Hello, everybody!

I want to introduce myself. I'm a historian from Germany (recently I have published a book on the Peloponnesian War). I've been playing Rome Total War for several years and I think it is probably the best game I've ever seen. I've also started playing some modifications (for instance RTR). I like the idea of increased historical accuracy. But I was usually turned off by certain shortcomings, most of all regarding the campaign map, the regions and cities and the leader names. We have seen loads of new and very interesting combat units, but there are many other things to improve.

This is why I started creating a new map. It took me two years of research and edit work, but now it is ready and it seems to be stable. It is a complete rework of the original map going from Scotland to India. Everything is of unprecedented accuracy. You have a huge number of realistic mountain passes, river crossings, islands etc. Some rivers have even become partially navigable. The new rivers and mountain passes give lots of new strategic options that will make up for a completely new game feel. For example: once you could prevent any invasion into Italy by closing 3 passes over the Alpes. But ancient geographers actually knew 12 ways to cross the Alpes and now these have been truly represented in the game, giving any invader a huge number of options.

The number of regions is now 197 (the maximum) and most of them are historically correct with exact borders as far as known. In many other cases I used rivers, mountains and forests to define the borders. All the major cities of the ancient world are included and each is in the right location as well as their ports. Many city sites have been highly improved. Just take a look at Alexandria, where you can watch the city plant with the Mareotis lake, the harbor and the island of Pharos and the lighthouse obviously in the right place on the island above the harbor.

In this thread I will post a series of screenshot to show what I'm up. For anybody interested I propose this map for further development. Currently I'm still working on a few features like ressources, city buildings, rebel names, leader names, but most of the work is done and the map is waiting to be filled with life. Any help is welcome. Just let me know what you think about it.