Mideast terrain and vegetation

[Nijis]

I've spent most of my adult life in the Middle East, so I probably take this a bit more seriously than some players, but it frustrates me sometimes the way that the terrain of the region is portrayed in games and movies. All too often, it's huge cities surrounded by barren sand or hills - to begin with, that's not even possible. You can't have cities or armies of any significant size unless there's agriculture. Palm trees are distributed as if they were beech or ash trees in temperate forest. In fact, because of the necessity of water, the distribution is very very different.

Field of Glory does a pretty good job with Middle Eastern terrain, but there are still are a few errors. This is hardly a top priority, but if wargamers are going to be grognardy about uniforms and insignia, I'd think, they might also be grognardy about terrain.

I'd emphasize the following points...

1) Very little of the inhabited Middle East is real desert. Much is semi-desert or arid steppe - the different being that the latter can support grazing. In the highlands, in particular, you'd expect to see patches of grass throughout much of the year.


This, for example, is the Zagros mountains (in springtime, I suspect)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zagros_Mo ... :Dena2.jpg

2) Palm trees tend to grow only where water collects - not on the tops of hills, in other words. Mostly that means in narrow ravines, or on basin oases (ie, like Siwa), or in agricultural areas. You don't expect to find them in highlands, either. Except in very isolated desert valleys, most will be in carefully tended groves.

3) There's really no such thing as "wooded" terrain in the modern Middle East, thanks to deforestation and grazing. The existing terrain might work for areas with lots of palm groves (ie, Iraq south of Baghdad) but these aren't too common.

4) Most encounters in highlands will be along the axis of a stream valley, as these are the main lines of communication. Ideally, I'd like to see a terrain generator which usually runs a small stream north to south, and places a road and cultivated lands alongside it. It would be flanked on both sides by hills. The width of the valley would vary according to whether you're dealing with hills or mountains.


In game terms, I'd break down Middle Eastern terrain into the following...
Mediterranean - Coastal Turkey and the Levant. For FoG, we can use the current Mediterranean zones for this.

Mideast agriculture - Alluvial zones - Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Damascus plain, etc. The current Mideast Agriculture does this pretty well, but I think the field / barren ratio should be somewhat higher. These areas are in high demand and generally VERY intensely farmed. PS: Assassin's Creed Origins, of all games, does a really good job of modeling the terrain of Egypt and eastern Libya.

Mideast hills - Inland and eastern Anatolia, northern Iraq and Syria (the Jazeera), etc. Most Mideast battles that you've heard of probably fall into this category: Carrhae, Manzikert. Gaugamela, Ankara. Much of the terrain can be barren, but perhaps with patches of green grass. Trees should be Mediterranean - almond, alder, olive - but NOT palm. They should cluster around streams, or areas where streams would be if the game showed every small watercourse

Here's a shot of the area around Lake Van. You can't see the color, but note both the barrenness of the hills and relative lushness of the strip near the stream, with alluvial trees (ie, alders) rather than palm trees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Van# ... kavank.jpg


Mideast mountains - Afghanistan and Persia. Like Mideast hills, but more grass and more trees. The non-alluvial terrain can be quite barren - it doesn't need to be as green as the Zagros.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_o ... 109157.jpg

Mideast desert - Oases, like Siwa, or hilly areas like the Sinai that trap water haphazardly. Some barren hills and barren plains, but some scattered agriculture. The current "desert" does these pretty well already, although there should be no "woods" of palm trees except on the very lowest terrain.

You can't really tell from the picture, but this is a wadi that has a strip of palm groves running through it. Probably there's some sort of dam at the lower end to allow irrigation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujairah# ... Towers.jpg

[edb1815]

Nice write up - very informative. On point 3 would it have been more heavily wooded 2500 years ago? My understanding was that there was less desert then anyway - the "fertile crescent", etc.

[Nijis]

Thanks! I think deforestation was pretty well along, even by the late Neolithic. The Cedars of Lebanon, for example, were a pretty big deal and probably unique, even when they were written about in southern Iraq (about 1500 km away) in 2500 BC or so. The Fertile Crescent refers specifically to river valleys - and they still are pretty fertile.

Here's a list of Middle East forests, btw. http://scoopempire.com/16-unbelievable- ... st-region/
However important to note that they include:

1) Forests in a Mediterranean coastal zone (ie, in Lebanon and Tunisia) as well as two fairly unique and humid biomes, the southern Black Sea coast in Turkey and the southern Caspian in Iran (home to the Hyrcanian rainforest.) Oman also has some monsoon-fed forests, I believe.

