Standard (80x52) World Map TSL

[Veneke]

I did some personal edits to the GK map in WB last night (some terrain, but mostly changes to Civs & and added a few City States), which I'd be happy to post here for your reference or future use in this process.

Definitely post it here. I've been tweaking around with the terrain (still not 100% happy with it) and would love to have additional feedback. Although, I am slightly more interested to know which City States you managed to sneak in.

 

[PawelS]

The map looks nice, perhaps I'll make my version as well, using some DLC civs, like the Inca.

Rio de Janeiro and Jakarta are placed in wrong locations, also the Mayan starting location is where the Aztecs should be.

 

[bwoww78]

The map looks nice, perhaps I'll make my version as well, using some DLC civs, like the Inca.

Rio de Janeiro and Jakarta are placed in wrong locations, also the Mayan starting location is where the Aztecs should be.

Those are exactly the things I adjusted.

I also added Mapuche and Colombo CSs, swapped Persia for Inca (and added Persepolis as a CS), removed Rome and added Vatican City CS, removed Almaty and added Ottomans in their place (just for kicks, even though Istanbul capital there may look funny, it frees up some of Europe and creates a very enticing CS to conquer in the Vatican).

I also made some changes to resource placement (lake issue previously mentioned---fish w/o boats are ok in lakes, but not crabs or pearls...). I changed some European terrain: less mountains in the Alps, boosted some of England's terrain (bigger Ireland, taller main island), moved Madrid to the western coast (they have a chance to accurately place Barcelona or lose out on that space to France...) and moved Berlin from it's coastal start (that way both France AND Germany have to settle on a coast...)

That's just what I can recall. I know I'd like to add some mountains around Morocco, but might have forgotten to. I'll post later tonight if possible. My CiV was not loading correctly last night post-patch update though, so I might need to deal with that first...

Overall, my goal is to have a standard earth map that is accurate yet balanced enough that I as a player would want to play as any Civ on the map and subsequently I could swap out Civs & CSs based planned on gameplay and realism for future playthroughs. This way resource placement doesn't have to change, rather the location/perspective of the player does, which is just as exciting and gives me an excuse to depart from playing as my already well-worn favorite Civs.

 

[thadian]

Hope ya don't mind, but im also making my own personal versions. I will simply have an "old world" version, "full world" version, and then 2 separate for each one so that i can try to replicate era's. I will also consider replacing some of the resources - but i doubt i will ever upload anything and if i do, ill post my revisions here for you to tinker with as you like.

 

[bwoww78]

Spoiler :

Those are exactly the things I adjusted.

I also added Mapuche and Colombo CSs, swapped Persia for Inca (and added Persepolis as a CS), removed Rome and added Vatican City CS, removed Almaty and added Ottomans in their place (just for kicks, even though Istanbul capital there may look funny, it frees up some of Europe and creates a very enticing CS to conquer in the Vatican).

I also made some changes to resource placement (lake issue previously mentioned---fish w/o boats are ok in lakes, but not crabs or pearls...). I changed some European terrain: less mountains in the Alps, boosted some of England's terrain (bigger Ireland, taller main island), moved Madrid to the western coast (they have a chance to accurately place Barcelona or lose out on that space to France...) and moved Berlin from it's coastal start (that way both France AND Germany have to settle on a coast...)

That's just what I can recall. I know I'd like to add some mountains around Morocco, but might have forgotten to. I'll post later tonight if possible. My CiV was not loading correctly last night post-patch update though, so I might need to deal with that first...

Overall, my goal is to have a standard earth map that is accurate yet balanced enough that I as a player would want to play as any Civ on the map and subsequently I could swap out Civs & CSs based planned on gameplay and realism for future playthroughs. This way resource placement doesn't have to change, rather the location/perspective of the player does, which is just as exciting and gives me an excuse to depart from playing as my already well-worn favorite Civs.

So please ignore what I said above about Civ/CS changes to the map; I didn't realize that while I was editing the map last night I had the legendary earth mod activated, which changes the available city states (e.g. Persepolis as CS). I guess I'm just wasn't familiar enough with the new CSs added in GK to realize those were not "stock" unmodded CSs. So, with that said:

Attached is an adjustment to Ven's map. I changed the number of playable Civs (20 to 21), opening up Europe a bit and filling out Africa in the process. Likewise, I added more CSs to the Americas and adjusted SE Asia.

Regarding resources and terrain, I added and rearranged some natural wonders (e.g. Cerro de Potosi) for additional flavor (it is a more cramped map than the TSL huge/giant earth maps). I changed the location of some strategic resources based on realism (though this was hardly scientific). Knowing this is one of the drivers for AI settling behavior, I tried not to mess with it too much. I assume a few playthroughs will help to determine any changes in distribution.

I'd be interested to know what you think. Thanks again for the great mod!

 

[overkill9]

I'm actually perfectly happy with the current number of Civs and City-States but I do appreciate that there are large number of them.

Policy/promotion saving and, indeed, Civs are all pretty simple. The problem is that you'd probably need to include 3 maps just to cover the VC variations (all, diplo/dom, culture/science/time). If you add in policy/promotion saving you're up to 6 at a minimum (3 with and 3 without), then if you try and vary the Civs you're up to at least 12 (the aforementioned 6 with one group of Civs and another 6 with a different group of Civs). This is the major problem I have with it - there'll be a huge map pack of some 20+ different maps that are all exactly the same map just with some differences in settings.

