unexplored map?

[NosPortatArma]

Hi, this is on the medieval II engine, and if i recall right one could sail west to discover the americas. Now, one couldn't see them to begin with, but had to move units there to remove the fog. So I'm wondering, will this feature be used in ebii? Becuase surely, the arevaci didn't know of india for example. It would be very realistic imho.

[yuezhi]

yes it would make sense for the less civilized factions.

[alin]

No, we haven't planned to use this feature in the first release.
Please bear in mind that we're trying to mod a Medieval era game, that's a huge amount of work and we can't finish everything for the first release.

Thus it may be used in later releases.

[fryslan]

I think its a must for later releases/patches, is it so much work to do that?

[Nightbringer]

The issue is that it must still be on the initial game map, which I believe is still constrained within certain limits. This means that in order for there to be far off undiscovered lands all the initial ones would have to be shrunk.

[NosPortatArma]

Alin:

No of course not, not in the first release. but later? glad that you're considering it.

nightbringer:

I'm not suggesting that there should be any discoverable americas or anything, just that the map we already have will be unexplored variably for different factions. No need to shrink anything.

[Appius Pulcher]

I have to say I am against this. Making an all covering fog doesn't work because surely everyone playing the game already have a basic geographical knowledge. In MedII you didn't choose to sail west to discover a trade route to India. You did id because you already knew what was there. I think we can safely assume that no players have never looked at a map of Europe, and thus the fogging of the map wouldn't add to immersion but only be a nuisance.

Another issue is that it would force the team to make some very crude estimations of how much of the world a tribe knew geographically. And when their knowledge of a region was geographically sound enough to warrant inclusion in the starting map. Take the Ptolemy world map. Everyone can see that although the map is largely accurate certain mistakes are present, and the mistakes tend to be bigger the further away from Greece you get. But at what point does a mistake in the map (and thus the geographical knowledge) become large enough to warrant exclusion from the starting map?

I know that particular map is a bit later that the starting date. Just used it as an example.

[NosPortatArma]

beautiful appius: (not flirting, but I hope you know what pulcher means. just latin geekery)

players also know how history actually progressed, and that this and that unit will become avaible that date, they can also, if they see wich, know the exact starting locations of each of the other factions armies et cetera. What I'm saying is that players already posses lots of information, or the means to get it, not avaible to historical leaders. I don't see how it would be a nuissance, I just think it would add immersion aswell as educating us about how much of the world different cultures knew about.

Yes, determining hits could be quite tricky indeed. But it doesn't have to be perfect, and an attemp at it, even if fauly, is better than none in my view. But I'm sure the devs already know how much each faction knew, roughly.

[Appius Pulcher]

beautiful appius: (not flirting, but I hope you know what pulcher means. just latin geekery)

players also know how history actually progressed, and that this and that unit will become avaible that date, they can also, if they see wich, know the exact starting locations of each of the other factions armies et cetera. What I'm saying is that players already posses lots of information, or the means to get it, not avaible to historical leaders. I don't see how it would be a nuissance, I just think it would add immersion aswell as educating us about how much of the world different cultures knew about.

Yes, determining hits could be quite tricky indeed. But it doesn't have to be perfect, and an attemp at it, even if fauly, is better than none in my view. But I'm sure the devs already know how much each faction knew, roughly.

Don't worry I got the latin geekery, but thanks anyway

When it comes to units becoming available and other events like it, date date usually isn't fixed. To my knowledge it either depends on certain events in the game, or it could be an event set within an interval of turns. This is precisely because knowing the exact date of an event would allow the player too much use of forehand knowledge. The aim is to render forehand knowledge mute. The same should, in my humble opinion, be done with the map, disclosing the entire map to begin with, and not letting the players cartographic knowledge be an edge in the game-play. I think the geographical knowledge in EB1 was limited enough. Can't name particulars right now, but I remember thinking how it was unlikely that a certain faction wouldn't have knowledge of who owned a particular piece of land at game start. Especially when it comes to the Hellenic world.

A further complication is also that factions with written language could be favoured in geographical starting knowledge, simply because it can be documented that they knew of certain regions. For factions that haven't left us any written sources, one can only guess how much of the world they knew. And no doubt this knowledge will then be underestimated, because no particular knowledge can be documented. For instance, the Greeks knew of the Britons, and this may or may not be represented in the starting map. But did the Greeks share any of their knowledge with the Britons themselves? Or did any Britons have far reaching trade routes, and was the knowledge these traders possessed passed on to other in their culture, or was it trade secrets. There are simply too many unknowns. I worry that the hellenic factions (and perhaps the romans) will start with a far superior starting map, because their knowledge has been documented, and the "barbaric" factions knowledge has not. This would go against the entire goal of Europa Barbarorum, whose aim it is of course, to give a more balanced and factual view on the "barbaric" factions.

Now it might sound as though this is a deal-breaker for me, but it isn't. I get the appeal of exploring the world and discovering new factions and all that. I just don't think it would add anything to the mod. At least not for me. Therefore I would humbly request that making an all-covering fog of the map could be implemented to the mod via sub-mods after release. That way I think we can all be happy.