Nikas Kunitz
Warlord
Some additional thing I want to say about the map.
As I remember there was discussion about expanding the region covered by the RFCE map to east, to include Armenia and Georgia, civs so beloved by Civ community. While the idea is not bad in itself, I think there are many complications with it.
There are certain "borders" between parts of the world that can be seen as dividing "historical spaces". Usually these borders are major geographic divides that usually weren't overcovered by a single political or cultural entity for long time. Some are the opposite - vast space that were covered by a single country only to become its deep hinterland with only occasional historical events of international significance taking place in it. (and these two types usually conflate with each other, and also shift, depending on historical period).
Creator of the map of RFCEurope identified such border well by cutting off eastern half of Eastern European plain, along with Middle East except Levant. As such, the map covers all of Mediterranean and most of Europe except hinterlands of Russia and sparsely populated northern half of Scandinavia. I found such dimension good (even though I live in part of Europe that got cut off) and used it in my map I presented here. By the way, bad (in my opinion) example of a map that doesn't follow such "historical spaces" is in SoI, where northwestern slice of India is brutally cut off throwing the rest away.
As you might had read, I also made expanded version of my map that covers all of Europe (I need to finalise it before posting). While projecting RFC gameplay on such expanded map I noted some complications that accompany obvious advantages of having entire Europe represented.
Returning to the "historical spaces and borders" I discussed above, if we need to represent all of Europe, eastern border of the map obviously should go as far as Ural mountains, to cover whole basin of Europe's longest and largest river, Volga, along with some other. Going south things become more interesting. Just "stiching" Caucasus with Armenia and Georgia to Europe is not as easy as it might sound. Expanding dimension of the map would require to add all of Mesopotamia, and with it, Iran, to get the countries Armenia and Georgia mainly interacted historically, being geographically in Asia, not Europe. As such, I identified another "historical space border" that runs around eastern border of Iran, separating it from Afghanistan and Central Asia, most notably by geography dominated here by deserts and mountains. Even though many empires, especially ancient ones, expanded across this "border", the two parts it separates clearly had different connections, with Iran being more interconnected with Mesopotamia and Caucasus than with Central Asia.
Using such full map of Europe will add around 10 more civs, not only Armenia and Georgia, but also including Sassanid Iran (that would be Byzantium-like civ with big developed empire at the start, being equal adversary to it), Khazaria, Volga Bulgaria, Arabia optimally would need to be divided into Rashidun/Ummayad Caliphate civ based in Syria and Abbasid civ based in Mesopotamia, also there should be atleast Persian Buyids for the "Iranian Intermezzo", and possible one-two more civs for that, then Greater Seljuk civ, and two Mongol civs of Ilkhanate/Ulus Hulagu in Iran and Golden Horde/Ulus Jochi in Volga region, and finally Safavid Iranian civ for the country that exists to this date. There also can be even few more civs.
New and some older civs would add around 50-100 more cities to the map (even though northern and north-eastern parts of Europe are supposed to be pretty much empty, being wild taiga and tundra). This all will load more processing resources, likely making late game hard to play, even if first half of the game would be more exciting with all the new civs.
But besides all mentioned above, the greatest issue I have with bigger map is balancing between historicity and playability of just one civ. Russia.
Even if around third of Russian territory is intended to be unsettled, Russia still is huge with tens of cities more than with the smaller map. The very balancing of the map becomes hard, as if we make all the territories intended to be settled atleast decent, then settling them will make Russia far, far overpowered (very basis of Civ comes evident here, more cities=more power, far more cities=far more power), but if we will make these territories lacklasting (just as around third of Russia already is!), there will no incentive to settle them at all. And that is not counting how to balance expansion, i.e. number and distance of the cities, itself, and also how tedious it will be to manage all of them for human player. Of course, Russia alternatively can stay in its historical core, in the center of the Eastern European plain, for whole game, but then any historicity blows away. Finally, with SO much land to expand in all directions Russia... will expand in all directions, getting solid basis by settling atleast part of it in any direction. What I mean is that there's little incentive for Russia to expand specifically westwards to get all of Old Rus, Ukraine and Belarus, fighting with Poland, Lithuania or whoever will be controlling it. Smaller map is much better for representing history, especially before XXth century, when WWII and rapid development made eastern half of European Russia much more historically relevant (it was important before that too, just not so much, while western regions of Russian Empire were relatively more important). In smaller map Russia starts in its historical core on the very eastern edge of the map that inevitably propels it to expand westwards.
Even if some other [realistic] map is made covering all of Europe and Iran (using different projection, for example), problem with huge Russia won't be fixed, as it still will be huge, even if with fewer cities. Alternatively, generally smaller map of full Europe can be made, fitting for playable Russia, but then it will make rest of Europe (Western, Central, Southern) much smaller, taking away so needed space (with civs and cities on it) to properly and interestingly represent European history. This all presupposes realistic proportions and geography, where Russia covers around half of Europe, but if some "warped" version of full Europe map is made, where Eastern Europe is significantly downsized, then any semblance of realism fades away. By the way, there's similar problem I found with huge China while making detailed realistic map of East Asia.
That is, a map with current dimensions, my or that of existing RFCE, is optimal for any RFC mod about Europe, while full map of Europe is practically impossible for that purpose.
