• Introduction
• Command-Line Usage
• Examples
• Map File Format
  • Header
  • Geography list data
  • Map geography
  • Map tile data
  • Game description header
  • Game description data
  • Unit data format
  • City format
  • Unknown block
  • Team format
  • Player format
  • Map tile improvement properties
  • Map tile improvement data
• Replay File Format
• Save File Format

Most custom maps designed for Civ 5 will usually provide screenshots of the map, but they will either only show a portion of the map in the game or a zoomed out image which shows all of the cities but not the terrain. This program is designed to provide you a detailed view of the entire map in one single image.

You have the option of generating a physical map or a political map. The physical map focuses on generating the terrain, while the political map shows the civilization boundaries and major cities. This program will convert a Civ 5 map with the file extension .Civ5Map to a PNG image.

The input filename can either be a .civ5map or .json file. To start using this application, you can use any of the map files in the maps/ folder or you can load a .civ5map in your game directory.

If you generated the map image and want to modify the map, you can export the .civ5map as a .json by providing an output filename with the file extension .json and reuse the exported json as the input filename.

./Civ5MapImage.exe -input=[input filename] -mode=[drawing mode (optional)] -output=[output filename (default is output.png)]

The default map mode is physical, which shows the different types of terrain.

./Civ5MapImage.exe -input=earth.Civ5Map -output=earth.png

To generate a political map with the civilization and city state borders, you must pass in -mode=political to specify the drawing mode.

./Civ5MapImage.exe -input=maps/europe1939.json -mode=political -output=europe1939.png

To generate a replay, you will need to provide the base map and the replay file of a game.

./Civ5MapImage.exe -mode=replay -input=[map filename] -replay=[replay filename]  -output=[gif filename]

Set -mode=exportjson and output to have a filename ending in .json. No image will be generated.

./Civ5MapImage.exe -mode=exportjson -input=earth.Civ5Map -output=earth.json

This file format covers .civ5map files, which stores the map data. All data is stored in little endian.

Following the header, is a list of strings whose size is determined in the header. Each string list will have a zero byte to split items.

The map data is inverted, which means that the bottommost row rendered on the screen is stored on the top row of the array and the topmost row rendered on the screen is stored on the last row of the array.

The size of this struct is 8 bytes.

In version 11, the sizeof this struct is 48 bytes.

In version 12, the sizeof this struct is 84 bytes.

In version 11, the sizeof this struct is 104 bytes.

In version 12, the sizeof this struct is 136 bytes.

There is a section between the city data and team data that doesn't seem to be used anywhere, except for padding. The sizeof this block is unknown, but this block size increases as the number of civs increases.

The sizeof this struct is 64 bytes. The team name is usually the default value, e.g. Team 1.

The sizeof this struct is 436 bytes.

This block is always placed at the end of a file.

The size of this struct is 8 bytes.

The replay files store a list of civilizations, events, and datasets for different statistics like gold per turn.

DLC Array Element

Array size is uint32 followed by list of elements.

Mods Array Element

Array size is uint32 followed by list of elements.

Header Continued

Unknown Block

Header Continued

The civ names are stored in an array.

Array size is uint32.

Array element format

Array size is uint32.

Array element format

This is a 3D array. The first level is divided by civilization and the second level is divided by category. To get a list of dataset values, you have to call datasetValues[civIndex][datasetNameIndex]. Each dataset value is represented by a Turn and Value pair.

The number of events is a uint32.

Replay Event format

Tile data contains information about the physical map.

Most of the save file is compressed and the header begins with 0x789C, which is a ZLIB header.