The Map, Tilted?

[brymht]

One of the things I loved about RTR 7.0 (Biggest let down EVER) was the idea to tilt the map, to include less of the Sahara, less of Sideria, and the plains, and a greater concetration on the "civilized" world. It was a shame this map was never used. Any effort to utilize similar map changes on EB2, or significant map changes at all?

[Foot]

Personally I found the tilted map to be quite disconcerting, and it is not something we have considered. The EBII Map will largely be copied directly from the EBI map with minor changes to province borders and names.

Foot

[Tellos Athenaios]

While I thought that the idea in intself is quite neat; the way it works out in a game as EB.... I am not to convinced. For one thing some of our factions would experience some pretty inconvenient geography as a result of projecting a sphere onto a rectangle like that.

For RTR this isn't that big an issue, AFAIK, as they focus more on what you call the 'civilised' world; but EB has a fair few factions more on the 'outer-spheres' of the map. Not too practical from what I saw on the screenshots to go for a 'tilted' map then...

[brymht]

I suppose it would be problematic for the Saba if noone else.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Sauromatae and Saka possibly as well. And possibly... uhm, well you'll hear about that soon enough...

[chairman]

AAAGGGGGHHHHHH!!!! They KNOW something we don't know!!!

Chairman

[Hax]

Tellos, you're so cruel.

[mcantu]

One of the things I loved about RTR 7.0 (Biggest let down EVER) was the idea to tilt the map, to include less of the Sahara, less of Sideria, and the plains, and a greater concetration on the "civilized" world. It was a shame this map was never used. Any effort to utilize similar map changes on EB2, or significant map changes at all?

um...we haven't released RTR VII yet

[Hax]

I think that's the letdown he's referring to.

I'm really looking forward to it though ;)

[brymht]

No Offense to any RTR VII People here meant. When I gave up waiting for RTR VII I, after all, came into the arms of EB .8

[mcantu]

No Offense to any RTR VII People here meant. When I gave up waiting for RTR VII I, after all, came into the arms of EB .8

yeah, i've been addicted to EB since 0.8. try beta testing EB 1.0/1.1 and working on RTR/RTR-TIC at the same time...talk about frying your brain

[Cartaphilus]

One question:

Do you consider allow a pass (as in the Bosphorus or in Sicilia) in the Channel and in Gibraltar?
That would be interesting. So it will end the boring isolation of the Casse and will allow more movement between Hispania and Africa - you know pretty well that the IA hates the sea campaigns and the transport of the troops.

[Hax]

Doesn't hate them as a bad in M2TW.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

No landbridge across the English Channel in EB1 was decided because it is a decent amount of distant and a rough sea. Where as you could commandeer a merchant fleet at other landbridges, you would need an actual fleet and a lot of planning to cross the Channel.

Thankfully, the M2TW AI is not afraid of making naval invasions.

[Cartaphilus]

No landbridge across the English Channel in EB1 was decided because it is a decent amount of distant and a rough sea. Where as you could commandeer a merchant fleet at other landbridges, you would need an actual fleet and a lot of planning to cross the Channel.

Thankfully, the M2TW AI is not afraid of making naval invasions.

I have played M2tw in many campaigns, and the AI seldom make naval invasions, more than RTW but few indeed.

And what about the landbridge in Gibraltar? This pass wasn't a problem for any army in History.

The English channel with a landbridge could do a better campaign. Playing the Casse is now too easy. You have now no trouble to unify the Islands and then make your landing in the Continent.

[Mithridates VI Eupator]

I guess that the AI will not allow you to do this quite as undisturbed in EB2.
The M2TW campaign-AI does, actually, use naval landings from time to time.
Sure, an island will be somewhat more protected from invasion than a "regular" province, but that does, in my opinion, only add realism to the game. After all, launching a naval invasion is not the kind of thing you can do whenever you feel like it. It takes careful planning and preparation.

[Cartaphilus]

Of course.

But the cross of the Bosphorus needs the same preparation (Xerxes, Alexander...), and we have two "landbridges".

Examples of crossing the Channel: Catuvellauni (related to Belgae), Caesar (for two times), Claudius, Hengist&Horsa... Yes, I know some of them are post-time-game.

