RFC Europe map development thread

So since this is the map-thread, I figured this goes here.

I have looked at the map (proto-europe) and fixed around with sweden. What we imagined will be taiga is now jungle.



Okay, alright. The pics' too big and the north isn't even in it. Well. It ain't mine fault some friggin' hackers took down my uploading site because "if you have bad security, blame yourself". Dang. The north looks just the same anyway. Jungle on tundra.
What I have done is that I have added the lake Mälaren and the river that floats through Stockholm and taken away the one to the south (?), cos I'd hate it really if that river went to Vänern instead. H'anyway. I also made Gotland a real island and not just a totally worthless dot that's just there for... idonnu. Something. It's very possible that it's to big now, but I wanted it worthy of settling. I also moved the wheat north so as to make Stockholm kinda hotter (idonnu, it will probably be super-huge know, but it's just an extreme). I added a plain to the area in the southwest so as to make the landscape look less... green. Ah well. I also replaced a stone with a coal in the north. That north might need a nerf, idonnu. Couldn't clearly see all the minerals due to the forest/jungle, but it looked like ALOT. Whilst iron is realistic, alot of it is called for I think, gems isn't. Neither is stone really. Sweden is unlikely to pursue wonders due to it's late spawn.
Not also that any norse city in Scania shouldn't flip. Sweden didn't capture that til... when was it? Middle 1600th somewhere? Ah well.
I am aware of the extreme scetchyness of the rivers and so on, but this is just a idea for you guys to see what I'm about.
That's really all. Can't put up a save right now, really tired. Will do tomorrow (friday, night to saturday to americans?).
 
So since this is the map-thread, I figured this goes here.

I have looked at the map (proto-europe) and fixed around with sweden. What we imagined will be taiga is now jungle.

Okay, alright. The pics' too big and the north isn't even in it. Well. It ain't mine fault some friggin' hackers took down my uploading site because "if you have bad security, blame yourself". Dang. The north looks just the same anyway. Jungle on tundra.
What I have done is that I have added the lake Mälaren and the river that floats through Stockholm and taken away the one to the south (?), cos I'd hate it really if that river went to Vänern instead. H'anyway. I also made Gotland a real island and not just a totally worthless dot that's just there for... idonnu. Something. It's very possible that it's to big now, but I wanted it worthy of settling. I also moved the wheat north so as to make Stockholm kinda hotter (idonnu, it will probably be super-huge know, but it's just an extreme). I added a plain to the area in the southwest so as to make the landscape look less... green. Ah well. I also replaced a stone with a coal in the north. That north might need a nerf, idonnu. Couldn't clearly see all the minerals due to the forest/jungle, but it looked like ALOT. Whilst iron is realistic, alot of it is called for I think, gems isn't. Neither is stone really. Sweden is unlikely to pursue wonders due to it's late spawn.
Not also that any norse city in Scania shouldn't flip. Sweden didn't capture that til... when was it? Middle 1600th somewhere? Ah well.
I am aware of the extreme scetchyness of the rivers and so on, but this is just a idea for you guys to see what I'm about.
That's really all. Can't put up a save right now, really tired. Will do tomorrow (friday, night to saturday to americans?).

Thanks - I propose that we use the arctic-looking forest for taiga. I think I was using jungle on this map to represent marsh. I had plans to nerf some of the resources, but I do feel like Scandinavia should contain both metals and gems. As for the stone, I figured that an area with such a high % of mountains would have at least some usable building stone... No problems with the addition of the lake, but I don't think that Gotland should be more than 2 tiles. If I messed up the location of the river and you've corrected it, I have no problem with that. Same with the plains. I'd be happy to make the changes to the official version to reflect this, if nobody else objects.
 
No, not really. But the question is how useful is it to place coal on the map, because if the szenario ends in 1800 there is no real industrial coal mining isnt it?

Surely there were coal diging but no real mining?
 
No, not really. But the question is how useful is it to place coal on the map, because if the szenario ends in 1800 there is no real industrial coal mining isnt it?

Surely there were coal diging but no real mining?

