Favorite map expansion(s)

[harishw8r]

People who love BtBS would most probably like HoR. To get a better essence of how HoR would be, just take the road to the Finnish tyres factory in St. Petersburg. It's filled with dense trees on both sides of the road and that's a nice drive.

[Jatruck]

And what do you think about RTTBS vs BTBS? I don't have the first one and I don't know if both are quite similar (I believe so).

BTW, my favorite is Iberia, as I said, because its diversity, size and level of detail.

I like too BTBS, Italia and France, and Scandinavia a bit less due to quality problems. Going East is even worse (although it has a great potential), same as Base Map still not rebuilt.

[festmache]

I liked BtBS more than RttBS. Both are of high quality, but the first region is more interesting to me. Especially the part in Russia. I expect to love HoR as well

[55sixxx]

Quality wise is Iberia, without a doubt... But the one i like driving the most just as i like driving in Iberia is BtBS. It's pretty much the perfect match for me since i like taking long distance jobs.

[SenseFM]

Surprised to see Vive la France so low. It's IMO one of the most complete DLCs, with a good balance of highways, country roads and a pretty dense road network. Corsica is very scenic, and in the mainland there are many castles, bridges, villages and landmarks scattered around the country, and all in all it holds up pretty well. I know that people don't like driving into toll roads every now and then, but I don't feel them that annoying if you follow the 90 km/h speed limit.

That said, I may be biased since I am from Spain, but I feel that Iberia is the best one so far. I know most of the roads and cities that have been featured in Spain, and I can say devs have done a very good job for a 1:19 scale. Most city accesses, bypasses and ring roads are pretty close to real life, almost every road has at least one stretch that makes it recognizable, while the signage work is top-notch, especially since IRL Spanish signs sometimes go pretty overboard with colors and symbols. And of course, the Iberian Peninsula has some unusual variety by European standards: coniferous forests and green grass in the north, arid and flat interior, deserts in the southeast, scattered mountain ranges and hilly areas, oak savannas in the southwest... I'd say the only weak points are the usual miss of elevation changes and the lack of a third road (E7) between France and Spain through the Pyrenees. HoR still has potential to beat it, I'm very expectant to its release!

BttBS and RttBS are both very good and worth their money. I'd say that if you like country roads you can't go wrong with any of the two. RttBS is more scenic, but BttBS has a better road network and is better connected to the rest of the map. RttBS has also some strange choices in the roads that have been included, and some cities, especially Cluj Napoca, may feel too extended and separated from the main roads. I think it will shine more once the Western Balkans and Ukraine are released and the DLC gets more connections than those two roads from Hungary.

[Some newbie driver]

It's normal SenseFM, people hate to death the VLF toll gates.

[isaac_mihai]

1st place - RttBS because is home but is not perfect because of how devs decided to include some roads and not others that I consider more important. Very strange configuration they got there.

2nd place - I also love Italia DLC, it is relaxing to drive, has a good mixture of highways/country roads, has an amazing scenery and is good enough in graphics.

3rd place - Scandinavia was for a long time my favorite, it still is somehow but the graphics are pretty outdated. With an improved graphics it could be even my first ranked DLC, even over my home country DLC.

[Jatruck]

In VLF there's something strange ... so many tolls and ... in one highway route that doesn't have them (Nantes-Brest), then SCS has the "good" idea to make fixed (and eternal) roadworks that have the same effect ...

[Janaff]

My personal rankings:

7) Going East! - The basic consensus is that this is the weakest one due to its age, though I will give it credit for even then being an improvement over the base map.

6) Scandinavia - This is the transition point as far as the game's quality goes; it still has a lot of base map-isms, but there's a lot more focus on making scenery look nice and actually specific to each country, a welcome change when much of the base map and Going East! can look samey. Norway in particular still holds up really well.

5) Vive la France! - The knock against this one is that I don't think the scenery is quite there yet (though it's very close), and that cities can still feel a bit samey. With another round of polish I think this one could go up a spot.

4)Beyond the Baltic Sea - This was the expansion that was new when I got in to the game, so it might rank as my sentimental favourite. It was the first expansion to really get the design of cities and industrial areas, and the focus on rural driving was pretty new at the time. The main thing that holds this one back is that after Italia, it is a small step back in terms of environmental design and variety. I hope Heart of Russia can really make this one pop.

3) Italia - This is the complete package for me: A great variety of road and industry types, and is the moment when the map designers really understood how to make beautiful and diverse scenery. The only thing holding this back is Italy's relative linearity and isolation; you'll be driving those same highways a lot sadly.

2) Iberia - Easily the best environment variety of the expansions. The main thing keeping this from the top spot is how highway dependant it is, so I'm really happy to see it get post-launch additions which focus on that.

1) Road to the Black Sea - This one has the best gameplay of the bunch with well-designed cities and environments alike. This is maybe a wishlist thing, but I also like how this expansion came out at a transitional moment for the region's infrastructure, with several under construction highways dotted around. I'd love to see this expansion be updated to correspond with the opening of real-life roads, which isn't yet something the game has kept up with.

[Double M]

I'm surprised to see Scandinavia ahead of Italy and France, but even if time has passed, Norway still looks great.