Communitas map script

[Thalassicus]

Less massive mountain areas and more spread to hills. It might not be super realistic but it's good for gameplay to have access to hills or you can't compete on higher difficulties.

Resources like stone improve terrain without changing the appearance. I did this for flat areas. I can add more resources to those areas if you feel it's necessary, but they already get a lot of bonus resources.

 

[heinous_hat]

@ Thalassicus

Wanted to mention that the custom logger in the last Communitas script doesn't fly when using LuaJIT. I don't know whether you mean to support that or not, but thought I'd mention it. I presume the trouble lies entirely with use of the deprecated 'arg' table in function Logger().

I'm trying to fix this for my own purposes, but my underwhelming Lua knowledge is getting in the way

 

[Thalassicus]

The current version 1.3 of the map should work with that, based on the information I found about the recent lua changes from various sources. I haven't actually tried LuaJIT yet however.

things like this:
logger.Trace = function (logger, ...) return logger:Message(LOG_TRACE, unpack(arg)) end

changed to:
logger.Trace = function (logger, ...) return logger:Message(LOG_TRACE, unpack{...}) end

 

[heinous_hat]

The current version 1.3 of the map should work with that, based on the information I found about the recent lua changes from various sources. I haven't actually tried LuaJIT yet however.

things like this:
logger.Trace = function (logger, ...) return logger:Message(LOG_TRACE, unpack(arg)) end

changed to:
logger.Trace = function (logger, ...) return logger:Message(LOG_TRACE, unpack{...}) end

Yes, the new version is working with LuaJIT. Thanks.

I almost had it, was declaring arg={...} in the wrong place

 

[DeepSoul]

deleted

 

[DonQuiche]

Hello, I've found a silent bug.

In Plot_AddMainFeatures, the terrainGrass variable is never defined and therefore has the nil value. Also you do use plotTerrainID before it is defined. All of this turn some lakes into plains around the equator, and causes your script to try to add forests on sea tiles.

In case you wonder, when setting a nil value on SetTerrainType, the game assigns grasslands instead. Reseed was not reproducing this behavior and this caused all sort of bugs with your map for one of our common users. I released a beta to address that.

 

[SlightlyMad]

The map looks great, but jungles on hills are giving three food instead of two. Kinda screws up game balance since jungles are so good already.

 

[DonQuiche]

Another bug, on line 2166, in BlendTerrain: "plotFeatureID = plot:GetTerrainType()". It should be GetFeatureType()

Copy-pasting is the root of all evil.™

 

[DeepSoul]

Resources like stone improve terrain without changing the appearance. I did this for flat areas. I can add more resources to those areas if you feel it's necessary, but they already get a lot of bonus resources.

Yes, I think it's necessary because if you build a city in flat terrain it doesn't get enough production from only one resource of stone which is what you get at most. Sometimes there are large flat areas with no stone at all.

i have managed to cover most of the things I wanted to change. Now it's just a matter of the lakes since you maybe didn't see my question about that. Can I edit the code somehow to generate less lake systems? I would be happy with just one or two lakes systems. By lake systems I mean those areas with lakes connected by rivers. You seem to favour those and got a little carried away.

What does mglobal.mountainWeight do exactly? Does it affect hills?

 

[DeepSoul]

The map looks great, but jungles on hills are giving three food instead of two. Kinda screws up game balance since jungles are so good already.

What are they good for except for food? A large city doesn't do much good without income or production but if you think it's imbalanced you can decrease the amount of jungle in the lua file. The new script seems to generate forest on hills in a larger degree than before so I don't see it as much of a problem but I guess it varies a bit how much jungle on hills you get.

 

[Bobert13]

What are they good for except for food? A large city doesn't do much good without income or production but if you think it's imbalanced you can decrease the amount of jungle in the lua file. The new script seems to generate forest on hills in a larger degree than before so I don't see it as much of a problem but I guess it varies a bit how much jungle on hills you get.

Jungle-Trading Post-University-various social policies...

2 food, 3 science, 2 gold (3 in a GA, 4 on a river pre-BNW),(2 culture with the right religious belief) tiles are very, very powerful... make it 3 food and you're definitely creating an imbalanced tile! Yes, you may suffer some from lack of production, but so long as you have at least one other city with decent production it's not that big of an issue.

The game boils down to > > > > and is only ranked so high because it leads to more and ...

 

[Crimson13]

Hey Thal, I wanted to ask something. Is it possible to get more Desert tiles out of the map, along with selecting Hot & Arid?

I'm not saying it has to be like the Sandstorm map, it's more like...regions, I guess? Like the Sahara or something, like there can be greenery and the like elsewhere but some places are just big swaths of desert.

 

[DeepSoul]

Jungle-Trading Post-University-various social policies...

2 food, 3 science, 2 gold (3 in a GA, 4 on a river pre-BNW),(2 culture with the right religious belief) tiles are very, very powerful... make it 3 food and you're definitely creating an imbalanced tile! Yes, you may suffer some from lack of production, but so long as you have at least one other city with decent production it's not that big of an issue.

The game boils down to > > > > and is only ranked so high because it leads to more and ...

Wow, Universities are also a balance issue here imo. 2 science is a bit much since only a few civilizations have jungles within their borders. I think a balancing mod is in order. (One that doesn't give a lot boosts to other things).

 

[Brannock]

The map looks great, but jungles on hills are giving three food instead of two. Kinda screws up game balance since jungles are so good already.

This should get fixed, I hope.

 

[mystikx21]

The mod should already split the jungle science bonus to university and research lab (1 each). But we also shouldn't be having 3 food jungle hills (without opportunities added back in).