Heh, that totally slipped my mind. I'm sure I would have noticed when we removed the coal from the mod...

I do wonder if some of the terrain-related random events (like the tin or jade ones) could be modified to give a production bonus in coal-producing regions, to reflect the fact that those hills were historically more productive. If the event could be written in a way that it would be more likely to happen in one of those areas, that would be ideal - but I have to admit I don't really understand the events code.
 
Instead of the rather unrealistic plains, there should be some taiga forests in the middle of sweden below the lakes as well.

North of stockholm, but outside its range should be a lot of iron resources (at least 3) in a cluster, but the city that can work them should have very little food. This would show how sweden was the iron exporter, but lacked the population to do anything with it. Alternately, put iron resources deep in the forests that swedish culture but not cities will reach.

Re coal, I thought the mod was ending mid 18th (Seeing the napoleonic wars and the ensuing peace and british economic hegemony being the begining of the end of the old european system - and the revolutions of 1848 being the final phase change to an industrial, ideological and nationalist europe rather than the old dynastic driven system). If so coal is very important (and significant coal mining did occur before the end of the 18th century in britain).

Now that I've finally reclaimed my copy of CIV, I'm going to check out the map ;).
 
Okay had a look (won't upload a save as I lack BtS)

Major Points
1)There are far too many plains in the north, I think we need a northern plains/moorland graphic to make it more visually appealing (Scotland for one should not be orange ;)).
2) Not enough forests, northern europe was pretty much comprehensively covered at the begining of this period, which leads me onto point 3.
3) We really need to reduce the hammer yeild from chopping in the mod (perhaps down to only 5?) :lol:
4) Since there is a big lump of space, why not put Iceland (with whales and fish and not much else in), to give an impetus to develop astronomy.
5) Again as an impetus to astronomy there should probably be an ocean gap between the canaries and africa to prevent early gain of sugar.

Minor Points
1) You probably want to remove the oil and uranium more than the coal eh?
2) Is corn a placeholder for something?

Geography Minor points/ideas/quibbles
1)Wouldn't it be cool if we put venice starting on a little spur with only marsh as ajoining land tiles - making it only attackable from the sea (though armies can raze its productive region)?
2) There should be more marsh around where St.Petersburg is, Guyenne, and ireland.
3) The west coast of ireland (aka one of the wettest places in europe) being plains amuses me quite a bit, ditto plains in denmark).
4) the Carpathans should probably be thickened so they present an actual obsticle ;).
5) Northern germany should have more forest, marsh and the odd unchoppable forest.
6) Is making Sjaelland an actual island a bad idea? especially if the vikings get a galley when they spawn?
7)North Africa does seem really productive - those berber hordes are going to have to be nasty.

Resource Points
Spoiler :

I'm not that keen on the current resource placements, here's some suggests for resources that should appear in different areas, and some which should definately not appear in that area:
Scotland
Yes-Furs,wool,sheep,coal,maybe a cow
England
Yes- Wool, sheep, coal, several iron in the midlands, fish, wheat and horses in the south, maybe a dye.
Wales
Yes-Gold,Coal,Sheep
Ireland
Yes-Cattle,Sheep, fish, not much else
Denmark
Yes-Cattle,Pigs (several of both) No-Metals
Norway
yes-Copper,fish,whales,Deer,barley No-to many food resources
Sweden
Yes- IRON,copper(N of stockholm),fish,barley,some cattle and wheat on the west coast (I would recommend making stockholms lake larger to boost food rather than have actual food resources. If amber is represented by gems, put a source in Scania.
Finland
Yes - Copper,Fish,Deer,Iron east of the lakes.
Baltics
Yes - Amber/Gems on the west coast (several sources). the odd wheat or cattle.

More later.