The sickening thing is that it's actually all very easy to do and for the life of me I cannot figure out why it has been designed in this fashion. The only solutions I can see is to implement a whole new screen yourself (which is what YNAEMP does), ask people to fiddle around with the map themselves in the SDK (which kinda defeats the purpose) or else publish a huge number of maps that are little more than setting variations.

I have contacted Gedemon and a few other modders to see if anyone knows of a solution that isn't immediately clear but working under the assumption that it will take a small bit before a settings screen is available for this map I think we're stuck with option 3 and I'll take requests to include various different settings on the map.

At the moment I'm planning on the initial 6 I described above (VCs and promo/policy saving) with the existing Civ and city placement due for release sometime tomorrow. If you've any particular requests (Civs, City States, other options) I'll tailor each map setting to the request. This will, hopefully, be a temporary solution just to cover it until a screen can be added to allow players to alter the advanced settings on the map themselves.

Thanks for taking this on yourself Veneke. The map I would request is one with diplo/domination only, with policy and promotion saving, TSL, and real-life resource placements. You have made this leecher very happy today- time for me to fire up the American campaign and dominate the western hemisphere

One thing: I think some ppl are not in possession of civ DLCs, so only including the civs that came with GK and vanilla CiV might be a good idea to start with, as in being able to play even if you don't have those DLCs.

 

[Veneke]

Couple of points with relation to the Civ placement on my own map - I did simple swap of the Aztecs for the Mayans, it isn't entirely accurate (obviously) but I figured it was close enough to be acceptable. The Iroqoius (who are well out of position) and Jakarta (who are slightly out of position) were moved on the basis of giving them decent breathing room. Rio I believe I confused with Buenos Aires.

Anyone looking to alter the map should feel free to do so, but if you publish it I'd appreciate a quick word of thanks.

==

@bwoww78:

That actually looks very, very good. I rather like quite a number of your changes and if you've no objection want to incorporate them into the existing map. Couple of the most obvious ones that struck me: Mt. Sinai being moved, El Dorado, Colombo, Cahokia, Songhai.

Just a couple of points on some of your changes. I think some of these will be included in some shape or form.

I had kept Madrid's starting location on the east coast in order to ensure that Spain had the potential for a second city (like pretty much every other European power had), however, moving it to the west does get around the problem of Marakech blocking Madrid's route out of the Med. Likewise London was positioned on the southern coast in order to help ensure that the English channel was English and not French. I honestly don't know if these should be moved.

The DLC Civs Inca+Polynesia are Civs I personally play with when playing the map, but I wanted to avoid the DLC/non-DLC version division that happened for the Vanilla version. I'm probably going to include both, however, as the map is significantly better for their inclusion.

Swapping the Vatican for Rome is something I toyed with, but disregarded on the basis that Rome would be more popular than any other Civ that would take its place. Seeing it now though I think I actually prefer the Vatican.

Jerusalem is a problem. I wanted to include it initially but it significantly nerfs Egypt's second city on the mouth of the Nile and prevents a Suez from being built. It also prevents a Kuwait or similar from being built, which means that Jerusalem is now the provider of most of the world's oil... which is a little odd.

Expanding Scotland is probably the right move, but Ireland no longer looks anything close to what it's meant to look like. On the other hand, the English AI simply refuses to settle Ireland as is in my test games so this may be the only fix.

I have to admit that I prefer a larger Alps. All of the European Civs with exception to Germany have decent defensive locations which was deliberately put in place to help ensure that the European AIs survive the early rushes. London has the English channel, Madrid has the Pyrennes, France has the Pyrennes and the Alps to their south and wooded, hilly terrain with rivers between them and Germany, Constatinople has a river to the north and mountains to their SE, Stockholm has wooded, hilly terrain with natural chokepoints etc. I don't think removing it is conducive to helping the AI in Europe stay alive.

 

[overkill9]

Veneke:

I found that strategic resources no longer reach 6- they are relatively small amounts. Is this on purpose?

Also, if you can also create 'Large' versions of these maps, I think it will be great for people who prefer them. Some seems oversized - japan for instance. I understand the need to enlarge europe a little to ensure EU civ survival, but the overall small size of pacific oceans and enlargement of japan seems a bit too much

 

[Veneke]

There should be several 5 and 7 amounts of strategic resources dotted around places which typically have higher yields than the rest of the world. So the Middle East has a number of 7 yield Oil (and I've added one or two more for the next version) while any Civ that needs Iron or Horse for their UU has 5 of the appropriate resource.

Resource placement has been skewed to localize resources to particular parts of the world with the 1 and 2 yield strategic resource tiles dotted around the place for some kind of balance. It is the case, however, that if you do not expand beyond your immediate starting location it is quite likely that you will seriously lack for Oil, Uranium, Aluminium and potentially all three.

Part of the reason why this is Standard sized is that I want people with lower and middle end rigs to be able to play it with somewhat reasonable turn times. The number of Civs and resources obviously runs counter to this but increasing to Large from Standard is roughly a 33% increase in hex numbers which is quite significant. As you correctly surmise if certain areas weren't upscaled you'd have less viable starting points.


I apologize for not having the update today, unexpected matters cropped up that prevented me from giving it my full attention and I want to avoid a constant streams of half-formed updates. Although I have many changes done, I still want to review the Eastern Siberia and Mongolian region as well as Coal distribution before the next update goes out. Aluminium, Uranium and Oil might also need to be slightly buffed but I want to preserve the philosophy of scarce late-game strategic resources that has driven this map since its inception.

