Advanced Map Options, what do they do?

I looked through the manual, I couldn't find them anywhere.

What do;
World Age
Temperature
Rainfall
Sea level

Have effects on?

World Age: if you set it to 3billion years, you get lots of mountains and hills with few plains/grasslands. Think of it as less time for erosion to have an effect.

Temperature: if you set it to warm, you get more desert and jungle.

Rainfall: If you set it for dry, more plains and deserts. If set for wet, more jungle and grasslands.

Sea Level: If set at low, continents are larger. If set at high, smaller continents and (from my experience) more lakes on the land masses.

Sejuhasz said:

I looked through the manual, I couldn't find them anywhere.

What do;
World Age
Temperature
Rainfall
Sea level

Have effects on?

Click to expand...

World Age: How weathered the terrain is, ie: how tall mountains are.
Temperature: Hotter leads to more desert/ jungles and less ice caps, colder leads to arid landscape and bigger ice caps.
Rainfall: How fertile the Earth is.
Sea level: Effects how much land there is.

I think this is right, but I haven't actually played around with it.

A technical reply:

World Age affects plot types: flat land, hills, mountains. Older world = flatter world.

Temperature affects terrain types: grass, plains, desert, tundra, snow. Hotter = more desert less tundra.

Rainfall affects feature types: forest, jungle, marsh, oasis, etc. More rain = more foliage.

Sea Level affects percentage of the world that is land vs sea. Higher sea levels = less dry land.

Resources affects resource quantity: for military resources, this affects the number of units per tile; for economic resources, this affects total number of resource tiles in play (and in some cases, at start locations).


- Sirian

Sorry for diggin out this old thread, but are rivers affected by those settings?

And is the relationship between strategic and luxury ressources always the same? Or is there a setting for few strategic and many luxury ressources?

(This thread may not be completely fresh in everyone's mind.. slight necromancy, ahem )

I've never felt the need to play with these settings before, but today I wanted to try a very wide strategy, so I thought choosing "low sea level" would provide some extra space for expansion.

I ended up rerolling a couple times... every map seemed to be full of hills and mountains, and I mean full. In the end I gave up and went back to normal.

Does sea level affect hilliness as well? Should I try a "low sea level / old earth" combo to get "normal" terrain with extra land mass?

Rattling the bones here.....

I play archipelago with low sea level to give me large islands. Fun game if you want a navy to play a major roll.

This thread is built on necroposts so I'll join in with a question.

Does changing the sea level also influence how shallow/deep water is generated? As in higher sea levels means less shallow water between landmasses. Sometimes even continents far apart can have small shallow trails snaking between them.

I've always been curious about that. I ask because If I was playing a map like archipelago I would rather have deeper oceans because it would mean my enemies would have to get more techs before they could get to me. Plus it can be more interesting to not meet all of the other civs within the first era.

OursIstheFury said:

This thread is built on necroposts so I'll join in with a question.

Does changing the sea level also influence how shallow/deep water is generated? As in higher sea levels means less shallow water between landmasses. Sometimes even continents far apart can have small shallow trails snaking between them.

I've always been curious about that. I ask because If I was playing a map like archipelago I would rather have deeper oceans because it would mean my enemies would have to get more techs before they could get to me. Plus it can be more interesting to not meet all of the other civs within the first era.

Click to expand...

That is map script driven. If you want those on other landmasses to need Astronomy to reach you, while wanting fewer opponents on your starting landmass than normal Contenants your best bet is Small Contenants.

Archipelago is designed so that you can normally reach most of the players pre-Astronomony while in Large Islands & Tiny Islands this is always the case.

I always play with low sea levels whether it's Pangaea, Archipelago, Continents or whatever. More land = more cities = more fighting = more fun. Another good setting is 5 billion years for world age-- gives you more flat spaces (actually, lots of big open plains and deserts) which can be fun for domination games. If you go 3 billion years you end up with an asston of mountains. Like, dozens of mountains in giant chunks completely cutting off access to certain parts of the maps. 5 bil with low sea level for me anyways, makes ideal terrain for domination games.