The Monstrosity - Earth map 500x262 & The Monstrosity - Marathon edition

[Volman.me]

OK boys, let talk.

I updated the map, but its not playable yet.

I take into consideration real data. That's what works best.

Quintillus made the hardest recommendations for designing the map.

He said that design choices must be based on real maps.

I tried to use google maps for everything and after extensive testing (remember I am not a modder and I had to gain some experience) I concluded that the current design of the map did not work as I imagined.

So, after some research I found the following:

I design rivers based on this wiki entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_river_systems_by_length

Mountains and hills is based on this app: https://peakery.com/map

[Edited 14/7]
Mountains and hills (second source) is based on this app: https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/map-w5vdnx/River/?center=58.70739,9.71727&zoom=7

Volcanos are based on this #1: https://thegeographyteacher.com/famous-volcanoes/ and this #2: https://clachliath.com/top-50-most-prominent-volcanoes-in-the-world/

[Edited 9/7]
Deserts are based on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deserts_by_area

Currently I finished Volcanoes placement and half of the rivers.

Mountains and hills on Europe are good, but the rest of the world needs adjustments. When I originally was designing the map I was using google so, there are a lot of corrections to be made.

The final part of placing resources and forests is very easy (it will take under 4 hours so, if everything else is good I guarantee same day release).

Forest will be placed based on google maps.

Luxury resources will be placed based on specific locations. For example wine cannot be placed on Middle East.

Using this kind of luxury distribution motivates civs to exchange goods or start wars for getting there luxury resources so you can have more money.

Its the kind of resource that its not imperative for the civ to grow, just a nice bonus if you have it.

That is not the case with strategic resources.

These puppies will be evenly distributed.

That way I guarantee that each civ has the same probabilities to win the game.

Finally, the design of plain terrain is currently in development.

My idea is if the location is too cold or too hot, no river passes by or for any reason the food production cannot be as rich as grassland, plain terrain will be used.

My guide map will be google maps.

I will need some feedback after the next update where I would have included all rivers and all mountains. That will be after a week.

 

[timerover51]

I have looked at your map for civilization location, and see that you have some of the marked, but the victory point locations do not coincide with the starting points. Would you like me to place the starting locations as accurately as I can, in some cases with additional terrain features and then post it here for you to download?

 

[Volman.me]

I have looked at your map for civilization location, and see that you have some of the marked, but the victory point locations do not coincide with the starting points. Would you like me to place the starting locations as accurately as I can, in some cases with additional terrain features and then post it here for you to download?

I just posted an update with latest changes. Use that map.

Do not touch terrain.

I already made some changes to starting locations, but I could use some help on this matter.

Also I need some help on victory locations. I don't know where to place them.

Your help comes on perfect time since I am going to release the map on this weekend.

After the initial release of the map, I could use some feedback from the community so to make the map even better.

 

[Civinator]

Also I need some help on victory locations. I don't know where to place them.

For what use do you want to place victory locations? For supply shipments in RARR or CCM 3 they are not needed.

 

[Volman.me]

For what use do you want to place victory locations? For supply shipments in RARR or CCM 3 they are not needed.

For supply shipments.

If they are not needed I will remove them, if there is no other use for them.

If no victory locations exist, where does the supply shipment have to be delivered?

And another question:

If I want to make this map compatible for RARR, what file do I have to use? RARR1.7 or RARR1.7-extended?

 

[Civinator]

If no victory locations exist, where does the supply shipment have to be delivered?

They must be escorted to the capital.

There are two methods to set supply shipments, caravans and so on to work.

a) The reverse capture the flag setting: Here victory points are needed. If you use this methode, normally the victory points are set next to the capitals. A prominent scenario that uses this methode is AOI.

b) The capture the princess setting: Here the supply shipment must be escorted directly into the capital. No victory points are needed. This setting per example is used in the mods CCM and RARR.

If I want to make this map compatible for RARR, what file do I have to use? RARR1.7 or RARR1.7-extended?

This should not be a big problem for creating your map, as the main diverence is the number of turns that such a game will last.

Btw.: RARR 1.9 is still in the works. Here, as with several other mods and scenarios I had a setback in my work, thanks to Win 11 and its new ###! editor that replaces the good old working wordpad, destroying many text files of my mods and scenarios, among them RARR 1.9.

 

[Volman.me]

They must be escorted to the capital.

