the last one and my troops were tired and tied down in protecting) and they actually sent a stack of 10 axemen to die... Won using spacerace, Iran and China were trying as well but not even close. The challenge was actually finishing the race before running out of time, since the development is really slow in such crowded conditions (or is it just me...?) and I did not really concentrate on space race properly (also built a lot of tanks to go on safari in Africa)

But then I decided to go for a cultural victory as china, and I found out is is actually really difficult to expand in the beginning without the (1.52) chop rush and great production tiles in Europe.

So I was wondering what your experiences are as playing with a non-european civ and going for a cultural or diplomatic victory on this map?

Cheers!

 

[alexmatusiak]

I just played this map and I must say it was suprisingly, rediculously fun!

Good Job, 10/10

-Alex-

 

[Craterus22]

I really like what you did with the barbarians... will download it now and check it out tomorrow (my machine is doing a slideshow slowness routine every ten minutes, so I don't know how far I will get).

My only suggestions would be:

1. Give Italy a little more room at the expense of africa
2. Add a square to any one tile islands

Very cool!

 

[vanatteveldt]

I actually made some small changes to the map, to make two(imho) interesting players more viable:

- England:
Added a hill+sheep to England's north ("Scotland")
Added iron on the grass, coal on the plains* (coal in the midlands seems reasonable)
Added fish in the 'irish sea' (none left now, but they used to be there!)
Added fishing to the starting techs.
- Japan
Added myst. to the starting techs
Nudged the unreachable plains (Kyushu?) one square up and replaced it by a rice grassland
Added a hill to the north (hokkaido)
Added a fish between korea and kyushu

Both islands now have three tiles apart from the starting loc, which seems on par with the european civs. They are also quite resource heavy, maybe I overdid it a bit?

I am currently playing a game as England (monarch), I went heavy on the culture, building stonehenge and founded hinduism (pure luck, I think, as I did masonry first. I was actually aiming for judaism). This really paid off, I got the clams between london and pair and now actually got the iron in the pyrennees (sp?) as well. The religion is really paying off, since I got a prophet pretty quickly and built the holy thing the religion spread to over half the world, giving me a good income without ever taxing my people. Why did we ever go secular? . So anyway, the game seems to go pretty much my way although it is difficult to maintain tech parity with only one city and no hapiness resoures. I decided not to go for either pyramids or monarchy, which might have been stupid (I was hoping to reade monarchy, but no luck so far) so my city is limited at size 7 with enough food to drive your cars on.

So maybe I will tune down england a bit, not having to build any military is quite a boost, so I might have to drop one of the goodies. But england in the original map is really unplayable (I think), so I like this.

Might also play Japan,see if I can make it up to samurai and kick some chinese .. and/or do an early pearl harbor.

Cheers,

Wouter

*) I think iron was already on the plains, but I accidentally deteled it before I figured out a way to see what's on a tile. Hey, this is my first worldbuilder exp

 

[Syntherio]

I am currently working on balancing. It needs more time, then I tought, but I will finish an update in a few days.
Indeed England needs improvements, but I doubt they need an additional starting tech. And Japan is compareable to other Civs. Their position is fine for conquest of China or the barbarian islands.
This update will be the final version, so I hope everyone will be happy with it. The difficulty of this map varies heavily from a standard game. So if you have problems with it change the difficulty first. Thanks for all the comments.

 

[vanatteveldt]

Yeah I probably overdid it on England; maybe switching mysticism for fishing makes sense given culture and starting position, although I guess myst+stones really set them up for stonehenge.

I hadn't actually played Japan, but I just noticed that it always sucks with the computer.

Talking about AI, the AI is not a very good player at this map. They don't seem to understand the large scale invasions needed for this map, I haven't really seen any succesful inter-AI warfare until quite late into the game. This means that, while the human can usually destroy one or two civilization in the axeman-maceman part of the game, it is generally an unfair endgame. The thing that the AI is good at - early land grabbing - plays little role here. I wouldn't know whether it is possible to tweak the strategy of the AI though... making settlers unavailable or highly disfavored until after astronomy actually might make some sense as it is a waste of resources...

Also as mentioned earlier the culture is really counterintuitive; I played england, captured Paris and razed Rome and Berlin only to find the culture of Athens and Moscow grab all the land east of Paris. Modding down the palace to 0 culture might make sense on such a crowded map? (although this would make early wonder or religion extremely powerful... but that might be a fun strategy choice...?

Anyway, fun map, I was experiencing civ-fatigue (esp. due to the repetitive intial game of chopping-and-grabbing) and this really triggered me to waste some more time behind my computer

 

[MusX]

looks nice. will check it soon thx

 

[Syntherio]

Here comes the final update. I´ve spend dozens of test-games and tried to rebalance the Civilizations. The map is fully compatible to 1.52 and 1.61.

In addition to the Balancing I placed every city on a hill. This way it is more difficult to achieve an early advantage through conquest. Also I activated the "Aggressive AI"-Option. If you dislike this option, you can deactivate it, by choosing custom scenario in your main menu and deselect the checkbox.
I renamed every barbarian city. Now they are not named after the people who life there, but after a real city, which was located in that area or which is still there (i.e. "Inca" changed to "Cusco"). Finally I made some small changes to the map itself.

