Simple mapmaking question

Hello.

I have enjoyed in mods and maps by the Colonization community over the past years. I was never really active in it myself.
But lately I wanted to create a map all by myself.

I understand I can start a game and enter World builder but doing that I encounter some troubles. If I edit a map and wish to play it, all nations are locked to the same nations that were used when editing the map.
I wish to make a map that could be reusable (but I want the natives to have the locations I set them to, so they aren't randomised - either do I want randomised resources or upgrades). And I want it to be compatible with other mods (for example those that add new factions).

I hope I have made myself understandable and I hope I wrote this in the right sub.
Thank you.

To manually change which factions are playing the World Builder file, you have to open the file in a text editor. The world builder isn't very friendly to people merely wanting to change which factions are playing and where. So it will take some practice. Download 'Notepad++' and use the program to open the WorldBuilder file of your choice.

As far as I know, if you want the Natives to always start the same, a single map file cannot be compatible with all mods. You'll need to slightly readapt it. But it's very easy.

As Sanotra told, you can edit it simply in opening it with Windows Notepad (though it's much more handy to download freely Notepad++). Once that done, you'll need to edit the lines between "BeginPlayer" and "EndPlayer".

You can fully randomize players by erasing the whole section between both tags (them included), but then you'll lose the Natives.

Unfortunately, I don't know any way to randomize European players only, I've tried to do that by myself and couldn't find any solution. So you'll need to manually change the "LeaderType=XX" line in order to change the leader of a European nation.

It's possible to create mapscript python file that reads the map file and creates game on that map with user selected nations and leaders. But this way you can't preset exact locations of native villages, only approximate starting spots.

I think it should be possible to set precise location of natives from python if you really want to. The question is more like how difficult it will be, not if it can be done. A surprisingly high amount of functions are exposed to python meaning quite a lot of changes and setup is possible. However if I read you right, then you can set the area where each native will be and then the random map generation will place the actual settlements. That might not be that bad after all.

Nightinggale, you mean like placing the villages in the coordinates section listed in the text?

Fullerene, Once you load a custom WB file and it randomly places the villages, you can erase the villages it randomly generated and replace them wherever you would like. Once you put them where you want, you can save that WB file and the next time you load it, your manual changes will still be in effect.

Sanotra said:

Fullerene, Once you load a custom WB file and it randomly places the villages, you can erase the villages it randomly generated and replace them wherever you would like. Once you put them where you want, you can save that WB file and the next time you load it, your manual changes will still be in effect.

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Yes, you can set native village locations in Worldbuilder File. But,with Worldbuilder file, you are also forced to have always same leaders and nations too.

If you have Medieval Mod , you can check what I meant:http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12825029&postcount=12

I think it should be possible to set precise location of natives from python if you really want to.

Click to expand...

My understanding is that native placement is done after the python mapscript creation is finished. Placing native villages with python mapscript can result strange things. That's my experience. Of course, with mod, you can do anything you want.

So is there anyway I can make both the Natives and the Europeans start randomly? I am trying to build a map, but I can't make it to where you can select the civilizations. Does anyone know if there is a solution that doesn't eliminate the natives?

Unless you're playing a scenario, all civilizations always spawn randomly. I'm not quite sure what you're asking.

Thanks for trying to help, but I figured it out with some help from another thread.