Worls Maps suck!

genghisvick · October 30, 2001, 22:45

Bought Civ III this morning from babbages and its a great game! My only complaint is the world maps that ship with the game...they suck! They are not remotely realistic can't wait for someone to make a better one.

Andrew_Jay · October 30, 2001, 22:52

you mean both of them? I gather from screenshots that the smaller of the two is obscenley bad. It looked like Britain was a pathetic 9 or 10 square blob of land, while the Italian peninsula was 3 squares long.

genghisvick · October 30, 2001, 22:58

The world maps are pretty bad, I cant figure out how to use the ditor yet either. I will give it another shot later on.

Knight · October 30, 2001, 23:14

Quote:

Originally posted by Andrew_Jay
you mean both of them? I gather from screenshots that the smaller of the two is obscenley bad. It looked like Britain was a pathetic 9 or 10 square blob of land, while the Italian peninsula was 3 squares long.

I hate to tell you this, but that map was the bigger of the two. The world maps are very poor, but I'm sure some new ones will be out soon enough.

Boliao · October 31, 2001, 13:56

can u post a screenshot of the huge world map? Thanks...I'll be eternally grateful

Earthling7 · October 31, 2001, 14:02

I would create a good map... if I had the game

Stuie · October 31, 2001, 14:09

Quote:

Originally posted by genghisvick
Bought Civ III this morning from babbages and its a great game! My only complaint is the world maps that ship with the game...they suck! They are not remotely realistic can't wait for someone to make a better one.

Guess I'm not sure what the big deal is, but then again I used the world map in Civ2 only once or twice. I guess Firaxis shouldn't have bothered if the maps are that bad; the random ones are more fun anyway.

wotan321 · October 31, 2001, 14:51

Why in the world even bother including ANY "Real world" maps if you cannot place civs where the "Real Civs" actually occurred?

If you want to play to recreate history..... put the Egyptians in Egypt. Perhaps it'd be fun to ask "Hey, what would have happened if the Babylonians had started.... in Brazil...?" Hmmm...

I get the strange feeling that the poor souls at Firaxis were sitting in a group meeting pondering how to handle the fact that Infogames needed the thing Gold, boxed and on store shelves before Christmas regardless of how much more needed to be done.

"Hey, I read on one of the Civ fansites that the Civvers REALLY want an Earth map! Maybe if we put that in the box, it will help them forget that there are no scenarios, no scenario creation tools, and no MP! I can have an earth map finished before lunch!"

"Whoooohooo" goes the crowd.

Okay, enough sarcasm. I am sure Firaxis is sad that the thing wasn't 100% for them. For the fans, it can NEVER be 100%, we always want more. And yes, they will fix it. But I sure was looking forward to creating some scenarios right out of the box.

Che Palle · October 31, 2001, 15:09

Quote:

Originally posted by wotan321
Why in the world even bother including ANY "Real world" maps if you cannot place civs where the "Real Civs" actually occurred?

I'm not ready to bet the farm on that just yet.

I loaded the Huge map into the editor (and yeah like someone else said, the one without greece and with Italy being a whopping 3 tiles, is the huge map... and I saw that you can place these placeholders that say something like "Player Starting Position" or something like that.

Apparently I could place more than one of those (I placed 2)

Now I dunno if there ISN'T a way to specify which Civ will start in which starting spot... I would hope there would be (I didn't look into it, after seeing I could put the markers I closed the editor and started playing Duh!).

Incidentally if there isn't that would make the editor essentially useless for creating scenarios.

Maybe when I go home I'll spend another 5 minutes trying to figure out if I can either specify the starting positions (best) or at least found the first city for every civ and specify which civ that is.... that should be good enough.

However, like has been mentioned, the map is essentially worthless for placing some civs where they should be... for instance if you put the Romans where they belong, the French where they belong and the Germans where they belong, you might end up with Paris and Berlin sharing a square.

My personal impression is that the world maps were included to appease our requests... I can't really see a realistic game being playable on such a huge scale given the limited space.

Think about it... even on a 256x256 map (which I think someone said is available).... the diameter of the earth at the equator is I believe about 41,000 km (I hope I'm not grossly wrong here)... divide 41,000 by 256 and you get 160km per tile.

Using such a scale italy would be at most 2 tiles wide (but realistically it should be more like 1.5) and about 6-7 tiles tall.

Basically Rome itself would be the only city that you could build there. And you better build a harbor!

Alessandro

P.S. Maps of specific areas... Europe, just Mediterraneum, North America, Asia etc. will be much more useful when the artists start making them :-)

wotan321 · October 31, 2001, 15:53

I have read that you can place starting cities on the map, but you cannot specify which civ gets the city. So you can put a city on the European Continent, but there is no way to force France or Germany or whichever European civ to start there.

wotan321 · October 31, 2001, 15:56

Quote:

P.S. Maps of specific areas... Europe, just Mediterraneum, North America, Asia etc. will be much more useful when the artists start making them :-)

except there doesn't seem to be the ability to use flat maps, just wrap around maps.... though this could come in darn handy for Germany in a WWII scenario.... since they can simply blitzkrieg into France, head for Spain, and continue on into Russia! No more fighting on two fronts!

Skeeve · October 31, 2001, 16:00

I'm wondering how the random map generator is.
Surely it's better than Civ2?

Earthling7 · October 31, 2001, 16:08

Quote:

Originally posted by wotan321
I have read that you can place starting cities on the map, but you cannot specify which civ gets the city. So you can put a city on the European Continent, but there is no way to force France or Germany or whichever European civ to start there.

