Eurasia

[sevenwarlocks]

I'm calling it Eurasia, though it includes much of Africa. I can't really figure out what to do with all the desert - if I made it all waste, large portions of the map would be uninhabitable. I was thinking about making the provinces hot - but that doesn't seem doable. If anyone has any good ideas, please let me know.

Also, this map is based on the real world in all its dreadful inequality. You could consider it a Buddhist map, I suppose, since some births are more fortuitous than others.

The starting locations are all viable, however.

In this map, I tried to maintain more of the satallite image than in the British Isles map, and while this makes many regions beautiful and unique, it may be harder to recognize which terrains are where at first. I think the terrain will soon become clear enough, though, especially to those who have used my other maps.

http://www.sevenwarlocks.com/eurasia.zip
http://www.sevenwarlocks.com/images/eurasia.jpg

[Sombre]

You could drop some sites that increase heat in the deserty provinces. Alternately you can make them wastelands, but add sites like gold mines etc that make them useful in the early game. Midgame the fact they give more magic sites makes them useful.

[LDiCesare]

Why not merge all the desert provinces into one huge waste (thinking of North Africa)? There's no reason why the seas should always be the only big provinces out there.

[Stavis_L]

Just set the big wastelands to no-starts.

As far as why you don't want a big land province, it's because of the mobility advantage it gives; instead of being a hindrance to travel, that big waste province would now become a superhighway.

[rdonj]

Alternatively, I suppose you could make the wastelands really small. Then they would provide more overall money per area of map in a way, plus it would take longer to go through them which kind of makes sense to me.

[LDiCesare]

Just set the big wastelands to no-starts.

As far as why you don't want a big land province, it's because of the mobility advantage it gives; instead of being a hindrance to travel, that big waste province would now become a superhighway.
Considering the province separations are made on todays borders and seem quite arbitrary to me and not linked to the underlying geography, I feel nonplused by this argument. Why cut England from Scotland and not England from Wales for instance?
In particular, the argument is moot if you look at Arabia: Merge all the peninsula in one province doesn't change its connectivity much because there's already a huge province which goes from least to west.

[Sombre]

Could just give the wastelands high pop. Then the fact that they're wastelands doesn't make them useless.

[sevenwarlocks]

In particular, the argument is moot if you look at Arabia: Merge all the peninsula in one province doesn't change its connectivity much because there's already a huge province which goes from least to west.

It is true enough that connections are a bit arbitrary, and that the visual size of a provence has no impact on game mechanics. Yet turning most of North Africa into a single provence would run counter to my purpose.

Well, two purposes:

- Making sure that the African section of the map remains an important power center on which players can get a good fair start.

- Making it feel like Africa in an RP sense I.E., no travelling from Morocco to Somalia in one turn, and this includes making deserts behave distinctly from empty plains in a way that makes sense from an rp and game mechanics standpoint.

I think Sombre has the right idea, though I don't know exactly what sites can be added. I'll play around with it.

[Ballbarian]

Here's a partial list that might be helpful:

39 The Smouldercone
Heat

154 Plain of Perpetual Drought
Heat

162 Desert of Bones
Heat

165 Volcano
Heat

172 Fountain of Fire
Heat

180 Prison of the Desert Sun
HeatHeat

562 Desert
HeatDeath

66 Gold Mine
gld:60

67 Silver Mine
gld:40

68 Copper Mine
gld:20

164 Orichalum Mine
gld:150

223 Pearl Beach
gld:50

253 Great Gold Mine
gld:100

254 Great Silver Mine
gld:60

255 Hidden Gold Mine
gld:100

256 Gem Deposits
gld:75

509 Fountain of Rubies
gld:200

[sevenwarlocks]

Thanks. I realized when I thought about setting the provence population that I don't really know what the average populations are for standard terrain or any features - or how much income that produces, and what factors modify this. Might someone point me in the direction of a resource that explains all that?

[sevenwarlocks]

Updated - Aug 2, 2009

Bhutan is no longer incorectly identified as a sea.

http://www.sevenwarlocks.com/eurasia.zip
http://www.sevenwarlocks.com/eurasia.map


This is the Alt version I have been working on with low-pop, high income and high heat deserts. I offer it in case anyone wants to try something a bit wacky. I'm finding it hard - perhaps even impossible, to get the balance right on this, since the changes affect different nations so differently. Low pop starting regions can be a curse, unless a player succeeds in expanding rapidly, in which case, the extra gold becomes too much of a boon. Also, they provide gold even if the population is wiped out, which means they could super-charge LA Ermor and R'lyeh. The Map can be used with the same Eurasia.tga file.

http://www.sevenwarlocks.com/eurasia-alt1.map

[Zentar]

The use of current borders is a huge plus especially if you add specific nation start points . Adding features like those suggested by Ballbarian, Stavis_L, Sombre, and yourself would enhance this map further. You have a typo misspelling on the map (Ural Maountains).

Thank you for the map.