In some MTW2 mods the Channel has landbridges. And in all of them Gibraltar has one.

I am sure that the Casse will be untroubled if you don't put one. No one are at war with them (not indeed the eleutheroi). They have no relation with anybody. So they don't exist till they try to land in the continent (I've played lots of campaigns and I haven't seen it for now).

[azzbaz]

Sauromatae and Saka possibly as well. And possibly... uhm, well you'll hear about that soon enough...

HA HA! You got me thinkin all week about this one, Mâh-Sakâ, Apâ Sakâ, Qataban, Gandhara, Erain, Sklaven- WHO COULD THEY BE?? , another clue, end the sleepless nights!!
....please

[Mithridates VI Eupator]

I am sure that the Casse will be untroubled if you don't put one. No one are at war with them (not indeed the eleutheroi). They have no relation with anybody. So they don't exist till they try to land in the continent (I've played lots of campaigns and I haven't seen it for now).

Yes, but that is because you are playing a mod based on RTW, not EB2 with a modified M2TW AI!

With RTW, the AI is sadly incompetent.

Ad also, to invade the british isles is not that easy. A lot of people have made such plans (Napoleon, and some guy named Adolf), but they never did it, as they would have needed better naval capability.
For example, when William of Normandy invaded England, he didn't use some bridge, or as few barges, he hade a whole navy there, shipping his men over.
This is quite a risky undertaking, and I think having to buy a ship and sail, instead of simply "wading" over the channel represents this quite well.

And, once again, in M2TW, with its moddable AI, the computer does use naval invasions.

[Cartaphilus]

I wonder if it is possible to allow landbridges only in the summer season (because of the weather) or when some reforms have happened.
That would be more interesting than the complete issolation of the Casse.

But you haven't answered me (hehe):

1-. What about Gibraltar?

2-. And why in Bosphorus are two landbridges and none in the other zones I've mentioned?
Xerxes and later Alexander made a big effort (bigger than Caesar's in Britain) to cross the Hellespont.


You know that building a fleet is not a problem for human players (if I want to invade Britain I will with or without landbridge), but for the AI. So make the things easier for the dumb AI.
You can say that the AI in MTW2 is less stupid than in RTW, but it is still retarded (very retarded indeed).
I've played MTW2 for months and I can assure that, here if you trust my word or in the field of honour if you don't. Hahaha.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Calm down - your last post was just a few hours ago.

We went through a long process of taking the distances across for all major straits on our map, looking at the historical crossings of large armies, the difficulty of crossing, typical weather issues, and the cultural differences of the two sides played in a little too. We were happy to put crossings at the Bosphorous, at Rhegion/Messana, up in Germany, as well as some others too. But the crossings at Gibraltar and the English Channel were decided to be too long basically. Here was our list:

(YES)Nile-Red Sea Canal - less than .2km (less than one)
(YES)Greece/Euboia - less than .2km (less than one)
(YES)Bosporus - 0.7km (less than one)
(YES)Hellespont - approximately 1km northeast of Troy
(YES)Messina - 3.3km
(YES)Lesbos/Mainland - approximately 8km to north mainland, 6km east to mainland (widest gap between smaller islands)
(YES)CrimeanPeninsula - less than approximately 10km
(YES)Germania/Scanza - approximately 10km at its widest gap
(NO)Bonifacio - 11km, with a few islands in between too
(NO)Gibraltar - 13km
(YES)Ireland/Scotland - approximately 20km
(NO)Mandeb - island in middle 3km and 25km on the two sides
(NO)English Channel - 34km
(NO)Hormuz - 40+km
(NO)Scandivaia/Gothii - approximately (or greater than) 50km

Gibraltar is right on the borderline for us, but the fact that they do have factions on both sides, and is not isolated (like Ireland is), and the fact that the cultures on both sides are not the same types really, and also because we want the Carthaginians to be more naval-based (as much as we can given the engine) - all of those things made us not bridge Gibraltar. We did not want the Carthies to stream soldiers across to Iberia without using ships and lose their focus on Sicily. We are happy with the decisions and we won't be changing those in EB1 for sure and it's doubtful we would change them in EB2. Use minimods to change it if you like.