For anyone interested, here are the current provisional update notes:

Spoiler :

- Many of the changes bwoww78 has implemented I've taken on board (and I'd still very much like formal permission to utilize those) though there are some that I haven't; largely those that reposition the European Civs.
- There are now 6 versions (3 DLC, 3 non-DLC one of each is as is, the second of each is Diplo/Dom VCs with promo/policy saving, the third of each is Time/Science/Culture with promo/policy saving).
- The DLC version includes Inca and Polynesia in the positions bwoww78 suggested.
- Both non-DLC and DLC maps now feature Songhai while the non-DLC version features Rome and the DLC version features the Vatican (in order to make room for Poly/Inca).
- Jerusalem is now included in both, though is slightly out of position so it can act as a Suez transfer city. A side effect of this is that Persia has its starting position shifted 1 hex east to facilitate a city to be built in the Iraq region.
- The Saudi penisula has been expanded and resources redistributed and altered accordingly. The Arabian starting position has been shifted slightly.
- One mountain and the river have been fixed in Europe.
- Several Luxury and Strategic resources in inaccessible lakes have been removed, replaced or repositioned.
- Salt added to N. America and Iroquois position to facilitate the loss of Crab.
- Uranium has been removed from two islands in the south Pacific and Atlantic and some Uranium tiles increased by 1.
- Removed 1 Iron down by Cape Town that shouldn't have been there.

 

[bwoww78]

first of all, OF COURSE you can use my input! I'm glad to help. I'm not much of a modder, but I'm happy to help in testing for balance, etc. Like I've said, a standard size TSL map that I can use to replay with any civ on the board is what I'm looking for (and this is the best I've seen on the forums to date).

Resource placement has been skewed to localize resources to particular parts of the world with the 1 and 2 yield strategic resource tiles dotted around the place for some kind of balance. It is the case, however, that if you do not expand beyond your immediate starting location it is quite likely that you will seriously lack for Oil, Uranium, Aluminium and potentially all three.

I like this principle, however I'd recommend against placing highly strategic resources (e.g. uranium) on single hex islands in the middle of nowhere as it shies away from the realism I think many look to TSL maps for in the first place. I'll defer to your judgement on resource placement, and worst case scenario, I know how to play with WB for my own games...

Part of the reason why this is Standard sized is that I want people with lower and middle end rigs to be able to play it with somewhat reasonable turn times. The number of Civs and resources obviously runs counter to this but increasing to Large from Standard is roughly a 33% increase in hex numbers which is quite significant. As you correctly surmise if certain areas weren't upscaled you'd have less viable starting points.

Totally agree.

For anyone interested, here are the current provisional update notes:

- Many of the changes bwoww78 has implemented I've taken on board (and I'd still very much like formal permission to utilize those) though there are some that I haven't; largely those that reposition the European Civs.

I appreciate your feedback and the inclusion of my edits. I've put some thought into the Europe situation and I have a couple of potential recommendations:

Spoiler :

1. SPAIN: Regarding Madrid's placement, the 2nd city issue and access to Gibraltar, you COULD simply swap the western-most mountain tile of the Pyrenees with the eastern-most forest hex (above what hopefully should be Barcelona). I think the argument can be made that this still definitely serves as a choke point in Spain's defense and that Spain would be even MORE likely to place it's second city along the east coast of Iberia, if only for quicker access to that silver. This should be play tested, and if you'd like I'd be willing to do that. Either way, I won't fall on my sword for this one.

(Note: you could always just shift Marrakech southwest one tile as well as it's associated resources to save the strait for Spain).

2. England: You know best from play-testing, but I just hate it when England claims that west-most tile of France (what would be ~Brest). I don't mind, however, if England claims one of "Brussel's" marsh tiles. Go figure. That's mostly why I made the shift northwest. Regarding Ireland, well, it's not exactly the way I wanted it to look either, but you have to do something to make the AI settle sometimes, and if it's any consolation, I think with the plains/stone tile on the east coast will look better in game than as a hex in WB. I would recommend having something enticing there for both the AI (and the player). If we're upscaling Japan, we should do at least something similar for England.

3. Do you agree with my moving start locations of Berlin & Moscow? I might have changed some resources in the process, but thought I would note those differences.

- There are now 6 versions (3 DLC, 3 non-DLC one of each is as is, the second of each is Diplo/Dom VCs with promo/policy saving, the third of each is Time/Science/Culture with promo/policy saving).
- The DLC version includes Inca and Polynesia in the positions bwoww78 suggested.
- Both non-DLC and DLC maps now feature Songhai while the non-DLC version features Rome and the DLC version features the Vatican (in order to make room for Poly/Inca).

Smart choice. I may still make my own changes (since I have all DLC) in play-testing, but for as much as I've played Rome already, I had to do something to remove the temptation...

- Jerusalem is now included in both, though is slightly out of position so it can act as a Suez transfer city. A side effect of this is that Persia has its starting position shifted 1 hex east to facilitate a city to be built in the Iraq region.
- The Saudi penisula has been expanded and resources redistributed and altered accordingly. The Arabian starting position has been shifted slightly.

I'm glad you included Jerusalem, if only because it's neat they (and Vatican City) were included in GK and I'm not sure what the balance is currently for religious city-states. I'm excited to see what changes you've made for Saudi peninsula. If you noticed my edits removed Arabia because I didn't want the challenge of reshaping. I'd be glad to see them in game again.

