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

[timerover51]

@Quintillus I benchmarked the map and when the city limit reached, it took 20 seconds each turn to play.

I own a 9900K @ 5 GHz.

Since the limit reached after about 150 turns, I presume after 300 turns where civs will have a lot more units the time for each turn will be 40 sec max.

Anyhow, you need a very fast cpu with top of the line single thread performance.

That pretty much rules me out for playing the map except for a small number of civilizations, with maybe restricting the number of settlers by having the Palace auto-produce every few turns. Given my enhanced Barbarians, that should serve to keep the number of cities down. i have had some of the scenarios take over 5 minutes for a turn, at which point I stop playing them and delete the save.

When you make a monster map, have some consideration for those of us who do not have the latest and greatest computers to play on. I will try to see how it works with a few civilizations. like maybe 6 or so. I have already been changing the starting locations into something more reasonable and accurate.

 

[Volman.me]

That pretty much rules me out for playing the map except for a small number of civilizations, with maybe restricting the number of settlers by having the Palace auto-produce every few turns. Given my enhanced Barbarians, that should serve to keep the number of cities down. i have had some of the scenarios take over 5 minutes for a turn, at which point I stop playing them and delete the save.

When you make a monster map, have some consideration for those of us who do not have the latest and greatest computers to play on. I will try to see how it works with a few civilizations. like maybe 6 or so. I have already been changing the starting locations into something more reasonable and accurate.

Well friend, I have more bad news for you.
When epic battles start, and I am talking about 150 units stacked all over the place, that time can easily reach 2-3 minutes on my cpu.
It's not happening all the time, but it happens.
Try less civs.
Sooner or later the city limit will be reached and some of the civs will have a hundreds of units that will make war with somebody and then, for some turns you will have to wait for a few minutes.
Playing this map needs a good single threaded cpu and a lot of time and I cannot do anything about it.

 

[timerover51]

I will go with restricting settlers and a very small number of civilizations then, and give thought to having a fair amount of terrain unbuildable for cities.

 

[Razuka]

Almost 20 years ago I had a weak PC, like Celeron-433 / 128 Mb.
I was making the largest possible map with the maximum number of civilizations in the editor.
And yes... While waiting for my turn, I read books, did household chores and walked the dog
But I still seem to remember the epic battles on Pangaea. A long wait (sometimes for 20 minutes or more) did not spoil my game - it was something like playing chess by correspondence.

 

[Volman.me]

Almost 20 years ago I had a weak PC, like Celeron-433 / 128 Mb.
I was making the largest possible map with the maximum number of civilizations in the editor.
And yes... While waiting for my turn, I read books, did household chores and walked the dog
But I still seem to remember the epic battles on Pangaea. A long wait (sometimes for 20 minutes or more) did not spoil my game - it was something like playing chess by correspondence.

Using this logic, but no 20 minutes wait (but less), I have a small treat for you in a few weeks.
I don't want to publish it now because I beta test it for a full month (more than 100 hours) and I want to see if things work properly.

 

[timerover51]

After spending more time looking your map over, it would appear that aside from a two tile grassland island, which is presumably supposed to represent the Hawaiian Island chain, you have ignored all of the other islands in the Central and South Pacific. I am certain that the New Zealanders are excited to know that their two islands are completely grass tiles, with no trace of any mountains or even hills. Alaska and the Pacific Northwest no one gets right, so you are excused there.

In the Atlantic, aside from an odd-looking Iceland with no volcanoes, and what might be a few tiles representing the Falklands, you have no other island. This leaves out the Azores, Madeira, the Canary Island, the Cape Verde Islands, Ascension Island, and St. Helena.

There are serious problems with vegetation on the map. There was a very good reason that the area between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains was called the Great Plains and the Great American Desert. I am certain that the inhabitants of Arabia and the North Africa Mediterranean coast are quite pleased that the areas have quite a lot of forests. The Sinai Peninsula also is nice and flat, with many tiles of forests, while Israel is a nice flat plain, making it great tank county.

Overall, I am trying to decide whether it is worth the effort to clean up the map to my satisfaction, knowing that it is designed to only be used by the newest and fastest computers, which I do not have and definitely will not be getting. I have enough problems playing on maps of 256 X 256 size, with no more than 6 or 7 civilizations.

