Map Blog 2 - France and Iceland

[sumskilz]

Thanks everyone!

Regarding winter textures, they are still vanilla. I haven't worked on them yet. They will be more varied than vanilla textures but not to the degree that the summer textures are for reasons already mentioned by Ed and Res.

EDIT: Also, I think that the mountain tops can be improved. I haven't really worked on them yet either. What you are seeing now is a mixture of vanilla and some textures that were alternate ideas for the glaciers.

[IIGaneshaII]

What use will Iceland have without a settlement? I mean the AI wont try to attack it then right?

[sumskilz]

What use will Iceland have without a settlement? I mean the AI wont try to attack it then right?

It will certainly be worth something to the player, but if we can get the AI to attack it or not via the sea remains to be seen. Rebels could be a problem for the player either way.

[Recon]

Rebels could be a problem for the player either way.

And that's about all the action this norse colony should experience.

[brennas]

And that's about all the action this norse colony should experience.

Dude, we are speaking about Iceland, what did you expect?...it can not be the center of all the action

[Konstantin I]

Dude, we are speaking about Iceland, what did you expect?...it can not be the center of all the action

For me Iceland is only a decor, who wasted valuable space from the map.

[Mads]

niceness!

[Nirnaeth Arnoediad]

The only error I see is the place of Toulouse. This town is more western.

[Space_Ed]

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&...ed=0CB0Q8gEwAA

I think the difference is pretty negligible.

EDIT: You're not wrong though. Tolosa might get moved a bit further west.

[Resurrection]

It may switch banks depending on our post-processing process when we will try to correct any errors and will be placing PSFs (part of them will be the PSF representing suburbs on the other side of the city on the river.

[sumskilz]

Regarding Tolosa, I don't think it can be wrong. It might look weird because of the scale, but I'm fairly certain it was on the east bank of the river since that is where la Basilique Saint Sernin is. So if the rivers were created using satellite data...

[Space_Ed]

Regarding Tolosa, I don't think it can be wrong. It might look weird because of the scale, but I'm fairly certain it was on the east bank of the river since that is where la Basilique Saint Sernin is. So if the rivers were created using satellite data...

Yeah I think you're right.

[ZenBoy]

Amazing maps ! All looks VERY interesting to me !

[Nirnaeth Arnoediad]

I only said it because I'm french and also at the first glance I saw Tolosa was wrongly located.
I hope you will change it to place this important city correctly.
The rest is quite perfetc, I wait this mod with interest.
Have a nice day.

[Resurrection]

I only said it because I'm french and also at the first glance I saw Tolosa was wrongly located.
I hope you will change it to place this important city correctly.

It is closest to the correct location it can possibly be. As you surely know Toulouse lies on Garonne. While it is possible to have cities directly on rivers on the strat map (one tile westwards), it messes up the battlemap then. Therefore all cities must be next to their respective rivers (and next to their exact real world locations). Toulouse is no different so it's slightly more east than it's in reality because in reality it sits on the river not next to it.

The only thing we can do is the choice of bank and we do that as anything else historically. In this case, as sumskilz has pointed out, Toulouse was built on the right bank (eastern) of Garonne and medieval city was thus mostly there. Therefore it is on that bank in DotS. On the other bank will be village PSF if the city occupied both banks at the time to represent that.

The only concern is the amount of snow in eruope during winter. Are you guys sure there was so much snow? Sure it has snowed in places as far as southern spain but how many times has this happened? And even in france, it snows but not so much to last for months, just a few days or weeks. This is not russia or norway. But i could be wrong.

As you can see, it rarely touches germany. It would also make the winter map look less "white" and a bit more green. But in all i love the map

Sorry, you are wrong and yes, we are absolutely sure. Space_ED has posted recent UK winter: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...35#post7335235 and trust me most of Europe except most southern regions are exactly like that in most winters.

The difference from Norway and Russia is, that it's not snowy for most of a year or permanently...

[.Doge.]

Great Blog!
The map looks much better than anything I've seen before. And thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanks for the cliffs! I allways wanted more cliffs on the map.
+rep

[spanish_emperor]

Awesome map guys. I remember i asked for change in textures a few months probably a year ago and you guys said it probably wouldn't happen because of the ton of work to do. I am glad you guys made it possible, it looks stunning!

The only concern is the amount of snow in eruope during winter. Are you guys sure there was so much snow? Sure it has snowed in places as far as southern spain but how many times has this happened? And even in france, it snows but not so much to last for months, just a few days or weeks. This is not russia or norway. But i could be wrong.

This shows the amount of snow in seasons (of course each year the amount of snow differs):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...te-seasons.gif

As you can see, it rarely touches germany. It would also make the winter map look less "white" and a bit more green. But in all i love the map

[sumskilz]

They are indeed "white walls" but these walls also have a lot of convexities and emarginations in them.

Yeah, the way that textures are laid out by the game engine makes that hard to emulate. I made a new texture since these pics were posted that does a better job though.

I don't have deep knowledge about the technical issues so you might forgive me and remember that I actually try to help you improving the mod and do not try to offend you or to denigrate your work.

We haven't taken your comments negatively. It's just that sometimes the technical issues make what seems like reasonable suggestions into things that just can't be done (as far as we know at this point).

EDIT: New Glaciers:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Resurrection]

Seleukos_I. is right about this. If we wanted the map to span as we wanted it then the Iceland's inclusion is more of a by-product of that. The span's criterias:

South-East to include whole Arabian Peninsula and north to include whole Baltic sea (land between finland-sweden). Resulting map includes all of Sahara and Iceland as bonuses. Western border was adjusted in order not to cut the Iceland nor Sahara in half or something like that.

Such info would be part of Map generation blog should you people vote for it.

EDIT: Thinking of Sahara of wasted space and desert is a terrible mistake :-) I think you will be surprised how lively and interesting it's gonna be in DotS (as it was in fact in the past).

[Space_Ed]

Yes the desert will be a lively and contested region as it was in history.

Konstantin I, I can see what you are getting at but when you see the map properly in DotS it is pretty enormous. Iceland is a historically relevant place to include and the map is going to include African kingdoms and jungles in subsaharan Africa aswell as have contested trade routes between nomads, berbers, tuaregs, portuguese... etc. I think this is all good and unseen before. The muslims did go deep into Africa and unusually this will be possible in DotS.