Are Civ5 maps fair ? And can we improve them.

[TomasGudm]

Hi all. I am doing my Masters thesis focusing on Civilization V. Specifically the maps. Now
a big premise in my thesis is that the maps generated by Civ5 are not in general fair or well
balanced. I would very much like to ask you to answer the poll with your answer and see
what the consensus is, from 1-5 how balanced and fair the automatically generated maps in Civ5 are.

Now I have come up with some measurements and I will list them here. I am looking for a discussion
on what you guys think about them, if there are more measurements you can think of that would be great.
What are your opinions on these measurement. Please consider two scenarios, one where you are
in a 2vs2 multiplayer setting, and then 1vsAI single player setting.

Connectivity by land.
Is it important that the majority of players are situated on the same continent or is it better
to each have his own continent ?

Distance between players.
Is it better to start closer or farther away from your enemies, or is it better to be in between

Unique resources.
How much does it matter to have different unique resources scattered around your starting place ?

Strategic resources
Is it important to have an equal share of the strategic resources that are in the map ?

Throughput
Can the throughput (food, gold, production) of your starting position affect how well you will do
in the game ?


Thank you very much for your time.

[VikingHaag]

In small skirmishes connectivity by land is crucial in both cases because if you're separated by sea some civs are autowin (the english won't even let you land, polinesia can start colonizing your continent as early as turn 30 (assuming coastal start, 15 turns to produce a settler and 15 turns travel time)).

Distance doesn't matter as much as connectivity, but extremely close encounters (e.g 10 tiles between capitals) will make for extremely short games. a distance of 20-30 tiles looks ideal to me, gives room for both to expand.

Unique resources don't matter much, just with 2 or 3 you can manage the happiness fairly easily.

Strategic resources should be balanced, period.
Nothing is worse than having a resource dependant UU and not having said resource (no iron japan makes babies cry).

The throughput is crucial, a starting position with little food or production will cripple you in the long run, either preventing you from getting some key wonders (low production) or not letting you grow at all to use specialist and get more production (a hill desert start with a total grand of 20 food for my cap comes to mind, got stuck at 10 pop until i bought out 5 maritime CS's in the 1800's)

[hobbsyoyo]

Originally Posted by TomasGudm

Hi all. I am doing my Masters thesis focusing on Civilization V. Specifically the maps. Now
a big premise in my thesis is that the maps generated by Civ5 are not in general fair or well
balanced. I would very much like to ask you to answer the poll with your answer and see
what the consensus is, from 1-5 how balanced and fair the automatically generated maps in Civ5 are.

Now I have come up with some measurements and I will list them here. I am looking for a discussion
on what you guys think about them, if there are more measurements you can think of that would be great.
What are your opinions on these measurement. Please consider two scenarios, one where you are
in a 2vs2 multiplayer setting, and then 1vsAI single player setting.

I've never played multiplayer so I'll consider the 1vsAI SP instead.

Connectivity by land.
Is it important that the majority of players are situated on the same continent or is it better to each have his own continent ?

If you are not on the same continent as the AI, you have a much better chance of beating them. Especially in Vanilla CiV, the AI's suck at naval warfare. You WILL win if they aren't on the same continent as you.

Distance between players.
Is it better to start closer or farther away from your enemies, or is it better to be in between

It's better for you if the AI is further away. This makes early rushes less likely, and also makes it so that if they do rush you, their units will be obsolete by the time they show up. AI's being closer to you is better for the AI for the converse reasons.

Unique resources.
How much does it matter to have different unique resources scattered around your starting place ?

It really depends on the map size and your playstyle. If you have a small map or if you don't like to use a wide empire strategy, unique resources can be less of an issue because you won't spam as many cities that need the resources to grow and/or stay happy. A tall empire can get unhappy via large population, but it's easier to build enough happiness buildings in a tall empire to combat unhappiness than a wide one.

Strategic resources
Is it important to have an equal share of the strategic resources that are in the map ?

Yes and no. Lacking resources is both realistic, and it forces you or the AI to make strategic decisions about war and peace revolving around resource access. This can make for some fun or interesting games.