- One mountain and the river have been fixed in Europe.

I'd be interested to know which... did I do that? ha

- Several Luxury and Strategic resources in inaccessible lakes have been removed, replaced or repositioned.
- Salt added to N. America and Iroquois position to facilitate the loss of Crab.

Just FYI, I might have also changed some resources. If you noticed, I included a river to represent the St. Lawrence Seaway. I think this is really important for North America (a natural dividing line, etc.). Also, it' boosted a location for New York. I'd definitely vie for it's inclusion.

- Uranium has been removed from two islands in the south Pacific and Atlantic and some Uranium tiles increased by 1.
- Removed 1 Iron down by Cape Town that shouldn't have been there.

Great! See my note above about strategic resources. As I said, I'm interested to see your changes.

Thanks again

 

[bwoww78]

(See attached to describe what I mean about Spain)

Edit: is there a 2 tile limit on city placement? Or is it 3 tiles? Hmmm

 

[overkill9]

There should be several 5 and 7 amounts of strategic resources dotted around places which typically have higher yields than the rest of the world. So the Middle East has a number of 7 yield Oil (and I've added one or two more for the next version) while any Civ that needs Iron or Horse for their UU has 5 of the appropriate resource.

Resource placement has been skewed to localize resources to particular parts of the world with the 1 and 2 yield strategic resource tiles dotted around the place for some kind of balance. It is the case, however, that if you do not expand beyond your immediate starting location it is quite likely that you will seriously lack for Oil, Uranium, Aluminium and potentially all three.

Part of the reason why this is Standard sized is that I want people with lower and middle end rigs to be able to play it with somewhat reasonable turn times. The number of Civs and resources obviously runs counter to this but increasing to Large from Standard is roughly a 33% increase in hex numbers which is quite significant. As you correctly surmise if certain areas weren't upscaled you'd have less viable starting points.


I apologize for not having the update today, unexpected matters cropped up that prevented me from giving it my full attention and I want to avoid a constant streams of half-formed updates. Although I have many changes done, I still want to review the Eastern Siberia and Mongolian region as well as Coal distribution before the next update goes out. Aluminium, Uranium and Oil might also need to be slightly buffed but I want to preserve the philosophy of scarce late-game strategic resources that has driven this map since its inception.

For anyone interested, here are the current provisional update notes:

Spoiler :

- Many of the changes bwoww78 has implemented I've taken on board (and I'd still very much like formal permission to utilize those) though there are some that I haven't; largely those that reposition the European Civs.
- There are now 6 versions (3 DLC, 3 non-DLC one of each is as is, the second of each is Diplo/Dom VCs with promo/policy saving, the third of each is Time/Science/Culture with promo/policy saving).
- The DLC version includes Inca and Polynesia in the positions bwoww78 suggested.
- Both non-DLC and DLC maps now feature Songhai while the non-DLC version features Rome and the DLC version features the Vatican (in order to make room for Poly/Inca).
- Jerusalem is now included in both, though is slightly out of position so it can act as a Suez transfer city. A side effect of this is that Persia has its starting position shifted 1 hex east to facilitate a city to be built in the Iraq region.
- The Saudi penisula has been expanded and resources redistributed and altered accordingly. The Arabian starting position has been shifted slightly.
- One mountain and the river have been fixed in Europe.
- Several Luxury and Strategic resources in inaccessible lakes have been removed, replaced or repositioned.
- Salt added to N. America and Iroquois position to facilitate the loss of Crab.
- Uranium has been removed from two islands in the south Pacific and Atlantic and some Uranium tiles increased by 1.
- Removed 1 Iron down by Cape Town that shouldn't have been there.

Of course, the map size is appropriate for the stated purposes. I was just wondering if you would be interested in doing same map but only in large size in the future.

 

[PawelS]

I think Siam should be in the game, the Hanoi CS can be removed to make room for it. But if you are already at the 22 civ limit, I'm not sure which one should be removed...

 

[Veneke]

first of all, OF COURSE you can use my input! I'm glad to help. I'm not much of a modder, but I'm happy to help in testing for balance, etc. Like I've said, a standard size TSL map that I can use to replay with any civ on the board is what I'm looking for (and this is the best I've seen on the forums to date).

Thank you!

I like this principle, however I'd recommend against placing highly strategic resources (e.g. uranium) on single hex islands in the middle of nowhere as it shies away from the realism I think many look to TSL maps for in the first place.

Fair point and I have removed the offending resources.

With regards to your spoiler'd comments:

Spoiler :

1. Playtesting at the moment pretty much confirms that the Spanish AI settles in place and then creates a new city on that NW tile. Unfortunately, unless the XML (I think?) is altered you need 3 empty hexes between each city tile, which means that even if you swap the mountain tiles Paris will still block your proposed city.

Shifting Marakech SW is a good move and will, hopefully, mean that Spain takes the Strait.

2. All of my playtesting so far suggests that even as is France still tends to get one of the tiles in the English channel while England picks up one, or both, of the marshlands in Europe. It is not ideal. Something I am toying with is moving the resources in the English Channel out of there, I'm hoping that will mean that Paris' culture growth will veer elsewhere. Well, the upscaling of Japan is a different game. Civs in Europe, with almost no exceptions, have access to 2 city spots. Japan, however, is competing with China, India and Mongolia all who have access to at least 3 good city spots. Expanding the Scotland is a good move but I'm much more hesitant about Ireland or giving England access to Iceland/Greenland through coast tiles.

