bmaupin
Chieftain
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2017
- Messages
- 26
I've seen a lot of posts about people wanting to make Civ maps bigger, but has anyone modded the maps to make them smaller?
I've found myself less and less able to play Civ as I get older and have more responsibilities and less time to catch up on sleep. I'd even stopped playing Civ altogether for a number of years but I recently got pulled back in thanks to Dune Wars.
I tried different game options to make the games quicker, but even a quick game on a duel map took me over 7 hours (I did have 4 AI though, 1 just seemed too boring).
I wondered if I could find something quicker that would still scratch my Civ itch, and I found a few really interesting games, like Battle of Polytopia, Yield!, Hexarchy, and Ozymandias. As best as I can tell, these games are much quicker to play because have less of everything: civs, units, techs, victory conditions, smaller maps, and in particular, fewer systems.
But it occurred to me that Civ (particularly Civ IV) is famously moddable. Before spending time and money on another game I might not enjoy, why not try to mod Civ first?
So I started with what I thought would be easiest: smaller maps. I was particularly inspired by Battle of Polytopia, whose map sizes are absurdly small; the smallest map size is just 11 x 11 tiles. The largest is just 30 x 30, which is still fewer tiles than Civ IV's smallest map (40 x 24).
This was surprisingly easy to do. I just modified iGridWidth/iGridHeight in CIV4WorldInfo.xml (for Dune Wars I had to modify getGridSize in Arrakis.py, but it still wasn't hard).
I started by modding the duel map to just 12 x 12 tiles (3 x 3 grids). I finished my first game in just 30 minutes!! I couldn't believe it. Of course at that size I only attempted to play with 1 AI which was less interesting, so next I modded the tiny map to 16 x 16 tiles and played with 2 AI. I finished this game in an hour! Since it was just an experiment I was intentionally playing quicker than usual, but even then it still felt like Civ and I was still having fun.
I was expecting to have to make a bunch of other changes but so far I'm surprised how well the other systems seem to mostly work fine with the smaller map sizes. I didn't have to modify any of the map generation scripts, and even the default minimum 2 tiles between cities seems to work fine.
I'm going to keep playing with this and see if I need to make any other refinements, but so far I'm shocked. With this one change, I might not have to give up my favourite game series
I'd be curious to hear what anyone else thinks about this. Has anyone else tried anything like this, or am I the only one desperate enough to do something like this?
I've found myself less and less able to play Civ as I get older and have more responsibilities and less time to catch up on sleep. I'd even stopped playing Civ altogether for a number of years but I recently got pulled back in thanks to Dune Wars.
I tried different game options to make the games quicker, but even a quick game on a duel map took me over 7 hours (I did have 4 AI though, 1 just seemed too boring).
I wondered if I could find something quicker that would still scratch my Civ itch, and I found a few really interesting games, like Battle of Polytopia, Yield!, Hexarchy, and Ozymandias. As best as I can tell, these games are much quicker to play because have less of everything: civs, units, techs, victory conditions, smaller maps, and in particular, fewer systems.
But it occurred to me that Civ (particularly Civ IV) is famously moddable. Before spending time and money on another game I might not enjoy, why not try to mod Civ first?
So I started with what I thought would be easiest: smaller maps. I was particularly inspired by Battle of Polytopia, whose map sizes are absurdly small; the smallest map size is just 11 x 11 tiles. The largest is just 30 x 30, which is still fewer tiles than Civ IV's smallest map (40 x 24).
This was surprisingly easy to do. I just modified iGridWidth/iGridHeight in CIV4WorldInfo.xml (for Dune Wars I had to modify getGridSize in Arrakis.py, but it still wasn't hard).
I started by modding the duel map to just 12 x 12 tiles (3 x 3 grids). I finished my first game in just 30 minutes!! I couldn't believe it. Of course at that size I only attempted to play with 1 AI which was less interesting, so next I modded the tiny map to 16 x 16 tiles and played with 2 AI. I finished this game in an hour! Since it was just an experiment I was intentionally playing quicker than usual, but even then it still felt like Civ and I was still having fun.
I was expecting to have to make a bunch of other changes but so far I'm surprised how well the other systems seem to mostly work fine with the smaller map sizes. I didn't have to modify any of the map generation scripts, and even the default minimum 2 tiles between cities seems to work fine.
I'm going to keep playing with this and see if I need to make any other refinements, but so far I'm shocked. With this one change, I might not have to give up my favourite game series
I'd be curious to hear what anyone else thinks about this. Has anyone else tried anything like this, or am I the only one desperate enough to do something like this?
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