RFC Europe map development thread

[st.lucifer]

I've seen the map. I like it and I have a suggestion. A great chunk of the map is ocean, the sahara and forest in the east. I played a tabletop game, Age of Renaissance, where the map covered only Europe and at the borders you had proxis of the Far East and the Americas. What about putting something like that, rich of resources and available with certain techs? In this way, we'll give importance to places that now are useless, like the ocean.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/192678

as you can see, there are squares near Spain and the Black Sea, which represent oversea colonies and far east trade. Sorry, I couldn't find a better image of the board

Riker,

I've tried to do that by adding in the Azores and Canaries as sugar plantations, and by adding silk to some of the Caliphate cities (to represent the terminii of the silk road). While it might make sense to put a potential gold-producing colony at the south edge of the Sahara (to represent Guinea), I think we were going to handle most luxury-producing colonies (with luxuries such as tobacco, tea, etc.) as wonders or projects which provided resources, much as the Wembley/Graceland wonders already do.

I'm also wondering if I should add cotton to Egypt and Turkey, and what exactly to do about spices. Should I add some spice-producing areas to Europe, to represent saffron plantations, which have been around for hundreds of years? Should spices be another of the colonial wonder luxuries?

 

[Squirrelloid]

Riker,

I've tried to do that by adding in the Azores and Canaries as sugar plantations, and by adding silk to some of the Caliphate cities (to represent the terminii of the silk road). While it might make sense to put a potential gold-producing colony at the south edge of the Sahara (to represent Guinea), I think we were going to handle most luxury-producing colonies (with luxuries such as tobacco, tea, etc.) as wonders or projects which provided resources, much as the Wembley/Graceland wonders already do.

I'm also wondering if I should add cotton to Egypt and Turkey, and what exactly to do about spices. Should I add some spice-producing areas to Europe, to represent saffron plantations, which have been around for hundreds of years? Should spices be another of the colonial wonder luxuries?

Spices should be a colonial resource. I'd also consider making Cotton a colonial resource, though that doesn't necessarily mean Egypt and Turkey can't also have some.

 

[Zipzapzup]

I would add one wine resource to Portugal and perhaps 1-2 indepentend cities more to north africa, germany, east europe and to scandinavia. I placed on all spots which were maked from st.lucifer and then the map looked very empty in some areas.

 

[st.lucifer]

I would add one wine resource to Portugal and perhaps 1-2 indepentend cities more to north africa, germany, east europe and to scandinavia. I placed on all spots which were maked from st.lucifer and then the map looked very empty in some areas.

Wine to Portugal sounds reasonable. North Africa is a problem - there's a great stretch of territory which is empty (although it isn't likely to be that way in the game) - I think that I'm going to have to dry/empty it out a bit to prevent it from being too powerful. When looking for independent cities, I found it very hard to find cities which were old enough or persistent enough to be worth mentioning; certainly there will be others on the map, but I wasn't sure which to include.

Eastern Europe has the same sort of problem. There weren't many solid cities that weren't locked into a specific empire. (Really, even finding cities that persisted is difficult.) Scandinavia's going to have to be weakened a bit, too - too much food available without serious threat of invasion. I don't feel comfortable putting independent cities in Scandinavia, but I'd be in favor of barbarians showing up regularly to trash improvements.

So, yes. The map will have some empty spots. If you have suggestions for how to fill those, put them into the map on WB, put it in a zip file with WINRAR, and post it back up here.

 

[Jet]

In my opinion Europe maps should usually be rotated like the Age of Renaissance one so that Up is a bit Northeast. That yields less wasted space and a faster game.

I also think distorting aggressively for gameplay is much better than preserving actual geography.

 

[Depravo]

Yes, the Norse had walrus ivory and they traded it throughout Northern Europe. Very good candidate for a new resource.

You might also consider adding lead / tin / salt / peat in place of some of the more exotic resources.

 

[Depravo]

I like the map of Britain. However, I don't like the way the island narrows to a single tile-width at Edinburgh. Not only is this inaccurate, it will give Edinburgh access to both seas, which is completely unrealistic, not to mention total control over land access to northern Scotland.

