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Vallmoth's Middle-Earth

I could not find a decent map of Middle-earth for civ5. All i found was either needlesly large, lacked details, was imbalanced in food/hammers etc. So i decided to create yet another One, a master map. And into this map i poured my love, my passion for map making ...and my will to dominate all life. One map to rule them all.

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Map versions:

First:

without starting locations - add how many civs and city states you like, starting positions are random

Second:

starting positions are set, its ment for 13 civilizations and 10 city states. You can choose what civ will be at each start location (or leave it random). Civ starting places are:

Player 1 - Umbar
Player 2 - Khand (Sturlurtsa Khand)
Player 3 - Gondor (Minas Tirith)
Player 4 - Mordor (Barad Dur)
Player 5 - Rohan (Edoras)
Player 6 - Isengard
Player 7 - Rhun (Mistrand)
Player 8 - Lothlorien (Caras Galadhon)
Player 9 - Lindon (Mithlond)
Player 10 - Rivendell
Player 11 - Iron Hills (Azanulimbar Dun)
Player 12 - Elvenking's Halls
Player 13 - Angmar (Carn Dum)
City states locations represents: Dol Amroth, Lond Daer Enedh, Tharbad, Khazad Dum, Dol Guldur, Szrel Kain, Hobbiton, Fornost, Dale, Gundabad

Yet you can only play the Umbar because of lack of functions of worldpainter (and i am no moder to fix it that way). But there is way to play other starting position than Umbar with the third version.

Third:
Same as version 2, but with one more (debug) starting location. With "Custom Advenced Setup Screen" https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=75500984 mod you can hotseat multiplayer civ5. And we are going to use it in our favor. When setuping a game, choose your desired starting location to be a human player as well. When choosing the location dont forget to add one as player 1 is the debug, so umbar is player 2, khand player 3 etc. As such you start a hotseat multiplayer with 2 human controled civs. First is the debug one, the other is your desired one. Turn one of the debug civ just delete settler and units. This player will hence loose and you will continue play only as the desired starting postition. Just remember that you are technicly playing hotseat multiplayer when you are for example looking for your save.

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About map:

Overall layout:

All places shut have reasonable food/hammers. Even where the original map has no hills or forests i scatered a few of them to make the map look more detailed. Places that has few hills got other ways to get hammers like stone deposits. Tundra regions that shut be lorewise lucrative to settle got more sheep, deer and cattle to have reasonable yields. These adjustions are made only with bonus resources to not imbalance luxury/strategic ones. Northen wastes was made into mountians. > from game mechanic prespective i allways found large areas of flat desert or tundra to be anoying as they constantly spawn barbs or even sometimes AI-forever-pop-1-city-that-olny-hinder-them-and-add-nothing-to-the-game so i avoid places like that on my maps for all cost. Some of the starting positions may be one tile shifted to avoid/enable more cities to be settled.

Strategic resources:

Balanced throughout the whole map with some small lore-friendly bonuses (like more horses in rohan, duh...). Small and plentyfull iron and horses deposites to allow aces to these resources early with few cities to allow small force of specialised units, but not enought to field exclusive armies. Coal deposites are more sparse, but yield more units, you have to expand to have garantied acces to it. Overall there is anough of coal to have factories in every city. Aluminium is more like iron and horses, but offen on more remote tiles. Oil deposites are in bundles to spark envy and hostility over it. Uranium is rare.

Luxury resources:

Every region has acces to 4 units of 2 diferent luxury resources, some of them are chosen for lore, like ivory in Haradwaith to represent olifants, silver near Moria, spice in Shire to represent weed or gold near Erebor, or, when the region has no clear luxury (fancily said that i just dont know about it) it gets one randomly. Overall there is plenty of various luxuries for such a small map so happines shuld never be an issue.

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Conclusion

I put a lot of time and energy into creating this and had a lot of fun playing it afterwards. In fact so much fun i just have to share it. :) Hope you will have such a good times too. Any feedback is wellcome. Now go and build a civilisation that will stand the test of time.