RFC Europe map development thread

[st.lucifer]

@st. Lucifer: if you are making any changes to the WB file, use the latest one in whatever the latest test version of the game is. Otherwise it is too much trouble for me, the current WB contains a lot of information about the civs that is not in the original map 3.03.

I'm hesitant to touch it at this point for exactly that reason. If you'd like me to balance the existing resources more accurately for better gameplay, you can extract and send me the file at st.lucifer at gmail, and I'll work on it from there and mail it back for inclusion in the next version.

 

[3Miro]

There is a WB file in RFCEurope\Public Maps, or just start a regular game with Burgundy (specifically Burgundy) and enter the WB before you settler a city. Then Edit whatever needs to be edited and save the file as something else .worldBuilderSave .... (i.e. version RFCEuropev304....). Then post the file here. I will incorporate it and it should be OK for me.

 

[Cornelio]

Are you proposing changes to the coastline, or just to city placement? If it's the first, change it in WB, take a screenshot, and show me what it looks like. If the second, that's probably fine. Thanks for updating the city maps.

It was the first. Don't look at Wales. I thought it would look better but I uploaded the screenshot before I realized it didn't look better. The rest does look better:
Google

Old

New (Frisia, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland)

And Italy
Old

New (Sicilia and Apulia)

 

[jessiecat]

Your changes in Britain are fine except for Wales. Try filing in the west bay with one tile and add one to fill in the north-west bay a bit. The original Italy looks a bit better than the new one though IMO.

 

[Cornelio]

You think so?

 

[jessiecat]

You think so?

Maybe you're right. OK I'll go with that.

 

[onedreamer]

Apulia is too small now. We play a game we don't draw topographic maps
also, do I see trees on the Etna ?

 

[Cornelio]

How many cities do you want to build in Apulia?

About that forest you're right . There are placed forest on mountains all over the map, which is ugly IMO, but forests on volcanoes is even sillier.

 

[st.lucifer]

How many cities do you want to build in Apulia?

About that forest you're right . There are placed forest on mountains all over the map, which is ugly IMO, but forests on volcanoes is even sillier.

I actually like your change to Apulia - I think I went back and forth trying to get it to look right, and settled on the current version as the lesser of several evils. I'm keeping the extra tile in Sicily, though.

Miro, if I change the British coastline, does that screw up the settler map?

As far as the forests on mountains issue goes...what do you expect? Some idiot put ice all over the British isles, too. Clearly he can't get anything right.

 

[3Miro]

Miro, if I change the British coastline, does that screw up the settler map?

Actually, I think it does. Why don't we use the map that you now have and start making changes to that one. Once all the changes that we have in mind are implemented (Italy, Britain, the desert in Spain, some resources and whatever else), we would just make a new settlers maps and war maps run (I hope senda is fairly robust on those) and put everything in one map change.

 

[sedna17]

Updating the war/settler maps is relatively easy. The values are stored in spreadsheets and exported with scripts with only limited work required by hand. The only completely non-automated part is screenshots and posting them so people can see what's what. My tools for editing city name maps are less advanced -- but luckily this doesn't influence game-play.

The proposed changes to small portions of the map should not produce huge problems with the war/settler maps (the AI should just ignore suggestions to settled in the middle of the sea), so I will hold off making further modifications until things get settled.

 

[3Miro]

There are also some stability issues arising from the settlers maps. Actually if you own 150 there is no problem, but if you have a city over 150, then there is a penalty.

Either way, settlers maps do not cause problems, I checked it out. There is a bug, I don't think there is a ny other explanation for the wierd stability.

 

[onedreamer]

How many cities do you want to build in Apulia?

two before, one now.

 

[onedreamer]

for both realism and strategic value I'd add a wine along the northern river than ends in Venice.

 

[st.lucifer]

for both realism and strategic value I'd add a wine along the northern river than ends in Venice.

Ok. Do you have a tile preference? I'm going to have to move some things around in the Netherlands, so I'll add it then.

 

[onedreamer]

any of the 2 grasslands on the shores of the river edge or the 2 tiles N of these (one is a grass hill, one is a grass forest)

edit: on Genoa. What do you think of iron in Corsica and marble in the Pisan area ?