 

[heinous_hat]

Wow, Universities are also a balance issue here imo. 2 science is a bit much since only a few civilizations have jungles within their borders. I think a balancing mod is in order. (One that doesn't give a lot boosts to other things).

Well... maybe not so much by the time you can actually build universities. By then, science from population should be an order of magnitude larger than those conditional bonuses. You have to actually work a lot of otherwise mediocre tiles to make it worthwhile (as well as keep them unimproved for a large chunk of the game). There should be a decent payoff for playing that strategy.

I would agree that 3 might be too high. The present food bonanza on jungle|hills is due to the underlying grassland (which the script allows). Since the hill itself does not modify yield when it has a feature (just like forest), you get the underlying terrain yield + jungle modifier. So it's 2+1=3 (grass) or 1+1=2(plains), regardless of hills. Also -1. Grassland is what would normally dominate the climate zone where jungles appear if not for Firaxis' deliberate conversion to plains . Actually, it seems flat jungle is still on plains with Communitas, so maybe Thal chose to experiment here by only allowing grass with the more rare jungle|hill. It would make some sense since hills are also the best tiles to clear in a starved area.

Currently, I'm trying it with jungle set to 0, but I think I'd like to see how it goes with jungle|grass on the flat tiles as well, given that reduction.

There's really a lot of interesting options here...

- Allow grassland under all jungle (it will be naturally dominant) which looks much more realistic and provides a clear choice between early growth and delayed benefits. Alongside, reduce the food modifier to 0 or even -1 to accentuate the dilemma. Possibly allow a one time production boost from chopping.

- With the above condition and the -1 modifier, use bananas or even livestock (on clearings) to compensate. Most 'real life' tropical forest clearing is done for pastoral space.

- Keep jungle food yield very low, as above, but give grassland adjacent to unimproved jungle a boost when farmed. This would represent the positive effect that large swaths of rainforest have on surrounding farmland. Clearing of tropical forest has been found to actually lower crop yields in neighboring areas, so a boost for keeping it would be implicit.

- At some point in the game, boost trade route income for cities with adjacent, unimproved jungle. There are many rare, highly valued luxury goods not represented by game resources in these regions (animal products, rare earth, etc). Although trading posts fill that role currently, trade routes are more interesting, better representative of foreign interests and far less ugly

Overall, real tropical forest areas (especially rainforest) are food deficient areas with bizarre soil conditions. Firaxis tried to represent this and do some tile balancing by forcing the underlying terrain to low food plains. Science and culture benefits aside, I think there's room for improvement that doesn't permanently render equatorial terrain as barren plains.

The mod should already split the jungle science bonus to university and research lab (1 each). But we also shouldn't be having 3 food jungle hills (without opportunities added back in).

Wasn't aware of that split. It's a great idea, though I think substantially lowering food on all jungle would make players think twice about locking in those tiles.

 

[stackpointer]

Looks like the hotfix being released today will fix the farm crash bug. So anybody willing to work on some atoll graphics?

 

[DeepSoul]

I think the option where jungle get 0 and grassland is dominant in tropical regions is most appropriate, because that will be equal to the vanilla standard. Any other options would just upset the balance. Just as heinous says, rainforest have difficult conditions when it comes to providing food and I think Firaxis' idea works because burning down a jungle only provides good soil for a limited crop yield. The most realistic option would be if jungles have grassland that still produce 2 but become plains when chopped down, if it's not too hard to achieve.

To simulate the luxuries found in jungles you could add new resources that will be accessible with certain technologies. There are already mods doing this, adding resources like coffee, cocoa, mango and rubber. They are not compatible with custom map scripts but with permission you can take the artwork from such a mod. Imagine playing a balanced Communitas with a lot of new resources. The only problem is that Thal only drops by once in a week or so and I have no idea what his plans or ambitions are.

 

[heinous_hat]

You can't actually change base terrain type (or elevation) via the database after map generation afaik. But you can place a feature (like forest/jungle) through in game scripting (e.g. reforestation). That's about as dynamic as possible (barring adding a new feature type or re-purposing). But if it were possible to be more dynamic with the yield, I would think that going from a one time chop benefit -> crappy -> slightly less crappy -> meh -> ok I can farm it now ... would be appropriate for rainforest. The starting grass terrain would be just a graphical consideration (result of natural clearings).

The way it goes with Communitas is generally smaller changes, not too far from vanilla, tested over time and approved by consensus. So instant major change = bad. But some small feature yield manipulation is a good starting point.

Personally, I like the idea of using the existing mechanism to modify adjacent tiles (such as oasis granting fresh water to desert) to make tropical forest give a small fertility boost to neighbor tiles (while remaining poor food sources themselves). So to get the food under the jungle feature, you have to give it up elsewhere. Ideally, the poor soil under jungle would improve or be improvable (at heavy work cost).

As far as new resources, I think that there are already a decent number available that could be utilized and would work well for jungle regions. I like sparse resources myself, so I don't think I'd agree with addition without subtraction . Otherwise, adding new resources (graphically) is currently at the mercy of the aforementioned Firaxis patch.

I think Thal is here quite frequently, just not always in this thread. It's a big subforum and an ambitious project. The map script is just a small part. And he's as enthusiastically responsive as anyone with such a large workload

 

[DeepSoul]

I noticed that resources appear in strange places. For example salt can spawn in forest and sugar on grassland. Is it meant to be like that? Personally I have nothing against sugar on grassland but salt in a forest seems a bit unrealistic.