RFC Europe map development thread

[st.lucifer]

Well those discoveries weren't deterministic but rather dependent on advancing technology and economics - is it possible to tie Resources.py to technological discoveries (by any player to simply things)?

For Example
Some gold resources are available at the start
Shallow mine metals like the Silver in Saxony turns up with Vaulted Arches
Deep mines like the Sala silver mine turn up with Replacable Parts (see De Re Metallica)
Mines that used explosives like the Slovakian ones turn up with Gunpowder.
Potatos arrive with Trading Companies
Wheat resources on the eastern Steppes start with Scientific Method (these areas weren't very productive till the advent of dryland farming techniques)
Dyes appear in Northern Europe with Alchemy

If it is possible we can make a more comprehensive list...

I've also got to say North Africa is possibly to fertile now - sure it was the Breadbasket of the Roman Empire, but its fertility crashed immensely after the end of the medieval warm period and unless we're doing dynamic terrain we should probably try to strike a balance between the two states...

Its also IMO not correct in the distribution of fertility:
1) In Western Morocco its the inland rain catching highlands that are liveable, not the barren coasts.
2) There is a significant drop in fertility between Morocco and Algeria-Tunisa, this difficult area is one of the main reasons Morocco and Algeria exist as seperate entities.
3) Libya is serious desert, especially and tripolitania (if you want to make it a good city give it seafood and sheep on the desert), the middle and west is more fertile, but shouldn't be more than one tile thick plains anywhere.
4) The Cyrenica fertile seciton wraps further round the bulge catching the moisture off the Khalij Surt
5) The almost liveable area actually extends further south than you've got shown on your map.

Heres the current map with the above overlaid:
Blue: The high pine forest, composed of forested plains hills (timber resources)
Green: Fertile areas consisting of forest/grass/hills, forest/plains, and some grassland (wheat and seafood)
Yellow: Inner plains: forest/hills/deserts, plains (the sheep resources should mainly go here)
The rest should be desert of some type:

Thanks a lot for the map. I readily admit I don't know North Africa as well as some of the other parts covered, and this makes some fixes obvious. I'll try to get an updated map out next week.


As far as the dynamic resources go:
It's a good idea, but I worry about the effects on city placement. In particular, I worry about the grains in the steppes and some of the silver only being available with late techs - given the increased (and to be further increased) amount of dense forest, we're going to have some areas of Europe that are simply not productive or competitive with the Mediterranean areas. Also, without the grain resources, Kiev doesn't have much going for it, although we could have them put more of a priority on the Crimea and Caucasus and shift more resources to each of those places.

I'm not sure whether or not it would be possible to code this, but I'd be interested in seeing techs like vaulted arches and explosives make it more likely that a metal/gem/coal be discovered in an existing mine. The chance per turn is pretty low, so we wouldn't really have to raise the chance that the event will trigger much for it to make a difference.

 

[sedna17]

I'm not sure whether or not it would be possible to code this, but I'd be interested in seeing techs like vaulted arches and explosives make it more likely that a metal/gem/coal be discovered in an existing mine. The chance per turn is pretty low, so we wouldn't really have to raise the chance that the event will trigger much for it to make a difference.

Not easily. Possible of course, but it's DLL work not python, so probably not worth the effort.

As for resources uncovered by tech, I agree with Jessiecat that it's best to not go overboard with too many of them, but a few would be nice.

 

[jessiecat]

Not easily. Possible of course, but it's DLL work not python, so probably not worth the effort.

As for resources uncovered by tech, I agree with Jessiecat that it's best to not go overboard with too many of them, but a few would be nice.

Yes. It raises the question of how many new features we can keep adding without creating new possible areas of conflict or incompatibility. Recent crashes by many people suggest that this may be becoming a problem. My vote would go to stabilizing our present features before introducing new ones.

 

[blizzrd]

I know that there have been some recent changes to the Norse settler map, and infact the land areas in the Norwegian sea have also changed. But there are currently some problems.

