[Map Script] Planet Generator

I'm another FFH2 player who loves the map, but also struggles with the excessive amount of forest. Even set at the lowest vegetation setting, the high forest concentration is an issue (it basically forces you down the wood-chopping research path, which is tied to the Melee combat unit path). Being able to further reduce the amount of forest would be great.
 
Hi Nercury,

Did you hear that the downloads database was hacked? I think you need to re-upload your entry in there. We all had to re-upload all our files about a month ago.
 
Nercury,
Your map generator script is really very creative and practical. But, I have a few suggestions for you. I hope you will take into consideration. Because, I use your script as much frequently as standarty scripts like big&small, medium&small, terra etc. So I would like your script be even better more than most civ fans. Below, there are many suggestions, I can't know which ones you will agree with or which ones are easy for you to complement.

1) Lonely Islands as Part and Extension of Continents:
You have a very good continent customization.

Continents
From one huge Pangaea to 18 continents. If continent distribution is set to "Smart Selection" it will make best choice to make those 18 continents fit even into duel map. However, it is not like archipelago, but if you want something close to that, decrease continent separation to 1 square.

Size of every continent depends on how many players will be in it.

Continent separation
How many water tiles should separate continents. 3 is default. Select 4 for late civilization contact.

If you add a feature for lonely islands similar to the above selections of continents, it will be better.

Lonely islands (new)
Controls how many islands are created in empty ocean space. This option is affected by Ocean percentage: the higher it is, the more space for lonely islands.
- Use every empty area in ocean: this option means that algorithm will do it's best to fill empty space with islands.
- One island somewhere: creates one island somewhere, if there is space for it (usually there is, except maybe for duel maps with big islands selected)
- No islands

Lonely island size (new)
Controls size of islands. Size is computed the same way for any map size.
- Small: useful if there is some resource
- Medium: for one grown up city
- Big: varies from 1 to 3 cities

I believe lonely islands are very important in Civ4. Especially about resources, colonization. strategic base.
You could improve your continent scattering&island setting like following, by combining continent scattering setting with lonely island setting. As if each continent have a parameterizable number of lonely island.

Including:
* How many lonely islands per continent

* What will be the minimum distance between continents & their lonely islands

* Lonely islands might have different resources than the main continent it is near to. Selection:
1) same type of resources (DEFAULT),
2) having different resources that the continent doesn't have but very less in number, 1different type at most)

* If continent seperation is 5, than 2 continents should not be attached together with a lonely island between. Lonely island of one continent should be 5 away than lonely island of another continent or 5 away than another continent. So lonely islands being a part and an extension of the main continent.


2) Continents (Or called generally landmasses in Civ4) & Subcontinents:
You can seperate selection of number of landmasses than number of continents. For example; In the world, there are 6-7 continents but 2 landmasses.
Eurasia and Africa are continents. They have a narrow connection, they are in the same landmass.
Australia is also another continent totally as a large island in the same landmass. But it may be easier to generate similar continents with "lonely island feature" which I described above. You just select seperation between lonely island and landmass as minimum.
America's is a land mass but it has 2 continents North & South, narrow connection.

This is very practical for placement of civs. You can place civs to different continents in the same landmass.
This also helps players to focus on border cities more. Narrow borders are more strategic.
They can also found forts or cities to move their sea units to the opposite side of the continent without turning around. I don't find neither massive continents nor snaky continents much realistic. 2 massive continents connected with a narrow land is ideal in my view. It is also similar to the real world like Asia/Africa and North&South America examples.

If you ask, in practical what is the difference for 2 civs being in different landmasses or being in same landmass, different continent is that, they will have similar resources or not. Civ4 generally isolates resources in standart generator which you are also using. Different landmasses should have different resources, but islands/continents in the same landmass generally have the same type of resources. This is a very important key in Civ4. You have to trade new resources or settle on other landmasses in the later eras when your city populations get higher than 20-25s.


- Generator so far uses standard methods for adding resources and bonuses.


3) Resources: I don't know why but although you say you are using the standart generator, your maps generally create less amount of resources than standart map scripts.
You could also add a selection for standart/balanced distribution of resources.

4) Forests: Although I select normal humidity, nearly 80-85% of tiles in many continents have forests or jungles. I think it is much.

5) Rivers: You could add settings for rivers.
 
Nerc,

It's me, the guy who had the problems with the map and MP. I've been without internet access for a while, but I'm back now and I'll try to get ahold of that information you wanted.

As a matter of fact, after a search of my whole drive, planet_generator_0_60.cfg is not anywhere on my computer.

The settings are also not saved from game to game - I have to reset them every time.
 
Nercury,
Your map generator script is really very creative and practical. But, I have a few suggestions for you. I hope you will take into consideration. Because, I use your script as much frequently as standarty scripts like big&small, medium&small, terra etc. So I would like your script be even better more than most civ fans. Below, there are many suggestions, I can't know which ones you will agree with or which ones are easy for you to complement.