2) Pine forests in Israel that I believe were planted in modern times, deliberate reforestation. There are also some like this in Iraqi Kurdistan, Syria, and in Turkey, IIRC. Probably in North Africa too.

At any rate, I don't believe there are any Mideastern palm forests (as opposed to tended palm groves, which you do find) and this kind of forest would probably be in fairly isolated areas, not where armies are likely to clash.

[rbodleyscott]

Thanks.

[Patrick Ward]

Oh man. I'm so sorry but after such an epic and informative post you're going to be sorely dissappointed!!

We approached the terrain the same way as the units .. starting off as historical as possible, and then accepting that the game, style and realities of development dictate changes. I was aware that the Middle East battle locations would of been greener and can still remember conversations with RBS and the artist who did that particular terrain. RBS has also been studying this for decades and my son, who's studying physical Geography, regulalry beats me up over it.

But when you're only providing 3 terrain types (because its a long and expensive process ) you have to provide variety. So I decided to err on the side of desert because the first pass did not provide enough visual separation from the Mediterranean. As it would also have to double up for the desert terrain, lots of sand was kind of a prerequisite. It's what most people expect of a desert.

It's like pre-Marian Romans would not all wear red and the same type of armour. The only consistent thing would likely be their shields (shield emblems if they used them), and some helmet plumes. But 'people' expect all red tunics, uniform armour and a multitude of crazy shield patterns and colours. So while I've remained as accurate as I can be with shields, I did pander to the red tunics, though mainly because in game play terms it helps identification. ( Incidentally, even if they did all wear red tunics, the red madder dye they'd of likely used fades very quickly, so they'd actually be wearing pink. )

Another example is the banners. I originally had a load of unique designs for each nation. But we decided to reduce them to essentially solid blocks of colour because on a busy, crowded map, the detailed, if more interesting, banners were getting lost and became difficult to read.

In a nutshell, gameplay and, to a much lesser degree, players expectations, will always trump historical accuracy.

With regards trees, we're limited to two models to stand in for every possible tree in the Middle and Far East. Like all the terrain, it's a compromise and unfortunatly google gives you images like these when looking for Middle Eastern forests ..
http://scoopempire.com/16-unbelievable- ... st-region/
so maybe we were misled. Yes .. not many palm trees there but then again we don't have palm forests. Squares of cedar like trees with one palm for some variety.
Making trees follow rivers more closely however is an interesting point and worth thinking about. If we have it in the Middle East, we'll have to have it in Northern Europe and the Med becasue of the way the editor works. But should it be decoration or have an impact on gameplay (and all the testing and rebuilding of scenarios and AI that would entail)?

As for the Random Map Generator producing maps more to your liking .. maybe there is room for improvement there but thats not my area. I can only guess at the amount of work involved and where that would slot into the currently huge list of priorities. ie. given you can create your own maps I'd expect it to be quite low.


Obviously everyone has different demands on their time but I do wish that people like yourself, who do have a particular area of knowledge, could be more involved in beta testing. I would help add an extra layer of richness. While everyone on the team is a certified genius and knows everything about everything, we don't usually know about the things we don't know about and we're not too proud to admit it.
But seriously, beta is a better time to consider serious engine, AI, balance and art changes than post release but we'll think about what you've said.

Thanks for such a great post.

[Nijis]

Thanks for the long answer! I love the game, so I won't be too disappointed...

I've been involved in some game development myself, and I fully realize that distinctiveness and expectations are very important.

For the random map generator, I think you could "fix" 90% of the discrepancies with just two changes.

1) Use the trees from the Mediterranean template in Mideast mountain and Mideast hilly, while keeping the palms for agriculture/desert
2) Have no trees at all on elevated terrain. Maybe have rough where the forests would go.

This would yield realistic-looking terrain for inland Syria, inland Anatolia, northern Iraq and (I think) Persia and Afghanistan. The sandy/barren ground could stay the same. Most campaigns would be in late summer/early autumn anyway, I should think.

But, I don't know how difficult this would be to do, or whether it would be desirable given player expectations. A system that realistically rendered modern Middle Eastern deserts, where pine trees are frequently planted as windbreaks, would probably be mistaken for a bug.

At any rate, tree choice has a pretty minimal effect on gameplay. But do keep it in mind if you have to do more terrain templates for DLCs! And thanks again for the response.