Zetta Earth

Quintillus

Archiving Civ3 Content
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Introduction

One of the advantages of Civilization IV over its predecessor is the abolition of many of the limitations of Civilization III - the 512 city limit, the 8092 unit limit (lower before Conquests), and so on. Just how large a map can be in Civilization IV isn't specified - it's generally accepted that it is limited more by your computer than by hard-coded limits. So I decided to create the biggest map I could and record the tale resulting from such a decision.

The Largest Map

The first step was finding the largest map. In Civilization III, the largest map is 362x362 - but because of the 512 city limit, most of the land on such a map will not be settled. The effective largest map in Civilization III - that is, the largest that could be settled - would be 230x230. But because of its quirky grid system, that's actually 115x115x2 - a total of 26450 tiles, with the quirky math accounted for.

Theoretically, you could just create a 1000x1000 Civ4 map. But "theoretically" is key. I received these results with Civilization IV Version 1.00:

Version 1.00 said:
OK at 200x132 (26400 tiles); RAM usage: 900 MB. 99.8% of the size of maximum effective Civ3 map
OK at 50x38 (30400 tiles). 115.0% of maximum Civ3 map.
Crashes at 51x38 (31008 tiles)
OK at 52*37 (30784 tiles); RAM usage: 1006 MB. 116.4% of maximum Civ3
Crashes at 51x38 with Medium graphics; thus graphics are not the limiting factor.

By comparison, at the beginning of a game (when I took the RAM measurements), the largest possible Civilization III map takes 118 MB of RAM. Obviously Civ4 isn't nearly as efficient from a memory standpoint, but it may be more efficient processor-wise; only time will tell that (literally).

I then downloaded the 1.74 patch and tested the limits again:

Version 1.74 said:
OK at 204x152 (31008 tiles) 117.2% of max Civ3. RAM: 450 MB
OK at 240x152 (36480 tiles) 137.9% of max Civ3.
OK at 280x176 (49280 tiles) 186.3% of max Civ3.
Crashes at 320x200 (64000 tiles)
OK at 300x188 (56400 tiles) 213.2% of max Civ3. RAM: 667 MB
Crashes at 308x192 (59136 tiles)
OK at 304x188 (57152 tiles) 216.1% of max Civ3. RAM: 683 MB
OK at 304x192 (58368 tiles) 220.7% of max Civ3. RAM: 679 MB
OK at 300x196 (58800 tiles) 222.3% of max Civ3. RAM: 688 MB
Second Try: Memory Allocation Failure at 426 MB allocated
998 MB RAM free at MAF
Third Try: OK

So the limit is somewhere between 58800 and 59136 tiles. To try to find it more precisely would result in odd-shaped maps, so I decided to settle for 300x196.

Also note that memory usage is approximately 55% lower in version 1.74 than version 1.00. Talk about significant optimization improvements. Further, in neither case was memory the limiting factor - I had hundreds of megabytes free when both 1.00 and 1.74 hit the limit. Rather this error was the limit:



Perhaps it's good, though. I can't imagine memory use will fall as the civilizations develop.

Map Settings

You probably expect this section to be "temperature, medium sea level", etc. It isn't! With a map this big, a few other settings had to be changed as well, in the Assets\XML\GameInfo\Civ4WorldInfo.xml file. Here's what I changed:

<iDefaultPlayers> - Set at maximum 18
<iUnitNameModifier> - Left a zero. Unknown function.
<iNumTargetCities> - Is number of cities that get happiness bonus from Representation; also has small affect on city maintenance. In proportion to map size change, increase would be to 67. Increased to 70.
<iNumFreeBuildingBonus> Set to 70, in proportion. Actual affect not known.
<iBuildingClassPrereqModifier> Affects the number of prerequisite buildings for a big building. Most commonly, affects how many temples you need per cathedral. Set to 125 - which should be 5 temples per cathedral. Huge is 100.
<iMaxConscriptModifier> Affects the bonus number of drafted units over the standard three. Set to 1570% bonus. Thus up to 50 units can be drafted per turn per civilization in Nationalism.
<iWarWearinessModifier> = Set to -90% for low war weariness.
<iGridWidth> Is the grid width, divided by 4. Set to 75.
<iGridHeight> Is the grid height, divided by 4. Set to 49.
<iTerrainGrainChange> Set to 3 for more variety in terrain, but still having some epic jungles and mountains.
<iFeatureGrainChange> Set to 3 for more variety in terrain, but still having some epic jungles and mountains.
<iResearchPercent> - In proportion, would be 1750. But doesn't increase proportionally - a tenfold increase in tiles from Duel to Huge increases research by only 50%. Thus with the thirteenfold increase in tiles over Standard, settled on iResearchPercent of 225.
<iTradeProfitPercent> Set at 10%. Percent profit from trade; how it is calculated is unknown.
<iDistanceMaintenancePercent> = Set to 20% for less costs for sprawling empires.
<iNumCitiesMaintenancePercent> = Set to 10%.
<iNumCitiesAnarchyPercent> = Set to 1. Best guess is that it changes how much having lots of cities increases the length of anarchy.

