A Dymaxion Map would make Eras Total Conquest even better

[RubiconDecision]

I'm a big fan of this mod, as it was so ambitious and did so much with the restrictions of regions and units. Hopefully at some point in the future, the Memory Editing program will break those limitations, and if so, then Eras is poised to be the natural mod to play given all of the work done thus far.

But here's a way to make sea travel make sense for those on one side of the map or another, with Asia and North and South America most affected. There's little chance of the Native Americans or Aztecs finding a route to Asia, but of course the Chinese invented the compass and there are legends of traveling to the New World. Magellan's Voyage could come earlier. The Spanish in the New World might end up in Asia, and given their control of the Seas, well...watch out!.


Here's a Dymaxion Map, an unusual idea to depict all land surfaces properly scaled, something that doesn't work on a standard flat 2D map. It's entirely possible for a good mapper to use this as a base, then merely alter the existing regions in Bare Geomod, and then play Eras on that map. It would dramatically change the game.
https://telemachusunedited.files.wor...1/03/lowpp.jpg

Here's the link so you can see it properly and not be cut off in the forum software. As you can see this plays havoc with the ideas of cardinal directions of the compass, but it does allow any ship to travel through all of the oceans. The depth of the oceans would still limit getting to those places though until you advance far enough along in the tech tree.

More about Dymaxion maps:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map

The shallow depth from England, Ireland, and Scotland creates a path for travel to the New World, and given the advancement of Viking naval technology, it enabled them to get there first. But the passage to the Bering Strait would be arduous and cold and kill off explorers going that way, and given icy periods in history, might have been blocked by ice flows. The normal deep depth of the middle of the Atlantic Ocean would limit Spain from traveling to the New World, and the depth around Africa would keep a ship from traveling carrying an army in that direction...for some time to come.

Wouldn't this be the way to go in the future?

[Hazzard]

I would be all for something like this being added, but it makes my head spin trying to make sense of it.

[RubiconDecision]

Referencing the North Pole as an origin point:

If you move clockwise = West
If you move counterclockwise = East
If you move towards the apex (origin point) = North
If you move towards the periphery = South

It's a depiction of a globe or sphere on a flat surface and the first one was invented by Buckminster Fuller. So it's ideal for a world map mod like Eras.

If there's many more regions, say only 50 or so to add representation in much smaller kingdoms (based upon land mass) like England, and a large increase in the number of units in the EDU, say 150 or so, then all of the units could be represented at once in a single EDU and something closer to balancing the regions could be shown on this kind of map. Personally I think this can be done, and if nothing else, the Memory Editing project could transform MTW2 Kingdoms.

And these many reasons are why ERAs has genuine possibilities to be the future of modding, because the hard work of showing world cultures has been done to represent the diverse nature of units. The mod also makes it clear that no matter what, you can't make samurai or longbowmen everywhere, and hence you use whatever units you gain to best advantage, and you're limited by what you can muster. This makes invasion a very strategic plan of sending a composition of units that might have a reasonable chance of success given the opponent's own units. But then being dependent upon the indigenous units to defend it but perhaps with better armor and weapons.

If the 1326 campaign is the base, for people probably won't play from 1095 AD to the Empires era (too many turns), then you don't need tons of diverse units, but perhaps a few more per kingdom. Then with scripting certain historical events based upon discoveries in the tech tree, or exploration, then world-wide advancements could be seen.

Then with hording turned on, for you can still defeat a kingdom, but you can elect not to so they end up weakened or end up strong enough to displace some other region taken by another kingdom, then this mod would much more accurately show the entire world than any other mod out there.

You might be able to send samurai to North America due to proximity and having to ship surviving remnants post-battle back to Japan for retraining means that sending them to Portugal is less likely. Northern units would have real deployment issues with the extreme Southern regions on the edges. That diversity means learning about the strength and weakness of units, and planning battles based upon which you can muster from that region after pacification and domination.

A kingdom can go practically anywhere, and being on one side of the map no longer limits your goals. You have a sea route no matter what, so naval technology is crucial, just as was in history with colonization.

By limiting the interiors of North and South America with map movement modifiers, and the interior of Africa, then colonization would mostly occur on the coastlines which then can be more easily accessed by ships. Scurvy would be a common trait suffered upon those traveling by ship and debilitating morale such that even a very strong force could lose in unfamiliar terrain and weakened by long voyages. It means taking over some coastal settlement, then leapfrogging across by making that one strong in the tech tree, and then sending more units since you can't recruit useful ones for some time, and so slows colonization of the indigenous.

The indigenous would be overwhelming, spawning lots of counter-invasions, and likely best handled by a large kingdom of diverse settlements and not the slave faction. That faction would be a lot of fun to play to repel any interlopers.

[Yayattasa]

Hmm, I like this idea. Have you thougth about asking around the H.E.L.P project for help?