1) Lonely Islands as Part and Extension of Continents:
You have a very good continent customization.



If you add a feature for lonely islands similar to the above selections of continents, it will be better.



I believe lonely islands are very important in Civ4. Especially about resources, colonization. strategic base.
You could improve your continent scattering&island setting like following, by combining continent scattering setting with lonely island setting. As if each continent have a parameterizable number of lonely island.

Including:
* How many lonely islands per continent

* What will be the minimum distance between continents & their lonely islands

* Lonely islands might have different resources than the main continent it is near to. Selection:
1) same type of resources (DEFAULT),
2) having different resources that the continent doesn't have but very less in number, 1different type at most)

* If continent seperation is 5, than 2 continents should not be attached together with a lonely island between. Lonely island of one continent should be 5 away than lonely island of another continent or 5 away than another continent. So lonely islands being a part and an extension of the main continent.


2) Continents (Or called generally landmasses in Civ4) & Subcontinents:
You can seperate selection of number of landmasses than number of continents. For example; In the world, there are 6-7 continents but 2 landmasses.
Eurasia and Africa are continents. They have a narrow connection, they are in the same landmass.
Australia is also another continent totally as a large island in the same landmass. But it may be easier to generate similar continents with "lonely island feature" which I described above. You just select seperation between lonely island and landmass as minimum.
America's is a land mass but it has 2 continents North & South, narrow connection.

This is very practical for placement of civs. You can place civs to different continents in the same landmass.
This also helps players to focus on border cities more. Narrow borders are more strategic.
They can also found forts or cities to move their sea units to the opposite side of the continent without turning around. I don't find neither massive continents nor snaky continents much realistic. 2 massive continents connected with a narrow land is ideal in my view. It is also similar to the real world like Asia/Africa and North&South America examples.

If you ask, in practical what is the difference for 2 civs being in different landmasses or being in same landmass, different continent is that, they will have similar resources or not. Civ4 generally isolates resources in standart generator which you are also using. Different landmasses should have different resources, but islands/continents in the same landmass generally have the same type of resources. This is a very important key in Civ4. You have to trade new resources or settle on other landmasses in the later eras when your city populations get higher than 20-25s.





3) Resources: I don't know why but although you say you are using the standart generator, your maps generally create less amount of resources than standart map scripts.
You could also add a selection for standart/balanced distribution of resources.

4) Forests: Although I select normal humidity, nearly 80-85% of tiles in many continents have forests or jungles. I think it is much.

5) Rivers: You could add settings for rivers.

Uh, thanks. I will try to respond to your post the best way I can.

1. Choices for lonely islands. Choices. Basically I believe that less is more, and I am not going to add new choices to generator, unless I remove some existing ones. Good things to remove are Peak and Hill settings, humidity, one-tile islands (always remove). So it may happen ;)

Continents ant lonely islands near them - possible. Requires some changes though, and may look quite repetitive when generated.

Resources, again, are not generated by me. Actually, my own resource generation halted Planet Generator improvements, because it is hard. I mean, I want it to work with any version of civilization, including mods.

I am still working on resource generation though.

2. Subcontinents and connections between them. That probably is not going to happen with this generator.

Player placement is one other thing that is not done by me. However, if you choose 3 players and 2 continents, and continent size "by player", continent size will be distributed among them, so you will get one continent 2 times bigger than other. This scales up randomly to any number of players and continents.

3. There was a bug in older versions of this generator where i forgot to enable standard normalization of resources. Now it should be there.

As I said, I am working on resource generation, have some good progress - can collect tiles near players and sort them by probability of players exploring them, for any continent shape and any position of players. If one player is between other two, I can see that he will get blocked, and i can count additional land other players will have so I can place some desert/water/peaks there to normalize things.

4. Yeah. damn forests.

5. Heh, another thing not done by me ;)
 
Nerc,

It's me, the guy who had the problems with the map and MP. I've been without internet access for a while, but I'm back now and I'll try to get ahold of that information you wanted.

As a matter of fact, after a search of my whole drive, planet_generator_0_60.cfg is not anywhere on my computer.

The settings are also not saved from game to game - I have to reset them every time.

Ok then, which version of civilization are you using? And OSX or Windows? (I can't find your old post)
 
Resources, again, are not generated by me. Actually, my own resource generation halted Planet Generator improvements, because it is hard. I mean, I want it to work with any version of civilization, including mods.

I am still working on resource generation though.

3. There was a bug in older versions of this generator where i forgot to enable standard normalization of resources. Now it should be there.

As I said, I am working on resource generation, have some good progress - can collect tiles near players and sort them by probability of players exploring them, for any continent shape and any position of players. If one player is between other two, I can see that he will get blocked, and i can count additional land other players will have so I can place some desert/water/peaks there to normalize things.

