Why does civ franchise not seem to care about TSL Earth maps?

[evonannoredars]

Not that long ago I started a game on a TSL Earth map in, I think Civ 6. But it may have been Civ 5, I can't remember now. But I started as Elizabeth 1st on a TSL Earth map.
It turned out that I was stuck on the tiny Island of Britain for many turns because I had to wait till I had researched Sailing before I could get my units across the channel and into Europe lol.
That's a downside of playing TSL as England.

Indonesia I believe has a two-tile island it starts on in Civ 6 TSL, although I suspect the winner of the worst TSL start competition could someday be (advanced start) Hawaii

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Indonesia I believe has a two-tile island it starts on in Civ 6 TSL, although I suspect the winner of the worst TSL start competition could someday be (advanced start) Hawaii

Indonesia could at least surround themselves with Kampungs. I would give it to Scotland in Civ 6 right now considering they start on the same island as England but don't get any inherit naval bonuses like they do.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

I don't think it's current absence is an indication they don't care about TSL maps - I think it's more likely that the opposite is true. Sure it doesn't seem to be a priority for them, but I imagine they want to give themselves sufficient time to do it well.

• How should the globe be divided into homelands/distant lands? Eg. Americas + Afroeurasia/Oceania, Americas/Oceania + Afroeurasia, or Americas + Afroeurasia + Oceania (which would probably some extra work to make possible)

Humankind map generation #1 bug is that you have to assign all landmasses to different continents.
The distant lands/homelands is a likely candidate for messing up the world builder the same way.

But really with cities that gets +6 borders and cant settle 1 tile away they should make the map 4 -6 times bigger than what it was civ III maps. So we are talking 1500x6000 hexes. Civ VI TSL map was an atrocity, unplayable. Impossible to border trespass. If the opposite is true it's been 20 years not been enough? It's not just proportions. A Snoop that could move 8 tiles per turn (8 nodes) would take 400 turns to make the trip around the world. A Modern Sea vessel could make 30 tiles (30 nodes) and would take 100 turns.

Earth circumference is 21.600 nautical miles, so it would be about 1/4 scale. Each tile equal 4 nautical miles.
AMD just reinvented VRAM wheel with tree generation also.... So massive forests and no stutter...

I played 1500x3000 mod Earth map in Civ III, with sea vessels moving FAST. It's an experience. 2X horizontal is BIG, but really it should be 3X or 4X for a TSL Earth. Random maps could be whatever in between. 1200X720, etc. The limit then was the Monitors resolution...
Now we have Ultra-Ultra Wide Monitors, the Whole map could be showed. They could double Mountains heights to 2 tiles, and it would be at scale with the Everest.

Distant Land should really be just Antarctica, literally a continent that wasn't on the map in Ancient times and then it appears out of nowhere... that's the only way it feels right for me... some penguins wouldn't be happy anyway, but relegating the Distant Land problem to Antarctica might be the only solution.

With 8 nodes Snoops or 4 nodes Scouts on sea kayak, it would literally take the whole play through just to make a round-trip, there would be no need for un-natural invisible barriers to exist. Transport Airplanes and Floating Palaces of modern Age (Canard), and later Mag rail would make everything work.

You need the basis for this to work. They paddled the opposite direction since civ V.


Here is HK TSL Earth map, which can be edited at will.

First img is Everest top left, and a +11 praire, about 2x a basic tile width in height.
Second img is Vesuvius Vulcano, the Alps looks like +5 height. They interchanged the Etna with the Vesuvius for proportions, and it's
like 8.000 mt in height, complete blown out proportions here but generally far more organic.

Except Italy is just one territory, then there is Sicily, Corse, and Sardinia on the other side, and you can build only one city per territory... good maps design but the 1 city x territory is just too terrible.

 

[Iceberg1er]

I find it interesting that for a game like civ that is all about building human civilizations that TSL Earth maps appear to be an after thought in almost every civ version. The default civ experience is a random map. Some civ games have provided a TSL Earth map made by the devs, but mostly they rely on modders to make one. In contrast, historical grand strategy games like Europe Universalis only do TSL Earth maps and don't even give the option of a random map. Their default experience is exclusively an Earth map. I am not saying civ should not offer random maps. But it just seems odd that a civ game would seem to not even care about an Earth map. I've always been a fan of TSL Earth maps so I am curious.

I can think of a few reasons:
1) Historical focus. Civ is not a historical game per se. It is loosely based on history. So the vision of civ has always been more building a "make believe" history, hence the random map. So the game might provide an Earth map for those who do want a more historical game but that is not the focus of civ. Whereas, games like EU only have Earth maps because they are intended to be deep historical games.
2) Replayability. Random maps offer a lot of replayability. But this argument does not preclude having the option of an Earth map so it does not really explain why devs often ignore making an Earth map completely. Also, games like EU only have Earth maps and seem to offer plenty of replayability in other ways. So I think it is possible to offer replayability with Earth maps. And they are optional anyway.
3) TSL Earth maps tend to be very poor in civ. I know the civ6 Earth map was terrible because civ would be so cramped that they could not move or get wiped out on turn 1. This is likely due to the hex based maps in civ. And with Earth being 70% ocean, if you try to make an Earth map to scale, you end up with some regions like Europe being too small for civs. The only way to make it work is to make truly gigantic map but that is often too big for computers to handle with the kind of micro that civ games involve. Games like EU can do it because their format is different. They don't have hexes. They can have gigantic maps with like 1000 provinces and a lot of things are more abstract than civ.
4) Devs don't want to spend the resources on making a TSL Earth map because they want to focus on other aspects of the game like graphics and game mechanics.

The only reason I'll try to play civ 7 again for is a true earth map on Xbox.

 

[Leucarum]

Indonesia could at least surround themselves with Kampungs. I would give it to Scotland in Civ 6 right now considering they start on the same island as England but don't get any inherit naval bonuses like they do.

In Civ6 Maya's TSL start was kind of dumb. Big penalties to settling away from your capital but start off surrounded by ocean and only able to fit in a couple of cities...