Shiggs Earth

[Shiggs713]

I wonder why in the world your mini map looks like that faratia.

Interesting feedback. Thanks

 

[faratia]

Wow faratia, there has really been very little expansion in your game! In my game on Huge the only empty space is South America, Australia, extreme eastern siberia, and the bottom 1/3rd of africa. Everything else is blanketed over by 1300 AD And not by me, certainly.

EDIT: screenie. Hard to see India because of their color but they've landgrabbed most of Siberia!

Spoiler :

what game speed were you on?
I think the slow expansion problem I encountered might be because of marathon's overall settings. I might have to pickup a marathon mod to enhance unit training speed or something like that.

 

[Agent327]

so would you still want the Greeks in as well? And which one, removed or moved to central Asia?

Greeks in!

I think it's best to move the Ottoman Empire to central Asia, making it more like Turks in civ4. Need to do some history background checking on it though.

By being in central Asia Ottoman would help on balancing that area, so Asian civ wont go for a giant leap if it manages to defeat another Asian civ.

It also adds a different taste to the power balance around Middle East.

I agree up til here. I tend to notice the Asian civs expanding upward. With a Turk civ there that might counteract a bit (since there are no Mongols in - hmmm, another idea...).

 

[riddleofsteel]

You can change it back. (I usually play Quick speed.)

For some reason I cannot choose Epic pace with Faster Production from the main setup menu. Only plain old Epic is available.

For those who've played this map as England, where on mainland Europe did you invade/settle? I have too little iron on my brave little island as it is. Though I have a beautiful navy (veteran fighters) and the current high score on the map.

 

[aimlessgun]

For some reason I cannot choose Epic pace with Faster Production from the main setup menu. Only plain old Epic is available.

For those who've played this map as England, where on mainland Europe did you invade/settle? I have too little iron on my brave little island as it is. Though I have a beautiful navy (veteran fighters) and the current high score on the map.

The easiest thing would probably be to do what the British actually did in real life: forget mainland Europe, settle a global empire.

 

[tonberry]

I like the map but I would like to do a little tweak on it so if anyone can help me.

Suppose I'd like mod the map so that wonder are always built at their correct location (Eiffel Tower in Paris, Big Ben in London, etc.) is there a way to do it?

I know it would kind of remove the fun of building wonder but I'd like to try it as it would add another layer of historical accuracy to the game.

Thanks to anyone who can give me any info on how to do that.

 

[Shiggs713]

you would almost have to make them disabled for everyone except the civ you wanted to have each wonder, tonberry. not too much work I suppose, but not a 5 minute fix either.

 

[tonberry]

Is anyone experiencing a crash when you want to choose a civ using this map? The first time I play this, I use the default civ (Aztec) but now, each time I want to choose another civ, the game crash.

I haven't made any modifications yet btw.

edit: ok nvm, my game crash each time I try to choose a civ and I'm loading a mods so it's not this map in particular that is problematic.

 

[faratia]

For some reason I cannot choose Epic pace with Faster Production from the main setup menu. Only plain old Epic is available.

For those who've played this map as England, where on mainland Europe did you invade/settle? I have too little iron on my brave little island as it is. Though I have a beautiful navy (veteran fighters) and the current high score on the map.

If you want iron there's plenty of them in Scandinavia, you'll just have to bully some city states or settle in a little north
(those city states hated each other anyway, so you might even grab some influence by killing one of them)

 

[Ravellion]

Is all Iron/Horse only 1 resource? Hated having only 1 horseman as the turks.

 

[ReQuest]

You know what could be cool if you added the Vikings, Zulu, Inca, Spanish, Carthegean etc. as civ to fill the empty spaces and give a more differance experience and gameplay.

 

[Shiggs713]

Is all Iron/Horse only 1 resource? Hated having only 1 horseman as the turks.

No, all the strategic resources should be at least 2, most of them are 3 or 4. If any are 1 its because I missed it.

 

[Stacmon]

Hello all,

Shigg, thank you for all of your work on the map, in several ways, I like this one more than the other Earth maps currently out there. The terrain and resource placement in particular are real strengths for this mod. However, there are two particular items that I think are worth bringing up.

