RFC:Antiquity Map Development Thread

[JediClemente]

Trade with who? There are no indians, just Persia up there. It's much nearer across the desert.

The Suez Canal was built in the 1800s. I don't think it should be possible to pass the Sinai with ships. That's also ahistorical. No navy traversed the Red Sea, nor the Persian Gulf in Antiquity other than for commercial operations, which are absent from Civ4 (maybe a Great Merchant mission could qualify as that).

I'll add plots to the south because Egypt seems too short. Most of the new tiles will be desert anyway. And I'll try to connect those two seas, though I don't see the point really.

Why do you want to make the Mediterranean bigger? I think all that part of the map, including Italy and Greece, is fine now. Those two are already huge enough.

I'll also add some rivers (easily editable for me, don't take it as anything other than a test).

 

[JediClemente]

New size: 90x40 (was 90x33)

Gets to Nubia, Arabia Felix and the far Transoxiana. Even the Indus valley is large. Every civilized region in Antiquity west of Ganges is included.

Added preliminary version of hills, mountains and some rivers.
Suez Canal can be built. Crete is 1 tile shorter.

I'll always add the BMP images for WBSconverter in my versions from now on, in case someone knows what to do with them...

 

[ZachScape]

The only reason I thought it should be larger was because I thought we could use more sea tiles in the Mediterranean. That way we can separate all the islands between Italy and Spain more realistically.

 

[JediClemente]

Realistically, in the west Mediterranean they are quite allright now.

Sicily is separated by just a few kilometres from the Italian peninsula.

Corsica and Sardinia, they're quite like that also. Even too big in the map compared to reality, but I suppose it's OK.

The Balearic islands also, are close to Iberia but you must have in mind Iberia is downscaled a lot compared to Italy and Greece.

The main problem is indeed that the Mediterranean is too big! Naval units will need to have a huge movement increase, or ships will take ages to move from one coast to other and the AI will never colonize.

In my opinion the affected settler maps should have 2 cities for Sicily and Sardinia, 1 for Corsica and Mallorca.

 

[JediClemente]

Moved Iberia, Greece, Anatolia and Italy 1 tile north, Africa 1 south, Levant 1 east, Iberia 1 west.
Crete 5 tiles long again.

Islands should look better this way as you say. Especially Cyprus, it's now much more detached from the continent.

Edit: I definitely prefer the version previous to this one. That much space in the sea looks weird.

 

[kravixon]

Woah, there a quite a few new posts. I'll update this post once I look through the new saves. It's nice to know I'm not the only one wanting this.

 

[ZachScape]

Far from it!

 

[JediClemente]

I have some files around here... take a look.

Edit: they're old now.

 

[kravixon]

I had to leave school earlier than I was planning on Friday, so I won't be able to give any feedback until sunday night/ early monday

 

[JediClemente]

Allright. A little more advance here.

This is a preview. It only has the terrain and bonuses changes.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?1lm1tqmmqyk

Here are the number of bonuses:



Most of them are taken from RFC or RFCE.

I think resources are well placed for the most part, historically-wise. One possible idea is to reveal some of them late (as happens to the Americas in RFC), for example the ones in Gallia and Iberia. And make a lot of military units NOT require iron or copper, as they are not all over the map; they could be a bonus for their production.

Also coded two special resources absent from the map: ceramic (to be somehow produced from clay) and slaves.

"Access" would allow the building of "far eastern trade" projects in the late game, much in the way of colonies in RFCE.

All the info is in the pedia.

 

[jessiecat]

Unable to open your map but could I ask about tin which was absolutely critical in the production of bronze? Even though the Bronze Age began about 3000BC in Egypt and Mesopotamia those regions had no tin deposits. Therefore they must have had access to supplies from trade with those cultures that did mine tin. The only near areas at that time were tin was found were the following.
Afganistan
The Taurus mts. in S. Anatolia
Spain
Brittainy
But the vast majority of tin deposits were found in Cornwall and Devon in SW Britain.
There is evidence of Phoenician trading vessels in this area from about 1200BC or earlier. And one of the key reasons for the Roman invasion of Britain was the abundant supplies of tin. In fact Cornwall supplied about 75% of the world's tin right up to the early 19thC.
This, and the relative scarcity of copper compared to iron, made the Bronze Age relatively short-lived and the Iron Age that much earlier. Even in the Celts in the 6th.C BC had begun to smelt iron instead of copper, which was only used for jewelry and decoration.
I'm sure you've only put tin in very few locations but I just wanted to emphasize that its extreme scarity made trade for it essential.

 

[JediClemente]

I know there's some problem with it but not how to solve it by now. You must load the mod from BtS and then play the scenario instead of just double-clicking the publicmap. (and of course put the folder in Beyond the Sword/Mods, as usual)

Concerning tin, I tried exactly what you suggest, placing it only in those places (with Cyprus instead of Afghanistan, and no Spain). Problem is to get it by trade is difficult, as most of those areas aren't supposed to be settled until late game.

