Scenario Editor
Scenario Editor is the tool included with the Eternal Creation expansion for building hand-crafted worlds — deciding the terrain, placing settlements and armies, setting each empire's starting properties, and defining the diplomatic relationships between them before a single cycle of play begins.
DLC required: This feature requires the Eternal Creation expansion.
Accessing the Editor
The Scenario Editor is reached from the Create/Load Scenario dialog on the Main Menu. From here you can either start a brand-new scenario or load an existing one you've already saved — see User Interface Overview for this dialog's own shortcuts (Escape, Backspace, Enter).
Creating a New World
Starting a new scenario opens a short setup form before the editor itself appears, asking for three things:
- Scenario name — the name your scenario will be saved and identified by.
- Map size — Small, Normal, Large, Huge, or Titanic.
- Map shape — Quadrant, Wide, or Tall.
Pressing Create Scenario opens the editor with a completely empty map — every hex starts as Ocean terrain, a blank canvas waiting to be shaped from nothing. From inside the editor, you can clear the map back to this blank state at any time, generate a random starting terrain layout to hand-edit from, or paint terrain directly hex by hex — covered in full on the terrain editing page once it's written.
Map Size and Shape
Size and shape are independent choices that combine to set the map's actual width and height. Critically, total hex count stays identical across all three shapes for a given size — Quadrant, Wide, and Tall at "Large" all contain exactly the same number of hexes, just arranged into a different overall silhouette. A Quadrant map is roughly square; Wide stretches the map horizontally at the expense of height; Tall does the reverse.
| Size | Quadrant (W×H) | Wide (W×H) | Tall (W×H) | Total Hexes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small | 40 × 40 | 50 × 32 | 32 × 50 | 1,600 |
| Normal | 50 × 50 | 62 × 40 | 40 × 62 | 2,500 |
| Large | 65 × 65 | 81 × 52 | 52 × 81 | 4,225 |
| Huge | 85 × 85 | 106 × 68 | 68 × 106 | 7,225 |
| Titanic | 170 × 170 | 212 × 136 | 136 × 212 | 28,900 |
Some Wide/Tall dimensions are rounded during map generation and may be off by a hex or two from what's shown here — the totals above reflect the Quadrant shape's exact hex count as the reliable reference figure for each size.
A useful way to think about the two choices together: Size decides how much world there is to work with, while Shape decides how that space is arranged — a continent-spanning east-west empire suits Wide, a mountain-chain-and-coastline north-south setup suits Tall, and a Quadrant map is the natural choice if you don't have a strong reason to favour either direction.
The Five Editing Modes
Once inside the editor, five modes cover everything a scenario needs — switch between them with their keyboard shortcuts (see User Interface Overview for the full reference) or the mode buttons in the interface:
The Five Editing Modes
Once inside the editor, five modes cover everything a scenario needs — switch between them with their keyboard shortcuts (see User Interface Overview for the full reference) or the mode buttons in the interface:
| Mode | Shortcut | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Terrain | T or F1 | Painting terrain types, brush size, clearing and regenerating the map — see Editing Terrain |
| Empire | I or F2 | Setting up each empire's Imperial Court, starting resources, technologies, and recruitment policy — see Setting Up Empires |
| Diplomacy | D or F3 | Setting starting treaty status and language translation between every pair of empires — see Setting Up Empires |
| Asset | A or F4 | Placing new settlements, armies, outposts, and terrain improvements onto the map — see Placing Assets |
| Select | E or F5 | Selecting an already-placed settlement or army to edit its full properties — see Editing Settlements and Editing Armies |
Full walkthroughs for each mode will follow as separate pages once written — this hub will link out to each as they're completed.
Saving and Sharing
Ctrl+S saves the scenario, opening a rename dialog to confirm or change its name. Once you're happy with a finished scenario, see Workshop Uploader Guide for how to publish it to the Steam Workshop for other players to download and play.