 
Okay had a look (won't upload a save as I lack BtS)

Major Points
1)There are far too many plains in the north, I think we need a northern plains/moorland graphic to make it more visually appealing (Scotland for one should not be orange ;)).
2) Not enough forests, northern europe was pretty much comprehensively covered at the begining of this period, which leads me onto point 3.
3) We really need to reduce the hammer yeild from chopping in the mod (perhaps down to only 5?) :lol:
4) Since there is a big lump of space, why not put Iceland (with whales and fish and not much else in), to give an impetus to develop astronomy.
5) Again as an impetus to astronomy there should probably be an ocean gap between the canaries and africa to prevent early gain of sugar.

1: I'd be fine with that; I was mostly trying to simulate reduced food production, and plains fits that best. Actually, I remember Scotland as being a sort of dirty yellow/brown (and gray) color, but that might just be from tramping around the highlands looking at rocks. I'm sure that doesn't apply to everywhere.

2-3: Adding some more forest would be fine, but at the risk of historical inaccuracy, I don't think that covering 80% of N. Europe with forest is a good idea - I agree that reducing the chop bonus is a good plan, but think of the ramifications for defending armies, movement, etc. Arguably, movement should be slower in many of those areas (except river tiles - anyone want to go back to the CivII system? ;)) - but I'm hesitant to turn the whole area into the equivalent of Russia.

4-5: Good point on the Azores, I'll fix that. I ended up adding in Iceland (or at least, half of iceland) in the games I played with the map, and had intended to add it here.

Okay had a look (won't upload a save as I lack BtS)
Minor Points
1) You probably want to remove the oil and uranium more than the coal eh?
2) Is corn a placeholder for something?
The oil and uranium will be going, too. :) I haven't bothered to take them out yet as we haven't gotten the new resources in, but I'd really like to get the new resources in (and the old ones out) and work from there. I'd think that all of our resources are going to need re-examining, and many of them will be redone.
I believe I was using corn as a placeholder for barley. Certainly, corn itself has no place here.

Okay had a look (won't upload a save as I lack BtS)Geography Minor points/ideas/quibbles
1)Wouldn't it be cool if we put venice starting on a little spur with only marsh as ajoining land tiles - making it only attackable from the sea (though armies can raze its productive region)?
2) There should be more marsh around where St.Petersburg is, Guyenne, and ireland.
3) The west coast of ireland (aka one of the wettest places in europe) being plains amuses me quite a bit, ditto plains in denmark).
4) the Carpathans should probably be thickened so they present an actual obsticle ;).
5) Northern germany should have more forest, marsh and the odd unchoppable forest.
6) Is making Sjaelland an actual island a bad idea? especially if the vikings get a galley when they spawn?
7)North Africa does seem really productive - those berber hordes are going to have to be nasty.
1. That is a neat idea - I'm not sure if it's workable in the space we've got, but I like it.
2-3. I had planned to add a bunch of marsh to Karelia/Finland and some to Ireland, but wasn't sure where to put them in Germany. If you'd like to be in charge of marsh placement, go for it - I had a hard time finding terrain maps that showed me what I was looking for. Some of Ireland was changed to plains to prevent it from supporting such a large population; this can be achieved with marsh instead.
4-5: Agreed.
6: I played around with that while creating the map, and actually considered attaching it to Sweden rather than Denmark (since the strait is so much narrower on that side), but ultimately decided against it.
7: North Africa and Scandinavia are still in desperate need of nerfing. This isn't a finished product. :) This doesn't mean that I'm opposed to the Berber hordes being nasty- that wasn't exactly the most stable area in the world.


Resources addressed later - we're going to have to rearrange a lot of them.
 
The map is still great. But I still don't get the point of the huge ocean and the great chunk of desert. There is no reason to go there, to explore, to settle, nothing
 
1: I'd be fine with that; I was mostly trying to simulate reduced food production, and plains fits that best. Actually, I remember Scotland as being a sort of dirty yellow/brown (and gray) color, but that might just be from tramping around the highlands looking at rocks. I'm sure that doesn't apply to everywhere.

2-3: Adding some more forest would be fine, but at the risk of historical inaccuracy, I don't think that covering 80% of N. Europe with forest is a good idea - I agree that reducing the chop bonus is a good plan, but think of the ramifications for defending armies, movement, etc. Arguably, movement should be slower in many of those areas (except river tiles - anyone want to go back to the CivII system? ;)) - but I'm hesitant to turn the whole area into the equivalent of Russia.

