this post was submitted on
432 points (87% like it)
505 up votes 73 down votes
shortlink:

civ

unsubscribe14,791 readers

~63 users here now

New to Civilization V?

New to Civilization IV?

New to Civilization?

Want to play a Civilization-style game without needing to invest money first?

Other Civilization-Related Subreddits

Related Game Subreddits

created by Fishsauce_Mcgeea community for
to anything interesting: news article, blog entry, video, picture...
message the moderators

MODERATORS

reddit is a source for what's new and popular online. vote on links that you like or dislike and help decide what's popular, or submit your own! learn more ›

431
432

Can somebody turn this inverted map of the earth (found on /r/pics) into a Civ 5 map? (i.imgur.com)

submitted ago by trii0Chieftan

all 99 comments
sorted by:
best
best
top
new
hot
controversial
old

[–]KremecakesImmortal 143 points144 points ago

I'll try. Be back in a bit. It'll probably be crap though. I'm going to try a small map first.

EDIT: The Civ V World Builder doesn't have an Earth map preset. That'll make this significantly harder.

EDIT12: I'm finished! Now for touchups, and I'll post it in a bit. Then see if I can figure out how to auto scatter resources and post to the Steam Workshop.

After I've finished, I'll need to do touchups. I'm using a square grid (was a bad idea but I couldn't find a hexagonal one and too late now anyway) which makes the conversions to hexagons look really odd in some places. EDIT10: So what I'm saying is when I say I'm 100% done, I'm lying.

EDIT14: Posted. I'm going to go to bed soon.

EDIT15: Just so people can see it here: http://i.imgur.com/KB2JT.jpg

EDIT16: Here's the download! and the post, please go upvote it so people can see it (I get no karma).

[–]President_Platypus 27 points28 points ago

Godspeed soldier.

[–]KremecakesImmortal 29 points30 points ago

Actually, I took 4.5 hrs = .1875 days; .1875/7 = .02679 = 2.679% of the time it took God. But thank you. Without this comment who knows how long it would have taken!

EDIT: .1875/3 = .0625 = 6.25%

[–]JustJonny 12 points13 points ago

Actually, according to Genesis, the Earth was finished on the third day.

[–]Pargelenis 11 points12 points ago

And all the other galaxies, stars and planets were created in 1 day. Talk about work ethic.

[–]JustJonny 8 points9 points ago

Other galaxies, stars and planets? Oh, you mean the firmament, that solid object with stars stuck to it, over our flat disc of a world. Why would that take very long?

In all seriousness, he made the sun and moon after making day and night. It's not a narrative that bears much contemplation.

[–]XperiMental2 4 points5 points ago

and how can there be night with no moon!

[–]trii0Chieftan[S] 17 points18 points ago

I would like to personally thank you for putting your time and effort into creating this and I cant wait to play on it!

[–]KremecakesImmortal 7 points8 points ago

No problem! It's actually pretty fun now that I've kind of figured out what I'm doing.

[–]trii0Chieftan[S] 2 points3 points ago

Ill have to figure that thing out sometime as well.

[–]KremecakesImmortal 2 points3 points ago

Do you have the SKD?

[–]trii0Chieftan[S] 1 point2 points ago

No :/ i have the mac version but I've figured out how to get maps on it.

[–]KremecakesImmortal 1 point2 points ago

Ah. Well there's probably some tutorial somewhere. It's pretty easy to figure out (at least the PC version.)

[–]trii0Chieftan[S] 0 points1 point ago

I'll try to find a mac version (should just be an edited version of the PC original).

[–]klandriklandri sum imperator et pontifex maximus, Romae 10 points11 points ago

Can you post it as a new post? This one will probably be buried once you finish.

[–]KremecakesImmortal 7 points8 points ago

Sure! It might be later tomorrow, this is harder than I thought it would be. And probably won't include resources, at least the initial post.

[–]klandriklandri sum imperator et pontifex maximus, Romae 3 points4 points ago

No pressure, dude. But I think you can auto scatter resources so you don't have to bother with it.

[–]KremecakesImmortal 20 points21 points ago

http://www.meh.ro/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/meh.ro8955.png

Also, thanks for the tip.

[–]helloryan 1 point2 points ago

Waiting patiently for your map, thanks

[–]glados_v2 0 points1 point ago

For balance and aesthetics reasons, you should have a mix of terrain, not just s stream of plains / hills / mountains...