The perfect way would be to someway establish an event after ship exploration of Brittany and Britain that gave the resource to that civ for some time. But I have no idea if that's possible. And if it was, certainly the same would be applied for amber and the northern Balkans.

 

[kravixon]

Jediclem- I don't see that much of a difference between your RFCAJedi.zip file and your second JediRFCA.zip file. Either way, you said the sea is a little bit bigger and crete was one tile longer. They both look really good to me.

Your most recent file, the "preview" one, is top notch. The only problems I can see is some of your rivers extend into the sea by a tile, which can be fixed in seconds Is that one the same size as the previous file?

 

[ZachScape]

Jedi, I opened your version from post 62 (great work! btw), but I can not open the one from post 70. It's in the right folder, but the game is not reading it for some reason. It allows me to select all the other maps from the scenarios folder, but not that one, it's not even a choice.

 

[kravixon]

Open another scenario in worldbuilder and then use the worldbuilder's load feature to find it.

Confused me too.

 

[Michael Vick]

Why not use the RFC Europe map?

All the civs will have room for all their cities. We can remedy all the extra space by giving a whole lot more movement to all units, and more ways for cities to gain culture so cities will get spaced out more.

We'd just need to add Mesopotamia, and all that stuff eastwards. Scandinavia can get cut, so will the Russia area... etc.

 

[kravixon]

1) The landmasses, Greece and Italy in particular are too small for what we're going for.

2) You can't just add more tiles to one side of a map

 

[JediClemente]

OK. Now I know what the line "Allow PublicMaps=1" means.

You should be able to load the map now. Overwrite the originals with the two files in the attachment.

(if you didn't download the folder, it's this one:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?1lm1tqmmqyk
)

Your most recent file, the "preview" one, is top notch. The only problems I can see is some of your rivers extend into the sea by a tile, which can be fixed in seconds Is that one the same size as the previous file?

Hrmm. I don't understand what you mean. I don't see them extending.

 

[ZachScape]

I can't believe how good the map, terrains, and resources look! You did a great job Jedi!. But there's a few places I have suggestions for.

1. The thing I remember the most about the Phoenecians (except its navy and colonies) are its world renown purple dye. Maybe we could have a special resource that only the Phoenicians can see (their unique power). They got their dye from snails, so if somebody makes it, that could be the graphics.

2. Italy just doesn't look right to me. Don't get me wrong, I love that we expanded it, but it's missing it's shape. (See lower left hand picture inside the Persian Gulf Picture)
-It doesn't have that little stub thing in the Adriatic (1)
-The lower half of Italy, facing Spain, should maybe pushed in more. (2)
-The bay in the 'heel' of Italy is too compacted. For expanding Italy, it looks like that place got compressed. Maybe we should square it off somehow (I tried in WB, but I could not work it.) (3)

3. I just think the Persian Gulf should look more like this: Maybe the combination of our two depending on yours and other's opinions. (This, like the rest of the picture, I payed no attention to the resources and the terrains, just the difference between land and sea) Also, the Persian Gulf looked different thousands of years ago.

Spoiler :

4. I also redid and added to the Tigris and Euphrates. I used my McDougal-Littell World History textbook for reference to this and the Persian Gulf map.

Spoiler :

5. Now this is kind of a major change. I redid the Nile and lower (North) Egypt. It's further out into the Mediterranean though and the delta is twice as long. Again I used the history book for reference. I also added one coast tile to the East Red Sea. (I forgot to put it, but we should connect the Red Sea to the Mediterranean with a river, so sea trade is possible.

Spoiler :

6. That bay thing in North Africa should have a flatter base to coincide with the tilted map. (I'm not sure if coincide is the right word)

Just one question, how did you figure out the placement of the resources?

 

[JediClemente]

It's very late here and I'll look at the Worldbuilder tomorrow, but for starters changing Mesopotamia looks good, it will add more tiles to it, even if the Arabian Desert is made smaller in that part.

Italy's boot... the problem is the West Mediterranean isn't as rotated as the whole map.

About the Nile Delta, I deliberately wanted to make it small. It may look too tiny next to Greece, but not so much to the Levant. And for gameplay reasons, (I think) the Delta is not supposed to be intensely settled, as it wasn't that much populated. Egypt is scaled in an strange way, to fit Nubia under it (I think it covers well beyond the 5th cascade). Also, isn't it very near Crete with your edit?

That was my goal, to intend an Egypt with not that much cities (which is why it is so resource-packed and floodplains give an extra hammer).

Finally, I looked at wikipedia for some insight on the importance of resources from some places, which I believe is something similar to what Rhye made for RFC. With something like marble, it's easy; with olives, which I'm familiar with (it was the main product taken by the Romans from Hispania, apart from metals); or dye, as you pointed out. I also tried to make Persia possible to populate (that is why the abundance of wheat and barley there, which anyway is historical, as in the Zagros Mountains agriculture was first developed, or something like that I think), India and the far right corner (Transoxiana) with unique historical resources, and so on.