 

[Volman.me]

After spending more time looking your map over, it would appear that aside from a two tile grassland island, which is presumably supposed to represent the Hawaiian Island chain, you have ignored all of the other islands in the Central and South Pacific. I am certain that the New Zealanders are excited to know that their two islands are completely grass tiles, with no trace of any mountains or even hills. Alaska and the Pacific Northwest no one gets right, so you are excused there.

In the Atlantic, aside from an odd-looking Iceland with no volcanoes, and what might be a few tiles representing the Falklands, you have no other island. This leaves out the Azores, Madeira, the Canary Island, the Cape Verde Islands, Ascension Island, and St. Helena.

There are serious problems with vegetation on the map. There was a very good reason that the area between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains was called the Great Plains and the Great American Desert. I am certain that the inhabitants of Arabia and the North Africa Mediterranean coast are quite pleased that the areas have quite a lot of forests. The Sinai Peninsula also is nice and flat, with many tiles of forests, while Israel is a nice flat plain, making it great tank county.

Overall, I am trying to decide whether it is worth the effort to clean up the map to my satisfaction, knowing that it is designed to only be used by the newest and fastest computers, which I do not have and definitely will not be getting. I have enough problems playing on maps of 256 X 256 size, with no more than 6 or 7 civilizations.

There will be an update in a few weeks.
You are correct for the issues you said, and there will be even more small corrections I have to make.
You can wait for the update in a few weeks.
Since I have zero modding experience in creating a map, I had to playtest first before make any corrections.

 

[timerover51]

There will be an update in a few weeks.
You are correct for the issues you said, and there will be even more small corrections I have to make.
You can wait for the update in a few weeks.
Since I have zero modding experience in creating a map, I had to playtest first before make any corrections.

i will not trouble you again.

 

[Beechnut]

Fantastic map! Can you tell me how you got the editor to make the with greater than 362? I think your Earth is something like 500 across. I'd like to be able to make larger maps too.

 

[Volman.me]

Fantastic map! Can you tell me how you got the editor to make the with greater than 362? I think your Earth is something like 500 across. I'd like to be able to make larger maps too.

There is a custom editor called Quillus editor that allows you to do whatever you want.

That's how I created the custom size of 500x262.

This editor, that I actually call it piece of perfection, allows you to adjust manually almost everything.

The map size must be 65K tiles in total.

That means that you cannot create larger map than this one.

You can adjust width and height, but overall you cannot create a bigger one.

There are a few topics on this matter explaining everything. Google is your friend.

 

[timerover51]

Fantastic map! Can you tell me how you got the editor to make the with greater than 362? I think your Earth is something like 500 across. I'd like to be able to make larger maps too.

Quintillus' Cross-Platform Editor can be found here.

Cross-Platform Editor for Conquests now available!

Welcome to the Cross-Platform Editor thread! This editor allows you to do nearly everything you can do with the Firaxis editor, and runs on Windows (XP+), Linux, and Intel Macs (sorry, no Apple Silicon support). Specialty builds support PowerPC Macs, Windows 95 through ME/2000, and Haiku...

forums.civfanatics.com

 

[Civinator]

There will be an update in a few weeks.

VoIman.me, are you still working on that very interesting map? If you do, can you please post a biq with the current state of your great map?

 

[Volman.me]

VoIman.me, are you still working on that very interesting map? If you do, can you please post a biq with the current state of your great map?

I will try this weekend to give what I have done so far.

I have not completed all changes. I have a lot work to do.

I have a deadline on a project I am working on for 4 months and I have to deliver by middle of February.

By the end of February I will start actively working again to complete it and enjoy the RAR magic playing on this map.

 

[Volman.me]

VoIman.me, are you still working on that very interesting map? If you do, can you please post a biq with the current state of your great map?

I just released an update on the map. Nothing important, just some more resources and a few fixes on terrain.

The important update will come on March.

I attached pictures from England, Japan and World at modern era when I play testing back on October.

The map works as I expected, when I look at Japan and England. Enough territory for them to expand and when I make this map compatible with RAR, these nations will be truly fearsome.