4-5: Good point on the Azores, I'll fix that. I ended up adding in Iceland (or at least, half of iceland) in the games I played with the map, and had intended to add it here.


The oil and uranium will be going, too. :) I haven't bothered to take them out yet as we haven't gotten the new resources in, but I'd really like to get the new resources in (and the old ones out) and work from there. I'd think that all of our resources are going to need re-examining, and many of them will be redone.
I believe I was using corn as a placeholder for barley. Certainly, corn itself has no place here.


1. That is a neat idea - I'm not sure if it's workable in the space we've got, but I like it.
2-3. I had planned to add a bunch of marsh to Karelia/Finland and some to Ireland, but wasn't sure where to put them in Germany. If you'd like to be in charge of marsh placement, go for it - I had a hard time finding terrain maps that showed me what I was looking for. Some of Ireland was changed to plains to prevent it from supporting such a large population; this can be achieved with marsh instead.
4-5: Agreed.
6: I played around with that while creating the map, and actually considered attaching it to Sweden rather than Denmark (since the strait is so much narrower on that side), but ultimately decided against it.
7: North Africa and Scandinavia are still in desperate need of nerfing. This isn't a finished product. :) This doesn't mean that I'm opposed to the Berber hordes being nasty- that wasn't exactly the most stable area in the world.


Resources addressed later - we're going to have to rearrange a lot of them.

Are people posting on this thread rather than the other one now?
OK, Just a couple of observations:

1) The highlands of Scotland were originally dense oak forests (called the Caledonian Forest)
until they were stripped bare in 17th. and 18th. centuries to build the Royal Navy .
That's why they look so barren today. So really they should be wooded hills with lakes and mountains. And rather than be food poor, they should abound in game and fish, both sea and freshwater. (Obviously the way you saw the area is nothing like it was before .)

2)The west of Ireland should be represented by mixed marshland and stone outcrops with little grassland at all. Only the eastern half and south coast is rich grassland.

3)North Africa should have a few cities spaced apart on the coast except northern Morocco
which should include Fez, Meknes, Tangier and Tlemcen at least. Plus a cluster of cities in
the Tunis area as well.

4)I like the idea of tilting the map about 20%, so you could get rid of some of Siberia and
the Sahara and include Iceland and more of the Middle East.

5) Resources like oil and uranium are irrelevant but coal is important
fairly early for the smelting of iron and steel. Copper and tin are important
resources in areas like SW Britain as is gold (ie Wales and Scotland)
Sheep are, of course, everywhere esp. in Wales, Scotland and eastern England.
Which also explains the lack of trees in the Scottish Highlands today.
After 1750 The Highland Clearances stripped the land of trees and of
people in forced emigration to the Colonies to make way for sheep.
Wool was profitable and rebellious Scots expendable (ethnic cleansing?)

6) Most of Northern Europe would not have been forested in 500AD
Areas like southern Britain and the N. European plain would have mostly
been chopped for agriculture in Celtic times anyway. While only Central France,
Southern Germany and east Poland/west Russia still have areas of dense forests
today. But in general only northern Sweden, Finland and Russia would need
dense taiga forests thinning into scrub woods and muskeg, then tundra. :)
 
The map is still great. But I still don't get the point of the huge ocean and the great chunk of desert. There is no reason to go there, to explore, to settle, nothing

Yep, unfortunately the constraints of having a square map in civ mean you have to have the spacefilling ocean and desert (the desert at least gives a place for barbarians to spawn).

@Jessiecat:
Yes but under the 'wooded hill' should not be plains tiles, but a cold grassland/moorland type of terrain. Also I'm not sure about northern germany being comprehensively cleared at the start of the mod.
 
Yep, unfortunately the constraints of having a square map in civ mean you have to have the spacefilling ocean and desert (the desert at least gives a place for barbarians to spawn).

