[Religion and Revolution]: Maps and Scenarios

Hi guys,

let us discuss ideas and wishes about maps and scenarios in this thread.
(Of course you could also directly attach your work in here, if you like.)

I want to go first. I would really love to see more of a map looking like something with a few seperate continents and some smaller islands around. But not too small islands. Mapscripts already in TAC 2.02_inoffiziell looks too much like one big continent and tiny islands not worth looking at.

Couple screens just for illustration of our previous discussion:

1. Original map of some Mayan cities on the Yucatán Peninsula:



2. The marked cities on the Yucatán Peninsula (America map) in TAC 2.02b:



Map parameters:


I removed all bonus resources from the map because they were distributed randomly.
All work was made in Notepad++. CivVICol game was opened only to check results.

Main problem here: to find a historically correct map of native civilization. Any data (old maps with exact locations of native cities, etc.) are welcome.

A Scenario for North and South America would really be nice.

If I understand you correctly you want:

1. All Native Cities placed manually (no random placement)
2. Bonus Ressources placed manually (no random placement)
3. Starting Positions of Europeans fixed

I just want to point out to a few things:

A) We will bring in a new Terrain ("Light Green Savanna" like in Original CivCol)
B) Our list of Native Nations will grow steadily
C) Our list of Yields and Bonus-Ressources will be very different to TAC (much bigger)

Summary:

Generally I would really love if teammembers or people from community create many maps and scenarios for this mod.

If we create Maps now, we will need to do small adjustments for the new Terrain later on.
(No big problem.)

If we create Scenarios now, where Native Cities and Bonus-Ressources are fixed, we will have to adjust those several times as our mod grows.
(That might get annoying over time.)

Suggestion:

Let us wait a little with Scenarios until our mod is more advanced.
Maps and Mapscripts however we could do now already and have a little adjustment, when we bring in our new Terrrain.

But yes of course, we can already discuss and collect ideas or data about scenarios.
(I really just wanted to say that we might better wait a little with their creation.)

I guess my wishlist would be simple. A detailed and accurate map of both North and South America, that is of a decent size. I've seen some pretty good South America maps out there, but any map of North America, or both continents has a tendency to squash the area from the Carolina's to New England into about eight squares, leaving room for few settlements along the east coast.

Personally I like to play on big maps, (200x200), I find too much bigger than this and the game gets drastically slow. As I am not clever enough to do mapscripts, I always go into worldbuilder and build from scratch, that way I can add more Caribbean islands and make the eastern seaboard of North America more detailed. I could create a map on a grid that could serve as a possible template for a map or mapscript. If anyone is interested in me doing this, then let me know.

As for scenarios, I typically prefer custom ones as I then can pick and choose what civs I want and who leads them, but I am more than happy to throw in a few ideas, help brainstorm and act as a sounding board.

I don't remember when, but Ray and I had a discussion a while ago about mapscripts.

I've converted a few Civ4 mapscripts (thanks to TC01's tutorial)... If one of you is interested, just ask!

But here we're talking about scenarios... I think Ray's right. It's probably best if we wait and do them after we've added all the new features.

But mostly I've got a problem . I don't know how to add terrain features on scenario's (except manually). And I really don't want to add wind features manually on a huge map. But I'd like to add wind features on every map/scenario/mapscript possible!

Robert Surcouf said:

But mostly I've got a problem . I don't know how to add terrain features on scenario's (except manually). And I really don't want to add wind features manually on a huge map. But I'd like to add wind features on every map/scenario/mapscript possible!

Click to expand...

Don't worry.
(We will solve this problem once we start integrating that feature.)

Hi guys,

I proudly present the first screenshots of the scenario map I am working on:

Amerayca

It is created with our mapsize Gigantic.
(It is by far the biggest map I have ever seen.)

Players will have an incredible amount of possibilities to explore and to build up their colonies.

It is a scenario because I figured, that due to the almost incredible amount of plots it was not playable when Natives were generated randomly.
(Several Native tribes sometimes had 30, if not even 50 villages !)

Thus I will manually place the Natives.

Bonus Resources and Goody Huts will be random.

It is not geographically or historically correct.
It is simply a fun map optimized for playing with our mod.

However I tried to build regions similar to the "Great Lakes", "The Plains of North America" or the "Amazonas River".
There exist several super size continents, smaller continents and a few islands around.

The different regions offer totally different strategies.

As I said, I am not finished yet, since there were some technical problems.
(I started creating the map with an old revision of our mod and had a lot of trouble making it compatible to the current revision again.)

But I should have the complete scenario finished until the weekend.

The different regions offer totally different strategies.

Click to expand...

Every map should take this in mind to offer different gameplay - kinda like RFC (bts) gives each different civ a different game to play, maximizing its replay factor.

thadian said:

Every map should take this in mind to offer different gameplay ...

Click to expand...

I totally agree.