The 512 cities limitation is actually a good thing because the game is severely unoptimized for multicore systems.

Based on my experience (when play testing) and recommendations and ideas from members here, here is a TODO list:

- Add important islands
- Create important sea routes (North of Europe and maybe Alaska)
- Add more resources (specially iron, coal)
- Fix Mediterranean area (smaller islands and more empty space)
- Maybe move Black sea 1 or 2 tiles to East (under discussion)
- Add some tundra terrain at the North
- Add rivers ... a lot of them
- Fix forest locations
- Add more volcanoes

As far as grass tiles, the mod I just released, The Mostrosity - Marathon edition, give grasslands 2 food bonus instead of 1 when irrigated.

This is the reason I replaced a lot of grass lands in Europe with plain terrain. I treat grassland as a bonus tile, sort of.

But I will release another copy of this map as a resource for modders that follows a more conventional and standard approach which have grasslands at the center of Europe and even more tundra tiles as you and Quintillus suggested.

Any more suggestions and ideas are welcome.

I will start the development of this map by the end of February and on March I will deliver it.

I have enough experience to know what exactly have to do since I extensively play tested.

 

[Volman.me]

I just released a small mod based on this map, but it's actually a way of playing the game very very slowly.

The mod is located here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/the-monstrocity-marathon-edition.30357/

I am interested on your thoughts people and I am also curious on how you play the game when you want to take it slow?

Any suggestions are welcome.

 

[timerover51]

I just released a small mod based on this map, but it's actually a way of playing the game very very slowly.

The mod is located here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/the-monstrocity-marathon-edition.30357/

I am interested on your thoughts people and I am also curious on how you play the game when you want to take it slow?

Any suggestions are welcome.

I downloaded the file and saved it. I then made some changes to it. As I could not locate India's starting position, I attempted to load the game. Conquests crashed loading the file. I then tried to load the unmodified file to locate India. The game again crashed loading the file. I am running the standard Civilizations Complete disc version of the game on a Windows laptop running Windows XP.

 

[Volman.me]

I downloaded the file and saved it. I then made some changes to it. As I could not locate India's starting position, I attempted to load the game. Conquests crashed loading the file. I then tried to load the unmodified file to locate India. The game again crashed loading the file. I am running the standard Civilizations Complete disc version of the game on a Windows laptop running Windows XP.

I double checked and works as intended.

I use windows 10 and the steam version of the game.

Try rebooting your pc.

India's starting location is located at the center of Indian peninsula.

 

[Volman.me]

Some interesting situations playing marathon edition:

- An elite defensive unit well placed, like on a hill or a mountain can defend against 1 or 2 generations more advanced weaponry.
For example, an elite spearman can defend well against medieval infantry and knights. Spearman has good chances to defend against cavalry, especially if it is placed on a mountain.

- Slaves is a must have resource for making your empire powerful. Even if they work 50% slower than a worker, they do not have supporting cost and you can have hundreds. You need a lot of them to build mines and especially railroads.

- War is a very profitable business. You can acquire slaves by enslaving enemies, capturing cities and disbanding buildings that give you gold and also specialize their population to taxman giving you extra gold. You also get any artillery units if you are lucky free of supporting cost.

- Even elite offensive units that are a generation (or 2) old can be used by attacking enemies in plains or grasslands after artillery bombard them to the reds. That way they have good chances or surviving and some chances to create a great person.

- There are 2 ways to conquer a city, the efficient way and the expensive way.
The efficient way gives you more chances to defend successfully the counter attack of the enemy.
The expensive way will make you loose the war.

- There are zero chances to win the war by attacking to everybody at the same time. The only way to win is by going to war 1 country at a time and after you made piece with strong neighbors (or give them a gift so they join the war against your enemies).

 

[timerover51]

I double checked and works as intended.

I use windows 10 and the steam version of the game.

Try rebooting your pc.

India's starting location is located at the center of Indian peninsula.

As the crash locked up the computer, I had to reboot both times following the crash.

 

[Volman.me]

As the crash locked up the computer, I had to reboot both times following the crash.

I don't have enough experience in problem solving in this game, I am a newbie in civ modding.

Can you load the mostrosity map, not the marathon edition?