On the other hand, lacking resouces can lead to either you or the AI falling severly behind militarily - which isn't fun or interesting.

Throughput
Can the throughput (food, gold, production) of your starting position affect how well you will do in the game ?

A big, unqualified yes from me. A bad start can doom you, especially if you have a close, agressive neighbor.

Thank you very much for your time.

No problem, good luck on your thesis. I hope you have more questions to ask.

[LostInTime]

Originally Posted by TomasGudm

Connectivity by land.
Is it important that the majority of players are situated on the same continent or is it better
to each have his own continent ?

Depends what you are playing? There is no correct answer for this. But generally AI's should do better the less water there is. (they suck at water maps, but this is an AI problem not map)

Distance between players.
Is it better to start closer or farther away from your enemies, or is it better to be in between

Always good to have your back free obviously. In between is harder, but this can be offset with mountain ranges CS etc.

Unique resources.
How much does it matter to have different unique resources scattered around your starting place ?

Unique resources are more valuable so of course it matters.

Strategic resources
Is it important to have an equal share of the strategic resources that are in the map ?

No. You can survive without iron and horses easily etc. For the late game you can conquer land earlier anyways.

Throughput
Can the throughput (food, gold, production) of your starting position affect how well you will do
in the game ?

Well of course. More food and hammers early on means more production and more food? So you grow taller faster and gets infrastructure faster.. You need to go more in depth on exponential growth with this question for sure.

[TomasGudm]

Thanks everyone for their replies. It's really helpful.

As all of you know Civ5 is a HUGE game, and dissecting it is very hard and time consuming. I am looking at maps of size 60*48, (small) and a 2v2 scenario most of the time. The goal of my algorithm is to "search" for a map, that is good according to those characteristics. Searching can take a lot of time, since they are randomly generated, and then try to be tuned. I create about 5000 maps per hour, and then I end up with 20 or 30 to choose from.

Theoretically, you could give me a set of descriptors that you mostly valued, and a whole day of computing and you would have 20 or 30 "dream maps". At least that is what I am trying to prove.

What I am getting is that its really divided with Strategic resources - some say it is game braking, others say it doesn't. Same with unique resources. Each unique luxury resources should give you happiness to your empire and starting a game with no iron and no horses leaves you with weaker units. So at least its not in the "ignore" column.

What about some other things that could characterize fair and balanced* maps, features (rivers, forests, marshes), natural wonders (keep them, remove them, each has the same one?)

And again, thanks for the replies.

[eris]

I actually think the better maps are the ones that are slightly imbalanced by the various measurements you are trying to develop. There should be just enough asymmetry to generate flavor, history and challenges and not so much that it becomes lopsided and uninteresting.

A totally "fair" map tends to feel bland. I can see where it could appeal for some multiplayer situations, but even there, I prefer some perceptible unbalance for each player to attempt to exploit in some way.

[GAGA Extrem]

I voted for "Somewhat unfair".

It is not always a problem, because "perfect imbalance" can actually be a good thing.

However, the mapscript will, from time to time, lead to results that put a CIV in a severe advantage or disatvantage. A good example is the presence of jungle around the capital, the placement of certain strategic or luxury ressources (whales vs. salt for example) and the ability to actually access the placed ressources (I have had cases where the game placed 3 sea ressources that were inaccessible for anyone).

Connectivity by land.
Is it important that the majority of players are situated on the same continent or is it better to each have his own continent ?

Placing multiple CIVs on a single continent can obviously cause runaway-syndrome if one of these CIVs manages to overpower their enemies and take the whole continent.
But keep in mind: Different CIVs are land biased (e.g. huns -> early battery ram rush), while others are naval biased (e.g. Polynesia -> early embarkment).
So the answer is heavily based on the selected CIV.

Distance between players.
Is it better to start closer or farther away from your enemies, or is it better to be in between

All in all, I would say that larger distances make it more difficult to rush/wage early war. It also creates more space, reducing the impact of the initial starting location. It does, however, empower CIVs that tend to go wide (e.g. Maya).

Unique resources.
How much does it matter to have different unique resources scattered around your starting place ?