 

[st.lucifer]

I like the map of Britain. However, I don't like the way the island narrows to a single tile-width at Edinburgh. Not only is this inaccurate, it will give Edinburgh access to both seas, which is completely unrealistic, not to mention total control over land access to northern Scotland.

Reasonable criticism. I'll consider reworking it. Scotland really isn't very wide at that point, though... I might just move Edinburgh one tile to the SE, which would eliminate the canal effect.

 

[Depravo]

Thanks. I'd still rather have a land tile where the Solway Firth is though. It's 70 miles coast-to-coast here, and should a player manage to raze Edinburgh the 'canal city' problem may still arise.

 

[st.lucifer]

Thanks. I'd still rather have a land tile where the Solway Firth is though. It's 70 miles coast-to-coast here, and should a player manage to raze Edinburgh the 'canal city' problem may still arise.

That is a point. It's worth noting that it's also possible to do it with a city and a fort, but the fort method wastes a tile, which probably means that it won't happen. I guess I'll give up my attempt at a pretty coastline for gameplay...*sigh* the sacrifices that one must make.

I think that resources are pretty well covered, where we're going to have the exotic resources be colonial (for the most part.) That covers silk, spices, cotton, and possibly tobacco or tea. If we substitute cotton, tobacco, and tea for hit singles, movies, and musicals, we come out even; if we remove elephants, ivory can stand alone, and then there's some question about what to do with rice, corn, and bananas.

I'm in favor of renaming/redrawing bananas as 'citrus fruit' to represent oranges and bergamots in the Mediterranean regions, but I worry that they weren't important enough in trade. It might be worthwhile to replace bananas with salt - the food/trade bonuses of the tile would have to be altered somewhat, but that's easy; the benefit to groceries would be consistent with the use of salt, and the artwork would be easy.

We had talked about having corn represent another grain such as rye or barley; it wouldn't be hard to redo rice in the same sort of way, possibly as flax. I don't want to have another metal such as lead or tin - tin was less of a valuable commodity in the era we're working with, and I'm not sure how easy it would be to add bonuses to the forge and such rather than replacing existing ones. I've never heard of peat being traded - while locally important in several regions, I don't know that it warrants full inclusion as a resource.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[Depravo]

Cheers St Lucifer. I see your point re peat. Can you think of any tradable 'swamp' resource? Eels?

 

[st.lucifer]

Cheers St Lucifer. I see your point re peat. Can you think of any tradable 'swamp' resource? Eels?

Flax. And originally, I had sugar beets on the map in the Pripet and Karelian marshes, but ended up moving them to the Azores as sugar beets weren't processed until the industrial era. I'm not sure if we want to make controlling marshes particularly advantageous, though, and making one of the luxuries a marsh resource would have that effect.

Thinking more about lead and metals in general: we definitely don't need/want uranium in this mod, or really, oil. Do we want to reassign those resources to something else? I had considered putting saltpeter back in (shades of civ 3); obsolete with chemistry - or is that overkill? Access to reliable supplies of saltpeter actually was an issue during the early gunpowder era.

 

[Depravo]

Flax? Great idea.

Baltic amber was a luxury but I wonder if it's worthy of its own resource. You could have pitch to represent the trade in naval supplies. You could also have a tradable 'timber' resource in forests.

 

[sdLeo]

I totally agree with the salt and rye/barley. Both are a must as far as European history is concerned. I dunno about the rest, but there should be salt 1 or 2 tiles W of Marseille. And where Salzburg would be. Maybe TEN tiles with salt there?? (lol just kidding).

I'm sure there are tons of other places, I just don't know them.

Also, an almost risky suggestion: hemp. The single biggest crop ever... It's an essential resource to have, as most of everything - clothing, some foods, paper, fabrics, ropes, bags and more - used to be made out of hemp

 

[st.lucifer]

Flax? Great idea.

Baltic amber was a luxury but I wonder if it's worthy of its own resource. You could have pitch to represent the trade in naval supplies. You could also have a tradable 'timber' resource in forests.

