362x362 Maps! Is there an Earth map in the making?

[Alexan]

I love Earth maps. I noticed that PTW allowed 362x362 maps (twice as big as 256x256), and I was wondering that if you ever played had a host with a powerful enough computer to run the map, how many of you would play an Earth map of this size?

I also noticed that the new map editors allow y-wrapping. If you turn both wrapping's on, you can create a monopolic world-akin to a transverse map- those are far more accurate for area of Earth projections on a rectangular map(the regular Civ3 distorts the shape of the Earth, making areas to the poles much larger then they are in real life).
How many of you would think it would be interesting for the South Pole or North Pole to be in the 'middle' of the map, and say the equator to be where the north pole should be? Game play would be the same as the world would wrap around, it just would be at a weird angle.

Which civs would be the best for a Multiplayer game on Earth, take into account geographic starting locations.
I'm going to say the Americans for their expansionist and industrial strengths as well as their amazing starting location. They get two Continents with some of the richest land and resources in the world. An Early Neighbor, three oceans acting as a natural barrier to the early aggressors-It's ~150-175 Tiles from Washington to London so not until the late Industrial ages can an invasion to either continent be pulled off.(It's only 10 tiles from Paris to London). Their Unique Unit also is better for the late game world wars(Air Units can go to any Carrier, city, or Airfield in the world in one turn.)

Would you support modding the game so water units move faster?
How should major rivers be drawn? Should they be a civ3 'river' or a coastal?(The Amazon, the world's widest river, is 30 Mi at its height in width, which could be represented by one tile). While few Rivers actually get close to the 21 Miles, a coastal square more accurately represents improved movement with boats, the importance of fishing, and in some cases, the ability to allow land locked cities to be attached to near by oceans and seas. A coastal square, however, is usually bad for troop movement, and I think that if the crossing is under 11 miles, it should be a river instead of a coastal.(A river impedes road movement, but it gives extra gold.) A nice expansion one day would be allowing Workers to build Canals for ships to move along, and allowing ships to move along rivers(or even better, maps that are 1 tile x 10 miles).

Should the Oceans be smaller? If the oceans are smaller that means that the continents are larger, on a 362x362 map North America is over 20k Tiles. I think a better idea would be to increase ship movement.
How many resources should there be? I think that the best 200 Horse places on Earth should get a horse, the best 50 or 100 Iron places get Iron, ect. Although I wouldn't be basing this off of production, rather on actual resources-as Production is based off of cultural strengths of the moment.
Also I would take into account that a lot of how we treat modern resources(And one could include modern ecology into this for the topography of the map) are such that humans have depleted the resources at other locations in the past. Civ3 will automatically 'deplete' resources for us so ancient resource maps are sometimes good for determining resource locations. On the downside, horses where not available in the new world until after the Spanish came. I recommend splicing the two together based off of how it improves game play. If an ancient map will make the gameplay better use it, if a modern map will, use that. This applies as well to bonus resources. There's generally one of each bonus resource per 100-200 tiles that support it(If there where 100 Plains tiles, 100 coastal, and 100 Flood Plains tiles there would be 2-4 Wheat, 1-2 cow, and 1-2 fish). This will give you an upper limit on the number of fish and whales and other things you can have, and if you can find the top 500 fishing spots in the world and the top 500 farming locations in the world, you know where to put your bonus resources.

Finally would anybody ever play an Earth map where each land tile represents a certain number of the world's current population, or wealth, or some other factor.(On a Wealth Map America and Germany and Japan would be huge and Africa would be small, on a population southeast Asia would be huge and Canada would be small, ect)?

[Abdul Alhazred]

Your article is very interesting !

[Inverse Icarus]

america has to fight the iroquois and aztecs... both with kickass early units...

[Alexan]

Actually they don't have to 'fight' them as long as you keep a decent military and continue to pay tribute.

Besides Aztecs are in Mexico, and their distance is 1883 Miles in real life, so in the game it's 90 Tiles from Washington D.C. to Mexico City. Far enough away to get a scout to them and trade some techs, but too far away to have a war.

[GePap]

I fear that few systems could handle such a map with 8 players, or 16, and definitelly with 32! Think of the number of cities!

But yes, movement allowences would have to be increased greatly, which might negate the whole concept of retreat, since all units would be fast.

The only benefit from sucha huge map would be the ability to have a real world game with all civs in it, without having to worry about severe and dangerous overcrowding in certaninareas, like the Levant.

Now, being able to create more realisit 256X256 maps is a great thing.