@Jessiecat:
Yes but under the 'wooded hill' should not be plains tiles, but a cold grassland/moorland type of terrain. Also I'm not sure about northern germany being comprehensively cleared at the start of the mod.

Totally agree. Lots of tiles should be changed. But the point is that Scotland
looks nothing like it used to when it was heavily wooded and full of food before about 1600.
And the west of Ireland would have been wet, as you say, and partly forested
with bogs and rocky outcrops.
Also my point about coal is important. It has been gathered since 2000BC
and mined from shaft and pit mines all over Europe from about 1000AD. You
can't smelt iron or steel without it. For example the famous Toledo steel
swords first fashioned by the Moors over a thousand years ago required coal
from Galicia and iron from the Basque region to smelt and forge the iron.
You may be right about Germany though, as dense forests still exist in
eastern Germany near the Polish border also in Bohemia, Moravia
and the Carpathians/Transylvania area.:)
 
Uhm. What about cutting some tiles in the west (taking away Canarias and Azores), and place them in place of the desert (with water of course). We would not have tons of ocean and would look like the europeans map on paper with Iceland pasted closer in a square
 
Instead of the rather unrealistic plains, there should be some taiga forests in the middle of sweden below the lakes as well.
But there isn't any taiga there. Seeing as these woods wouldn't be choppable until Biology, by some the future tech of the mod, at least I wouldn't want to be to generous with them. As of my own map, I see about 4 good city-placements in non-taiga Sweden. Stockholm, Malmo (ö), one rougly in Kalmars place site south of the cows on the east coast and Gothenburg 1s or 2s of the west-cows.
There is no real taiga south of the lakes Vätten, Vänern and Mälaren. Believe me on this one, I have been there. ;)
 
But there isn't any taiga there. Seeing as these woods wouldn't be choppable until Biology, by some the future tech of the mod, at least I wouldn't want to be to generous with them. As of my own map, I see about 4 good city-placements in non-taiga Sweden. Stockholm, Malmo (ö), one rougly in Kalmars place site south of the cows on the east coast and Gothenburg 1s or 2s of the west-cows.
There is no real taiga south of the lakes Vätten, Vänern and Mälaren. Believe me on this one, I have been there. ;)

Jaja, I believe you. Again, the problem was that with that area as grass, Sweden got 4 size-20 cities, which is both ahistorical and problematic for game balance. We'll probably have similar problems with food in England, but at least that'll be historically accurate.

The taiga will be choppable with replacable parts, which will be a late tech like biology. The central part of that area should be forested at least, right?
 
Uhm. What about cutting some tiles in the west (taking away Canarias and Azores), and place them in place of the desert (with water of course). We would not have tons of ocean and would look like the europeans map on paper with Iceland pasted closer in a square

My original map was actually shifted about 12 squares over in the other direction - I cut the Middle East, Caucasus, and Urals, and put in the Azores and Canaries. I agree that the western edge of the map is ugly and unproductive, but there IS a big ocean and a big desert out/down there. :D Sugar in the Canaries/Azores and ivory/whales in Iceland should at least provide some incentive to explore/colonize.


re: Jessiecat - I thought I had forested much of Scotland. If I didn't, I'll change that. I do think that it should be plains, if we're not coding in a northern grassland that produces less food - it's much less agriculturally productive than the grasslands of southern England. Much of it could arguably be marsh, but I don't want to make it impassable. I like your suggestions on Ireland - that's definitely a change that needs to be made.

I had planned on adding more cities to N. Africa, but I didn't find many that persisted from 500 AD onward - Fez was really the only one that was close. The city names on the map represent independents that are around from 500 AD - other independents could pop up later. The others you listed should probably be in that category - go ahead and put them in with the tag 'Tlemcen - 650 AD' or something like that.