The timber idea has been kicked around for a while, and I think we ultimately rejected it. It's not a bad idea, but determining which forests provide timber and which don't is a potential headache, as is keeping the AI from filling Russia with useless mini-cities - unless we conditionally disallow settlers, which I am on record as being in favor of (perhaps alone).

Flax (to represent linen) is a well-supported historical luxury resource, and there are a number of marshy/swampy areas that would be appropriate for it. I believe that RFC code states that marshes cannot be improved, which would make the inclusion of a marsh-based resource questionable; I'm also a little reluctant to turn marshes productive (which is essentially what this would do, even if we gave it no tile bonus.) On the other hand, I'd rather not include both rye and barley (or oats, or any other cold-weather grain) - and I don't have anything better in mind for a food or trade resource. Potatoes would be perfect, but they don't show up until after the colonial period. Now, as standard RFC has resources popping up at regular intervals, that might work...

Agreed about amber. I proposed it earlier, but I think it's covered by gems - many of which are concentrated around the Baltic. It's kind of hard to come up with luxuries for a decidedly unluxurious time...

I totally agree with the salt and rye/barley. Both are a must as far as European history is concerned. I dunno about the rest, but there should be salt 1 or 2 tiles W of Marseille. And where Salzburg would be. Maybe TEN tiles with salt there?? (lol just kidding).

I'm sure there are tons of other places, I just don't know them.

Also, an almost risky suggestion: hemp. The single biggest crop ever... It's an essential resource to have, as most of everything - clothing, some foods, paper, fabrics, ropes, bags and more - used to be made out of hemp

I'll solicit more votes on this, but I think that replacing either bananas or uranium with salt is a good idea. It's probably the second or third most important/widely traded resource of the time period (behind spices), and it actually occurs naturally in the map and doesn't have to be wedged in through colonies. While hemp isn't a bad idea, how long has it been cultivated in Europe? I have a hard time thinking of hemp without thinking of the George Washington speech from Dazed and Confused.

 

[Virdrago]

What about olives? It could replace oil (the word oil actually comes from both English and French translations of the word olive). It has been important throughout European history, and the oil has been used for religious purposes (and still is, can create the +1 in temples?)

 

[repeatoffender]

Hi guys

I'm really interested in helping out with the Rhyse of Europe map. I was thinking that using this viewpoint would be optimal for a few reasons:

1. minimizes desert area in Africa
2. minimizes massive northern Europe/parts of Russia
3. minimizes ocean tiles
4. allows for inclusion of almost all of Egypt, Israel, and Mesopotamia which were important during the crusades and roman times

 

[st.lucifer]

Hi guys

I'm really interested in helping out with the Rhyse of Europe map. I was thinking that using this viewpoint would be optimal for a few reasons:

1. minimizes desert area in Africa
2. minimizes massive northern Europe/parts of Russia
3. minimizes ocean tiles
4. allows for inclusion of almost all of Egypt, Israel, and Mesopotamia which were important during the crusades and roman times

Your assistance is welcomed, and minimizing 1, 2, and 3 is a good goal - but #4 is actually one of the things we were trying to avoid. Rather, we were trying to minimize the amount of Middle East involved - we're beginning the mod well after the collapse of Rome, and the map we've got includes all of the important crusader states without making the Arab state a default superpower.

Still, there are advantages to your map. If you can recreate the current one to that angle, I'd love to see it. We're not completely married to the existing map (although I've put a lot into it, so admittedly I'm a bit biased) - if you can come up with a good alternative, I think we should put it to a vote among contributors. Good to have you along.

 

[Depravo]

I would love a map like that, but extended north just far enough to cover the Trondheim area and Gulf of Finland - or one similar to the Colin McEvedy projection minus the far north.

 

[Zipzapzup]

So what about the map?

I would propose that we keep st. lucifers map because i like it and it seems that we dont get any alternatives so far. Futhermore i guess that we can only deteminate the issuses by testing the map and not by only looking at it.

If everyone agrees we can perhaps have a first look at the starting points and the core areas of each civ. Something like the rfc atlas would be very useful to discuss this.