The first user-made Imp2 map.

AMRush's San Francisco Bay Area Imp 2 map.

The Imp2 map editor has been put to good use!

Download from the Imp_List Yahoo Group's files page.

Contents of the readme file:

IMPERIALISM II MAP HACK
=======================
SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA 1.0
--------------------------

This is a rendering of the San Francisco Bay Area region of central California, on the west coast of the United States.

Major thanks to Mr. Keith Bennett for developing the crude but effective map editor for this software title. This hack took me between 60-80 hours to complete, but would have taken much longer without Bennett's editor.

To my knowledge, this is the first *comprehensive* map hack for Imperialism II ever made...

The six playable nations are as follows:

- Marin (Marin & Sonoma Counties); Red (formerly England)

- Napa (Napa & Solano Counties); Dark Blue (formerly France)

- San Francisco (San Francisco & San Mateo Counties); Orange (formerly Holland)

- Oakland (Alameda & Contra Costa Counties); Yellow (formerly Spain)

- Monterey (Monterey & Santa Cruz Counties); Green (formerly Portugal)

- San Jose (Santa Clara County); Lt Blue (formerly Sweden)

The six Old World Minor Nations are as follows:

- Yolo County

- Sacramento County

- San Joaquin County

- Stanislaus County

- Merced County

- San Benito County

You'll have to play the game to find out who awaits you in the New World :-)

WHAT IS ACCURATE IN THIS HACK
-----------------------------

- Coastlines (95+% accurate)

- Rivers (90+% accurate)

- National boundaries (90+% accurate)

- Internal county boundaries (90+% accurate). For the five playable nations that are composed of two counties the individual counties are distinguishable. For example, during a game it's possible for a player to completely conquer Sonoma county leaving the outline of modern-day Marin county consisting of the remaining provinces for the Marin player

- Topography (85+% accurate). The swamp, hill and mountain placement is pretty consistent with reality. There are very few 'mountains' in the SF Bay Area, so I used mountain terrain only for the significant peaks on the map. Also, the eastern Central Valley I left flat, even though a realistic rendering would probably have some hills on the eastern fringes

- Forestry (85+% accurate). Since the game obviously doesn't allow for forested hills or mountains, I chose to place intermittent forest squares where there is regular forestation in hilly areas. The forest types are accurate for the respective forested regions on this map.

- Agriculture (85+% accurate)

- Province Nomenclature. All the province names are consistent with the areas they represent on this map.

WHAT IS ARBITRARY / CREATIVE LICENSE IN THIS HACK
-------------------------------------------------

- The most important use of creative license in this hack is the arbitrary placement of mineral deposits. In order to enable a more interesting strategic gameplay experience with this map, I chose to allocate minerals with a nod toward the Bay Area's traditional industrial centers. Some important aspects of this to note:

*Each playable nation has only one tin deposit

*Each playable nation has only two copper deposits

*There are very few provinces in the Old World that will support early metal industry once Town Growth technology is researched. The few provinces that will support early metal industry are modern centers for technology in the Bay Area. I did this to reflect actual population and industrial growth for the Bay Area.

- Each playable nation starts with only one horse ranch. Each minor nation also has only one horse ranch.

- For the minor nations of Yolo, San Joaquin and Merced, I had to locate their capital cities right on rivers. In reality, they don't sit right on those rivers. I also placed a scrub forest next to Woodland, and tin deposits next to Sacramento and Stockton. All of these are arbitrary placements in order to enhance the diplomatic decisions of the playable nations.

BUGS
----

- There is one very big bug that I don't know how to solve. In editing the Old World map, the swamp, mountain and hill terrain of the New World map has somehow been 'opened up' and doesn't need exploring. The New World area itself is still blacked out and you have to uncover blacked-out areas with Explorer units, but anywhere that there's mineral deposits they're already discovered - at least for the human player.

This has something to do with how the map editor modifies code for the overall map - even if you don't modify anything west of the Old World. I know I didn't touch the map west of the westernmost Old World land tile. So if someone can find and fix this bug, great.

WHAT'S INCLUDED IN THIS ZIP
---------------------------

- This Readme :-)

- Euro1500 folder that contains the five map files for this hack (after saving a copy of the the original Euro1500 folder somewhere else on your hard drive, paste this folder in the original's place)

- modified str#eng.gob file for revised political nomenclature (after saving a copy of the original str#eng.gob file somewhere else on your hard drive, paste this file in the original's place)

- Data (Empty Map) folder is an emptied-out (ocean-only) Old World map, making it easier to start from scratch with the map editor

Enjoy. I welcome comments / input / corrections / suggestions. Email me at amadmservices@yahoo.com.

AM Rush

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IMPORTANT NOTE

There is one potential and possibly important wrinkle: the map author found that one of the files that needed to be replaced was "str#enu.gob", in the Data folder, whereas when I (Dave) installed the map mod, that didn't work. I found that the file in the zip needed to be renamed "str#eng.gob", and used to replace the file of the same name in the Data directory. Then everything worked fine.

So the zip in the files section has had the file concerned renamed to
"str#eng.gob". If the country names don't change to become San Francisco area names, try changing the file in the zip's name back to "str#enu.gob", and replacing that file in the Data folder instead.

Why the author and I had different experiences, I don't know. Perhaps it's something to do with US English vs English English installations?

If anyone has any relevant insights about this issue, please post.

Also, the author's email address is in the readme file, so make sure to give him some feedback. ~ Dave