As for luxurx ressources, if you plan to go wide (more than 4 cities), you will certainly need a good mix of luxury ressources for early happiness. 1 salt + 1 whine + 1 cotton + 1 silk is better than 4 gems. Religion has reduced the impact from similiar ressources a bit (e.g. idols -> even 4 silver ressources are great). And as long as you can trade the excess ones away for gold or other luxuries, it isn't too bad.
Still, unique luxuries = more flexibility (but also possibly more tech requirement!).

Strategic resources
Is it important to have an equal share of the strategic resources that are in the map ?

During the early game, I think since G&K strategic ressources have become much, much less important. Iron is more or less useless, horses are good for offensive action, but not necessary. Later game stuff like coal and aluminium is imporant for the economy, but they can be obtained from city states or via recycling centres. The only really important strategic ressources are oil and uranium, due to completly overpowered nuclear wepapons and the mass-requirement by modern age weapons. Being without oil means to have no airforce - good luck against an opponent that has one. These two regulary create a large imbalance / unfairness during the later part of the game.

Throughput
Can the throughput (food, gold, production) of your starting position affect how well you will do in the game ?

Yes, and by a large margin. A decent tile with good food/hammer ratio will give you an edge that grants immense benefits over time. My favorite strategic ressource is salt on a hill - perfect early game production, easy to connect and even more food with a mine. My ultimate horror is a large patch of flat grassland without any hammer ressources. It makes early game construction virtually impossible. Thankfully, I have only had a few starts in such a location.

Gold yield is less important, at least imho, but a river (which is usually the main source of gold yield during the early game) is quite important (gold + food + defence + water mill).

[MadMage86]

I suppose you should also ask the question: should they be fair? I mean, if everyone gets the perfect situation (Rome or Japan with lots of iron near weak civs, or India/France isolated on a resource and food rich island) is the game even interesting anymore?

Then I would ask you... what is fair? Is fair a 'good' situation for each civ (see previous examples) or simply a good starting area with reasonable options for expansion and balanced distribution of resources?

Then you must consider that there are many factors that can make a game 'fair' or not... so let's look at them one at a time. And aspects such as 'different continents' and 'distance between civs' should be ignored, as they are basically controlled by map type and size. On a huge map you're going to have plenty of room between civs, but more opponents overall to deal with. It balances itself. As for certain civs being unstoppable if isolated... you should look to those civs specifically, as that gets away from being a map issue (unless, of course, we're talking about forcing the map to give us a perfect start for each given civ...).

In my opinion the most important thing for balance is the land itself both in your capitol and surrounding lands - a player starting on tundra or a massive desert has far less options than one in jungles, plains or grassland. Even if you look at a poor starting location as a 'challenge to be overcome', the city which should be the strongest in your empire is handicapped in some way while a player who started a coastal city in grasslands/forest with a long river clearly has an advantage in every way.

Second would be access to resources; the game does a pretty decent job of scattering luxury resources [when land is favorable] but strategic resources often times are very much feast or famine. Part of this is the poor placement by the map script (which I often feel I have to fix by clicking the 'strategic balance' button when starting a game, though it doesn't fix coal and aluminum placement) while the 'feast' end is caused by inconsistent dependencies - only some units are limited by resources while others have none, even within the same upgrade line. Personally, I'd like to see all units require some form of resource as well as resources that do not become 'obsolete' as time goes on.

My opinion is that the maps are unfair simply because in every game at least one civ is going to get shoved into a tundra or dry desert or some other poor land mass that limits their options for growth and expansion. Creating a map script that would limit 'poor' tiles (such as getting land away from polar caps) and/or keep players from being spawned in or near such areas would vastly improve balance without sacrificing the random [what if] nature of the game.

[EDIT]: I feel I should elaborate on ignoring distance between civs. The answer to your question is 'it depends'; if I am playing the Romans, I want another civ's capitol close to mine. Sweden... not so much. I feel the distance between civs isn't really a fairness issue so much as a 'playstyle and victory' issue - though having multiple civs or at least one aggressive civ near you obviously creates issues which are, again, drifting away from being strictly a map issue. Of course, I'll grant spawning between 3 civs who have nowhere else to expand but into you can be argued as a map issue (but again, some players prefer this).

