I liked Jordarkelf's and Cybrxkhan's Indian Ocean republic mods. However, thanks to the AI not being able to handle disconnected navigable seas, there needs to be a Suez Canal for these mods to be worthwhile.
Jordarkelf and Cybrxkhan provide the needed seazones, including the Suez Canal. Yet, I was not satisfied with ships being able to simply sail between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea as easily and as quickly as any other two adjacent sea zones. Really, if these vessels were traversing between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea they would need to be dragged across the Suez isthmus. This should not happen quickly, if at all.
How to simulate this? What I have done is create a small sea zone out in the far NW corner of the map, hidden under the map frame, and then linked this sea zone to the respective ends of the canal in the adjacencies file. This increases the apparent length of the canal. Now a vessel travelling through Suez will take several months to do so.
This is not ideal. Frankly, this sort of thing shouldn't be happening at all - I doubt the local Emir would look too kindly on a bunch of Crusaders dragging a ship across his sand! But a navigable Indian Ocean is only possible with a Suez connection of some sort. Hopefully this increased apparent length of the canal makes it less likely the AI will use it (yeah right... :unsure: ). Of course, for a human player to use it would be gamey.
At the very least this hugely increases the cost of establishing trade posts on the far side of Suez, unless a city is seized on the far side to facilitate this activity. Which is kinda the point of this mod, really.
This is somewhat experimental! I don't know the effects of this on AI behavior, or if this causes other problems.
Bugs:
* Ships traversing the portage disappear halfway through. They reappear when they arrive on the other side.
* The label for the sea zone "Sinai Coast" extends onto the Sinai peninsula.
Notes:
* This mod also removes the sea zone at the far SW of the map. This was reused as the hidden sea zone this mod uses. No *need* to do this (except for initially thinking I might need more blank space for a second hidden seazone as far away as possible), but in real life no-one was sailing past Cape Bojador until about 20 years before the game ends anyway.
* This mod does NOT use the seazones Jordarkelf and Cybrxkhan include in their mods. I needed to learn how to do this stuff, so I made my own.
* This mod will interfere with any other map mods (duh!).
* Feel free to use however you want.
Jordarkelf and Cybrxkhan provide the needed seazones, including the Suez Canal. Yet, I was not satisfied with ships being able to simply sail between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea as easily and as quickly as any other two adjacent sea zones. Really, if these vessels were traversing between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea they would need to be dragged across the Suez isthmus. This should not happen quickly, if at all.
How to simulate this? What I have done is create a small sea zone out in the far NW corner of the map, hidden under the map frame, and then linked this sea zone to the respective ends of the canal in the adjacencies file. This increases the apparent length of the canal. Now a vessel travelling through Suez will take several months to do so.
This is not ideal. Frankly, this sort of thing shouldn't be happening at all - I doubt the local Emir would look too kindly on a bunch of Crusaders dragging a ship across his sand! But a navigable Indian Ocean is only possible with a Suez connection of some sort. Hopefully this increased apparent length of the canal makes it less likely the AI will use it (yeah right... :unsure: ). Of course, for a human player to use it would be gamey.
At the very least this hugely increases the cost of establishing trade posts on the far side of Suez, unless a city is seized on the far side to facilitate this activity. Which is kinda the point of this mod, really.
This is somewhat experimental! I don't know the effects of this on AI behavior, or if this causes other problems.
Bugs:
* Ships traversing the portage disappear halfway through. They reappear when they arrive on the other side.
* The label for the sea zone "Sinai Coast" extends onto the Sinai peninsula.
Notes:
* This mod also removes the sea zone at the far SW of the map. This was reused as the hidden sea zone this mod uses. No *need* to do this (except for initially thinking I might need more blank space for a second hidden seazone as far away as possible), but in real life no-one was sailing past Cape Bojador until about 20 years before the game ends anyway.
* This mod does NOT use the seazones Jordarkelf and Cybrxkhan include in their mods. I needed to learn how to do this stuff, so I made my own.
* This mod will interfere with any other map mods (duh!).
* Feel free to use however you want.