 

[onedreamer]

I must say I really don't like the changes made to Apulia. Sure it may look more realistic if you zoom out, but its size has actually been reduced to unrealistic dimensions. It is now only 5-6 land tiles and can accomadate at best one crappy city.
To better understand how its size is out of scale with most of the map, think of Corfù:
2 tiles, more than 1 third Apulia. In reality, Apulia is 32 times bigger. Of course, we can't be precise on the game map... imprecisions of 2, 3 times the real dimensions are ok, but 10 times ? Ok Corfù might be an exception because of its strategical importance (not that 2 tiles instead of 1 might change its importance in the game...). But there are more examples:

Crete/Apulia 4/6 in the game, 4/9.5 in reality
Rhodes/Apulia 2/6 in the game, 2/27 in reality
Cyprus/Apulia 6/6 in the game, 6/12.5 in reality
Istria/Apulia 4/6 in the game, 4/19 in reality
Corsica/Apulia 4/6 in the game, 4/9 in reality
Calabria/Apulia 5/6 in the game, 5/6,5 in reality
Ireland/Apulia 29/6 in the game, 25/6 in reality

can't find anything that kept the same ratio ingame:reality with Apulia, not to mention a lower ratio... and I've been optimistic to consider it 6 tiles rather than 5 >_<
The closest one I found is Calabria, which incidentally I had noted as too thin previously in the thread.

 

[st.lucifer]

I must say I really don't like the changes made to Apulia. Sure it may look more realistic if you zoom out, but its size has actually been reduced to unrealistic dimensions. It is now only 5-6 land tiles and can accomadate at best one crappy city.
To better understand how its size is out of scale with most of the map, think of Corfù:
2 tiles, more than 1 third Apulia. In reality, Apulia is 32 times bigger. Of course, we can't be precise on the game map... imprecisions of 2, 3 times the real dimensions are ok, but 10 times ? Ok Corfù might be an exception because of its strategical importance (not that 2 tiles instead of 1 might change its importance in the game...). But there are more examples:

Crete/Apulia 4/6 in the game, 4/9.5 in reality
Rhodes/Apulia 2/6 in the game, 2/27 in reality
Cyprus/Apulia 6/6 in the game, 6/12.5 in reality
Istria/Apulia 4/6 in the game, 4/19 in reality
Corsica/Apulia 4/6 in the game, 4/9 in reality
Calabria/Apulia 5/6 in the game, 5/6,5 in reality
Ireland/Apulia 29/6 in the game, 25/6 in reality

can't find anything that kept the same ratio ingame:reality with Apulia, not to mention a lower ratio... and I've been optimistic to consider it 6 tiles rather than 5 >_<
The closest one I found is Calabria, which incidentally I had noted as too thin previously in the thread.

If you can give me a screenshot that looks good as a compromise solution, I'm willing to consider it. The previous version really didn't look right, though, which is why I was willing to change it in the first place.

And you're right to point out that some places are perhaps improperly inflated (Rhodes and Corfu being the prime examples), but one-tile islands aren't worth much, so the distortion is a deliberate compromise.

 

[onedreamer]

"looks good" is a bit too subjective, st. lucifer. I'd have to understand the mean of judgement, but I don't if for Apulia good= "nice shape in the F11 view" while for Rhodes good= "playability". We even have Eubea in a wrong location !! Personally I don't play RFC to stare at the F11 screen but to have a playable and realistic world, and Apulia isn't much of any 2 right now.
Now look at this screenshot http://www.ions.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/rfcatlas.htm and tell me if Apulia didn't look just about perfect until about a week ago

 

[st.lucifer]

"looks good" is a bit too subjective, st. lucifer. I'd have to understand the mean of judgement, but I don't if for Apulia good= "nice shape in the F11 view" while for Rhodes good= "playability". We even have Eubea in a wrong location !! Personally I don't play RFC to stare at the F11 screen but to have a playable and realistic world, and Apulia isn't much of any 2 right now.
Now look at this screenshot http://www.ions.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/rfcatlas.htm and tell me if Apulia didn't look just about perfect until about a week ago

Ok, your logic is reasonable. Could we compromise by having the area be more resource-rich to encourage settlement?

As far as Eubea goes... if you'd like to propose changes to the Greek map, I'll listen. It's just not an easy area to represent with the tools available; the island that you're calling Eubea is meant to represent Naxos and some of the other islands in the Aegean. Eubea proper is basically attached to Athens, because it's not far enough out from the mainland to detach it. If I were working on a larger scale, it would be distinguishable, but I made some choices about what could be represented 'accurately', and what couldn't.

I'm not that concerned about the F11 view - actually, I've never looked at it, and didn't use it when constructing the map (which may explain why some things have had to be changed). I built this map from an atlas of Europe, and I got some things wrong. At this point, I'm comfortable with the way things look - I'm willing to change them if the change is warranted from both a gameplay and aesthetic perspective, but I'm not sure that Apulia falls into that category. When people play this mod, their initial impressions are going to be influenced by how things look as much as how things work. I think we're less likely to get complaints about Apulia being able to support two good cities than we are likely to get complaints about Italy not looking right.