Civilization Board Game Map

A reboot of the Advanced Civilization Board Game Map

N.B., this is nothing to do with the Computer Games or the board game based on the computer games.

General

I wanted a map very like the original map from the Avalon Hill board game Advanced Civilization with the Western Map extension.

I know there are some versions out there, but generally they are bit maps of varying resolutions. My aim here was to create an SVG, so I could play with it a little. For instance I have added names for provinces (more on that later), and the colors are (I think) a little brighter.

The plan is to print it, and then glue it down to MDF (5mm), in two pieces so I have a pretty durable version. I'll post some photos when its done.

And I thought others might like having the SVG version to create their own mods.

Modifcations from the original

Mostly I have tried to follow the original map though a lot by eye so I won't apologise if it varies a little, but I have made what I consider to be few improvements (they make some things a little easier to see or work with). You may not like the mods or may want to go further, but that's why its a SVG, so you can change it.

Small Mods:

• Colors are slightly different.
• Population counts are black on color to make them more readable.
• Volcanos are in red instead of white to make them easier to see.
• Markers for cities are slightly larger.
• I have added the AST to the board, made it bigger to fit, and used the extra space to rearrange things, and add a table of the Civ cards.
• Added rivers to river-valleys.

The biggest mod is to add city names, and province names for provinces without a city. It makes it easier to discuss the map. The names are attempts at historical names, but the province boundaries don't always match up nicely. There are also a mish-mash of names: many Roman, for obvious reasons, but some Greek, and a few others. I also added river names, both for new rivers, and for the major rivers used as borders.

I had to move a couple of cities to make them match anything I could find (Gades for instance).

I'm interested in whether people have some better choices for such names.

The other biggish mod is to add an extra country to the AST (Phoenicia) with a view to allowing someone to play with adding this. I picked Phoenicia because you could start them almost anywhere around the Med.

Instructions

There is a PDF version for people who just want to print it off. Its set up for A0 paper, though there is plenty of spare room to print on some other format, or to scale up if you want a really big version.

The SVG is an Inkscape SVG, so for best results I suggest using Inkscape (its free and multiplatform, and pretty nice to use).

Most of the components are on a layer. Hopefully the names are fairly obvious. You could drop all of the text by dropping the appropriate layer.

The colours are mostly labelled as well, so it should be pretty trivial to play with the map colours.

I have put a black boarder around the edge, for my own printout, and some extra marks and measurements to help in gluing it to a board. You may want to get rid of them or not.

Also, it should be trivial to rescale it to whatever size suits, starting from the SVG (that's the nice thing about SVGs as opposed to bit maps).

If you want to add your remix to the repo, then we should be able to manage that as well.

The PNG (bit map) isn't intended to be printed, its just a picture to illustrate the map for the repo.

DIY Example

OK, here's the final version:

Details:

• It was printed out on A0 paper, then cut to size, and then cut in half so that I would have board that was small enough to store.

• Cut 2 sheets of 900mm x 600mm x 3mm MDF to the final size of the two pieces of the map using a jigsaw.

• I glued the two map sheet halves to the MDF using spray adhesive. For hints on how to get this right see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3J8yph1wX8. Carefully align so that the place where they meet is just right.

• Note that in the previous step there was deliberately a 2cm overlap of the edge, which was folded over, and glued down separately.

• The optional part was putting 5mm aluminium channel (with an inner dado of almost exactly 3mm) around the edges. This gives the edge a bit more protection, but also, I cut the channel on one board about 1cm longer than the edge, and the other 1cm shorter. This means that when assembled, the channel helps hold the two pieces together. The channels were mitred at the corners (which was a pain with a hacksaw -- I ended up sanding a filing a fair bit to get these just right). The channel is (lightly) glued on.

Final stuff

Obviously this is based on Avalon Hill content, and I am happy to remove it, if anyone cares. The only reason I think it is reasonable to put it up here is that as far as I know, its way out of print, and almost impossible to get hold of (except for other perhaps dubious quality reprinted boards).