3. Regarding Berlin, no not really. This is on the basis that it prevents a city from being founded in Eastern Europe and prevents Berlin's quick access to one of its luxury resources (Pearls). I must admit that I missed the movement of Moscow. I think it cuts into the Caucasus city a bit too much but I'm curious as to why you think Moscow should be moved there.

Vatican, Jerusalem & Saudi Arabia. Yeah, I spotted the Arabs sudden disappearance and while there probably is an argument to be made for their departure I would definitely prefer them to be kept. Completely agree on Vatican and Jerusalem.

Mountain and River in Europe. This is actually something that shouldn't have been in the initial release. The river moving from central Europe along to the sea above Constantinople is broken at one point. The fourth mountain 1 tile NE of the Alps has been changed into a hill.

I'll have to review the New York river again but yeah, that sounds like a good inclusion.

I think Siam should be in the game, the Hanoi CS can be removed to make room for it. But if you are already at the 22 civ limit, I'm not sure which one should be removed...

Early on (way back when I did this map for Vanilla) I decided that it would be more interesting to see a large number of CSs in Southeast Asia than it would to have another Asian Civ. There is actually room for Siam in terms of Civ numbers in the non-DLC map, but I've no plans to include it.

Of course, the map size is appropriate for the stated purposes. I was just wondering if you would be interested in doing same map but only in large size in the future.

Honestly I've no plans for this. I strongly suggest you check out Vadus' map which is linked in the OP if you want a map similar to this but Large. It was designed for Vanilla (and I've not seen any update for G&K), however, and the resource placement and a good deal of the terrain differs but it was a fantastic starting point for this map and would definitely be what I'd use were if I was making a Large or bigger version.

The next 'project' I'm toying with starting is a series similar to Neal's King of the World for Civ IV using this map as a base. Between that, updating my War Academy guides for G&K and RL I'm afraid that I simply don't have the time to explore enlarging the map.

==

Update will be out sometime in the afternoon eastern Aussie time.

Edit: And it's out. OP updated as well.

 

[overkill9]

Thank you veneke. Unfortunately, I see there are 6 maps, but they are somewhat hard to distinguish from each other and player can't tell the difference aside from civ and cs numbers. do they also differ in victory condition, etc.? If so, let us know how to tell them apart.

 

[Veneke]

Hmm... the map titles should specify the VCs and options enabled. When you go to select the map there should be a series of 'VGK Standard Earth ...' with ...DLC, ...DLC Saving, ...DLC SavingDiploDom and similar variations that tells each map apart.

Edit: Okay, lemme fix this real quick.

Edit: It has now kinda been fixed. Something though is still telling it to display the old names for the maps. Once you click on one though the proper naming comes up.

 

[Veneke]

Okay, fixed properly this time.

I believe I will forever be amazed at the idiotic design utilized by the Civ V modding system. It's almost as if they deliberately went out of their way to make things more awkward for you than they had to be. I've seen and attended meetings and presentations which were little more than expressions of collective stupidity that made more sense than what you have to do to get Civ V's mod/scenario/Steam Workship nonsense to work correctly. A grand total of 5 different entries had to be changed to get those names fixed, I no longer have any idea what 3 of them do anymore. I think the other two supercede them once you've included the file. The best part is that there's a whole separate screen that's always active and displays those two properties but which cannot be edited. You have to dig around in the Mod's properties file to edit them.

 

[bwoww78]

Thanks again for considering my input. Without any play-testing, I have a few comments on the most recent map changes. In short, I plan to make a few alterations myself to city/natural wonder/resource placement for a variety of purposes. I will then play-test and let you know how the AI behaves. My hope is that this will overall improve realism and the quality of the map for others. It's hard to squeeze TSL earth into a standard map, but I'm up for tweaking this one to perfection. To save everyone's screen space, I'll spoil my comments by region below.

NORTH AMERICA:

Spoiler :

1. Onondaga looks good to go now resource-wise. While not 100% historically accurate (it's really an up-state New York start location), I definitely agree with it's placement and think it should work out well for a much more evenly settled North America. One thing: I would recommend placing the Uranium north of Onondaga out west in Alaska for two reasons: (1) if the whales do not do so already, this resource might encourage Hiawatha AI to settle out west; (2) if Hiawatha does not get there, Washington likely will (and most definitely if it's me as the USA player), which also supports in realism (btw, look out Honululu...).

2. Natural Wonders: I would recommend adding one (Grand Mesa) and changing the location of the other two North American natural wonders as you have them. First, Old Faithful is actually located in Wyoming, so further north (more like on the Truffles near Cahokia or the mountain tile directly west of there). Secondly, after moving Old Faithful north, I'd replace it's old tile with the Barringer Crater and put the Grand Mesa in place of the Crater's old position.

(Note: I'm a sucker for using all available natural wonders, when possible (hence including El Dorado before). For example, if I could I would place the Fountain of Youth in southern Florida; however there is an issue with that feature requiring no adjacent coastal tiles. While it's game-breaking in Florida, if one wanted to get creative, it could be put it somewhere in Brazil, though this seems like overkill even to me...)

