0urBall
Warlord
There was, but CivII's issue was you could only play with 7 civs max. So there was vast swathes of empty land, with nobody in South America at all, or in Africa if you picked the Zulu and Egypt were not in the game
Why does civ franchise not seem to care about TSL Earth maps?
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aieeegrunt
Emperor
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TSL Earth in most versions of Civ doesn’t work for several reasons
The first is that you basically remove the “Xploration” part of 4X. You know where everything is..
The second is that Civ usually favors Wide over Tall, so you can’t have more than one or two European civs at the most. A lot of Civ titles don’t have many American or African civs either, so either you have a Zulu superpower with it’s own continent and an Aztex superoower, or either or both continents are empty and whoever gets settler spam there first wins.
Meanwhile Japan is like a two hex island.
The first is that you basically remove the “Xploration” part of 4X. You know where everything is..
The second is that Civ usually favors Wide over Tall, so you can’t have more than one or two European civs at the most. A lot of Civ titles don’t have many American or African civs either, so either you have a Zulu superpower with it’s own continent and an Aztex superoower, or either or both continents are empty and whoever gets settler spam there first wins.
Meanwhile Japan is like a two hex island.
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This must not be true. Here you can see screenshots with parts of central Europe and Japan in the world map I am still working on for the Civ 3 mod CCM 3 (31 civs allowed). Each building (represented by Civ 2 graphics) is marking a location that can be settled by that mod.
Spoiler :
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Japan is definitely larger than that. I assume they took that in account considering it's usually a base game civ, and made it larger. The only civ that I can think of that starts on a two hex island is Indonesia, at least in Civ 6. But for them I don't think that's necessarily a problem. Not sure about Civ 5 implementation.
MutilationWave
IDDQD
Good job on the map, looks like you spent a lot of time on it. Did you consider going with a different projection than Mercator? I realize you pretty much need it to have space in Europe.
I do think this shows off one of the big problems mentioned though, that there just aren't enough civs for the Americas and Africa.
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The Civ 3 worldmap with the enlarged Europe was created for the WW2 scenario WW2 Global nearly two decades ago by Aeldrik and CellKu. I am working on the special mechanics to use that map for a normal epic game. There are enough "civs" for the Americas and Africa. Many city locations are hold by "barbarian" tribes with their proper names (Civ 3 has 76 of them if counting correctly).
You have answered your own question.
TSL maps are undoubtedly popular, but they really should be understood as a kind of mod, rather than the default way of playing the game.
TSL maps go against quite a lot of the design features of the game: map randomisation, balanced starts. They’ve always been kind of a headache to ensure they are fair and playable.
And now with the specific features of Civ 7, they’re even more at odds with how the game is designed (civ switching, distant lands). Why should they be a development priority?
TSL maps are undoubtedly popular, but they really should be understood as a kind of mod, rather than the default way of playing the game.
TSL maps go against quite a lot of the design features of the game: map randomisation, balanced starts. They’ve always been kind of a headache to ensure they are fair and playable.
And now with the specific features of Civ 7, they’re even more at odds with how the game is designed (civ switching, distant lands). Why should they be a development priority?
That's not Mercator, it's not even a real map of the world.
Civinator's Japan is larger than Italy when the real Japan is more or less Italy-sized. Likewise, Japan is about level with Tunisia (town of Bizerte is 37.27 deg north, comparable to Noto Town's 37.30, famous for that devastating NY2024 earthquake) while on his map, it is level with Europe.
And if they were provided as an official game mode by the developers, it would always have to work decently well and be maintained. As opposed to treating it as a fun one-off made by some fan in their free time, rather than a product you pay for and expect professional support for.
"Oh no we can't add X civ because there's already a civ that uses the same capital city and it would screw up the TSL balance!"
"Can't add this or that mechanic either as it can't work if there's no land to expand to and there will never be land to expand to in TSL Europe."
Etc.
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aieeegrunt
Emperor
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Ya this is an oversized map from a mod, from an older Civ title where these map sizes are possible
Stock civ games and maps, especially the newer ones are often a lot smaller.
They also have mechanics like loyalty that make TSL Europe impossible
SupremacyKing2
Deity
Thanks. But to be clear, I am not saying TSL maps should be the default map. I am asking why TSL maps as an option don't get more love from the devs.
MutilationWave
IDDQD
I'm not trying to be rude here, but this has "But why male models?" energy.
I believe that the devs put emphasis on the "eXploration" part of 4X. By definition, you know where you are on an Earth TSL map.
You know where your neighbors will be, if those civs (Inca, Zulu, Romans) are in this game. I'm assuming that you're choosing random opponents.