[TomasGudm]

Where I am getting at is supposedly "fair and balanced" and I wrote down a sentence in the early stages of my thesis on what it is. Granted, 1v1 is a very different game than 2v2, which is a totally different game than 8 player FFA and so on. Point being, Civ5 is essentially many different games hidden inside a very big game. This is my quote:

A fair map has equal fitness from each player and each team's point of view

Now this is actually quite a bad sentence, but the sentiment is the same. Fun, good, fair and balanced are all adjectives that qualitatively describe an object. As a computer scientist, I don't do good with qualitative measures. Fair and balanced, are actually the only two that can be also, quantitatively measured and can derive adjectives like good, and maybe even fun. Now, this is actually kind of my standpoint, that I'm not necessarily aiming for fun maps.

Imagine a Counter Strike game, one team starts in a big pit surrounded by walls with doors and stairways leading on top of the walls. The other team starts on the walls. The one that starts up top on the walls has a clear view of the guys in the pit, but nothing is impossible. Some people might like the challenge of being easy targets. But my point is trying to automatically, generate maps that are the opposite of that.

strategic resources often times are very much feast or famine [...] My opinion is that the maps are unfair simply because in every game at least one civ is going to get shoved into a tundra or dry desert or some other poor land mass that limits their options for growth and expansion.

@MadMage86 Exactly what you say here, is the motivation behind this project and thesis.

And to all others, to spark more debate. If you think about 2v2 scenarios only on maps with size Small (60*48). What other evaluators are helpful for determining whether or not a map is fair.

[TomasGudm]

I also want to say. There are maps, that are "fun" to play, for example Scandinavia, The Moon, Earth, Middle Earth, Westeros whatever... And then there are maps that are "fun" to play competitively. It is not fun to play competitively and have no strategic resources at your disposal.

And a little Firaxis bashing :
Distributing resources throughout the map is pretty well done by Firaxis. But it is kind of "sidestepping" the problem, by giving everyone the same amounts of iron and horses after the resources distribution has been performed. It is predictable, and you don't want predictable.

[MadMage86]

Originally Posted by TomasGudm

And a little Firaxis bashing :
Distributing resources throughout the map is pretty well done by Firaxis. But it is kind of "sidestepping" the problem, by giving everyone the same amounts of iron and horses after the resources distribution has been performed. It is predictable, and you don't want predictable.

I totally agree, which is why I dislike having to use 'strategic balance'. On one hand, the number of Legions the Romans can churn out is still limited but it does defeat the element of chance or the need for the player to think about expanding specifically to grab a resource.

I actually love the strategic resource system - I like the limitations on powerful military units. What the game needs is to make parallel lines of paired units throughout the game; one which is stronger somehow that requires a resource and another which doesn't. This way a player is able to garner a benefit from having the bonus resource, but isn't hindered by a lack thereof. And it needs to be consistent; a unit shouldn't drop a resource requirement when upgrading, leaving you with spare iron sitting on a shelf somewhere you're never going to use again - you're telling me they cannot 'refine' the iron into steel to be used for stronger armor or weapons?

But this problem isn't really tied to the map script. Yes, the map could do a better spread of strategic resources... but the problem exists outside of map generation and wanders into a core mechanics problem.

[hobbsyoyo]

Originally Posted by TomasGudm

What about some other things that could characterize fair and balanced* maps, features (rivers, forests, marshes), natural wonders (keep them, remove them, each has the same one?)

And again, thanks for the replies.

If you mean fair and balanced* in the Fox News way, then I quit this thread.

Natural wonders have to be entirely random as to their placement. Otherwise the Spanish could get a mega advantage and everyone could get a huge advantage that would largely cancel out if everyone got one. Spain would still get a ton of gold, so they would get more advantage than the rest.

But making their placement not-random takes some of the exploration fun out of the game as well as the strategizing that goes along with taking control of natural wonders and such.