3. Cahokia & Palenque: Historically Cahokia is really supposed to be around St. Louis. While we're breaking this rule plenty already (see Onondaga), along the same lines as Jerusalem & Vatican City, I view this CS as a ripe target for both AI/player conquest (more on the other two CS later). As such, I'm inclined to move it more to the midwest to draw it's expansion over the available natural wonders and relieve some space for Hiawatha. I mention Palenque here as well because, well, as much as I look forward to Montezuma-less North America map, I think the Mayans are better positioned in the Yucatan peninsula for two reasons: (1) the Cerro de Potosi will draw a second Mayan city north OR El Dorado may draw them south. This should be play tested, but I like the idea of Mayan expansion in either directly (otherwise Inca might get it too easy being basically alone in South America); (2) By placing Palenque closer to that available sugar in the Caribbean, there's a chance the AI will go coastal and expand that way (or at least compete with Washington + Colonial Europeans, should we be that lucky in AI realism behavior).

As such, I plan to change the following city placements (along with Natural Wonder adjustments noted above):
* Cahokia moved to the forest tile triangulated between the current 2 wheats and aluminum along the Mississippi.
* Palenque moved south in the jungle tile (maybe change to a hill tile?) triangulated between the 2 sugars and silver.

4. Quebec City & St. Lawrence Seaway: Thanks for including. I like to make sure the Great Lakes get their due, and on a map this size this is the best we can do. I can't quite tell from the attached image what the river placement you adopted, but here's fair warning I might adjust it to respect it's realism and/or match the natural border. As you likely know, CiV strongly considers rivers in cultural tile acquisition and while I don't think this would mean moving Quebec City south (specifically because I'd want to leave room for New York), I wanted to let you know that I might tweak this area (which might not be obvious at first glance).

SOUTH AMERICA:

Spoiler :

I worry that, as usual in vanilla CS TSL maps, the Inca will end up being too much of a powerhouse with little expansion competition until late game (hence wanting to encourage Mayan southward expansion, as noted above). I notice you placed them on a coastal tile. As they remain basically mountain landlocked on the west coast, this seems fair so I'll leave it as is for now and see how the Inca play out.

Aside from creating a special new CS (Buenos Aires equivalent? Some unused "Italian" CS?) to be placed along the Rio de la Plata, I'm not sure I'd have any other solutions. I'd be interested to know how others play-testing goes in South America.

EUROPE:

Spoiler :

1. England: I think you may be on to something with moving sea resources out of the English Channel. Remember, France has an inherent advantage in early game with a +2 culture bonus, so France (AI or player) WILL expand faster than England without help. As such, I plan to move those to channel luxuries to the coastal tiles between the main island and Ireland. This might not work exactly every time to make sure England gets those last two (resource-less) western tiles of the channel, but it might have the added bonus of encouraging settlement in Ireland. It's just a hunch. Will play-test.

2. I see your point in placement of Berlin and Moscow. I trust your previous experience here and will leave them as is. I'm curious though: are those marshes between them to serve as "early rush" protection? I removed a couple of them in my initial edits (and moved Moscow south a tile) because I'd like Russia to settle St. Petersburg on the coast (a dream, I know). I'm always bummed Russia doesn't expand enough as AI on TSL maps (which is really too critical, I know), but I'll take a Caucus settlement over a Baltic one if I have to. What would be great is a 5 total city Russia, spread in a circle around Moscow, which then poises Catherine for eastern expansion in the mid game... but then again, I guess that's why this map is great, because that would be my plan as a player...

3. Lastly, regarding Vatican City, I'm very happy they made the cut. I mention it above, but I think it will be very interesting to see how AI handles a city state with such awesome resources at it's disposal, especially given it's defensible position. This way we've got an important religious CS at the disposal of all of Europe and Mediterranean and a conquest option that could really sway the balance of Europe---hard to beat. While you can still miss Rome, I believe this will be much more interesting in replay value overall.

AFRICA:

Spoiler :

1. Marrakech: Just looking at the map attached image, you might want to be certain that the starting point for this CS is on the same tile as the pre-placed city. (Personally, I don't like to pre-place cities at all; rather, I only include them for image captures like the one you did and then delete them and rely on designated start locations before running the actual scenario in game. This avoids any potential bugs in cities not having the required buildings (palace?, etc.) or designations. As you've already stated, there are some quirky things about mods in CiV and I think this is an easy fix to avoid some.)

Additionally, I'm going to add some mountain tiles to the Maghreb (maybe a couple, one southwest of the nearby copper tile on the coast, and a couple south of those plains tiles?). Carthage needs some reason to utilize their UA, and unless they take over Vatican City and head north into Europe through the Alps... Just an idea. This does not hurt the map in expansion terms and provides a bit more interesting gameplay. After all this, I'll post the edited map I plan to play with and you can see my mountain additions there.

2. Songhai and Egypt: will need horses, I believe, for their UU. I'm not sure about Ethiopia, but unless both those civ's rush to Madagascar (which I'm also not sure why Uranium is there and not north of Cape Town somewhere...), they will be out of luck. And that's a lot for AI with no coastal start to research Optics early and settle far away... sorry, you get my point. I'll make some adjustments in my map (4-5 horses per civ who needs them, right?) and post.

3. Resources: in writing the above I realize you might want to add another mountain to represent Mt. Kilimanjaro (is that already a natural wonder? it should be, Firaxis...). If there is a Kilimanjaro, I'll place it southwest of the current mountain in middle Africa. If not, just another regular mountain tile there instead.

MIDDLE EAST:

Spoiler :

... looks great!

1. Arabia: well done. A la Madrid, I think you've got a great 2nd city location and strong resource placement available to nearby CS and civ. Losing those coastal mountain tiles on the Egyptian side is totally worth it for the peninsula's sake.

