What does Sea level do?

JBossch

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Pretty self-explanatory question. What does the sea level option on the custom game screen do? Does it affect the number of rivers or something?
 
Pretty self-explanatory question. What does the sea level option on the custom game screen do? Does it affect the number of rivers or something?

Not really, it seems to have more of an impact on the size of the land masses. Lower sea levels = larger islands/continents.

My current favourite map is archipelago with snaky continents and low sea levels. Lots of good-sized land masses of interesting shapes with plenty of choke points and several canal options. Fun!
 
Another thing sea level influences is whether or not you are able to navigate your ships around the poles of a continent. Low sea level means there is more land, ice, tundra etc in the polar regions, and its possible your ships will be unable to travel around the continent. This means you are forced to send them the long way around, and can be annoying if you want to meet new civs or get the circumnavigation bonus. With high sea levels, you will rarely, if ever, encounter this.
 
Not really, it seems to have more of an impact on the size of the land masses. Lower sea levels = larger islands/continents.

My current favourite map is archipelago with snaky continents and low sea levels. Lots of good-sized land masses of interesting shapes with plenty of choke points and several canal options. Fun!

I have given this a try also. Rather enjoyable and a bit different.
 
I agree. My only problem is that even if sea level is Medium, the odds of isolation are pretty high. I played as Alexander for a reason, dag it! But it also gives turtlers and REXers a fair land mass to start with. Mine had most of the resources. Also, barbs develop similar to a Terra map, since most of the tiles are ocean and will be unexplorable till Optics rolls around. Thus, relatively advanced barbarian lands (past Feudalism) can be found.
 
I agree. My only problem is that even if sea level is Medium, the odds of isolation are pretty high. I played as Alexander for a reason, dag it! But it also gives turtlers and REXers a fair land mass to start with. Mine had most of the resources. Also, barbs develop similar to a Terra map, since most of the tiles are ocean and will be unexplorable till Optics rolls around. Thus, relatively advanced barbarian lands (past Feudalism) can be found.

Not to mention late goody huts that could be popped for Astronomy! :goodjob:

(A slim chance, I know, but that's what makes the game fun!)
 
basically, it increases/decreases the ratio of water to land on a map. Think of it as turning on massive global flooding that never goes away, thus taking away land.
 
Only problem is, using "island plates" as your world map, the coding is backwards. (You use this map to avoid all the aggressive early game AIs.) If you pick "low sea level" you get a small island, as if sea level were high. If you pick "high sea level" you get a much larger island, as if sea level were low. They need to FIX this.
 
1) There aren't going to be any more fixes coming from Firaxis. Islam Plates sounds like a modded map type; you might have luck getting the maker of that mapscript to fix it if you can contact him/her.

2) 9-year necro!
 
1) There aren't going to be any more fixes coming from Firaxis. Islam Plates sounds like a modded map type; you might have luck getting the maker of that mapscript to fix it if you can contact him/her.

2) 9-year necro!


2) jajajjaja

to the thread:

high sea: 20% of the world will be land

medium: 30%

low: 40%

meaning low sea level maps have twice as much land than high SL.

beeing ratios:

20:80

30:70

40:60

high sea will also have 4 ocean + coast(O+C) tiles per land tile, while Medium will have 70/30= 2.3, and low SL will have 60/40 = only to 1.5 tile of O+C tiles per land tile.

Also, there will be 20/80= 0.25 LTiles /O+C tiles; 30:70 = 0.42 LTiles /O+C tiles and 40/60= 0.66 =2/3 LTiles /O+C tiles, respectively to each sea level.

If:

Total land will double with low sea level compared to High SL, and Land tiles will be 2.66 times more common. ( 0.66/ 0.25)

Medium sea will be near a mid point between the two extremes analysed above.

As Med. SL will be 1.5 times that of high sea and 0.75 that of low sea, due to

30/20 for (M/high) SL and 30/40 for (M/L) Sea Level

As you might have realize, independently of the map script, each sea level changes gameplay notoriously.

In fact, you can have more game experiences than N° of maps * sea levels * climates * the results of every other combinations of different settings.
 
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