The Scramble for Africa Map
One of the biggest changes in this scenario in Civilization 5 is that the Scramble for Africa Map changes every time you play. At least most of it.
Here’s what changes and what stays the same:
| Stays the same | Is subject to change |
|---|---|
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The changing map increases the fun playing the scenario more often than once per civ. Of course this limits the benefit of a map for Scramble for Africa. Nonetheless the map becomes useful when playing as the native African civilizations. These civs do not see the coastline of Africa revealed. With the map you know now where the Portuguese and English cities are!
Download the Map (high resolution)
There is a map editor available for Civilization 5. You can use this to view the map, but you can not export to PNG etc. to have it open in parallel. Furthermore it’s hard to see all details at one glance. Usually the editor shows city names as they’re addressed by the game (e.g. something like PORTUGAL.CITY.001.NAME.EN for Lisbon), which makes it barely usable. Using Photoshop I created the map from more than 40 screenshots.
Download the high resolution (2391x2913x32b) version of the “Scramble for Africa” scenario map by clicking the image on the right:
Natural Wonders on the Scramble for Africa Map
Scattered across the map you will find 6 natural wonders, which are located in Africa:
Lake Victoria
|
Yields:6 foodSpecial:none
Likely location: Lake Victoria will be placed randomly on the map. I’ve seen it in Egypt and in South Africa, near Dakar in the West and close to Zanzibar in the East. |
Source of Nile
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Yields:10 happinessSpecial:All units that are next to it heal at double rate for the rest of the game.
Likely location: This will most likely be in Southern Egypt or Ethiopia (making them even harder to conquer). To find it just follow the Nile upstream. |
King Solomon’s Mines
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Yields:6 productionSpecial:none
Likely location: I don’t remember seeing this south of the equator. It’ll most likely be somewhere around or in the Sahara dessert. |
Mt. Kilimanjaro
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Yields:3 food, 2 cultureSpecial:All units that are next to it move at double speed through Hills and receive a combat bonus on Hills for the rest of the game.
Likely location: There seems to be a modifier here as well. I’ve never seen it in the west. Sometimes I’ve seen it south of the equator, but most of the times it was in or close to Ethiopia as well. Granting food, culture and an invaluable bonus (double movement on hills even with jungle!) this is key to winning the Scramble for Africa as Ethiopia. |
The real scramble for Africa
If you’re interested in the real Scramble for Africa you might want to check out Wikipedia. There you will also find an explanation for why the English special ability in the scenario is called The Rhodes Colossus! Also it explains how Ethiopia managed to remain independent (as the only remaining part of Africa) for so long.
FYI, your map is missing Antananarivo.
Ha! True! But did you go there in any game (Deity level) of that scenario? 😉
Actually, yes. Currently playing a Deity game as Egypt. After making peace with the five surviving Europeans (Italy was obviously destroyed), I sailed to Madagascar just to see if there are any other city states there I could conquer. Sadly, there aren’t.
But yeah, it’s a pretty worthless city state that clearly exists just for historical flavor. Being a landlocked island city state on the outskirts of the map, it makes a poor marriage candidate for Europeans, is annoying to conquer for North Africans, and probably won’t even be contacted by Sub-Saharans.
The game I’m playing is pretty interesting, though. I’m in its last turns and currently have a major score lead over Ethiopia despite never fighting it. No, I didn’t think it could be done either. Egypt is a very powerful civ in this scenario if you know how to break Italy’s AI. Will tell the details once it’s done.