Your recommendations for a regular Earth map

S

Singleshot

Chieftain
Joined
Jun 25, 2007
Messages
13
I'd really like to player on real world geography, but most earth maps seem to be huge, which I dont find very enjoyable (long load times plus that they're not as 'epic' as I originally thought they'd be). I'd like to play on a regular sized map, preferably with Civilisations in their real starting locations, preferably with PTW resources/civs etc (I had a copy of Conquests but it exploded in my drive).

"But Singleshot", I hear you flame, "why can't you look through the many threads on this you lazy n00b?" Well because there's just too much to read through, especially as many maps have multiple versions, some spanning a few years, with different people posting their comments on them. As an example, I found the thread for Marla Singer's map, which looked good, but then I noticed that the date was 2001 and by the end of that thread, people were saying that Marla's was one of the first good maps but there were many better ones now. It is all very vexing. :crazyeye:

Anyway, I'd like to ask you, you lovely forum veterans, for your time-honoured wisdom over what is the best regular-sized real world map you've played. Obviously fun, balance and realism all come into the equation. If you can, it'd be a great help, thanks.
 
Well i won't recommend you something specific, but I just want to mention that there are very few real world geography maps. There are several reasons. The most important one is, that if it would be realistic it will be unplayable because of all the europe civsstartiung in a very small area compared to african and thefew american civs.
Also Japan and Korea are also always a problematic. because of either beeing on a tiny island without resources or being locked between the Ocean and China/Mongolia....
 
I agree that one or rhyes would be good choices as they are real world geography but with larger europe and japan for gameplay reasons, so they are playable, plus if you use rhye's and stop setteling on tundra, jungle and deasert it will play real fast :)
 
Oh, he wants smaller, stupid me :)
Try searching for Satyajedi's world map (or earth map), dont know if you'll find it here, its old, try in that other site, apolyton :rolleyes:
 
Yes, I think so too, thanks. 98% of the credit goes to Hypnotech3, he created the map, I just made a few modifications here and there, and added some terrain for the conquests version.
Its giga sized but if used with a mod that limits expantion, it should provide one fun game :)
 
Well i won't recommend you something specific, but I just want to mention that there are very few real world geography maps. There are several reasons. The most important one is, that if it would be realistic it will be unplayable because of all the europe civsstartiung in a very small area compared to african and thefew american civs.
Also Japan and Korea are also always a problematic. because of either beeing on a tiny island without resources or being locked between the Ocean and China/Mongolia....
Click to expand...

Yeah, I once played as the Romans on a 32-civ map. I had pretty much nowhere to expand, and was being attacked on all sides by Hungarians, French, Celts, Spanish, Germans... erk. No iron either, so that five-minute turn length in the ancient age game got boring pretty fast. But on a regular map, you only need 8 civs. I'd personally go for 3 new world and 5 old world, but it depends on resource distribution. My personal all-star team would be Romans, Egyptians, Persians, Chinese, Mongolians, and you don't really have much choice for the 3 american ones on PTW.

It's pretty unrealistic to have all the civlisation co-existing anyway, to the Romans, the English, French and Germans would have just been the Angles, Gauls and Teuton barabarian tribes. In reality, the relief of Europe makes it tilt towards lots of nations and warfare, all those peninsulas and islands for peripheral civilisations to fall back to and the Alps to split up north and south. Compare with say China, where the North China Plain and Yangtze Plain pretty much make it inevitable for one hegemonous culture with a centralized beuracracy to reign supreme. (Except for where the Korean peninsula, the islands of Japan, the jungles of South-East Asia, the Gobi desert and the Himalayas all allowed other cultures to settle away from Han domination). Maybe the real world isn't very well-balanced :p

Anyway looks like all the maps so far have been huge? (I searched for Satyajedi's and the thread I found said 256x256 :eek: ) I seem to remember playing on a world map on CTP2, can't remember the size but I don't think it was that big. But none for CIVIII?
 
I like using Rhyes overlarge Europe 180 x 180. If you have Conquests you can convert .bix and .bic to .biq using the editor so you could use one of those world maps and convert it.
 
Singleshot said:
Anyway looks like all the maps so far have been huge? (I searched for Satyajedi's and the thread I found said 256x256 :eek: ) I seem to remember playing on a world map on CTP2, can't remember the size but I don't think it was that big. But none for CIVIII?
Click to expand...

Well, unless he did another one, the one I used and helped updating was 180x180, try looking for threads in Apolyton where I participated under the username "Alexandre Madeira"
 
Well, world, without ado, I announce my decision to MAKE MY OWN.

I'm currently looking at which projection to follow. I initally figured that since the world had a circumference of about 40,000 km, (roughly the same N/S as E/W) that I could use 400x400 km areas for the tiles. I then realised it would have to be 400x200, since the N/S axis on the map is half the distance of the E/W circumference. And also that the Earth isn't a freakin' cylinder, so if I use the same area for the polar tiles as the equatorial ones, there won't be enough land in the north (huge oceans between Europe, Greenland and America, and the Bering Straight a huge gulf) but making polar tiles represent less area will mean that Greenland will be the size of Africa, say.

However, since these are the issues mapmakers, and more recently CIV custom mappers, have been grappling with for centuries, I'm hoping there's going to be a body of lore around this topic. Ie, what projection should I use? Anyone know what Kal-El used (am planning to base my map on his somewhat)?
 
I've spent a few hours yesterday and today working on Western Europe. I've been using Kal-Els map as a guide, dividing the coordinates of distinguishing features on his by 1.8 (as his map is 180^2 and mine is 100^2) to determine where to place them on mine. I've also got a pretty decent atlas at home which has seperate maps for relief and land usage, as a rule of thumb for the non-moutainous regions I reckon pastureland corresponds to plains, and cropland to grassland.

Most of my time has been spend trying to get it to look 'right', I live in Britain so I've got a fair grasp of how Western Europe is supposed to look. If I carry on, the rest of the world should take less time (although perhaps less accurate, for the same reason), though I'm not looking forwards to doing Siberia.


Shot at 2007-07-09

I think France looks too small (squashed N/S). There shouldn't be a hills tile in the centre of Britain, but making it grassland makes the SE of England look really wrong. I'm not sure if the top two of those four tiles in the middle of Spain should be plains, desert or hills, according to my Atlas, "the Meseta platuea averages 600m in height and is alrgely dry and treeless".

I haven't yet added any rivers, I don't know which ones are major enough to add, but I'm planning to make them about as frequent as on a randomly generated map.

I think I'll just have one European Civilisation, probably Romans or maybe Greeks. I've used a barbarian village to simulate the Germans and a Goody hut to simulate the French ;)

Anyone, what do people reckon? is it worth me carrying on with this? At least I'll kick-ass with my knowledge of georgraphy by the end, if I do.
 
Did some more work on it today.



As you can see, I've also installed Sn00py's terrain mod. I haven't done Greece yet, that's why it's not there. Russia is at the moment just a big blob of forest, that was fun ;)
 
Yes it is. Italy is also touching Sicily. I figured that the distance between them wasn't enough to warrant requiring naval transport. I know the English Channel is narrow too, but I'm too aware of Julius Caesar's attempts to invade Britain/the Norman Invasion/the Spanish Armada/the Dunkirk Evacuation/the Normandy landings/the brouhaha over the Channel Tunnel, to connect Britain to the continent. But I don't think the Oresund straight has been that contentious historically. I've not created each individual island of Denmark, and in a similar vein Denmark is touching Sweden.

But if I'm wrong, I'll change it.
 
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