Abundance of Militaristic City States

As some others have mentioned, there seem to be too many militaristic city states compared to cultured and maritime ones. This is a particular issue for Arabia and Egypt, because it is virtually impossible to find a non-militaristic city state within their sphere. Consider that of the following cities which surround them, none are cultured or maritime:

Almaty (Central Asia)
Sidon (Lebanon/Syria)
Aksum (Ethiopia)
Carthage (Tunisia/North Africa)
Madrid (Spain)
Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo/West Africa)
Dar es Salaam (Tanzania/East Africa)

This makes it very difficult for Civilizations in the Middle East and Africa to pursue strategies that rely on city states. My suggestion would be to make at least the following changes:

Aksum ---> Cultured
The Aksumite Empire was the first major empire to officially adopt Christianity. The city of Aksum was once a bustling metropolis, cultural and economic center within the Kingdom. They were well renowned for their impressive palace and their cemeteries because of the elaborate grave stones (stelae and obelisks)

Dar es Salaam ---> Maritime
The African East Coast, including the area of modern day Dar es Salaam, was heavily connected to the world through maritime trade. These connections were especially strong with the Muslim (Arab/Egyptian, Persian) and Indian Empires. In fact, these maritime trading relationships are a large explanation for the large proportion of Muslims in the region. During the colonial period, the German East Africa Company established a station there, which facilitated the town's growth as the administrative and commercial centre of German East Africa.


I would say that those two changes would make a considerable improvement. Additional modifications would be welcome too, but I see the above as a priority. If you wanted to go one step further, I would also recommend:

Either Sidon or Carthage ---> Maritime
The Phoenicians (Sidon and Tyre), dominated large parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. Their major cities were largely coastal and their trade was predominantly naval.

Later, when Phoenician settlers founded Carthage, it quickly grew as a maritime power in the Western Mediterranean. This control of the sea is actually what brought it in conflict with distant Rome and led Carthage to settle areas of modern day Spain and Sicily.

If you would rather not change Sidon (because the vanilla version of the game by default makes it militaristic), then Carthage would be the appropriate choice (and equally logical as a maritime state).

Also, if you feel this would raise the number of maritime states too much (though I don't feel this is the case), you could consider changing one of the Nordic city states from Maritime to Militaristic. Let's not forget how aggressive and militarily important the Vikings have traditionally been!

Location of the Persian Capital

I also wanted to note that the current location for Persepolis is a bit off. Currently it is located a bit too far East, very close to modern day Pakistan and India. This, in my opinion, leads to too little contact/interaction between them and the civilizations of the Middle East/Mediterranean. Moving it westward on the Iranian plateau would therefore improve realism further.

Here is a map that can help demonstrate the location.

So thank you again for all the effort and the ongoing updates. I hope that you find some of these comments useful.

 

[Shiggs713]

Wow, thanks for such a detailed post Stacmon! It'll probably be awhile (busy with real life and other things), but sometime in the future I will update this again, and will take all your suggestions under serious consideration.

 

[Stacmon]

Wow, thanks for such a detailed post Stacmon! It'll probably be awhile (busy with real life and other things), but sometime in the future I will update this again, and will take all your suggestions under serious consideration.

No problem, I'm happy you found some of it helpful.

Shortly after writing that post, I decided to see if I could make the changes myself. I modified the map file to move the Persian capital and also made two more minor changes. The updated Persian starting location was on top of an incense resource, which I repositioned one tile East. I also moved the location of the dye in Mesopotamia (Modern Day Iraq) one square to the Southeast, to allow (Arab) players the ability to found a historically accurate Baghdad, without having to do it on the resource.

In your XML file which included the new city states, I made all of the changes that I outlined. Specifically, Aksum became cultured, Dar Es Salaam became maritime and Carthage was also changed to Maritime.

Ironically, my choice to move the Persians and hope that they would be more involved in Middle East conflicts turned to be my downfall in a recent game. I founded Baghdad as my second city, frustrated them by locating so close by and had an insufficient army when our relations soured too much and they decided to invade. It was a very exciting game!

Since you seemed receptive towards the changes I suggested, I've attached these files in case you would like to use any part of them in an update. I also thought it might be worthwhile in case players in the meantime were interested in the same tweaks as I was. Feel free to use as much or as little as you think is appropriate, Shigg. It's your mod after all and I'm just trying to provide my own feedback.

