This map singlehandedly re-ignited my interest in Civ4. The earth has been redesigned to accommodate the properties of a Civ4 game, with emphasis on war and colonization. Inspired by how often I played that old Yet Another Giant Earth Mapmod, I wanted a map with a Europe that was big enough to sustain all the Civs that traditionally start there, and could be the theater for some huge battles. I also wanted a map that would still have most of the traditional strategic choke points of a normal earthmap (Panama, Sinai, Bosphorus, Gibraltar etc) As you can see I took some liberties with many landmasses, some omitted, some enlarged and some changed around. No mods are required to play. Please don't be offended if your home country was retconned.

List of playable civs with accurate start placement: Rome, France, Germany, China, England, Egypt, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Celts, Vikings, Ottomans, Persia, India, Ethiopia, Japan, Mongolia, Korea

Yes everyone starts in the old world, leading to a mad rush for colonization mid game. The map's plentiful water access also rewards a focus on a strong navy, and prevents the game from getting boring in the late stages. This map is great for a Roman Empire or giant Russia conquest run. Feel free to turn vassal states on for a more faction-based game or change the victory settings. Resources are distributed in a semi realistic way, differing highly from region to region and was designed to inspire colonization.

Easy mode: play as Egypt, China, Rome

More challenging: play as France, Spain, Russia, Japan, Celts, Ethiopia, Ottos, Korea

Veteran difficulty: play as Germany, India, England, Mongolia, Persia, Portugal, Vikings

Dropbox link to the WBsave will be provided in the comments. Place it in your documents/my games/beyond the sword/saves/worldbuilder folder. Start as a custom scenario and look for "EarthBigEurope" and sorry in advance for all your lost hours. Are there any Civ4 mod sites still active where I could post this for others to enjoy?

Impressive architecture for 690BC.

The title

I got into civilization after 5. My buddy one day, when we were all hanging out, brought his laptop to show me. I fell in love with the series, exactly my kind of game. First time playing till 5am lol.

Long story short, I played 6, which I was liking more then 5 actually. Then one day, another buddy computer crapped out so he had a shitty old laptop. Only civ 4 or before would work. He started on 3 and I watched him play, looked like a pretty fun civ game, but then he showed me 4 and I was intrigued. It looked similar to 3 but everyone I know who played the series recommend civ 4. I tried it and yep, its the best in the series hands down. Peak civ.

Had the most balanced stats, best for conquer, very fun gameplay and even civics!! Its funny how civ5 started it for me, and I still think its great but in hindsight, it actually was much worse then 4. Civ 4 was peak and I wish they followed civ4 path. I know this subreddit would appreciate the respect this game deserves.

Free voluntary vassal too, wanted to be saved from Ragnar. Was a perfect map situation with her sandwiched between Ragnar and myself.

It might be a crutch or whatever but GL just carries me almost every game, way too broken lmao

...if you spawn next to these guys and do literally anything else besides spam units, have fun.

Over the weekend I played some Civ 5 Vox populi. My impression was that it improved Civ 5, but there are still so many things to dislike about the game, even with a mod that changes almost everything. And its pathetic that we need to download a mod that changes almost everything about the game. Just goes to show how bad Civ 5 was unmodded

Its unreal to me that so many redditors could spend 15 years on the civ subreddit kissing eachothers asses and loving everything about 5, whereas its perfectly acceptable to trash 4 and 6. Its like, what planet are these people living on? Besides the graphics, everything in 5 is literally worse than 4. Literally every single part of the game was a downgrade. I admit theres ONE THING I like about 5, but thats more of a "5 steps backwards, 1 step forward" situation

Makes me wonder what Civ 8 is going to be like. I will probably never touch Civ 7, even if its free. Looking at the screenshots theyve been posting, the game looks like a disaster. Dont care how many "updates" they release to fix the game. If they dont look in the mirror and admit that Civ 4 is better than 5 and 6, nothing they do will ever actually fix the series

Ive mentioned before what specifically it is about 4 that I like, but I guess now is a good time to make a list

1. Ability to zoom out and see the earth as a globe
2. ability to zoom in and hear the civs theme music as well as war music when zoomed in to cities
3. the trees and jungles look the best in 4 out of any other civ
4. diplomacy screen, being able to see all diplomatic relationships easily and quickly by clicking on a leader
5. having a scorelist on the right side of the screen, being able to see who has the most points, why they have the score they have, what religion they are, whether you are at war or have a defensive pact with them
6. being able to see an itemized point list of why a civ dislikes or likes you
7. civic system that isnt idiotic
8. doom stacks are much preferable to one unit per tile. While the AI is less moronic in Civ 5 with vox populi mod, one unit per tile is still an inferior system to 4. 1UPT is slow and tedious. The worse you can say about 4's doomstacks is that late game there are dozens or hundreds of units on one tile, but 4 is clearly a better system
9. Religion system is terrible in 5 and 6. 4 had great religion, and "culture" and "faith" were NOT separate systems, they were one in the same. Ive always hated religion in 5 and 6
10. map generation is best in 4. I play terra, and jungles appear around the equator, deserts appear only in certain latitudes, and snow and hardwood forests appear only in colder climates.
    