Spoiler :

Firstly, the Norse settler map is showing tiles as favoured for settling which are not land tiles but sea tiles. Specifically, two tiles in the ocean at the northern edge of the map.

Secondly, the Norse settler map should encourage settlement of the Isle of Man. This was a base for Norse raiders from the late 800s AD and was the centre of the Norse Kingdom of Mann and the Isles from 1079AD.

Spoiler :

Similarly, settlement of all of the Orkneys, Shetlands and Faeroes should certainly be encouraged on the settler map, which currently only encourages the Hebrides and Iceland.

Spoiler :

Lastly, the area of Normandy which requires settlement for the Norse UHV should not include Brittany. It should be limited to the area along the northern coast of France which is encouraged to be settled by the settler map, but not land further to the west.

 

[blizzrd]

Bump. Is anybody following this thread?

 

[micbic]

@blizzrd: Since school is closed due to swine flu, I will do the changes you propose (and some others) in the Norse map and the English one. Expect them ready at Wednesday.

 

[jessiecat]

Bump. Is anybody following this thread?

My apologies. I meant to respond to your post. I agree with your suggestions and I support micbic in making the changes you suggest for the next version.

 

[jessiecat]

@blizzrd: Since school is closed due to swine flu, I will do the changes you propose (and some others) in the Norse map and the English one. Expect them ready at Wednesday.

While you're making changes to encourage the Norse to settle why don't you give them something to eat?
Like fish near the Shetlands, Orkneys, Faroes and or esp. Iceland.
BTW Have you noticed there's no fish resources at all near south or west England or southern Ireland? That's crazy. I live a busy fishing village in Cornwall, SW of Plymouth. Where's our fish???

 

[st.lucifer]

Bump. Is anybody following this thread?

I am, but I don't know how to do it.

While you're making changes to encourage the Norse to settle why don't you give them something to eat?
Like fish near the Shetlands, Orkneys, Faroes and or esp. Iceland.
BTW Have you noticed there's no fish resources at all near south or west England or southern Ireland? That's crazy. I live a busy fishing village in Cornwall, SW of Plymouth. Where's our fish???

I thought I had fish out there, but I guess not. There are whales, which are considerably more rare and valuable. I'll add some seafood to both locations.

 

[FakeShady]

As a Byzantine-biased tester xD i am pretty concerned about where exactly do the Ottomans spawn.

After doing a little research i realize the Ottomans in actual history actually does spawn quite near to Constantinople

BUT

I also realize the Ottomans land size before 1400 is very small. So maybe the Ottomans should spawn nearer to Constantinople after all, but the flip zone should be smaller. Not more than 3 Asia Minor cities should flip to the Ottomans, and even that is a lot already considering the Ottomans start with 3 settlers. And definitely NO cities to the west of Constantinople should flip to the Ottomans. I think that's fair

 

[Deon]

What is Bognatchar? Also, Tokmak seems to be too big for a real city.

If Bognatchar is supposed to be Boguchar, then it's greatly misplaced and is too big too.

I am talking about it because there's no place for Volgograd (Stalingrad), which was Carycin ~ 1590, which was Cary-Cin ("Yellow Island"), where was a settlement of Golden Horde.

I'd suggest to remove Tokmak alltogether (or move it as I suggest in "P.P.S.") and to place another city on the shore of Azov sea 2 tiles lower, there was a settlement there which later became Mariupolis (Mariupol), a big and important fortress/port/city. And I'd suggest the removal of Bognatchar (I couldn't really find what it is, if not Boguchar which should be much further to the west and south then) to allow a creation of Carycin later (Stalingrad, Volgograd). Maybe you should improve area around Belgorod (currently it almost lacks resources) to compensate this.

Also it appears that a place of a current Rostov-na-Donu is totallu blank. There was a "Dmirtiev" town which was settled on a place of an old settlement which dated more than 5k y.o. At least leave this place NOT blank (place city ruins) and move the things like I supposed or close to this to allow a settlement of Dmitriev, and place a city name map there.

Spoiler :

Thank you for your attention .