2. Jerusalem: See my Vatican City comments above. Great religious state with STRONG resources available (Mt. Sinai is a straight faith tile, I believe) which gives all civs early reason to friend or conquer. Moreover, as you have the city currently placed, it's Suez-utility makes it a crucial late game city, for obvious reasons. My only other suggestion would be to place a single source of Uranium on Jerusalem's city tile as an easter egg in the late game.

(Note: I'm not sure of the mechanics of passing THROUGH a friendly CS on a coastal bridge tile like that. My first play-test will be as the US---mostly to see how the rest of the world expands---and I'll try out a Jerusalem friendly approach to see if this works. Either way, it's a great fit; glad to see it included.)

ASIA/PACIFIC:

Spoiler :

This is where the expansion is move variable, I'd assume. It's hard to have many comments without at least play-testing it once, but here you go.

1. Mongolia: Looks good. I'd include at least one lake (coast) tile nearby (the grassland tile NW of the capital?) to represent lake Bikal (historically significant). This also provides some fresh water in the area without requiring a river, which helps in Ghengis' road-less troop movement (look out China...). Otherwise, your nearby mountain placement looks good to direct city settlement and conflict.

2. Persia/India: I'd be very interested to see how nicely Persia and India play together now that they are closer and there is even less of a natural defense boundary (at least compared to Europe). The difference here is that there is additional room to expand for each civ in the other direction, respectively.

3. The Non-Siam: I agree with your using CSs instead of Siam in SE Asia as this provides more flavor for CSs in what could (probably already is) a fairly crowded map. As a player, I think it's very interesting. For example, as England, I'd build up my fleet and test out G+K naval combat to conquer/colonize much of South & SE Asia and Australia. Makes for a fun map that still holds up to some realism without a ton of extra effort.

4. Pacific: I initially moved Jakarta to the west (realistic location) in order to open up those islands a bit for Polynesia and Japan. I'd be interested to see how the AI approaches this region. It'd be great if Polynesia ends up colonizing a bit of Australia as well. I did make the Hawaiian islands Asian "continent" tiles, if that makes any difference to AI (though I think it's really just a graphical adjustment).

In sum, at my next opportunity I'll make the adjustments I note above to the DLC map (i.e. Inca/Polynesia/Vatican City) and post them here for your review. I'll also play-test as USA to report how my changes play out.
Thanks again for a great map.

 

[bwoww78]

Attached is the edits I made to the map encompassing my last post with some additional. See change log below:

Spoiler :

NORTH AMERICA:
- Removed any culture on WB map by selecting "Paint" tab in Map Editor tools... Brush Type "Culture Border"... Drop-down menu selection "No Culture". This is fairly simple and is required for some reason every time you add and then remove a city from the map in WB.
- Added Uranium (3) to plot (5, 44) in Alaska per rationale above.
- Moved Cahokia start position to plot (13, 35) along Mississippi per rationale above.
- Relocated 2 natural wonders; resulted as follows: Old Faithful plot (12,36), Grand Mesa plot (11,34), and Barringer Crater plot (10,34).
- Added Fish resource near New England coast, plot (23,38)
- Relocated Mayan start position to plot (15, 26), in Yucatan peninsula; changed tile from flat terrain to hill.
- Added Atoll features to plots (22, 25) (22, 26) to reflect smaller Caribbean islands.

SOUTH AMERICA:
- Relocated Incan start position to plot (19, 17) away from coast and north of Lake Titicaca; as a result swapped existing Gold resource on that tile to plot (19,15), Inca's previous start position. Rationale here is both historial accuracy of Cusco's location and Incan ability to settle further along coast at start and expand borders beyond mountain range easier from the interior position.

EUROPE:
- Swapped English channel luxury resources from plots (35, 39) (36, 40) to plots (32, 41) (33, 42) per rationale above.

AFRICA:
- Added mountains to plots (33, 28) (36, 28) (36, 27) (38, 26) and hills to (32, 27) per rationale above (based on google maps view). Unfortunately, there is no Mt. Kilimanjaro feature, so I left that region alone.
- Replaced jungle feature and changed grassland to plains on plot (36, 24) NW of Gao to provide 5 Horses to Songhai.
- Note: I don't believe that Egypt needs horses for War Chariot UU. Not totally sure though.
- Added 2 Uranium resource to plot (40,11) north of Cape Town for flavor.

MIDDLE EAST:
- Added 1 Uranium to Jerusalem's start position for flavor.

ASIA/PACIFIC:
- Changed plot (62, 43), north of Karakarum from hills to lake (coast) to reflect Lake Bikal north of Mongolia.
- Added Atoll feature to plots (68, 23) (68, 21) to reflect Philippines islands more accurately.

This is the map I will use to play-test as indicated. Thanks again for considering my input, hopefully I haven't worn out my welcome.


(P.S. You might want to double check all of the WB files that the Team # for each Civ & CS are not shared by accident. This is not handled very well by WB when you add/subtract civs and may or may not cause problems for users down the line. I always double-check before starting a scenario just in abundance of caution.)

 

[Veneke]

Feedback is always welcome. Worst thing to happen here would be a lack of commentary, not an over-abudnance of it!

N. America:

Spoiler :

1. Well, there is already Uranium out in Alaska. Originally the Uranium in Onondaga's starting position was several tiles north surrounded by snow and ice, however, I felt that the Iroquois would settle there anyway and given how poor the Canadian terrain is I didn't want to overburden the Iroquois with another equally useless city.

