Volman.me, I am very impressed about your gigantic world map.
In many parts it is reminding me to
Blue Monkey´s project of a Full Earth Map, With Areas "Resized" To Maximize Game Play, that unfortunately was lost in a computer crash.
When having a first look at the grand shape of your map, focusing on game play and not on the very correct dimensions of geography, I have to say that I like the "great proportions" a lot.
Here are some interesting distances about Europe (the most problematic continent in Civ 3 considering gameplay) in your map, compared to distances in other big maps I am using at present. These distances are taken by x-tiles between the European capitals of London and Berlin to Moscow. For Moscow it must be taken into account that it is placed much to far in the east on your map (east of the Caspian Sea) and the comparison must be taken with the fixed coordinates (for London and Berlin one could only discuss about changing the location for about one tile):
Your Monster Map:
London x=243, Berlin x= 271; Moscow x= 325 (fixed from 344)
WW2 Global Gold map with enlarged Europe by Rocoteh and Celku (slightly changed by me): 362 x 306
London x=179, Berlin x=197, Moscow x=225
SOE-Map (only Europe and parts of North Africa and parts of the Atlantic): 254 x190
London x= 72, Berlin x=102, Moscow x=154
So the distances between those capitals are:
Monster Map: London - Moscow: 82 x-tiles, Berlin - Moscow: 54 x-tiles
WW2 Global Map: London - Moscow: 46 x-tiles, Berlin - Moscow: 28 x-tiles
SOE-Map: London - Moscow: 82 x-tiles, Berlin - Moscow: 52 x-tiles
The astonishing fact is, that the monster map for European regions "north of the Alpes" offers nearly the same space as the SOE map (that is limited only to a small part of the world) and therefore for this region could be a good help to place cities, landscape and rivers on the Monster Map - and VoIman.me, your map in this region offers nearly twice the place of the current known big worldmaps with an enlarged Europe.
South of the Alpes the situation changes. Here the y-tiles for the size of Italy and Greece are of special interest (the SOE map here is not helpful, as it holds quite different dimensions):
Italy Monstermap: y91 - y114 => y23
Greece Monstermap: y107 - y123 => y16
Italy WW2 Global map: y-size = y20
Greece WW2 Global map: y-size = y11
So here the WW2 Global map could be more helpful to place cities, landscape and rivers on the Monster Map.
I have only two complaints about the "grand shape" of the Monster Map:
What in any way should be fixed on your map is to create a sea path to the cities Murmansk and Archangelsk. And it is a pity, that the Dutch don´t have the correct place on the map that they need. Giving them some more tiles between Germany and France would be great, as the Dutch were a great civ in history that should not be replaced by Poland (for Poland there is enough place at the Dutch starting location and I would like to add the Dutch and Poland to a future CCM world map). I am aware that you posted an early version of your wonderful map (with some not fitting starting locations for C3C Vanilla) and I appreciate this, as it allows us to give you some input to your great work.
VoIman.me, I don´t have very much experience in creating maps (the biggest modding work here I did, was cutting out the east coast of the US and adding space including the Caspian Sea up to the east of the SOE map), but these would be my next steps in improving the Monster Map:
1. Create a naval passage north to Scandinavia to reach the harbors of Murmansk and Archangelsk.
2. Set cities as coordinates for forming the landscape and the rivers of your map. Here the WW2 Global map can be helpful and for the region of Northern Europe the SOE map.
3. For placing resources on the map, Wolfshade´s big worldmap can be very helpful. The resources placement of this map is based on the Oxford university atlas with some minor changes made for gameplay purposes (please don´t do the settings of navigable rivers of that map for optical reasons). The number of resources of the RARR 180x180 map done by Kal-El are for a game with only 24 civs, not for 31 civs.
For your general thought about a combination of your world map with the RARR mod, you will receive any support you need by me. The civs of the RARR mod in my eyes are a little better suited for a world map (more civs in America) compared to the civs of CCM. On the other side your map could be very suited as a world map for the CCM mod (and many others), too. For a combination with the RARR mod, the range of the RARR should be enlarged to the greater range of the CCM aircraft. In general CCM is concepted for games on bigger maps as it is the case for RARR.
VoIman.me, thank you very much for sharing your great work!
We live in an exciting time for modding Civ 3.