P.S. Ok I've captured Bognatchar and it's KASTORNOE? Kastornoe is to the far north-east from Belgorod, so it proves that my suggestion is legitimate . Also it was founded in 1590 and always was a small town, so I don't see a reason to have it (sorry dwellers of Kastronoe, if you have internetz ).

P.P.S. If you really want Tokmak, it should be around 3 tiles south 1 tile west from current "Bognatchar". I see no problems with it, it wouldn't block Carycin, Mariupol or Kharkov.

P.P.P.S. I've fixed the map image. Also don't forget to draw the river Volga from Cary-Cin to Astrakhan and place fish resource near Mariupol. And appropriate naming for Mariupol (currently if you build a city there, it's Khabarovsk!, which is in far east in reality, on an eastern border with China).

 

[Deon]

It should be something like this:

Spoiler :

 

[jessiecat]

It should be something like this:

Spoiler :

No offense, but there's been so many name changes on the Russian City/Name map every time a new Russian guy turns up. Maybe you guys should hold a congress and elect a special commissar for city names.

 

[Deon]

1) It's mostly Ukraine, not Russia.
2) It took 5 min to check google maps and Wikipedia to get this info. It means that previous changes didn't touch this area or were wrong. Come on, would you place a Parriss on the place of Cornwall?

P.S. Example that I am right:

Spoiler :

No Tokmak, no Bognatchar (which is a name which didn't exist). Mariupol and Rostov-na-Donu (former Dmitriev) are there.

And Khabarovsk is near Vladivostok!

Also you can't neglect an existance of Stalingrad .

P.S. I thought it's a map development thread, so really, Jessiecat, if there're a lot of guys popping in this thread, it means that the map is wrong. If it was right, there wouldn't be so many people . We only try to help to make it closer to real world maps.

 

[jessiecat]

1) It's mostly Ukraine, not Russia.
2) It took 5 min to check google maps and Wikipedia to get this info. It means that previous changes didn't touch this area or were wrong. Come on, would you place a Paris on the place of Cornwall?

I don't doubt you any more I did the other guys. I just wish you would agree with each other.
Anyway, I was just joking.

 

[Deon]

I think others would agree . They probably didn't try to look at THIS part, there's a lot of things to fix, and people are mostly interested in areas of their home cities. I am OK with St.-Peterburg, thus I started to nitpick other areas .

 

[JediClemente]

I have a batch of map change suggestions:

- I like southern Italy better than before, but there are still a bunch of resources out of reach from Napoli which will never be taken. To the north, Milan, Genoa and Florence are nice places but culturally-bombed between each other. The cities have less tiles to work than in other places of the map. I'd put more resources to give a real advantage for the player investing in Italy.

As of now only France becomes competent conquering Italy north of Rome, but maybe in the future we can change that. You must have in mind Italy was one of the main scenaries of war in Europe from 1400 onwards.

- The english can get more resources, or better placed. Especially Edinburgh sucks.

- In Scandinavia there are resources on dense forests. Norse will never have them. I'd put only timber on dense forests. And all timber, so the dumb AI doesn't chop it.

- In fact many resources in the Baltic area could be moved for more suitable positions, according to city placement.

- This is a curious request: make atlantic access appear near Denmark and Sweden in 1700. Just give them the chance they historically had.

I can work on all those save for the last one. So please comment.

 

[dragodon64]

I second the placement of only timber on dense forests. Edinburgh is a bit sub-par, add a fish maybe? I think Atlantic Access in either the Skagerrak or Kattegat would be appropriate if it spawns 1650ish.

 

[jessiecat]

Resources around Britain are esp. poor. There should be a timber and fish near Edinburgh. Fish near London and Bristol. And fish and crabs near Plymouth. (And it isn't just because I live in a fishing village in Cornwall.)

 

[dragodon64]

I've kinda ignored this until now, but I have to ask, why is Iberia on such an unnatural tilt? NW Africa is pretty screwed up too because of that. According to the game Gibraltar is at the same latitude as Constantinople, which is utterly ridiculous!