Comms 
Empires of Steel beta tester Chris Nelson has written up a short tutorial about how to use the powerful map editor that comes with Empires of Steel to create custom maps. In this article he's making full use of the nifty "overlay" feature to re-create a European map from scratch!
Empires of Steel comes with an intuitive editor that allows you to create scenarios and maps. Within a short time, you can create your own worlds and then conquer them with the AI or your friends. Empires of Steel even comes with a share feature that allows you to share your creation with other players from around the world. Your maps can be used for random quick battles or in scenarios with specific situations set up beforehand.
In this tutorial I am going to give you a look at how to create a map for Empires of Steel using the map editor. We will examine the entire process from beginning to end.
What Will the Map Be?
Before you even open the editor, you must ask yourself some basic questions about the nature of your map. Will there be action from turn 1, or do you want the nations to develop a little before making contact with each other? Will the map be resource rich, enabling huge armies, or will each nation have to fight for precious resources? Will there be an emphasis on land or naval battles? How many players will the map be able to support?
All of these factors and more will be very important in the construction of the map, because the map will very often dictate the strategy required for victory. Space the starting cities far apart and with mountain ranges between them, and your players will not fight each other until they have advanced militaries. Cluster oil in a few strategic locations, and players will have to compete intensely for these key locations. Shape the map so that it delivers the experience you have in mind.
For my map, I want players to start in relatively balanced conditions with a variety of land forms to deal with. They will have contact early in the game with each other, but will need a blend of diplomacy and conquest since resources will not be equally distributed across the map. I have chosen Europe for this map.
Finding a Reference Map:
If you are modeling your map after a real world location, you are going to need to locate a suitable map which you can use as a reference. The ideal map, or combination of maps, will give clearly defined coastlines, display major mountain ranges, and show the location of major and capital cities. It is also desirable that the map is “flat”; in other words, it does not show the curvature of the earth. In continent-sized maps, this can result in a lot of warping near the edges of the map.
For my Europe map, I have picked the map to the right. It has all of the desired characteristics: it is flat, it clearly shows mountain ranges, and the coastlines are clean with contrasting colors. A simple web search can typically yield a desired map within minutes.
If you do not wish to spend the time creating your own map, then you don’t have to! The Map Editor comes with a random map generator that creates maps to your specifications. It can create maps with landmasses of varying sizes, and place cities and resources. You can then modify the generated map to your hearts’ content.
The Editor:
Before we dive into the nuts and bolts of building a map, let’s take a look at what the editor offers.
When you first open the editor, you will be greeted by a blank ocean. All of the tools you will need to edit your map are located on the left side and are divided into three panels:
Tools: Geography
Tools: Map Objects
Tools: Map Analysis
The very top of the panel is where you to save, load, and set the Map Settings. This is where you will set the size of the map, determine whether the map will wrap, and include any description text that the player can read before selecting the map. In the Geography panel the tools for defining the land forms are located. You can raise or lower elevation to create land or ocean using brushes of varying sizes. You can create arctic, desert, plains, wooded land, or add mountains by “painting” them onto the land.
In this panel you can also draw map lines of various colors for denoting national borders, and you add a map overlay to use as a guide for creating your map. We will get back to that feature very soon.
In the Map Objects panel you can add roads, cities, airfields, fortifications, and resources to the map. You also use this panel to set Start Locations, which are vital to maps because they tell the editor where players can possibly start when the game is generated.
The Map Analysis panel is used to balance the total resources on the map with the total population present from cities.
If you ever get lost, every icon has a tooltip telling you what it does, and a Help page can be accessed by clicking on the yellow question mark in the upper right corner.
Creating the Map:
The first step is to set the map size. The default is 1000x1000. I am using 1200x1200 for my Europe map.
Our first step is load the reference map into the game, where it will use it as an overlay over the game map. This is a fantastic feature that is not present in most games, and takes all of the guesswork out of recreating geography. Select “Load Image” in the Geography panel and load your map. It should now appear laid over the map and partially transparent; 20% to be specific. You can control how opaque the overlay is in the Geography panel. Now you must move and resize the overlay to fit your maps dimensions. Use Size and Offset to do this. Make sure that the X and Y size changes are the same or the map will become distorted.
For my Europe map, I increased the size by 125 in both directions, and offset by -65 to remove some ocean that would take up too much map space.
Now we paint in the land, following the overlay. Use the smallest brush size and the largest elevation increase to paint in the coastlines and islands. Then switch to a small elevation decrease and chisel away at the coastlines to match the geography. After you have defined the coastlines to your satisfaction, switch to a large brush and elevation increase and fill in the land.
Here is my Europe map after filling in the land.
Now that the landforms have been created, important features and objects should be added. I am going to add cities next. These are the most important feature on the map, so everything should be placed relative to them. With the reference map overlay, adding cities is very easy. Simply go to the Map Objects panel, click on the city icon, and click on the map to add a city. Placing a city close enough to a coastline will also give it a port, signified by an anchor in the lower left corner. If you misplace a city, you can drag it where you want with the drag tool located in the Map Objects panel. You can edit a cities population, buildings present, name, and whether it is a start location by using the select tool.
For my map, I am placing most capitals, as well as some major cities. I have designated seven starting points: London, Madrid, Berlin, Paris, Minsk, Belgrade, and Rome. Each has at least one buffer city between them and another player start point, and each has a different mix of terrain and cities to deal with.
Next I add mountains. My reference map includes elevation data, so it is simply a matter of painting mountains wherever the map is brown. The mountains are a major obstacle to movement and a great place to form defensive lines.
Might as well add roads next. You can “draw” roads on the map by dragging your cursor or, if you are feeling lazy, the game can auto-generate them for you. I will be drawing roads to connect most cities to each other and provide a few key routes through mountain ranges. The players will be able to use these roads to mount fast attacks and travel through rough terrain more quickly.
To give the map a bit more flavor, lines can be drawn on it. These lines have no impact on units or the game itself. I am going to use lines to denote modern national borders. Another good use would be to use blue lines to draw rivers.
Next I add forest to the map. This is painted on much like regular land is. Arctic and desert can also be added, but since this is Europe we will see very little of those terrain types. Where you place these terrain types is important as they will affect combat and supply.
This seems like a lot of work, but it can be done very quickly. After adding all of the above, the map is beginning to take on a life of its own:
Now that the geography is complete, it is time for what is in my opinion the trickiest part of creating a map: placing the resources. This will require some careful thought and testing to ensure that each possible starting location is given a fair chance at victory with the resources available to them. The amount of resources on the map will affect the pace of the game; a large amount of resources will generally lead to faster games with more units in play. A nation with more resources is also not as inclined to engage in diplomacy for trading. The Tools: Map Analysis tab can be useful for helping you find the desired ratio of resources to population.
There are an almost limitless amount of permutations for resources, so I will leave this subject with only one thought: Empires of Steel is essentially a battle for resources. Acquiring and intelligently managing resources is required for victory. Because of this, you must have a plan when you set resources.
After the resources are placed, your map is done! The work is not over, however. Now you get to play test it to ensure that it works are you intended. All game content requires revisions before being played by the public, so do not be surprised if you end up making several trips to the editor to modify your scenario.