That's just plain silly! They can't do this to us! Dan, help us!

Faboba · October 31, 2001, 16:31

Did you say what I think you said.

Did you say there was no flatworld option????????

Firaxis - If you've given me a doughnut world but not a flat one like Activision did I may scream.......

El hidalgo · October 31, 2001, 16:51

No specified starting positions, no flat world... great, wake me up when Firaxis releases a real editor that is at least as useful as Civ 2's (which was very frustrating and annoying, but at least it was possible to specify starting positions and flat world).

Che Palle · October 31, 2001, 17:13

No Flat world, No Starting positions....

Is anyone here stating this as fact, or is this all hearsay?

I'll be able to check it out in about an hour when I go home but I'm just wondering if anyone who's saying these things actually checked it out in the editor.

Alessandro

P.S. If we were to believe hearsay we'd believe that ancient units have a reasonable chance against modern ones.... and I proved that wrong last night (unfortunatelly guess who had the more ancient units

)

El hidalgo · October 31, 2001, 17:25

Quote:

Originally posted by Che Palle
No Flat world, No Starting positions....

Is anyone here stating this as fact, or is this all hearsay?

I'll be able to check it out in about an hour when I go home but I'm just wondering if anyone who's saying these things actually checked it out in the editor.

Alessandro

P.S. If we were to believe hearsay we'd believe that ancient units have a reasonable chance against modern ones.... and I proved that wrong last night (unfortunatelly guess who had the more ancient units

)

Please let me know if you figure out a way to make flat worlds and to specify starting positions. This is very important to me. I have heard from several people here that you can't do either. Thanks!

klesh · October 31, 2001, 17:30

Your worst nightmare...lol

Here are some screenies I am posting regarding some of the crappiness of the maps. The 'regular' sized map doesn't even have an england on it............yes, you heard me correctly. And, yes, there is absolutely no way to add starting positions, units, cities or any such things to what the designers call a 'scenario'.

-FMK.

Hawksguard · October 31, 2001, 17:37

Hello all. New poster here. I just got CIV3 last night but only had a chance to play it for a few hours. As soon as I'm done writing this I'm heading home from work to play, play, play...

I have to concur that if the current world maps are...ahem...bad.

Hopefully, if I can squeeze out some free time (or while no one is looking here at work) I can do some work on some better ones. I did a USA map in CIV2 that alot of people semed to enjoy (judging by the e-mail I got from people) so I'm looking forward to tackling the CIV3 editor.

Geographically yours,
Dave

Adm.Naismith · October 31, 2001, 17:58

Slow site=double post

Adm.Naismith · October 31, 2001, 18:00

Quote:

Originally posted by Hawksguard
Hello all. New poster here.

Welcome Dave!

Quote:

Hopefully, if I can squeeze out some free time (or while no one is looking here at work) I can do some work on some better ones. I did a USA map in CIV2 that alot of people semed to enjoy (judging by the e-mail I got from people) so I'm looking forward to tackling the CIV3 editor.

IMHO Firaxis needs every help it can grab to finish the game, so please do your best. Not that they seem really high on aknowledment of all the help many fans give them for free, but we must live with it

OTOH helping them you are helping you too, and all of us, and you already noticed that the gamers community is more ready to thank you

Tventano · October 31, 2001, 18:13

Quote:

Think about it... even on a 256x256 map (which I think someone said is available).... the diameter of the earth at the equator is I believe about 41,000 km (I hope I'm not grossly wrong here)... divide 41,000 by 256 and you get 160km per tile.

It is 40000 km. Actually that was the first definition of the meter.

Because in reality earth is much closer to a sphere than to a cylinder and the Mercator projection is far from equal area these kind of calculations can be very depending on the latitude of the tile.

Roman · October 31, 2001, 18:25

Quote:

Originally posted by Tventano
It is 40000 km. Actually that was the first definition of the meter.

The first definition of the meter was 1/10,000,000 of the distance between the north pole and the equator measured through Paris, which is not quite the same as you say, because Earth is not perfectly flat. As a result, the circumference of the Earth at the equator is slightly more than 40,000km, but I cannot remember the exact number.

Tventano · October 31, 2001, 19:09

Roman, you are right. I was writing to quickly.

Earth flattening is around 1/297 or 1/298, the best ellipsoid depends on the place on earth. If somebody wants to know exactly look at the site of NIMA.

Case · October 31, 2001, 19:09

Remember how bad the world maps for Civ 2 were? Remember the world map where the pacific was a lot smaller then the Atlantic? Not to mention the Pacific map where North America crossed into the southern hemisphere... It seems that maps are done at the last moment by programmers who can't find the atlas

That said, the absence of pre-set starting positions and flat worlds is a major cause for concern...

el freako · October 31, 2001, 19:23

This sound's awful.

For Civ2 I was also dissatisfied with the world map and made my own by adjusting the one that shipped.
It was 90x110 with a larger than accurate Britian and Japan, with room for 3-4 good sized cities, plus an expanded eastern europe.

I should be able to make one 4 times the size by just doubling everything to 180x220 - when I get the game (which should be around the 16th).

Yog-Sothoth · October 31, 2001, 20:27

Quote:

Originally posted by Case

That said, the absence of pre-set starting positions and flat worlds is a major cause for concern...

This just sucks ass

It's not like it takes long to implement this simple, but in my opinion important features