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Welcome to Diplomacy: Empires.
A long time ago on Bnet there was a map called Rise Of The True Rome. It sought to bring together elements from both Diplomacy and Civilization. In some ways it succeeded, in others it failed. The map was fun, which is what brought me to further it. What you see before you is the map built on the foundation of my previous edits, RotTR: Gold and RotTR: Advanced (v1/2/2.2).

As with RE:RC, the map is re-triggered in almost every way possible, as of the .90 and above series almost no original trigger systems remain from the original. The terrain and units have been entirely redone from scratch, along with my signature string formatting to make everything beautiful.

Map Information:
Dimensions: 256x256
Tileset: Jungle
Terrain: ISOM and extended mix
Players: 7 human, 1 computer
File size: ~115kb (Thanks Tinymap!)

How do I play?
In short: Acquire geysers, build armies, crush enemies.

D:E works on RotTR's geyser acquisition idea. Each Extractor/Refinery/Assimilator grants you minerals per second. The gathering of gas represents trade and movement between your cities and capitals. Gas is used to create troops and minerals, which are scattered and located mainly around rivers or mountains, are used to create structures. Along the way you will advance from the Bronze age, through the Iron age, and finally to the Gold Age.

Each age grants you stronger units than the one before, along with offering you selection of the new wonders specific to that age. Since the map uses no offensive or transportation based air units, the Spore Colony, Missile Turret, and Observatory serve as your Wonder creators. When these long build times are finally complete the building explodes and you are given a choice of various Wonders for that age. Some give resources, some give access to special structures, and sometimes it's good to grab one just to make sure no one else gets it first.

It's too hard!
I'm sorry to hear that, however you probably aren't playing correctly.

When you start, it's a good idea to mass zerglings to quickly acquire more land. When you run into a bunker, do not try to take it, it will mow you and your little swarm down easily. It's best to wait until the Iron age to try to tackle bunkers and cannons. Expand within the bunkers that are located at each border between two starting points and key locations, and tech up.

In the Iron age, infantry are nice but you want to work your way up to goliaths. Vultures are nice to take down enemy light units if you have managed to get through to someone else on the map. Siege tanks are best used defensively until you've upgraded their attack damage a bit. Upgraded goliaths are the strongest non-gold units you can lay your hands on.

During the Golden age, all bets are off and you have access to a number of powerful but expensive units. Sustaining a large Golden army requires a lot of land and a lot of resources. By this time you should be using drones to retrieve gas so as not take precious Terran or Protoss supply. As a rough rule of thumb, depleted gas is better than no gas at all.

If after all that you find a unit really is underpowered or useless, let me know and we'll see about buffing it.

It's too easy!
Glad to hear you're so skilled at it. Perhaps we'll have a game some time.
Actually though if you find a unit or strategy you think is overpowered, let me know.

Due to my router problems my ability to test this map is VERY limited. As such there are probably huge balance issues. You should let me know so I can fix them.

I want screenshots!


Credits
WW-IronWall for RotTR.
DarkMarine and Darkling for testing.
MiniMoose2707 for various contributions.
Civ World and Diplo 7.7 for ideas.

Enough! I want download!
Most up to date source: https://sites.google.com/site/exsector12/map-downloads
Here at SEN: http://www.staredit.net/sc1db/file/1656/


Want To Help Me Out?
Rate, comment, download, host on bnet.
Host it on Bnet, play it, spread it around.

Post has been edited 20 time(s), last time on May 30 2015, 8:37 pm by Excalibur.

ME WANT. I think I'll buy SC for the umpteenth time just to play this.

Glad you like it Cent. Make sure to report back to me on balance.

I see that the Jews and the Norse has their special unit on picking menu mixed up, Jews with Norse Viking, Norse with Messiah, nothing on balance yet

Without actually playing, though, I must say I don't like the idea of forcing people to expand to build more. Smaller states like France or Switzerland were modern, though that was largely because technology could be shared in real life. Russia wasn't modern. I always liked the idea that a small country in a game of this would be able to be viable economically to compete with larger ones, though with more effort (Civilization RT and IV do this, in WCIII). Anyway, forcing people to build tech in easily-attacked areas is also annoying. For a real-life example, the USSR built its military-industrial base in the Urals; that is to say, not near Finland or the border with Poland. I really don't think it's necessary to do this, since you're already making people need expansion to be stronger by spreading out resources.

I remember a while back, someone (BeDazed?) created a modified version of this map. It had significant improvements, similar to the ones you've made.

I thought I had fixed that but I guess I forgot. Whoops.

Realistically you're obviously correct but in the name of balance it was necessary.

Find it for me if possible?

Edit: 0.81 added, fixed the starting unit placement problem.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 20 2009, 1:53 pm by Excalibur.

Yeaaaaaaaah. Testing Ling has tested.

Working on 0.82.
If anyone can give me details on terrain/doodads causing bad pathing in any areas or bugged geysers, that'd be awesome. I already fixed the pathing bug north of Greece.

As I usually do, I got unhappy with the current terrain. So I decided I'm going to do it over again.
WARNING: LARGE IMAGE, no image tags to save the people on small res/bad connections.
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f126/MCRXxHelenaxXRCM/DERedo_1900x1900_1900x1900.jpg
As you can see I'm not anywhere near done yet, just started on Carthage. I blanked dirt over just about everywhere, leaving a few pieces of things I still liked. The new terrain should have about 30% more extended and probably a 10-20% increase in doodads.

Ex, as I could probably tell you through MSN, I'd like to just make this opinion public.

I feel that the wonder boxes could be moved to the left side, giving you a lot much needed space down in Carthage and the surrounding areas. Simply put, it looks like a blocky hill on the side of a masterpiece in the making.

Noted but honestly the mountains there make it so Africa isn't too big a part of the map. Only North Africa is supposed to be included.

Instead of having doodaded bridges, you could make triggable destructible bridges. Have some sort of buildable building on each side of the river where the bridges are and if you destroy one of the buildings the bridge will not work. To fix the bridge, you have to rebuild the building there. Connect the bridge using some type of air unit.

Have you heard of UNIT PATHING by chance? v.v

Just an idea i though would be cool for a game like this.

A bad idea that wouldn't be cool because of unit pathing.

I don't think you could get much into let alone past the Sahara.

UPDATE:
Wonder spots changed to left side. Pointless advertising of my name put into old space until I decide what I want to do with it.
Germany's starting overlord was removed in order to try and balance their extremely fast early game expansion. Further nerf might be required.
Picture in main post updated. Warning, its 1280x1280 and just under 1MB.

I'm still reterraining the new .90 update but I thought I'd release this in the meantime.

Edit:
Hm. Germany's got some rough early game still. I might make it so that they keep their ovvy, but have to build their Spawning Pool unlike the other locations. That should give enough of a mineral penalty that they can't go grabbing 5 extractors while other spots only have 2.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 22 2009, 4:27 pm by Excalibur.

Why so many temples in the water?

I got bored doing .76