They need to have random placement but they also need to be accessible. Krakatoa in the middle of the ocean with no land tiles around it is pointless, for example. Other than the fact that it will give extra gold to Spain. Natural Wonders don't need to be in the middle of really super awesome terrain (but they could - again, it should be random) but at the same time when they are in all-around useless terrain or completely inaccessable they suck.


Features like rivers should also be random IMO. Making everyone get, say, a river start, is kind of dull. It's challenging sometimes to get a 'bad' (featureless) start, but also fun when you get a 'good' start. I like how you don't know what you get and generally stick with most games regardless of start location. But having 'even' (everyone gets the same) starts is boring.

[hobbsyoyo]

I know I'm replying to replies and it's all out of order but I don't feel like taking the five minutes to reorder these posts. Sorry.

Originally Posted by MadMage86

I totally agree, which is why I dislike having to use 'strategic balance'. On one hand, the number of Legions the Romans can churn out is still limited but it does defeat the element of chance or the need for the player to think about expanding specifically to grab a resource.

Strategic balance is 'too' fair for me - I don't want everyone guaranteed to have strategic resources and lose that randomness. Sometimes it's just fun to have to strategize around a lack of coal, for example.

I prefer legendary start. You are guaranteed to have a good start (with lux's and some other bonus resources) but are not guaranteed to get strategic resources. This leaves some of the randomness to the map, while helping me (and AI's) get their civs off the ground. I have problems in the early game, that's why I love this feature so much.

I actually love the strategic resource system - I like the limitations on powerful military units. What the game needs is to make parallel lines of paired units throughout the game; one which is stronger somehow that requires a resource and another which doesn't. This way a player is able to garner a benefit from having the bonus resource, but isn't hindered by a lack thereof. And it needs to be consistent; a unit shouldn't drop a resource requirement when upgrading, leaving you with spare iron sitting on a shelf somewhere you're never going to use again - you're telling me they cannot 'refine' the iron into steel to be used for stronger armor or weapons?

I love the strategic resource system as well. But to be fair, we do have a bit of the parallel lines already with Spearman/Pikemen v Swords/Longswords and other unit pairings. But it probably could be expanded. As for the rest of the paragraph, I largely agree, but I won't comment b/c it probably gets OT.

But this problem isn't really tied to the map script. Yes, the map could do a better spread of strategic resources... but the problem exists outside of map generation and wanders into a core mechanics problem.

Again, I like the way strategic resources are sprinkled randomly around now, but I know that's just my opinion as this is yours.

Originally Posted by TomasGudm

I also want to say. There are maps, that are "fun" to play, for example Scandinavia, The Moon, Earth, Middle Earth, Westeros whatever... And then there are maps that are "fun" to play competitively. It is not fun to play competitively and have no strategic resources at your disposal.

That last sentence is entirely dependent on how competent your opponents are. In Multi Player, yeah it would probably not be fun. But it's almost always fun (for me) playing against an AI w/o strategic resources. It's a challenge to overcome that handicap and still win. Probably couldn't do that against a human of equal playing level though.

And a little Firaxis bashing :
Distributing resources throughout the map is pretty well done by Firaxis. But it is kind of "sidestepping" the problem, by giving everyone the same amounts of iron and horses after the resources distribution has been performed. It is predictable, and you don't want predictable.

Are you talking about using the Strategic Balance setting? Because other than that, it's not predictable. I regularly get maps without iron or horses and have to strategize ways to get them. And that's on legendary start maps to boot.

Originally Posted by TomasGudm

Now this is actually quite a bad sentence, but the sentiment is the same. Fun, good, fair and balanced are all adjectives that qualitatively describe an object. As a computer scientist, I don't do good with qualitative measures. Fair and balanced, are actually the only two that can be also, quantitatively measured and can derive adjectives like good, and maybe even fun. Now, this is actually kind of my standpoint, that I'm not necessarily aiming for fun maps.

Well, if you are looking for fair and balanced maps over fun maps, probably nothing I've said helps you. In many situations, slightly unbalanced maps can be fun, (and still fair in the context of playing against a braindead AI) and I don't care much for 'balanced' and 'fair' as you posit.

