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.