4. Yeah. damn forests.

I see. You may ot agree with adding new choices. They were only ideas. But the more important part is really about resource generator. I'm glad that I heard you are working on it.

Last time I used your script, there were 3 seperate large landmasses. Mine was a landmass in size of 70-100 cities. I had more than 50 cities on it. There were very few food resource types. OK, that may be normal. Maybe more types are generated in the other 2 landmasses, unluckily. But what was strange is that, the number for each type of food is also very very less.

In the landmass the following food types were present with numbers:
1) crab (only 1)
2) sheep (only 1)
3)fish
4)clam
5)type x
6)type y

I don't remember type x and y, they were sth like corn and rice let's say. There were only 1 crab and 1 sheep and the other 4 types were not many either.
I was playing in an overriden huge map (nearly 150*100) and mine was the largest of 3 landmasses. I think the total number of resources in that world would be nearly equal to total number of resources on a standart sized continents map.
 
Windows XP, Beyond the Sword.
 
I love this script and all the options but resources are somewhat of a problem for me. I play on oversized maps and like camarilla said they can be very scarce. I see that you are using the standard resource generator so does this mean that the resources are not scaling with map size (beyond huge) or is it an issue with any map size?
 
I love this script and all the options but resources are somewhat of a problem for me. I play on oversized maps and like camarilla said they can be very scarce. I see that you are using the standard resource generator so does this mean that the resources are not scaling with map size (beyond huge) or is it an issue with any map size?

exactly!
i don't know how it is but i assume the number of resources is sth like following. the numbers are imganinary but i guess you will udnerstand what i meant

std map 1000 tiles: 100 resources
large map 1500 tiles: 133 resources
huge map 2000 tiles: 160 resources

here i mean that the total number of resources should increase with the map size but maybe not as much as the ratio of increasing size multiplication ratio.

let's say there is such a relation between map size & number of resources, still oversized maps should follow similarly.

std map 1000 tiles: 100 resources
large map 1500 tiles: 133 resources
huge map 2000 tiles: 160 resources
oversized huge1 2500 tiles: 182 resources
oversized huge2 3000 tiles: 200 resources
 
I've studied the default resource placement extensively, so maybe I can help shed some light. Some resources are placed depending on the number of players in the game, and some are placed depending on how many tiles present that will accept that resource. For example, wheat I think requires 16 unforested tiles of plains to generate one resource. Crabs and Clams require 32 tiles of coast that are above or below a certain lattitude. Strategic resources like Iron and Oil are placed depending on the number of players.
 
I've studied the default resource placement extensively, so maybe I can help shed some light. Some resources are placed depending on the number of players in the game, and some are placed depending on how many tiles present that will accept that resource. For example, wheat I think requires 16 unforested tiles of plains to generate one resource. Crabs and Clams require 32 tiles of coast that are above or below a certain lattitude. Strategic resources like Iron and Oil are placed depending on the number of players.

hmm. if it is coded like that in xml, that makes sense.
the forests are generated very very much in number even in normal humidity, nerc also commented as "yes, damned forests" about this case :)
then i will start another game ASAP with lower humidity and i will make continent scattering as "coast varies much" . maybe that increases the resources you mean

but what i wonder is that, does humidity effect rivers as well?
decreasing river ratio would be bad. both about commerce and irrigation
 
but what i wonder is that, does humidity effect rivers as well?
decreasing river ratio would be bad. both about commerce and irrigation

If rivers are generated the default way, than it shouldn't change.
 
If rivers are generated the default way, than it shouldn't change.

yes but about rivers nothing is defined. no selection is there. besides if you see the psot 1 of this thread, it is written like the following

Humidity
It controls amount of forests, jungles, and flood plains.
 
I love your Planet Generator Map Script and I wonder if there is any way to get it to work over multiplayer?

We tried a game last night and it started out with the OOS error. Any help would be appreciated.
 
back again, after a long time gone.

I've tried earlier versions of the planet generator
and had wondered about the lack of resources -

Camarilla's comments on them (especially for oversized extra huge maps)
finally showed me why I didn't see many resources

is there *any* way to edit the %% of resources by ourselves
in the xml files?? if so, where & how?

also - my 2nd favorite map is the ringworld map -
would it be possible to have PG do a version of that?
icewall mountains along the north & south poles,
with a length 10X the height ...........

thanks again for a great planet generator
bonniee

:):):)
 
I am sorry, I don't have much time these days to play around with map generator anymore - so I can't promise new version or anything right now.

For more resources, select higher number of players and set smaller map size.

For less forests, i need to write some additional code to remove some forests randomly after generation is finished. I can't simply reduce them by changing number, because they are the central piece in climate distribution.
 
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