[Cartaphilus]

Ok.
Thank for your answer.

I wonder if in Bonifacio Strait can be a landbridge, but it is a minor question.

But it would be cool implement some landbridges when some reform have been happened.

I agree with you about carthies, but I'd prefer them more active, be it at sea or inland.
But certainly in the current 1.1 version I've found them less lazy than usual.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Seeing those most recent maps in the 1.1 AI Progression thread does give me hope that the carthies are doing better too. In one they took most of southern and western Europe, then lost almost all of it too. Pretty awesome!

[Tellos Athenaios]

HA HA! You got me thinkin all week about this one, Mâh-Sakâ, Apâ Sakâ, Qataban, Gandhara, Erain, Sklaven- WHO COULD THEY BE?? , another clue, end the sleepless nights!!
....please

No. Not yet.

[Cartaphilus]

Seeing those most recent maps in the 1.1 AI Progression thread does give me hope that the carthies are doing better too. In one they took most of southern and western Europe, then lost almost all of it too. Pretty awesome!

Yeah, and as a last resort, if the AI factions were still stupid, the landbridges could be implement.

I've read some posts about how moddable is the new AI so I hope you can make it more competent than now - I'll pray the Immortal Gods for that.

But the 1.1 version is at least less stupid than the former ones (curse be the vanilla AI!). Yesterday I started the Baktria campaign and is hard to survive in the beginning without cheating the game. Great job, guys! Keep the game tough! We all like the challenges. :)
For now, the Grey Death is respecting me because I don't touch their objectives and I mantain garrisons in the border towns - but my purse is running very very low.

[lobf]

While I thought that the idea in intself is quite neat; the way it works out in a game as EB.... I am not to convinced. For one thing some of our factions would experience some pretty inconvenient geography as a result of projecting a sphere onto a rectangle like that.

For RTR this isn't that big an issue, AFAIK, as they focus more on what you call the 'civilised' world; but EB has a fair few factions more on the 'outer-spheres' of the map. Not too practical from what I saw on the screenshots to go for a 'tilted' map then...

I don't understand what this means. Specifically how the AI knows/cares the map is tilted.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Okay, take a breath. Here goes:

As you'll know the earth isn't a neat rectangle; so whenever you try to do cartography with it on any 'worldwide' scale you will have some obvious problems. One: no matter what you do you will always end up with an incorrect map due to the distortion you get from projecting some sphere onto a rectangle. Two: either your proportions will be all wrong or your angles will; again due to the fact that you project your sphere of sorts onto a rectangle.

What RTR has done is that they have chosen to go with correct angles; which means that if you would view their 'Earth' from 'space' you would see the same rough shape as you would with the real Earth; i.e. their map can be seen as a flattened sphere. However towards the boundaries of their map you will notice that in order to keep the angles the size of the various land-masses/provinces had to be stretched/shrunk; a natural consequence of their 'circular' map. Imagine a circle intersected by two lines who intersect each other in the center at some angle as well. Now imagine a circle with the same center but half the radius. Again the lines will intersect the second circle but the distance between the first two intersection points and the latter two will reveal a signficant difference.

Hence factions which dwell on the rims of the RTR map will have much more of a distance to cover from one city to another on the map than they would have to in real life. Since RTR has more of a focus on the Mediterrean this isn't too much of a problem for them as they simply can chose the center of 'their circle' to be somewhere in the middle of that sea; and the need to shrink provinces won't become as obvious due to the rather large amount of provinces already located there -- and the need to stretch provinces can be considered a small price to pay as relatively few factions will ever need to traverse those stretched provinces. In fact part of those provinces are the steppes for which it doesn't really matter too much as one can always claim to incorporate part of one region into another.


EB on the other hand has chosen to stick to the more common approach of rendering the proportions correct but the angles wrong. So you could view the EB map as an 'unfolded' Earth. This means that distances on the map correspond to distances in the real world; but that moving directions will not. A simple example is that 'north' doesn't correspond to 'up'; but differs from which point on the map you look at it.

[lobf]

Thank you very much, that was exactly the explanation I was looking for.

Plus, it would look a little lame to xerox an idea like that, amirite? :P