[asleepathewheel]

an earth map that huge sounds great. will be quite slow, but fun.


get on this

[Cagliostro]

I love earthmaps too - and I allways play the biggest possible with the maximum # of civs (256², 32 civs right now...), and I woluld play larger maps with more civs as well (computing times would be terrible but my comp is up 24/7 anyway without too much cpu load most of the time - but first of all, I have to say I prefer mercator/miller maps - mainly because even with a 356x356 map, it wouldn't be possible to draw a detailed geography of europe which is important to me due to my "eurocentric" view of history. That's also why I personally dislike the projection with a pole in the middle - it is more accurate, but it's not the world as I know it - and besides if you look at a projection coming close to it (if I understand you correctly, which I may not - posting a picture of the projection you're talking about would be nice):


it would be quite a short way from england to the north of the US, which may be geographically accurate, but doesn't work with civ since any naked settler can cross the northpole without even getting cold feet .


I also value fun over realism, and even on marla singer's map, the size of russia and asia was annoying for me (in terms of killing fun) - and Imagine having australia, afrika or america in it's original proportions - miles and miles of deserts, swampy jungles, tundra and ice . It wouldn't be that much of a problem, if it wasn't civ3 and it's AI:

I think founding cities in the most hostile regions of the world is still rewarded too much - and the AI just settles everywhere - I think it would allways end in an absolute city-foundation overkill.
The only workaround would be to change the whole economic system of civ3 & ressources deserts and cold regions provide. For example:

Founding a city in Sibiria actually costs food from other parts of a civilization - it's impossible to found a prospering city there without lots of tech & constant supplies from fertile regions due to the permafrost ( hope the word exists in english ) there. It's only usefull to pump your ressources inthere if there is a ressource you really need.

Even founding st. petersburg, which still is in a pleasant region (a "bit" swampy) compared to sibiria, nearly consumed all russian ressources for the period of it's foundation and would have been technically impossible before the the 17th century (founded 1702, but could have been done 100 years earlier I guess).

In civ3, you can walk into sibiria with a settler in the stoneage, found a city and it grows (sowly, but it does) - it's rewarded to found cities - anywhere on the map - whereas it should be punished in large areas of the world, imho - that's why the ai founds city on every piece of rock available (and we're talking about cities here, not some 100 people inuit fishing villages, which are not represented in the game as I see it...). Imho, founding in hostile regions should consume food from other cities, in a manner that you would kill your civ if there are too many cites in the desert or frosty regions - large areas on the world are uninhabitable - and civs gamerules don't pay tribute to that...

Concerning civilizations: I'm against having the americans in, because they're basically a further (mmkay - lets not get into detail here, but in terms of science and power they are ...) developed offspring of mainly european cultures - they would be represented by an american continent colonized by any european culture during gameprogress.

I assume playing the game from 4000 bc - american natives first came in 25000 bc, so there should be some of them in - I don't know how many civs are possible with PTW, but until I am corrected, I guess 32 including player can't be exceeded - so I would put 6 civs on both continets:
Cree in the north, near hudson bay, Maybe Shoshone in the west, near california, sioux in the plains or cherokee in southeast etc... and maya, actecs inca or olmecs for the rest - I'm not too well informed on that topic and don't wanna do research now...


I definitely would reduce the # of european civs compared to the mod I'm playing right now (the one coming with PTW) - there is no need to have celts and french in for example, because french are (romanized and later invaded by the franks, a germanic tribe) descendants of the celts - there is no need for hungarians, polish etc... - I'm not even sure if there should be seperate english, scandinavians and germans in - there allways have been less differences between all the european "civilizations" (in fact there is only one european culture) than between the many different cultures in ancient china - the chinese only got united in one empire under a ruling "tribe" - something none of the european tribes ever managed...

mmmh - I have to come to an end - I guess noone even reads this anyway - I'm digressing too much...

- I think ships (and maybe even land units) should be faster, rather than having the oceans too small, because of the city-overkill problem mentioned above.

- I think having huge rivers represented by oceans would also help them defining borders, which they allways did (even 60 years ago in WW2 the rhinebridges still where important, and I guess they still would be in a conventional war), but never do in civ (something I never understood in the civ-series) - so I think it would be a great Idea - that, or redefine river movement - make them really hard to cross, before you built bridges.

the ressource idea you had is a good, but it's a hard Job with civs general ressource handling - after all it's just a boardgame taken to PC, not am earth-simulator - maybe we should just wait for civ x, with a rotateable, real globe, a real ressourcesystem etc... - or just another game

[Flash]

I'm trying to convert Omni's CTP2 400 x 400 map, but I have to cut it down. Not easy. But after I convert it I plan to modify it. Anyone interested. I actually have the borders plotted on Isometric paper. Coloring it is a pain !!!!!!
I pretty much know where I'm cutting the map down.
I'm getting rid of Antartica due to a lack of a glacier terrain.

Flash

[Alexan]

I've been thinking about this more. Ok the map editors let us set it to 362x362 right? What if we set it to 360x360 instead. Each Tile would represent two degrees north and south and one degree east. This sounds a lot like the miller projection... Does someone know of a transverse miller projection?