2. Fair enough, those are easy changes and I don't think they'll affect the AIs settlement pattern anymore than the existing ones already do. I'm against the inclusion of FoY though, it's still very OP'd.

3. (a) At the moment I'm hoping that Cahokia will serve as a buffer state between Washington and the Iroquois. I considered moving it from the initial location but decided against on the grounds that it would cut into the number of available city spots in America. If it's moved to the position you suggest you'll prevent cities from being settled in much of the southern United States/northern Mexico and it will force the Aztecs/Mayans to expand south unless they take a trip across to the west coast of the US or head east to Florida.

3. (b) Moving the Mayans is not a bad move.

4. Fair warning received. I followed the placement in the map file you attached. If the AI follows river tiles too strongly then we might consider moving Quebec 1 tile NW and moving the Furs there to Quebec's current starting position. That should prevent the city state from wrapping up all the river tiles before anyone can settle in NY.

S. America:

Spoiler :

This is always a problem with the Inca and one without a very good solution, especially now that settlers do not require transports to go across water. Once the Inca get Compass all bets are off.

The issue, of course, is that even removing the Inca doesn't actually solve the problem as the Aztecs/Mayans will simply expand into where the Inca would have expanded anyway. It might be that a number of Fish are removed from the Incas landlocked terrain to prevent food growth and hopefully slow their science rate, but ultimately it's going to be very difficult to prevent the Inca from running rampant in S. America provided their AI is even remotely competent (it may be that the XML files are toyed with to tone down their expansionistic preferences, though I would dearly love to avoid doing anything like that).

You don't mention moving the Incan starting position here but it's in the changelog. One of the reasons why I kept Cusco on the coast was to prevent its culture growth from giving it good food tiles for some time. In the new position it has 11 good food tiles which will, I fear, make it more likely to do well and do well early.

Europe:

Spoiler :

1. England: Well, if London is kept in the position I have it, England will always get those luxuries and at least one English Channel tile. Obviously if you move London north then yes, you'd have to move the luxuries as well.

2. (a) Yeah, Berlin is rather exposed and the marshes help with that. It also (in Vanilla) helped the Germany AI settle there quickly, which gave them Prussia (kinda) on the coast. They used to settle on that forested tile between the marshes and the Cows to the NW. Unfortunately my first play-test saw Hamburg being settled in the dead centre of Eastern Europe 1 tile NE of the oil. This though has the nice benefit of leaving St. Petersburg open to Russia. I think a few more run-throughs are necessary before anything is altered here.

2. (b) As such, there is a site for St. Petersburg on the coast, it's just the same as the Prussian one! As for Russia's settlement - yes, there are 4-6 reasonable to good settlement spots for Russia before it has to consider moving into Siberia. There is very little to be done about the AI unless the XML files are played with to encourage expansion but short of concentrating resources so that there is one and only one best settlement spot for a decent area we're going to have to take a gamble on the AI.

3. This was an inspired suggestion, no doubt about it.

Africa:

Spoiler :

1. (a) Yeah, the current version now uses starting positions for all Civs and City-States. The initial ones didn't and it wasn't until just before the previous release that I realized that the CSs were all missing Palaces! This is also why there is still some left-over culture for some City State starting locations.

1. (b) Adding in some mountain tiles? Sure and you're right, it does mean that Carthage gets to use its UA which is kinda important.

2. Well, Egypt doesn't need Horses (the War Chariot is a resource-less UU). Songhai does and I think they were removed duing the initial update for G&K which didn't have Songhai in it. That'll be fixed.

2. (b) I initially had Uranium both north of Cape Town and in Madagascar but dropped the north of Cape Town Uranium on the basis of removing Uranium from Africa which I felt was generally too easy to acquire. It was kept in Madagascar because that required a deliberate move to settle like almost every other Uranium tile.

3. Unfortunately Mt. Kilimanjaro is not a natural wonder; who can fathom the selection criteria for these things?

Middle East:

Spoiler :

1. I must admit that I'm very happy with how the Saudi Arabian penisula turned out. I still think there'll be a problem with Arabia's culture grabbing those desert hills in Egypt but I've done my best with resource placement to delay that as long as possible.

2. A single source? Yeah, that would be a nice twist. Added. Unfortunately you can't pass through it unless you conquer the city. It's still the best solution to the Suez issue (in my previous playthroughs the Egyptian AI stubbornly refused to settle for a Suez). You'll also have the problem of Arabian culture blocking your movement but there's only so much that can be done about that on this size a map.

Asia/Pacific:

Spoiler :

1. Good catch, completely forgot about Bikal - added.

2. I'm more worried about Persia than India, frankly. It has a significantly worse starting position than India and it's second city spot, if it misses Iraq, is pretty poor. What I suspect will happen is that if Persia doesn't conquer early it's not going to do very well.

3. Yep.

4. I am almost 100% positive that it is a graphical thing, but we should compare expansion patterns after a few play-throughs and see if it makes any difference. I haven't tried the DLC map properly yet, but I'd be somewhat concerned if the Polynesian AI didn't go for SEA or Australia. If it moves to America in the earlyish game consistently it's going to stunt its growth and something will have to be done about that. As it stands, the Silk in Asia is 1 tile closer than the Salt in Western US but if it's scout heads East then all bets are off.

Will double-check the team # but I believe that they're all good.

Let me know how your playthrough goes.