The Emperor Editor: The Empire Map

When you first enter the editor, you are presented with the Empire Map screen. This screen is where you will plan out most of your game strategies, and where you will locate all of the adventure tools.

The first thing you should always consider is whether or not players will be able to select all of the cities you place on your empire map. The best way to keep this functioning properly for everyone, is to design this portion of the scenario using a resolution of 800 x 600. If you place your cities too close to the borders of the empire map, players may not be able to select them during the game to request trade etc.

I will try to go into much greater detail in the next section of this article to describe setting up of triggers and events. For this portion of the article I will provide a brief outline of each of the Empire map functions.

Whether you design a city map yourself or choose one of the many random maps provided within the game you can create an excellent scenario. As always, the first thing to do is to plan out your scenario on paper. Decide what cities and events and goals will take place. Once you have this planned out you may then enter into the Empire map mode and begin your planning.

Along the right side of the screen you are presented with four buttons. The fourth button allows you to select a range of Empire maps.

Using the arrow keys provided you can scroll through the various Empire maps provided in the game.

Once you have selected the Empire map for your scenario, you can also modify the pricing of world commodities from this screen. All tradable goods are listed here and may be changed to suit your needs. Remember that any changes on this screen will only affect those cities that are not being controlled by players. If you raise the price of clay for instance to 50 cash, any player city that is trading clay may still control the amount of cash they wish to receive for that item. If you do edit prices in the editor, you can always restore the default by clicking the appropriate button at the bottom of that screen on the right hand side.

Now that the Empire map selection has been made, it is time to start placing cities. Using the right side button selections, you will choose the add, move and delete cities button.

This is the first button in the panel. Once you select the add city button, it will remain selected until you right click on your mouse or until you select another option. So you may place several cities at once. When placing these cities, you should always consider the region or area that you are placing them. The Empire map is shaded in a manner to reflect the different climates. Arid, Temperate, and Humid regions of the map are defined by the colour of the area. You should also consider the location of the cities you wish to use. Each city name provided within the Emperor game has been researched and placed on the map in a reasonably close geographical location. In order to keep your scenario as close to historic location as possible it is a good plan to follow other missions for city location.

After your cities have been placed on the map, you will notice that all cities are defaulted to one city name and leader. It is very important that you change these two properties as soon as possible in order to avoid future embarrassment. The other thing you want to do while still in this screen of the Empire mode is place the regions for the game. By providing regions, you are making your scenario look more professional.

Now that the cities have been placed and moved to suit your map, and all regions have been placed, you should continue on and edit the city properties. This screen is where you will rename your cities and leaders. Also, from here you will develop a large portion of the scenario.

Selecting the city properties button will highlight one of the cities on your map. You may then change that cities name and leaders name. Also, you will add the selling and buying goods for that city. It is very important that you add buying and selling goods even for those cities that you plan as player cities. If you do not select any trade for player cities, they will have nothing available if no one playing your scenario selects that city. One other thing that is very important here, is to make sure that your player cities’ trade options match the resources and goods that you plan on making available for that city. If you have no stone on your city map, or you choose not to allow a player to run a quarry, it would not make sense for you to allow that city to sell stone if it has not been selected by players.

As you look over the city properties on the right side of your screen you will notice that the first city you originally placed is a player city. All other cities on the map will default to NP cities and you will need to change that if you wish to create a multiplayer scenario. By selecting the city type that is listed, you will be allowed to change the city’s property with this selection box.

Distant cities are used for trade purposes only and have no military effect on the game. Each city that you select is also defaulted as a RIVAL. You may select through the options of RIVAL, VASSAL, and ALLY in order to get the best situation for your planned scenario.

The cities also default to trading with other cities. If you wish your players to open trade with cities, or request that trade be open, you should set these cities to non trading. There are a number of other options available from this screen and it is best advised that you scroll around the page and find all of the needed settings for your planned scenario.

Once you have satisfied yourself that all of the needed settings have been made for your cities you want to go to the trade routes option of the Empire map. From here you will determine each city’s trade options. Land or sea may be changed by first selecting the visible trade route and then changing its properties to reflect the desired trade style. Remember that any city you select to have a sea trade route must have water entry and exit points on its CITY accompanying map.

All trade routes default to land trade and are drawn in a direct line to the city it is trading with. If you wish to make these routes look more realistic, just click on the trade route. Once the route has been selected you may use your left mouse button and drag sections of the trade route to their desired position. Now that the main portion of your Empire map has been set up you may begin planning the entire scenario. Each city that you placed on the map has been placed without a corresponding city map. If you select the city properties button once again, and then select NO CITY MAP located on the right side panel, you will be presented with all of the available maps for your adventure. Search for the map you created, or use one of the maps provided from within the game to produce your adventure. You will need to do this for each of your player cities. Again, it is important that you try to match the climate of the city map with the climate that you intended that city to have. If you select a city map, you will then notice what kind of climate that map was produced with.

Remember to save your campaign as you are going along. Click the file option from the top menu and then select the save as option. Type in the name you wish to call your campaign. Now you are ready to start planning out your events and triggers, and everything that will make this a complete and enjoyable scenario.

Putting it all together.