[–]KremecakesImmortal 0 points1 point ago

I tried to model it off the picture as closely as possible, but I was thinking along the same lines. I'll edit it tomorrow.

[–]jb2386 0 points1 point ago

Just a heads up, I've made a few maps from real world locations (i.e. I worked from an existing image/map), and the best way I've seen to do it is to use a program called 'GhostIt'. It allows you to pull the map on screen and set it to 50% opacity, so it overlays the world builder. Then you can get the land layout to be exactly as the map - no need to deal with grids, etc.

[–]KremecakesImmortal 0 points1 point ago

Thanks, I'll look that up!

[–]jb2386 1 point2 points ago

Made my large version of it: http://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/y47si/can_somebody_turn_this_inverted_map_of_the_earth/c5sfqq4

[–]thesatsui 1 point2 points ago

OP delivers!

[–]Ender11For a Day 65 points66 points ago

My brain doesn't process it properly. It wants to see the water as continents.

[–]JewChooTrain89 30 points31 points ago

Buster? The guy who thought that the blue on the map was land?

[–]legacy_of_fail 2 points3 points ago

Holy heck. I'm like "that map's not upside down, they connected africa and...."

Then I realized that inverted meant, land for water, not north for south...

[–]TselfCiv Lurker 18 points19 points ago

Certainly makes Indonesia and Micronesia much better places to settle than in a normal Earth map.

[–]jimstr 12 points13 points ago

Hawaii is now an oasis

[–]shadowofmeadow 17 points18 points ago

After looking at this map for 20 minutes, I can now see the continents as water without my brain screwing it up.

[–]arcainzor 55 points56 points ago

I like this version

[–]Boslof 21 points22 points ago

Greenland Sea just sounds silly.

[–]Threedawg 11 points12 points ago

Greensea

[–]FlatbarNoble 3 points4 points ago

I thought about this too. I remember seeing this years ago. I also thought the same thing as OP when I saw that post today. Jeez, I surf reddit and play Civ5 a lot.

[–]Choppy_LaStatch 2 points3 points ago

The only problem with this one is it doesn't invert the Marianas trench into a bad-ass mountain range that divides the map in half!

[–]Astrokiwi 0 points1 point ago

Plus the Great Lakes of New Zealand are absent again...

[–]trii0Chieftan[S] 2 points3 points ago

I like it too and i think I will name cities similarly to this.

[–]jimmyh03 0 points1 point ago

English Island? Pfft.

[–]Tastes_like_SATAN 0 points1 point ago

All glory to Mexico Land!

[–]joshlikesbagelsKing 14 points15 points ago

This is an amazing idea.

[–]timo103 6 points7 points ago

I remember this as a map in Civ3

[–]Ampatent 5 points6 points ago

Interesting fact, where you see the main island of Hawaii would be the new Challenger Deep. Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain on Earth, measured from the base at the bottom of the ocean to the tip.

This also points out that this isn't an accurate representation of the Earth if it were inverted. The highest mountains would be South of Japan where the Mariana Trench exists, not a flat plain.

[–]trii0Chieftan[S] 1 point2 points ago

Interesting fact indeed but I think this will work fine for the purpose that its serving.

[–]Gandzilla 0 points1 point ago

yep, first thing I though was: These mountains are all wrong.

Also: There is a continous dessert stretching from england to the south africa (compared size of course).

[–]Jman5 3 points4 points ago

I know I'm splitting hairs here, but the world doesn't seem to wrap well.

http://i.imgur.com/al7mf.jpg

The Northern Arctic and central Pacific Desert aren't aligned properly.

[–]trii0Chieftan[S] 0 points1 point ago

Thanks for the heads up but I think that once its in a civ map the hexagons will make it look fine (assuming its left like this).

[–]Ugbrog 10 points11 points ago

Ugh, Pacific desert....on wrong side.....of mountains.

[–]gsfgf 6 points7 points ago

And that Antarctica is still land

[–]fazi0 2 points3 points ago

Would still be ice regardless. Can't really see if it's still land.

[–]YUNoDie 2 points3 points ago

How do we know that the winds aren't going the opposite direction?

[–]agrey 4 points5 points ago

I would assume that the deep parts of the sea would become the tallest mountains, and vice versa.

but the marinas trench is on the wrong side of the ocean.

[–]stargunner 6 points7 points ago

this is bizarrely fascinating to look at.