As I remember there was discussion about expanding the region covered by the RFCE map to east, to include Armenia and Georgia, civs so beloved by Civ community. While the idea is not bad in itself, I think there are many complications with it.
There are certain "borders" between parts of the world that can be seen as dividing "historical spaces". Usually these borders are major geographic divides that usually weren't overcovered by a single political or cultural entity for long time. Some are the opposite - vast space that were covered by a single country only to become its deep hinterland with only occasional historical events of international significance taking place in it. (and these two types usually conflate with each other, and also shift, depending on historical period).
Creator of the map of RFCEurope identified such border well by cutting off eastern half of Eastern European plain, along with Middle East except Levant. As such, the map covers all of Mediterranean and most of Europe except hinterlands of Russia and sparsely populated northern half of Scandinavia. I found such dimension good (even though I live in part of Europe that got cut off) and used it in my map I presented here. By the way, bad (in my opinion) example of a map that doesn't follow such "historical spaces" is in SoI, where northwestern slice of India is brutally cut off throwing the rest away.
As you might had read, I also made expanded version of my map that covers all of Europe (I need to finalise it before posting). While projecting RFC gameplay on such expanded map I noted some complications that accompany obvious advantages of having entire Europe represented.
Spoiler :
Returning to the "historical spaces and borders" I discussed above, if we need to represent all of Europe, eastern border of the map obviously should go as far as Ural mountains, to cover whole basin of Europe's longest and largest river, Volga, along with some other. Going south things become more interesting. Just "stiching" Caucasus with Armenia and Georgia to Europe is not as easy as it might sound. Expanding dimension of the map would require to add all of Mesopotamia, and with it, Iran, to get the countries Armenia and Georgia mainly interacted historically, being geographically in Asia, not Europe. As such, I identified another "historical space border" that runs around eastern border of Iran, separating it from Afghanistan and Central Asia, most notably by geography dominated here by deserts and mountains. Even though many empires, especially ancient ones, expanded across this "border", the two parts it separates clearly had different connections, with Iran being more interconnected with Mesopotamia and Caucasus than with Central Asia.
Using such full map of Europe will add around 10 more civs, not only Armenia and Georgia, but also including Sassanid Iran (that would be Byzantium-like civ with big developed empire at the start, being equal adversary to it), Khazaria, Volga Bulgaria, Arabia optimally would need to be divided into Rashidun/Ummayad Caliphate civ based in Syria and Abbasid civ based in Mesopotamia, also there should be atleast Persian Buyids for the "Iranian Intermezzo", and possible one-two more civs for that, then Greater Seljuk civ, and two Mongol civs of Ilkhanate/Ulus Hulagu in Iran and Golden Horde/Ulus Jochi in Volga region, and finally Safavid Iranian civ for the country that exists to this date. There also can be even few more civs.
New and some older civs would add around 50-100 more cities to the map (even though northern and north-eastern parts of Europe are supposed to be pretty much empty, being wild taiga and tundra). This all will load more processing resources, likely making late game hard to play, even if first half of the game would be more exciting with all the new civs.
But besides all mentioned above, the greatest issue I have with bigger map is balancing between historicity and playability of just one civ. Russia.
Even if around third of Russian territory is intended to be unsettled, Russia still is huge with tens of cities more than with the smaller map. The very balancing of the map becomes hard, as if we make all the territories intended to be settled atleast decent, then settling them will make Russia far, far overpowered (very basis of Civ comes evident here, more cities=more power, far more cities=far more power), but if we will make these territories lacklasting (just as around third of Russia already is!), there will no incentive to settle them at all. And that is not counting how to balance expansion, i.e. number and distance of the cities, itself, and also how tedious it will be to manage all of them for human player. Of course, Russia alternatively can stay in its historical core, in the center of the Eastern European plain, for whole game, but then any historicity blows away. Finally, with SO much land to expand in all directions Russia... will expand in all directions, getting solid basis by settling atleast part of it in any direction. What I mean is that there's little incentive for Russia to expand specifically westwards to get all of Old Rus, Ukraine and Belarus, fighting with Poland, Lithuania or whoever will be controlling it. Smaller map is much better for representing history, especially before XXth century, when WWII and rapid development made eastern half of European Russia much more historically relevant (it was important before that too, just not so much, while western regions of Russian Empire were relatively more important). In smaller map Russia starts in its historical core on the very eastern edge of the map that inevitably propels it to expand westwards.
Even if some other [realistic] map is made covering all of Europe and Iran (using different projection, for example), problem with huge Russia won't be fixed, as it still will be huge, even if with fewer cities. Alternatively, generally smaller map of full Europe can be made, fitting for playable Russia, but then it will make rest of Europe (Western, Central, Southern) much smaller, taking away so needed space (with civs and cities on it) to properly and interestingly represent European history. This all presupposes realistic proportions and geography, where Russia covers around half of Europe, but if some "warped" version of full Europe map is made, where Eastern Europe is significantly downsized, then any semblance of realism fades away. By the way, there's similar problem I found with huge China while making detailed realistic map of East Asia.
That is, a map with current dimensions, my or that of existing RFCE, is optimal for any RFC mod about Europe, while full map of Europe is practically impossible for that purpose.