Replayability comes from the chance to discover who is in the game (did any civs start on the Iberian peninsula? which civs started in Asia?) but you know where to look. You know how quickly to prioritize researching certain techs to cross deep ocean.
I'm glad you're a fan. I'm not, since I love the exploration part. Who will be where? Is my neighbor peaceful or a warmonger? Where is the ocean?
That's been true in all of the civ iterations. So much map to discover in Civ3, Civ4, and Civ6 (didn't play much Civ5). Even more map to discover in BERT.
Civ7 goes in a whole new direction, w.r.t. ocean travel, so an Earth TSL map will be much lower priority. If my Antiquity civ is located in the Americas, then I know exactly how the Distant Lands will be laid out; conversely, if my Antiquity civ is located in Africa, then I know to try the ocean crossing to the east in Exploration.
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As loyality is an element taken from Civ 3 and in C3C big TSL earth maps can be done, I don´t think that this is a big obstacle for earth maps in later versions of the civ series.
In my eyes it is more the problem, that creating a big earth map that provides a lot of fun and a demanding game for any civ on that map, is an incredible amount of work and this is considered a subordinate task by the devs.
Nigel_Tufnel2
King
Gedemon is doing yet another TSL and more project:
It appears the recent patch may have broken things. I had played with it earlier, and it did in fact allow for very large maps, and Distant Lands on a TSL map, etc.
If it weren't for his Civ VI version, I would have played that version half as much. I loved all the variation you could throw into an Earth (or Near Earth) Map with that mod, and for me, having general coastline or Natural Wonder knowledge with no idea of terrain, CS, and civs was a blast. It was like being in the second wave of exploration, if that makes sense.
I also played a ton of other TSL maps - Northern Europe, the Med, the Med inside of North America (!!!). That one was very clever and a hoot. With clever maps you can always try to tweak your strategy, and maximize things like Isthmus cities in various locations.
Spoiler :
It appears the recent patch may have broken things. I had played with it earlier, and it did in fact allow for very large maps, and Distant Lands on a TSL map, etc.
If it weren't for his Civ VI version, I would have played that version half as much. I loved all the variation you could throw into an Earth (or Near Earth) Map with that mod, and for me, having general coastline or Natural Wonder knowledge with no idea of terrain, CS, and civs was a blast. It was like being in the second wave of exploration, if that makes sense.
I also played a ton of other TSL maps - Northern Europe, the Med, the Med inside of North America (!!!). That one was very clever and a hoot. With clever maps you can always try to tweak your strategy, and maximize things like Isthmus cities in various locations.
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Very good work on the map and the video! My question is: Is it not possible in Civ 7 to make the map so much bigger, that a civ can really become a civ ? What are the limits in size in Civ 7 that cause such a "claustrophobic" feeling on the map and is there a chance to overcome these limits ?
On the other side it is very nice to see these ships on the navigable rivers in Civ 7.
This is not possible in Civ 3 and is not working well in Civ 2 ToTPP.
On the other side it is very nice to see these ships on the navigable rivers in Civ 7.
This is not possible in Civ 3 and is not working well in Civ 2 ToTPP.I still have memories of my greatest game of all-time, I think it was a small TSL map, where I was Babylon, built a bunch of elephants, went and conquered the only 2 other civs in the game in Rome and germany, maybe. And then their respawns were in like Eastern Europe and maybe Africa, and so I ended up winning the game like way before 1 AD.
Although from that, some people might be able to deduce that was Civ 2 days. I don't think I've really cared about Earth maps much since then, even less so TSL. Earth maps alone aren't terrible, but yeah, for me after about 2 turns you figure out where you are, and then given how the maps have usually been made, you know where to go for the good spots (ie. you know that India maybe has a bunch of high-food floodplains). And the way that civ has been in recent years, the earth map actually tends to lead to large territories that you can't do much with - I think terrains tend to cluster more than the fictional map gen.
That's probably not as bad in civ 7 since you maybe don't mind being in a massive stretch of plains hills. It might actually be an interesting map in civ 7 terms, since you'd have those true "distant lands" zones that might work out. I don't think I'd necessarily want a TSL variation, but might be slightly curious how a normal Earth map would play.
Although you still run into the problems that basically unless if you're playing on a huge map, especially with the cities stretching 3 tiles out, basically all of Europe can be covered in like 2 cities. There are some elements of scale on an Earth map that just make things awkward in civ terms.
Sure it might work for the first era, but once you swap civs then what? You'd end up with the US in Europe or something weird like that. It is nuked.
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