But this is much easier with a "fun map", then when trying to be "historically and geographically correct".

A lot of people prefer to play / create maps that are "historically and geographically correct".
I wish there would be more "fun maps" that would focus on gameplay first.

How often have I heard:
"Yes it would be good considering gameplay to have resource X or terrain Z in this map. But it would not be correct."

I am not saying maps that are "historically and geographically correct" are not interesting.
I simply wish that people would also create some more "fun maps".

I have uploaded my map Amerayca to SVN.
(It is now part of the mod and will also be in Release 1 next week.)

I did not make it a scenario.
(Nations are still random. Goodies and Reources are random too of course.)

Reasons:

• Well, I simply cannot find the time.
• It is easier to adapt to further releases or modmods.
• It gives the player higher flexibility to choose nations and settings.

!!! Warnings !!!

• Do not play this map, if you do not have a very strong system. It is incredibly big !
• Native Tribes are incredibly big and strong on this map. You should be prepared for that.

What I have learned:

Currently we have 5 Europeans on standard map and for Huge map. I think this is simply wrong...
It would be very nice to create special RnR -- right now all the maps come from different scenarios.

My laptop is lagging on Huge maps already, so I will never taste Gigantic map I guess.. But Western Hemisphere on Gigantic map would be to good to skip

Tigranes said:

Currently we have 5 Europeans on standard map and for Huge map. I think this is simply wrong...

Click to expand...

Wordsizes LARGE and HUGE also have 6 European Players in newest revision now.

Tigranes said:

It would be very nice to create special RnR ...
...
But Western Hemisphere on Gigantic map would be to good to skip

Click to expand...

Yes indeed, but we have not yet found anybody who is interested in creating such maps.
(But things might change after the release next week ... )

I just figured out, that I had a wrong setting at the Mapsize Gigantic, which caused too many Native Villages to be created.
(I had misinterpreted that value.)

Now Mapsize Gigantic should not generate too many Native villages anymore.

Ray, I just want to acomplish you on your Amerayca map. Well done! I have got a couple of questions. Did you do it all by hand, or using a mapscript? How long did it take you?

I just want to announce to everyone that I have a little extra time afforded to me right now... and I am using that time to make a small 30x70 geographically accurate map of the New England region. After playing RaR, I realized that a lot of players need a smaller map to play on to account for the slow down on their system caused by Rar's size! I hope to have New England out to you all soon.

Great!
I hope you or someone find some time after that to make a little map of the region (Hudson bay) I told you... it would be really appreciated.

I think it could be a great base for a scenario (like the latest TAC scenario).

And about that, how do you consider maps? Should they be balanced for all yields or can scenarios be made to add more presence for specific yields or strategies?

I mean It would be great having some games where you have to buy some yields because you can't produce them, and the types of things you can produce are limited instead of playing to produce all...
Does the actual engine allow that? How about the AI?

It would be a great point to consider these things while generating maps and improving the AI. Ideally the AI game should be set to change its strategy according to these things. For ex. an human player would not get stuck with cities only producing silver, but the AI would do (instead of buying ore or tools with that income)...

Sanotra said:

Ray, I just want to acomplish you on your Amerayca map. Well done!

Click to expand...

Thanks.

Sanotra said:

Did you do it all by hand, or using a mapscript?

Click to expand...

Most of it was done by hand.
(Winds and Storms were generated. And a lot is random of course.)

Sanotra said:

How long did it take you?

Click to expand...

About 12 hours.
Although it took me 2 hours of these 12 to fix a bug in the map and get it compatible again.
(So without that it would have been about 10 hours.)

Isabelxxx said:

And about that, how do you consider maps? Should they be balanced for all yields or can scenarios be made to add more presence for specific yields or strategies ?

Click to expand...

Generally there is only one major ascpect to consider about maps that are not balanced considering terrains and yields:
Maps that do not allow all productionlines / features to be used are usually only of little interest to most players.

It is no real problem for AI.
(It is just the same as AI settling in a specific region where it also does not have access to all yields.)

However, it would be a little problematic, if AI would not have enough access to strategic yields.
(Food, Lumber, Stone, Ore.)

So it is not advised to create maps that are missing these strategic yields.
(Map without or only very little Forrest, without or very little Hills or Mountains.)

Summary:

Well balanced maps considering terrains, terrain features and yields will simply make better use of the features our mod offers.
If you don't care about that, it still does not make the map unplayable.

So do whatever you like.

A Hudson Bay region would hardly have grassland, savannah, prairie, desert, or marsh. It would definitely be a map someone would play to get a strict winter and winter resource experience. For example: Taiga and tundra would be the norm, causing the player to specialize in special furs and furniture for an income... and food could not be grown but only fished or hunted. If that appeals to you, and it does to me to, for a good winter game now and then, I could get started on one if I find time! I'll take a look at my options for how to construct the map.