Thanks go to anion for his explanations of these parameters at http://forum.civilization.org.pl/viewtopic.php?t=5117, as well as Google Translate. Also, thanks to NeverMind, whose XXL World mod made it easy to modify these files.

Thus, without further ado about the map itself, let us begin...

Zetta Earth



"Looks like we've got our work cut out for us," said Antonina as she looked around the barren landscape.

"No kidding," replied her husband. "Not even a single tree around here to chop down for firewood."
 
Now that is the crappiest start I ever seen.... that and the the huge size of the map will make quite a show for you :lol:

Did you considered using a modified DLL to get more civs in game?
 
now that must be the worst starting position ever

I suppose that's what you get by overloading mapscript :p

Now that is the crappiest start I ever seen.... that and the the huge size of the map will make quite a show for you :lol:

Did you considered using a modified DLL to get more civs in game?

:joke: That's not really the starting point :D! I set the TerrainGrainChange and FeatureGrainChange to -5 and then found the most desolate place on the map and World-Builder-ed a Warrior and Settler to get that. But setting those values to -5 does result in amazingly nonchanging lands across large areas.

Even at 3 I expect a few civilizations - possibly mine - to get a really poor start, based on what I saw when generating maps. But very far northerly starts seems to be a flaw that I can't avoid.

I didn't look into adding more civilizations if only because there's only 18 civilizations in Vanilla (though I know of mods such as Jecrell's Carthage mod that add in civilizations). If my Civ3 experience is any indication of what Civ4 will behave like, though, for the same size map and level of development, more civilizations significantly increases AI turn time, and thus sticking with 18 civilizations may be a good idea.

Not that more civilizations isn't tempting. I considered buying Beyond the Sword just for more civilizations and the possibility of even bigger maps before deciding it probably would be wise to see if this works first.

Damn! What PC do you have at home :p It will actually be able to run this?

It will at least be able to start running this. I don't know if it will be able to play the whole game - there's only one way to find out. If it does run out of steam at some point I'll give a Histographic win to whoever is ahead, or possibly Cultural if someone is obviously going to win that way.

The precise specifications are 2.2 GHz Core 2 (Duo, not that that matters), 2 GB RAM, Windows XP 32-bit (other specs not affecting Civ4 performance). I'm rather expecting having to increase the memory to at least 3 GB eventually to keep it running. Civ3 got me accustomed to long turn times, and Civ4 seems to be more efficient there, so I don't think the processor will be a limitation, at least not before memory.

Now without further ado, it's time to start playing!
 
The following settings will be used for the game:

*Gigantic map (300x196)
*Tropical climate (to help ward off civilizations being left to freeze at the poles)
*Low sea level
*Ancient era (of course!)
*Epic game speed, with unit costs at Normal costs for even more epic battles.
*City flipping after conquest allowed
*Aggressive AI
*Lock Modified Assets on. There won't be any miracle units coming to help out!
*All other options off (default).
*All victories allowed exception Domination. I'll likely go for conquest, but I really don't expect to finish conquest before time runs out, so I'll leave the others on to keep it interesting.
*All civilizations enabled. Of those with multiple leaders, these have been chosen:
-Napoleon of France. Lois XIV just looks ridiculous, sorry.
-Roosevelt of America. I seem to get him less often.
-Victoria of England. I seem to get her less often, plus it's more fitting for a truly imperial empire.
-Asoka of India. Gandhi just looks way too thin in Civ4. Not saying it's inaccurate, just with Asoka I feel less obliged to gift rice, wheat, and bananas to India so Gandhi can eat more.
-Genghis Khan of Mongolia. More of a reputation for conquest.
-Mao Zedong of China. Can't leave out the only communist.
-Bismarck of Germany. Led a more powerful, united Germany than Frederick.
*Noble difficulty. This is my standard Civ4 difficulty, and I've yet to win above it except for a Quechea rush.
*Single unit graphics. It just looks better to me, three guys battling it out just seems silly unless it's three musketeers. Other than that and anti-aliasing, graphics settings are at the maximum.

-------

In the beginning, the Random Number Generator was kind to the Russians, and gave them a decent start. Theirs was a forested location, relatively rich in resources, and certainly nothing to complain about given the possible alternatives.



Yet already signs of difficulty loomed. Apparently high-texture terrain increased memory usage more than anticipated.



Oh well. The settings could always be turned down later if need be.

But for now, all was jolly. The settler settled in place, and the nearby village provided Russia with a rather useful map.



Work began on another Scout, to see if the south was any more bountiful than the already pretty good north, and research set to The Wheel. Early military conflicts were not expected, but already it was known that roads would be essential to building a huge empire.

Ninety years later, the village in the above map gave us 51 gold, certainly a useful sum. Our scout countinued his mission to find more and more prosperous lands.

However, the good times were short-lived. Disaster struck in 3895 BC.



:hmm: This might take some work...
 
I hope you can get this to run, I would like to follow your game.
My PC would have burned down even before settling.
 
Really hope you can keep this up. Good luck with getting your PC to make this work.
 
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