Native Terrain

[Mentos]

Native Terrain
- This modification places Civilizations on native terrain types at game start
- Note that these settings never guarantee anything, but you should notice a trend

Civilization Start Locations (original settings)
- America avoids Desert, Jungle, and Tundra (River)
- Arabia seeks Desert (Desert)
- The Aztecs seek Jungle (Jungle)
- China avoids Tundra ()
- Egypt seeks Desert (no Forest or Jungle)
- England seeks Coast (Coast)
- France avoids Desert, Jungle, and Tundra ()
- Germany avoids Desert, Jungle, and Tundra ()
- Greece avoids Desert, Jungle, and Tundra ()
- India avoids Tundra (Grassland)
- The Iroquois seek Forest (Forest)
- Japan avoids Desert and Tundra ()
- The Ottomans seek Coast (Coast)
- Persia avoids Jungle and Tundra ()
- Rome avoids Desert, Jungle, and Tundra ()
- Russia avoids Desert and Jungle (Tundra)
- Siam seeks Jungle (no Forest)
- Songhai seeks Plains (no Tundra)
- Babylon avoids Jungle and Tundra ()
- The Inca seek Hills (Hills)
- Spain seeks Coast (Coast)
- Mongolia seeks Plains (Plains)
- Polynesia seeks Coast (Coast)
- Denmark seeks Coast (Coast)

Compatibility
- Install and activate Native Terrain after any other gameplay mod
- All start location settings will be deleted prior setting new ones by Native Terrain
- Native Terrain can be removed from a game session


v5
- Fixed Mongolia setting
v4
- Added Denmark support
- Removed Tundra avoidance from Russia
v3
- Removed Jungle avoidance from China
v2
- Placed Spain back to Coast
- Removed unnecessary code
v1
- Public Release

Download

Installation
1. Copy/Move the *. civ5mod file into C:\<username>\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS
2. Run Civilization V, go to Mods/Browse Mods and click the Install Mods button in the Installed tab
3. Enable the mod by clicking the round button on the right
4. Start a Single Player game back in the Mods menu

 

[Mentos]

Like mentioned, start location settings in general are far from realized in every game.
For example, I have often seen the Aztecs placed away from jungle tiles where a suitable large jungle region on the same map was simply ignored.
I guess rivers have somewhat more priority in general, so these are rather chosen as start location than anything else.

I&#8217;ve rather used the avoid settings than bias because these tend to possibly trigger more often and provide more alternatives.
It was important to me that tundra was generally avoided. I felt Russia was penalized too much with that bias, while Arabia is usually getting along much better with desert.

All maritime city states have coast priority, so hopefully all of them are usually placed now there if enough ocean is generated.

 

[Psycadelic_Magi]

Would it be possible to have certain civs favour a particular tileset? (Either instead of or in addition to your current system)
So european civs would prefer the europe tileset etc etc...

 

[Mentos]

I've crawled meanwhile a bit through the code and notes of AssignStartingPlots.lua where everything about assigning starting locations is managed.
I understand not nearly half of the code but the notes give some good info.
Here is maybe the best explanation how the system works:

Spoiler :

If you are modifying Civilizations:

* You can plug your new or modified civilizations in to the Terrain Bias
system via table entries in Civ5Civilizations.xml

1. Start Along Ocean
2. Start Along River -- Ended up inactive for the initial civ pool, but is operational in the code.
3. Start Region Priority
4. Start Region Avoid

Along Ocean is boolean, defaulting to false, and is processed first,
overriding all other concerns. Along River is boolean and comes next.

Priority and Avoid refer to "region types", of which there are eight. Each
of these region types is dominated by the associated terrain.
1. Tundra
2. Jungle
3. Forest
4. Desert
5. Hills
6. Plains
7. Grass
8. Hybrid (of plains and grass).

The definitions are sequential, so that a region that might qualify for
more than one designation gets the lowest-number it qualifies for.

The Priority and Avoid can be multiple-case. There are multiple-case Avoid
needs in the initial Civ pool, but only single-case Priority needs. This is
because the single-case needs have a fallback method that will place the civ
in the region with the most of its favored terrain type, if no region is
available that is dominated by that terrain. Whereas any Civ that has multiple
Priority needs must find an exact region match to one of its needs or it gets
no bias. Thus I found that all of the biases desired for the initial Civ pool
were able to be met via single Priority.

Any clash between Priority and Avoid, Priority wins.

I hope you enjoy this new ability to flavor and influence start locations.

These mentioned priorities and avoidances are the only way to give Civs any locations.
My European settings are those "avoids Desert, Jungle, and Tundra".
I could also use Grassland as European priority, but I don’t think many would like that because Plains are more favored by everyone.

By the way, my pitiful attempt to make City States get some proper region has utterly failed because it's also mentioned in this file that CS just serve as place filler and additional luxury resource place between real Civs.
I haven’t found a single code line about maritime is getting coast tiles as priority somewhere but according to further map tests, they should usually get such place anyway.
If there is a reason for any Civ change, I’m going to remove that CS code in the next Native Terrain version. Right now, I don’t see that my unnecessary code is breaking something.

 

[Revoran]

Don't civs also have start bias for resources? For instance Greece seeks Marble.

 

[Mentos]

There are sometimes resources additionally added to balance Civs and City States, especially with the Legendary Start option. But there is nothing that would specifically give certain Civs resources.

I don't know if there are mods of this AssignStartingPlots.lua file out there which add such feature.

 

[Mentos]

v2
- Placed Spain back to Coast
- Removed unnecessary code

Download

 

[Baleur]

I really like the idea of this mod, but due to my inherent love for Jungles i cant bring myself to download it XD
I think it'd make a bit more sense for the "desert or tropical civs" such as egypt, babylon, polynesia, songhai and even china to remove the "avoid jungle" tag.
My resoning is that egypt was based around the nile and fertile regions (it was very fertile in the ancient times) with palm trees, same with babylon.
Polynesia is regarding tropical islands, no doubt about that
And china to some extent, granted it is mostly grasslands, plains and forests, but since bamboo forests have no representation in the game and since there are friggin tigers in china, i'd allow them to spawn near jungle too XD

 

[Mentos]

Don’t imagine these settings as a total denial. It’s more a slight shift to desired or disliked terrain. Even with a jungle restriction, you should occasional notice jungle tiles next to such Civs. The explanation, how the system works, is shown in an earlier post.

Jungle would be a dense region, not just some tiles, with such terrain features. I only added the restriction to Civs which don’t belong mainly to wet, tropical climate regions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropics
You could also argue that America got desert in its country, but how would that look like, if Washington is placed in the middle of a huge desert? Alaska, tundra, is also part of America. The tip of Florida is also a tropical zone, but no reason to place America deep into a jungle.

Yeah, I was a bit undecided about China. It's so damn close to the pure tropical zone and has larger subtropical zones. No problem. I removed the Jungle tag there, but the rest should be fine. I don’t want to extend this to temperate rain forests which also exist in England.
Remember that Plains can also have Jungle features, so wherever Plains is not avoided, Jungle can largely exist; especially if Civs seek it, like Songhai. Also, just because Arabia or Egypt seeks Desert, doesn’t mean it can’t have Jungle nearby.

You can also easily edit my SQL file with notepad and modify whatever you don’t like. No reason to reject a mod, if it’s only a matter of few disliked things.

v3
- Removed Jungle avoidance from China

Download

 

[Mentos]

v4
- Added Denmark support
- Removed Tundra avoidance from Russia

Download

 

[Mentos]

v5
- Fixed Mongolia setting

Download

 

[Babri]

Sounds like a good mod. Will try it.