There are two methods to set supply shipments, caravans and so on to work.

a) The reverse capture the flag setting: Here victory points are needed. If you use this methode, normally the victory points are set next to the capitals. A prominent scenario that uses this methode is AOI.

b) The capture the princess setting: Here the supply shipment must be escorted directly into the capital. No victory points are needed. This setting per example is used in the mods CCM and RARR.

This should not be a big problem for creating your map, as the main diverence is the number of turns that such a game will last.

Btw.: RARR 1.9 is still in the works. Here, as with several other mods and scenarios I had a setback in my work, thanks to Win 11 and its new ###! editor that replaces the good old working wordpad, destroying many text files of my mods and scenarios, among them RARR 1.9.

Friend, Notepad++ is the best free editor.

I never use microsoft crap.

I hope you come back strong from this disaster.

Thank for the info on supply shipments and the difference of RARR files.

We will talk more after I release the map.

 

[Civinator]

Friend, Notepad++ is the best free editor.
I never use microsoft crap.

In the past decades wordpad from MS worked very well in editing Civ 3 texts. I don´t know why MS took wordpad down and replaced it with such a garbage of an editor.

 

[timerover51]

I just posted an update with latest changes. Use that map.

Do not touch terrain.

I already made some changes to starting locations, but I could use some help on this matter.

Also I need some help on victory locations. I don't know where to place them.

Your help comes on perfect time since I am going to release the map on this weekend.

After the initial release of the map, I could use some feedback from the community so to make the map even better.

I downloaded your newest map, and I have placed as correctly as possible the starting points for each civilization. I am running into a problem when I run the map to check the starting locations. The problem concerns the Hittites and the Ottoman Turks. I have located the Hittites starting location in the middle of Asia Minor where they were historically, and not on the coast as you placed them. I located the Ottoman Turks just north of the Caucasus Mountains, where the Seljuk Turks apparently originated, who were the predecessors of the Ottomans. When I run the game, unless I play the Ottoman Turks and their starting location is correct, their starting location is moved into the middle of Asia Minor. This places them right next to the Hittites, if the Hittites appear in the correct spot. Part of the time, the Hittites are appearing on the west coast of Africa, where there are no starting locations. I cannot determine if this is a bug in the map, or my game. I am running the Civilization 3 Complete disc in my IBM laptop running Windows XP. I have not had this problem previously. If you wish, I will load the map here, and see if anyone else has the problem.

 

[Volman.me]

I downloaded your newest map, and I have placed as correctly as possible the starting points for each civilization. I am running into a problem when I run the map to check the starting locations. The problem concerns the Hittites and the Ottoman Turks. I have located the Hittites starting location in the middle of Asia Minor where they were historically, and not on the coast as you placed them. I located the Ottoman Turks just north of the Caucasus Mountains, where the Seljuk Turks apparently originated, who were the predecessors of the Ottomans. When I run the game, unless I play the Ottoman Turks and their starting location is correct, their starting location is moved into the middle of Asia Minor. This places them right next to the Hittites, if the Hittites appear in the correct spot. Part of the time, the Hittites are appearing on the west coast of Africa, where there are no starting locations. I cannot determine if this is a bug in the map, or my game. I am running the Civilization 3 Complete disc in my IBM laptop running Windows XP. I have not had this problem previously. If you wish, I will load the map here, and see if anyone else has the problem.

Don't worry.

If, for some reason the civilization cannot grow, the capital is disbanded and located somewhere else.

When I was making changes and improvements on the map, at the beginning of my modding journey, I faced the problem you just described.

That's why I make special changes on every capital so to have enough resources and grow naturally.

When I finalize the map and add resources, that problem will be gone.

Thanks for the help.

 

[timerover51]

Attached is the Monstrosity biq with the updated starting points for the 31 civilizations. I have placed them as accurately as I could based on historical locations. The main exception would the Celts, who start in Ireland. I have added a couple of rivers where the rivers figured in the location of the capital. This is mainly for London and Washington, D.C. I have not added anything else in terms of terrain. Some of the starting points, like for Spain and Portugal, and the Middle East civilizations are pretty close to each other, so you might want to take that into consideration when playing the completed scenario. There is a bug with the Hittites and the Ottoman Turks that I have not figured out, but will allow Volman to work on it. The finished map should be interesting to play on.

 

[Volman.me]

I imported starting locations. Looks good.

Nice recommendation for London and Washington for rivers placement. I will examine the locations on google maps and I will probably add some rivers.

I already placed rivers properly on Berlin and Paris (because I new they had near them) and looks very nice.

I will remove victory point locations, since civinator pointed out that supply cargos can land on capitals.

I think that was the only useful reason these things exist.