[–]cyborgmermaid 10 points11 points ago

And while we're at it, here's bizarrely frightening

[–]Threedawg 9 points10 points ago

Greenland the same size as Africa ಠ_ಠ

[–]OleSlappy 6 points7 points ago

It's that mapping thing (mapping a sphere to a rectangle is hard). The mainland part of Canada is around the same size as the US but it's quite a bit larger in this map.

[–]orangecamoSettler 5 points6 points ago

Map Projection

Fun stuff, really.

[–]AstronelsonKing of All Cosmos 3 points4 points ago

Relevant XKCD.

[–]kintaeb 5 points6 points ago

Welcome to the Mercator Projection. It gets the shape and outline of the landmasses correct, but distorts everything near the poles to be much larger than it actually is so that you can draw one straight line from any point across water and follow it. The projection was for sailing originally, but it's been adopted as the dominant projection for some reason. There is no was to get both the size and shape of a landmass right with a rectangular map.

[–]irregardless 3 points4 points ago

It's currently the preferred projection for web mapping for 2 main reasons:

  • It's rectangular, so it can be sliced and tiled without any gaps at the edges.
  • It's conformal, so angles are preserved. Right angles stay right angles no matter what latitude you're looking at. One of the reasons Google adopted the mercator was that its original projection "squished" road intersections in the high latitudes.

[–]cyborgmermaid 0 points1 point ago

Mercadian projections are silly. :)

[–]Pandajuice22 0 points1 point ago

This gives me a headache for some reason.

[–]roblowcoptermy units are merly passing through 4 points5 points ago

PLEASE! I saw this too and first thing I thought was, "This would be an awesome civ map."

[–]KremecakesImmortal 1 point2 points ago

http://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/y4t2q/as_requested_inverted_map_of_earth_51x32/ you're welcome.

[–]paradigmx 5 points6 points ago

I love it, I want it framed on my wall and I want a globe made out of it.

[–]Choppy_LaStatch 2 points3 points ago

The pacific is the coolest part of this. Remote islands become remote oases, Indonesia becomes a marsh, the Marianas Mountains, the Japan inlet. It'd be great if there was a tiny river in the north connecting the North American & Asian oceans.

[–]KremecakesImmortal 2 points3 points ago

Hmm. Will add tomorrow.

[–]jb2386 2 points3 points ago

Done. I've made a large version. I prefer to play on my maps to see how well it plays before I upload to steam, so I'm currently in the middle of a game, prob be a day or too until I get it up on steam. But if you guys want to see it now, it's here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/73054258/Inverted%20Earth.Civ5Map

BTW, I'm currently playing with 20 civs and 30 city states and there is still a bit of room, so it's a fairly large map! I also took a few liberties with the map that I thought would make it nice for playing. To install the map, just move the Civ5Map file to: C:\Users\You\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\Maps

[–]LeonTrotsky1BtS 4eva 1 point2 points ago

I like Baikal island in the middle of the massive Asian Ocean.

[–]Endulos 1 point2 points ago

Took a while for me to realize what the hell I was looking at, but now that I see it, awesome

[–]Seleucian 0 points1 point ago

I'm working on one with the SKD right now, hopefully it'll be up in a day or two.

[–]jb2386 1 point2 points ago

I'll give it a shot, too. I'll try for a large map. Huge would be cool, but considering the ratio of land to water is now reverse, there will be a lot more land than water now, so becomes almost unplayable as you can only have a max of 22 civs.

Also I read it as 'invented map of the earth' and was staring at it for a while thinking, how do you invent a map of the earth before my brain clicked that the water was the continents haha :P

Edit: Added my version: http://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/y47si/can_somebody_turn_this_inverted_map_of_the_earth/c5sfqq4

[–]trii0Chieftan[S] 0 points1 point ago

Thanks, I'm gonna try both versions out!

[–]MadeForTeaVea 0 points1 point ago

Hey this is from /r/mapporn. I love that subbreddit. Yay for all map lovers.

[–]trii0Chieftan[S] 0 points1 point ago

I would've put that in the title if i had known but I found it on /r/pics.

[–]MadeForTeaVea 1 point2 points ago

Ah no worries. Just giving r/mapporn a shout out if anyone on here is fascinated with maps like me.

[–]CatboyMac 1 point2 points ago

I'm being an asshole by asking this, but wouldn't an Earth that was 70% land be a lot more arid?

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy. © 2012 reddit inc. All rights reserved.

REDDIT and the ALIEN Logo are registered trademarks of reddit inc.

π Rendered by PID 9035 on app-100 running 4e3ad27.