The point where I either blog about it or never blog about it in spite of intending to.
Thiiiiiis...is probably the latter.
I have the essentials written out. It's a fairly cool idea, I think, and I do want to share it...
...But my notes for it are currently buried under a pie and whipped cream.
...One which was forced upon me, and which I'm really not sure I can eat when I'm this sick.
...It makes sense in context--kinda sorta? Just have to take my word for it, this is an actual thing which keeps me from working on it, and is indeed a problem. One I'll have fixed before bed, but by that time I'll be too tired to blog. As-is, in fact, I'm blogging at the only time I have the clear time to do so coherently.
Earlier, family would distract me; later, tiredness would claim me. (Also, at any time, girlfriend could call on me--and girlfriend > blog entry. Which would kill my momentum if I was midway through writing an entry.)
I'll try to remember it tomorrow, but I don't want to leave you with nothing, so I'll leave you with the other difficulty I'm facing.
Mustering up how to keep my momentum going and get the map right on my civ 3 mod.
It's actually going great! (I think I told you all yesterday that I needed to manually make the map, yes? Don't actually remember.) I've built the terrain for all of Africa--sans rivers, forests, and resources, but the TERRAIN is there.
The entirety of the east of the map from Africa's built as well, to the body of water in the bottom right corner of the map.
I've also built the Mesopotamian version of Greece and the terrain that's the areas of cities like Ancyra and Iconium. Plus the Mesopotamian version of the coastline for the Mediterranean in that area, and the Mesopotamian version of the coastline for the body of water above it. (To think there was a time where Geography was a subject I aced. Haha present me, past me laughs at how badly you suck.)
If I could actually complete the darn further inland portions extending it all the way east to the edge of the map and touching on the vaguely-northeast body of water...then I'd have, 1: fully completed the Mesopotamian map's terrain, and 2: fully completed the whole bottom left quadrant (literally almost perfectly 1/4th of the entirety of the map) of the map.
Of course there's caveats.
This is the Mesopotamian part.
I need to tweak it for the Rise of Rome map--which will then be tweaked on any subtle differences between it and the Fall of Rome map (they're 99% similar, but aren't literally identical), then the Middle Ages map, then Napoleonic Era, then Age of Discovery (which mind you may come in hand for a small detail about Africa), etc.
I need to actually add those things.
Plus the cities.
Then there's generating the other 3/4ths of the map. (Well more like a little over 2/4ths since Africa is most of the bottom left side.)
But it's mostly done, is what I'm getting at--and by my estimation, it's loose, but I think the 200 x 200, and my scaling, is on target to include all the details, more or less. Some details are getting expanded further than they should, some details are regrettably lost due to a crunch, because generating a map 100% manually leads to glitches in the overlay like that and I'm mostly just eyeballing things with educated guesses at what "feels" right.
But holy moly, I might actually manage to create a coherent map. It won't perfectly match the terrain of any map. It won't perfectly recreate geography. If it were put on a globe, some areas would be woefully out of proportion with their actual size, some too small, many too large. It won't be perfect...
...But with a lot of luck, it'll work, is what I'm getting at, I hope.
I'm just...
...Having a bit of creator's block in trying to hash out those inner details for the Mesopotamian map. It should be easy. Should. But it's not. Something's just...in the way of my creative muse for landscaping right now. I did use that time to do some game calculations, though.
By my count, I've got at least 59 wonders, 24 small wonders, 109 buildings, 265+ units, and 155+ technologies, to cram into four ages.
A reasonably crowded tech tree, the vanilla industrial ages, had 24 technologies to research.
I need almost double that.
I did, however, knock out an item on my to-do list; I compiled similar technologies. I did so sloppily; some techs were left off altogether, some techs are classified a little awkwardly, but I got them more or less sorted, and loosely separated by age, no less!
Well, by original age.
There's a good 70+ that'd fit into the "Age of Rome" age, usually--maybe slightly more (depends on what technologies I need, because I need techs to match unit advancements and to cover buildings and to cover abilities unlocked by techs and to cover new governments), maybe slightly less (depends on what technologies I can cut, or can be moved to an era later).
Those aren't gonna fit no matter what, so it'll be divided differently. I have a loose idea of a partial map, but it's not complete.
For the record, the original second age has ~55+, also rather on the high side.
In contrast--and to reiterate, this would be why I'm going to end up starting from the end result and working backwards--the fourth age has 12. I can easily double that, safely, and not be crowded.
The third age has ~21+ useful ones. A little more crowded, but not undoable. I believe the record for a tech tree is 32ish (give or take) in Rise of Rome.
If I can push it up to be 40/page, then that'd be 160 techs--about what I'm thinking I'll need.
I also made note of what governments are in which scenarios, as another side-project.
Soyeah, that's my game progress.
I think that the route I took, of doing the documentation I've done?
...Was absolutely the right route to take.
Just typing this all out, I haven't fixed the main problem of creator's block for the map, but I am brainstorming ideas for the tech tree layout, given the move of what the fourth age will be. (Mind you, I still need to do the calculations for what the tech tree positions can be.)
I have exactly the number of sea techs I need for the sea tech tree, by my calculations. (12 units in the galley line--mind you, the galley line stops at Galleon, with Transport being an upgrade of Troop Transport; Galleons represent the ultimate combo-ship, being capable of some bombardment and good attack and good defense--not as good as dedicated warships in any of these regards--while transporting troops, but not as many as a troop transport.)
I think I have exactly the number of techs I need for the air units, by my calculations. (The most upgraded air unit is the fighter, which I found seven unique versions of in a chain.)
I have exactly the number of techs I need for siege units, by my calculations. (11 units, 11 upgrades.)
Little hard to tell on archers; I have 7.5 for them (the eighth joins a different unit upgrade chain--but diverging from vanilla where it's the swordsman upgrade line, the upgrade chain I went for is the spearman upgrade line), but I don't know where they fit; I think there's enough.
One area I'm coming up a bit short on, but which I may be able to fix with the use of integrating some of these into the military upgrade line (which is honestly where most horse units are gotten anyway), is horse upgrades. Since horses go to become tanks by my tech tree line, I have 14 in that line, and I've only got about 11 or so dedicated.
I may have missed one or two, though, which when used can maybe get me up to where I need to be.
It still looks like I'm likely going to need to invent one fake tech, maybe two.
(The way I have it lined up now, Animal Domestication unlocks the chariot, the wheel unlocks the war chariot--generic unit--chariotry unlocks the three-man-chariot, still generic, pack animals unlock the mounted fighter, horseback riding unlocks the mounted warrior, horsemanship unlocks the horseman, and...heavy cavalry unlocks ancient cavalry, with the step above that being ancient heavy cavalry; I think I want to add a tech between horsemanship and heavy cavalry for ancient cavalry. Also, down the line, I have three tank units for only two techs, motorized transportation and armored tactics; I need a third.)
I have 12 in the "swordsman" line, with one being the Foot Fighter (replacing Warriors as the starting unit, with Warriors being an upgrade), meaning I need 11 techs there. By my estimation, I have ~19 techs I could use; more than enough.
That is however, the amount I need for the "spearman" line, which features 20 units. One as a starter.
Some spearman upgrades don't need to be on the military line, though.
All in all, it's coming together quite nicely.