Already started fixing rivers and adding hills and fixing plains/grassland ratio.

I will have something on Sunday. Maybe with resources and forests allocated, maybe not, we will see.

The main point is in a few days this map will be done. That means RARR, I am finally coming to you.

 

[Civinator]

That means RARR, I am finally coming to you.

In that case the map should have the starting locations of the RARR civs. These are not always identical with the starting locations of the standard epic game.

And a thought from my efforts about a 362 x 306 worldmap: The 512 cities limit of Civ 3 makes big parts of precious land terrain not be covered by cities, if the normal mechanism of Civ 3 settlement is used with such a big map. Reserve the marsh terrain to be the only terrain that can be settled and mark the locations of cities with a tile with that marsh terrain. The AI settlers will find that city locations. Marsh terrain can be set to transparency and the single tiles can be marked with different settlement resources.

Why marsh terrain? Because it changes to grassland terrain when being settled and when not being settled, it can be covered with a very high level of disease to stop the reservating of those city locations by military units of some civs.

 

[Volman.me]

In that case the map should have the starting locations of the RARR civs. These are not always identical with the starting locations of the standard epic game.

And a thought from my efforts about a 362 x 306 worldmap: The 512 cities limit of Civ 3 makes big parts of precious land terrain not be covered by cities, if the normal mechanism of Civ 3 settlement is used with such a big map. Reserve the marsh terrain to be the only terrain that can be settled and mark the locations of cities with a tile with that marsh terrain. The AI settlers will find that city locations.

Why marsh terrain? Because it changes to grassland terrain when being settled and when not being settled, it can be covered with a very high level of disease to stop the reservating of those city locations by military units of some civs.

I remember there are some different civs on RARR, and some vanilla civs are deleted. I will properly make changes to these civs.

I don't get your point for marsh terrain.

[Edit] You probably referring to some specific issue with RARR, which I don't know yet. I have not examine RARR files in depth. We will talk again when I know more.

I don't touch game rules. I work only on the map.

Marsh terrain will be located, by 90% chance, next to rivers on tropical climate. That means Amazon river and their near by rivers, South Africa (Zulus and the area South West that have some jungles) and South Asia (India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, etc). Also on areas with many lakes (like North America, South East of Canada)

I like to see images to talk about and understand better your point, so, you will tell me more about marsh when I place resources.

The general rule, which is extremely easy and very fast process to implement, is this:

Resources will be placed every 2 or 3 tiles. What resource (bonus, luxury or strategic) will be placed depends on location and luck.

I have created a google sheet that gives the exact number of each resource to be placed. I will share this google sheet when I am done.

Forest, jungle and marsh will be placed according to google earth. Especially jungle and marsh will be located at the places described above.

The difficult task I am doing right now is placing hills and mountains based on the websites I mentioned above. Hills and mountains must work together with rivers and proper adjustments must be made, especially to rivers.

When I am done we will have something to see to talk about.

 

[Civinator]

I don't get your point for marsh terrain.

On big maps the AI settles in clusters, meaning big parts of the map where cities should be, will never hold cities when the 512 city limit of Civ 3 is reached. This problem can be solved, when settling is no longer allowed on nearly every kind of terrain (even with forbiding settling only on mountain-, desert- und tundra terrain). Much better for big maps is to allow settling only on one kind of terrain and the best suited terrain for this job is marsh terrain. So don´t use this as a terrain where marshes are on planet earth, but use it for certain tiles where cities should be founded.

Per example each tile in my screenshot above where you can see city resources, is marsh terrain, renamed to city location terrain.

 

[Volman.me]

On big maps the AI settles in clusters, meaning big parts of the map where cities should be, will never hold cities when the 512 city limit of Civ 3 is reached. This problem can be solved, when settling is no longer allowed on nearly every kind of terrain (even with forbiding settling only on mountain-, desert- und tundra terrain). Much better for big maps is to allow settling only on one kind of terrain and the best suited terrain for this job is marsh terrain. So don´t use this as a terrain where marshes are on planet earth, but use it for certain tiles where cities should be founded.

Per example each tile in my screenshot above where you can see city resources, is marsh terrain, renamed to city location terrain.

Ok, I get it now.

So you basically say not to use marsh terrain on the map and later on you will use it only for possible city formation spots as you see fit?

 

[Civinator]

Ok, I get it now.

So you basically say not to use marsh terrain on the map and later on you will use it only for possible city formation spots as you see fit?

Yes, it is needed on such big maps if you have no preplaced cities on it. With 512 preplaced cities on the map of course such a setting is not needed.