And to all others, to spark more debate. If you think about 2v2 scenarios only on maps with size Small (60*48). What other evaluators are helpful for determining whether or not a map is fair.

AI difficulty level. If you play against a high level AI (with all the bonuses it gets instead of playing 'better') and you don't get a good set of lux's and resources, etc., you are screwed. It's not fair and you're gonna lose.

Any maps that heavily favor a certain civ (say, England on Archaepalegos) where you play against that civ as a civ that has inherent disadvantages in that map type are not fair. Having one civ in favorable terrain vs. one that is nuetral or not totally disadvantaged in that terrain probably isn't unfair. (Like say, an archaepalego map where you play as the Inca vs. England but the islands are really hilly or something)

Originally Posted by MadMage86

Second would be access to resources; the game does a pretty decent job of scattering luxury resources [when land is favorable] but strategic resources often times are very much feast or famine. Part of this is the poor placement by the map script (which I often feel I have to fix by clicking the 'strategic balance' button when starting a game, though it doesn't fix coal and aluminum placement) while the 'feast' end is caused by inconsistent dependencies - only some units are limited by resources while others have none, even within the same upgrade line. Personally, I'd like to see all units require some form of resource as well as resources that do not become 'obsolete' as time goes on.

Having units in the same line use or not use certain resources helps even out the fact that not everyone will have access to the resources, or that they won't have access at the same time.

My opinion is that the maps are unfair simply because in every game at least one civ is going to get shoved into a tundra or dry desert or some other poor land mass that limits their options for growth and expansion. Creating a map script that would limit 'poor' tiles (such as getting land away from polar caps) and/or keep players from being spawned in or near such areas would vastly improve balance without sacrificing the random [what if] nature of the game.

I agree with this.

Originally Posted by GAGA Extrem

However, the mapscript will, from time to time, lead to results that put a CIV in a severe advantage or disatvantage. A good example is the presence of jungle around the capital, the placement of certain strategic or luxury ressources (whales vs. salt for example) and the ability to actually access the placed ressources (I have had cases where the game placed 3 sea ressources that were inaccessible for anyone).

That's really frustrating and dumb IMO.

As for luxurx ressources, if you plan to go wide (more than 4 cities), you will certainly need a good mix of luxury ressources for early happiness. 1 salt + 1 whine + 1 cotton + 1 silk is better than 4 gems. Religion has reduced the impact from similiar ressources a bit (e.g. idols -> even 4 silver ressources are great). And as long as you can trade the excess ones away for gold or other luxuries, it isn't too bad.
Still, unique luxuries = more flexibility (but also possibly more tech requirement!).

One caveat to the bolded sentence. Having 4 gems as opposed to 4 different resources is better (or at least not worse) if:

1)You are willing to invest in the diplomatic game and can get favorable trades + positive diplomatic modifiers from trading 3 extra gems.
2)Early game, money is more important than happiness, so you could just as easily trade 3 extra gems for money as you could trade off 3 different other resources. In fact, you'd be more inclined to do so b/c you wouldn't be losing any happy faces by trading 3 extra gems while you would lose happy faces from trading 3 different resources. Of course, those extra happy faces aren't as important early game and the trades will end right around the time you need the happy faces back, but most players don't see it this way.

I also agree with the other caveats (Religion, etc) that you listed.

During the early game, I think since G&K strategic ressources have become much, much less important. Iron is more or less useless, horses are good for offensive action, but not necessary. Later game stuff like coal and aluminium is imporant for the economy, but they can be obtained from city states or via recycling centres. The only really important strategic ressources are oil and uranium, due to completly overpowered nuclear wepapons and the mass-requirement by modern age weapons. Being without oil means to have no airforce - good luck against an opponent that has one. These two regulary create a large imbalance / unfairness during the later part of the game.

All of the oil units upgrade to aluminum dependent units by the late game (except Battleships). So aluminum is equally important for warfare. Of course, by that point you've probably already won and a landship or tank or bomber arguably have more impact than Modern Armors or Stealth bombers on the outcome of the game (again, because you've probably already got it in the bag by the time they show up). I'm just pointing things out...