To install, simply unpack the archive and replace the existing files in the mod's directory.

Thanks again for this, I think it also may be the only Earth Map Mod, that does not persistently crash at some point for players (some of the others seem to have unrecoverable crashes and there's no telling yet why).

 

[Agent327]

True.

It´s a pity I started a game as the English or I´d have started on your map update.

I just finished a Science victory with Egpyt, while China was trying to conquer the world (they already dominated Asia, Europe and Africa after finishing off the Romans. Before, the Romans had taken care of the French, Germans and Russians and were about to do the same to Mali - which ended up with 3 cities in Southern Africa -, when they decided to try the same with China. They actually took took Mecca and Istanbul - the Turks were long gone and the Persians had ousted the Arabs from Asia -, but then basically got steamrolled. The Chinese were into Future Tech way before me and because of their constant expansion were highest in score. (And yes, you can take cities with Choppers.)

 

[aimlessgun]

Abundance of Militaristic City States[/SIZE]

As some others have mentioned, there seem to be too many militaristic city states compared to cultured and maritime ones. This is a particular issue for Arabia and Egypt, because it is virtually impossible to find a non-militaristic city state within their sphere.

I strongly disagree with this.

For maritimes you have Lisbon, Cape Town, Helsinki and Oslo all extremely easy to contact from a position in Egypt or the Middle East. No, they're not directly next to you, but is that a real issue? Some cursory exploration with a Trireme will get you Singapore, that other Indonesian CS, Seoul, and the Australian states.

I mean since I doubt youre buying up city states during the very first part of the game anyways, it's not like it matters that you meet them a little later than the military states that are on your doorstep.

Anyways just speaking from experience: I had no issue with finding and allying with Maritime and Cultural city states, playing as Arabia.

 

[V. Soma]

Um, I had the version with Greece downloaded via CFC attachment in the OP (Steam mod browser isnot working for me)

Problem:
I start the game (load as scenario), it loads, then black screen and exe fail... is this dx9 problem? or sg. else?

 

[Stacmon]

I strongly disagree with this.

For maritimes you have Lisbon, Cape Town, Helsinki and Oslo all extremely easy to contact from a position in Egypt or the Middle East. No, they're not directly next to you, but is that a real issue? Some cursory exploration with a Trireme will get you Singapore, that other Indonesian CS, Seoul, and the Australian states.

I mean since I doubt youre buying up city states during the very first part of the game anyways, it's not like it matters that you meet them a little later than the military states that are on your doorstep.

Anyways just speaking from experience: I had no issue with finding and allying with Maritime and Cultural city states, playing as Arabia.

While I see what you're saying, I still think that some Maritime city states are necessary in the Mediterranean and Near East. As it stands, Lisbon is the only one even relatively nearby and it is located on the Atlantic. There is far too heavy a weight in Northern Europe (Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki) and any one of these (especially Oslo) could be justifiably changed to militaristic.

With regards to cultured city states, they are a rarity in the region. Aksum really seems like it would be appropriate as cultured.

In the end, there are two issues. One is functionality. I agree that the map is certainly still playable without any changes to the city state traits. However, I think most of us would agree that the proportion of militaristic to non-militaristic city states is too high (a simple count can confirm this).

The second issue is one of realism and historical accuracy. At least from my perspective, I find it a lot more pleasurable as the Arabs, Egyptians, Ottomans or Persians to ally with Aksum or Athens for culture, rather than Seoul or Lhasa in the Far East, and to ally with Carthage or Dar Es Salaam rather than Helsinki or Cape Town (which players really shouldn't even reach by sea until the colonial era) for a maritime partner.

The key here is an even distribution so that the whole world doesn't have to be allied with a Viking city to get maritime bonuses .

In any case, we are all different players with different interests and expectations. Of course it is impossible to perfectly please us all .

 

[Shiggs713]

Um, I had the version with Greece downloaded via CFC attachment in the OP (Steam mod browser isnot working for me)

Problem:
I start the game (load as scenario), it loads, then black screen and exe fail... is this dx9 problem? or sg. else?

it also requires the mod. You have to have the Shiggs Earth mod installed as well for any of those two maps to work. It likely crashed because it tried to find the city states I added, and you didn't have them.