Changelog:

Removed one jungle W of Jing
Placed fish SE of Jing
Removed pig SE of Athina
Removed forest E of Berlin
Placed fish N of Berlin
Placed fish E of Madrid
Placed river W of London (St. George´s Channel)
Placed fish NW of London
Changed the icemass in the arctic ocean
Replaced coast in the Baffin Bay with ocean
Renamed barbarian cities
Placed every city on a hill

I hope, everybody is happy. Of course there are still differences between the Civs. Some have an easier life than others, but the differences are smaller than before. At last I want to remember of the four main ideas of this map: crowded, tiny, realistic and terra-style-map. Thats the reason, why europe is so small and why there are no american civs.

Download is in the first post.
Have fun.

 

[Yom]

4 quick points.

1. The Bantu homeland is in modern day Cameroon, not Eastern Uganda/DROC.

2. There really needs to be one more African civilization. There's still too much room to expand (the same is true on a larger scale for the Americas). I would propose Nubia or Ethiopia (whichever is easiest to come by).

3. The Red sea is way too large. It's usually around 100-150 miles across (20 at its narrowest), and never greater than 200 miles, so it really shouldn't be represented by more than one square (which is approximately 200 miles).

4. Southern Africa is way too narrow (which stems from the Red sea being too wide, as it makes the horn smaller and more interior, pushing all of the eastern border back). Where it becomes sort of linear (just south of "Bantu") is lined up with eastern Greece, when it really should be lined up with the western boundary of the Caspian sea.

 

[Craterus22]

I hope, everybody is happy. Of course there are still differences between the Civs. Some have an easier life than others, but the differences are smaller than before. At last I want to remember of the four main ideas of this map: crowded, tiny, realistic and terra-style-map. Thats the reason, why europe is so small and why there are no american civs.

Download is in the first post.
Have fun.

First - it is a fun map: my first time through this version I played Mongols and I am currently rolling... Next time through I will try one of the crowded western europe civs.

Second - minor bug/ map error: For england and surrounding islands you don't have the coast tiles set.

Third - my suggestions for mods: This may be something I do for fun after playing it a couple of times... Madrid = 1L, Egypt = 1D, Greek = 1D1L, German = 1R, Russia = 2R, Rome = 1D (remove two tiles from africa add one tile south of rome). I would also add one squre to any remaining one square islands (ie honolulu does not appear to have any chance of being taken over either by culture or invasion)


In my current game (yr 1785) - Paris culture has wrapped London, Madrid, Roma, and Berlin(with help from russia) completely. Greece is caught in culture trap between france and persia.

There is one french colony in south america... and at least one russia colony has been killed by barbarians in north america.

 

[Syntherio]

1. The Bantu homeland is in modern day Cameroon, not Eastern Uganda/DROC.

Is the city still called "Bantu"? I thought, I&#180;ve changed the names of all barbarian cities.

3. The Red sea is way too large. It's usually around 100-150 miles across (20 at its narrowest), and never greater than 200 miles, so it really shouldn't be represented by more than one square (which is approximately 200 miles).

4. Southern Africa is way too narrow (which stems from the Red sea being too wide, as it makes the horn smaller and more interior, pushing all of the eastern border back). Where it becomes sort of linear (just south of "Bantu") is lined up with eastern Greece, when it really should be lined up with the western boundary of the Caspian sea.

Maybe this was a mistake. I didn&#180;t looked it up now, but it is possible that I accidently double a "row"... If you want to change that, your welcome. I don&#180;t think, that I will update the map once again. Maybe, when Warlords comes out, I will make a second one...

Second - minor bug/ map error: For england and surrounding islands you don't have the coast tiles set.

If I remember correctly, I&#180;ve done that to make the connection between GB and Greenland "greater". Not really usefull, because of Englands culture, I think...

Third - my suggestions for mods: This may be something I do for fun after playing it a couple of times... Madrid = 1L, Egypt = 1D, Greek = 1D1L, German = 1R, Russia = 2R, Rome = 1D (remove two tiles from africa add one tile south of rome). I would also add one squre to any remaining one square islands (ie honolulu does not appear to have any chance of being taken over either by culture or invasion)

My aim was a quite realistic map, thats why some locations are really small.

 

[Craterus22]

My aim was a quite realistic map, thats why some locations are really small.

Yes - and that is why i suggested the changes as "mods" to the original map (not changing the original map itself).

On another topic... is there a northern passage in the real world (I am not an expert on this) north of russia? Perhaps some ice tiles could be used to close off the water passage north of russia and china?

 

[Syntherio]

I am not sure about it. According to the map I used as source, there is a passage, but an old globe I have, says it isn&#180;t...

 

[MusX]

any support for warlords civs?

 

[MusX]

heeeey!?! is this map working for warlords?
could you please also release clean version of this map?
clean = with no cities build (only settlers), with standard civs/leaders names

 

[Argpmait]

Actually this map works with warlord. I've completed it a couple of times, and enjoyed it totally.

This map is sooo good, that I would like to play the same map with a number of other mods, like Genetic Era Mod, Amra's Mod, etc. I can play them, except that I do not get the new resource types that are in these mods. For example, the Genetic Era Mod have new resources like Varech and Methan and they are not present if I just played the map on the mod.

Is there are way to modify this map, so that it can cater for new resource types?? Thanks.

 

[Syntherio]

Sorry, I haven´t played Civilization for quite a time and I will not be able to spend time in editing this map in the near future. I don´t even own warlords

But you are welcome to edit this map on your own and provide it here for others. I don´t think there are any passwords or something like that needed.