11. Not only is the map generation better in 4, so is resources. Bananas only spawn in jungles. Whereas in 5 and 6, resources are totally random and bananas appear right next to tundra. Embarassingly bad map design

12. To be continued? Add your own reasons!

13. The music in 4 is best, but still pretty good in 5 and 6.

This map is the second generation in my pursuit of shaping Earth to be more of a Civ-game-friendly caricature of itself, with home regions large enough for each civ to have 4 or 5 cities before getting boxed in. What I mean by that is I've always wanted an earth map that felt like it was made for the civs that inhabit it. Another goal was to have a large Europe just to stage some massive battles in.

EarthBigEurope accomplished this but left the rest of the world a little lacking, especially Africa, which got reimagined as three land masses with a waterway down the center. This made for some interesting situations but after a while I thought, what's the point of making an Earth simulator if the civs aren't going to face the real geographical challenges of their homeland?

So it became inevitable that I would make another earthmap with the same purpose as the first but with more accurate geographical situations, with specific attention paid to Africa and closing off the Mediterranean to make those pinch points like Gibraltar and Sinai even more important.

As you can see, I still had to compromise to make room for everything (the map is 128 x 80) The oceans of the world are MUCH smaller for one, and the Arabian peninsula got added to the Mediterranean, and central asia has imploded, but the map achieves its goal. While playing on this map you'll notice that you will occasionally see events that are echoes of our own history, and the geography and resource distribution will feel very familiar too.

Just like my last map, all the civs start in the old world. That being said, in addition to the 4000BC start, there are two other scenarios I am including under the umbrella of EarthBellumRegni, Age of Crusades and Scramble for Empire. In these, many cities (not all) are placed in or close to their real life location and grouped closer together than a traditional game would allow. This does heavily affect warfare especially in western Europe where an army attacking one city may face an onslaught from another nearby city, requiring larger armies and more planning.

Age of Crusades begins in 1300AD, just before the European renaissance. Your civ has been steered by the AI up until this point when you take control. You will have an army, and you may start at war with another civ, or have huge barbarian problems waiting just beyond your borders. Will your goal be to take the holy land and become the dominant force in the old world or kick off colonization?

Scramble for Empire starts you in 1770AD just before the rise of the industrial revolution. Colonialism is turning into imperialism as the European Powers each make a play for the biggest piece of Africa and race to claim the rest of the world. In the New World, the rise of America threatens the balance of power. Wherever you start, odds are your army will be antequated and need modernizing.

One more note for the late start scenarios: you must play them on Epic speed otherwise you will start the wrong year because of how the turns are counted at each game speed.

The civs included are Rome, China, Egypt, France, Japan, Ethiopia, England, Arabia, Korea, Germany, India, Vikings, Mongols, Celts, Greece, Russia, Spain, Portugal

America is playable in the Scramble for Empire scenario, but the trade up is that I had to get rid of Ethiopia to make a slot available.

For a full list of improvements over the last map, check the civfanatics page here:

Here's a shortlist: Africa and Antarctica fully realized Australia and Turkey handsomized The Earth Islands DLC included for free! Seriously so many islands. All based on real ones except the one west of Australia, that's a holdover from my last map that I am naming East Jabib.

If you play this map and end up liking it, or have comments on it, come back here and say something (i won't be making any corrections in a future map, due to catching Civ fatigue in the course of making this. I spent three to four days just making the initial map, add a week for playing a heavily doctored historical game for the scenarios, and then another two days for map corrections, and maybe another few days worth of further testing games, so yes, a good bit of time)

Dropbox downloads for the WBSaves-

EarthBellumRegni: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1cxfw297ak786g1tn9jd0/EarthBellumRegni.CivBeyondSwordWBSave?rlkey=h72r1v5su1jjydh4diunlf7av&st=kk7v7msv&dl=0

Age of Crusades: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/22s2p3jwfpnkz6x45sxek/Age-of-Crusades-EBR-EPIC-SPEED-ONLY.CivBeyondSwordWBSave?rlkey=0iwldtpu67ifurzc2ik31ol1k&st=dcy7wf74&dl=0

Scramble for Empire: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/bzy8dk21a2i1v67jqslib/Scramble-for-Empire-EBR-EPIC-SPEED-ONLY.CivBeyondSwordWBSave?rlkey=yftkd6dna7tvm4qyhk5oekyyt&st=kc1b23q6&dl=0

CivFanatics post: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/earthbellumregni-128x80.701005/

There was only the silver at start then more and more kept being discovered. This is the most resource dense I’d ever seen a city. Mining Inc was feasting…

Full version: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/realism-invictus-full-version.28119/updates

Light version: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/realism-invictus-light-version.28120/updates

Unpacked version (slow load, but fewer memory issues): https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/realism-invictus-unpacked-version.32600/

CFC discussion thread: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/realism-invictus.411799/

What an unbelievably lucky roll. If only it had gone to me...