All right, we'll keep coal. Should coal be a resource requirement for steel-based armaments? (late-game only)




For those of you who keep suggesting that the map be tilted - if you want to redo the entire map from scratch, tilting it, please go ahead and create that map. Once you have a workable version, then we'll talk. I'm not opposed to using such a map, but I don't think that any of you really understand the amount of work that goes into creating an accurate map of this size. This isn't a slam on any of you - I'm just going to say straight out that I don't have an extra 200 hours of time right now to do this, and I'm not interested in investing that time to do it when I think that our current map is pretty decent. Again, I'm willing to consider a tilted map - although we removed the Middle East on purpose - but I'd need to see the thing before considering it.
 
St. Lucifer - cities that existed from 500 onward in North Africa:
Carthaginian/Roman Tarabulus became today's Tripoli, Libya. It might be too close to Sabrat, though...
Also, maybe too close to Fez: Tanger (Carthaginian) became Tangier(s), Morocco.

If I notice others, I'll let you know.
 
All right, we'll keep coal. Should coal be a resource requirement for steel-based armaments? (late-game only)

Oui: Artillary/late cannon, and the last tier of ships perhaps?

Ideas for a reworked England and Wales

Spoiler :

Okay, just going through and changing some stuff:
1)The Marshland wasn't in the correct place, East anglia is boggy yes, but its also very productive and far dryer than the Wash.
2) Added the Thames (london appearing to start on the Ouse in the old one :lol: ) and Tyne. I think the Avon may have been altered by accident (both work)
3) The tundra is a placehold for Moorland
4)Added the lack district as hills and put stone there
5) Resource placement: Agriculture resources in the southeast, iron and coal in historically correct locations. Proposed some places for wool (there may be a lot but it is one of only 2 happiness resources. Put some fish by liverpool, gold in wales is more accurate than silver.
6) Suggested some places for independents.




Good ideas/bad ideas? Ireland tomorrow ;).
 
St. Lucifer - cities that existed from 500 onward in North Africa:
Carthaginian/Roman Tarabulus became today's Tripoli, Libya. It might be too close to Sabrat, though...
Also, maybe too close to Fez: Tanger (Carthaginian) became Tangier(s), Morocco.

If I notice others, I'll let you know.

As I mentioned earlier, Fez, Meknes and Tangier for sure, plus Tlemcen or
Cueta well to the East. after that you won't find much until a cluster of old
Carthaginian and Roman cities starting with Hippo, Utica and Carthage
(Tunis) and Kairouan(very old important mosque) to the south. Then you have
Tripoli and Benghazi. That's about all until you reach Egypt..:)
 
Oui: Artillary/late cannon, and the last tier of ships perhaps?

Ideas for a reworked England and Wales

Spoiler :

Okay, just going through and changing some stuff:
1)The Marshland wasn't in the correct place, East anglia is boggy yes, but its also very productive and far dryer than the Wash.
2) Added the Thames (london appearing to start on the Ouse in the old one :lol: ) and Tyne. I think the Avon may have been altered by accident (both work)
3) The tundra is a placehold for Moorland
4)Added the lack district as hills and put stone there
5) Resource placement: Agriculture resources in the southeast, iron and coal in historically correct locations. Proposed some places for wool (there may be a lot but it is one of only 2 happiness resources. Put some fish by liverpool, gold in wales is more accurate than silver.
6) Suggested some places for independents.




Good ideas/bad ideas? Ireland tomorrow ;).

My ideas?
Coal necessary from at least 1000AD, not just for cannons and ships.
How do think they smelted steel? Just with wood?
2 Coal (S. Wales and Yorkshire) needs to be shown with iron
for smelting steel swords, also cannons from 1400.
First map much preferred to second.
Original map better for rivers except Ouse and Severn should be shorter
1) Cut marsh squares n. of London to 2 (1e, 1w, no north)
2) Thames OK as it shouldn't be more than 1 square from south coast.
London should start 1sq west, with estuary link deeper.
3) Tundra + grass OK for moorland
4) Lake District, stoney hills. Yes, but where's the water(ie lakes)?
5) Wool, as shown, but 1 more east of London and 1 in SW
6) Tin as well as copper in Cornwall.
7) Fish and crabs everywhere, esp East coast and SW

That's it. You asked for suggestions.:)
 
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