Random Map Type vs. Shuffle

[Plumfairy]

Does anyone know what the difference between these two map scripts is? Based on the descriptions, they seem to do the exact same thing: randomize all the settings. So why have two different options?

 

[PhilBowles]

Shuffle is a particular type of map that randomises a whole suite of variables, such as world age, that aren't affected by random map type. It produces a novel map type in every iteration. Random map type just selects one of the preset non-Earth map designs from vanilla - such as Continents, Pangaea or Archipelago (I don't think it randomises among DLC/expansion maps) - without telling you which it has selected.

I played random map type a fair bit recently, and am now back on my favoured Shuffle, but it's not easy to tell how they differ in practice. Shuffle doesn't seem to randomise nearly as well as it did in past Civ games (or such factors as world age and rainfall don't make as significant a difference).

 

[Plumfairy]

I understand your words, but I'm still not clear on the difference. Selecting "one of the preset map designs" will result in all sorts of land configurations. Archipelago maps can have more & more land, until they start to resemble small continents, which can also have more & more land until it resembles continents, and so on. So selecting one of the preset map types leads to a pretty much random land distribution. If I understand what you're saying, shuffle cuts out the middle man & explicitly contains the full variety of land configuration. But in practice they lead to the same array of maps, right? (I ask because I've played a ton of games with each setting, and I can't for the life of me detect any practical difference.)

 

[PhilBowles]

As far as I can tell, yes you're exactly right about the way they work in practice. I think the key difference is in the variables Shuffle describes the maps as generating such as world age and rainfall, as I think these are identical across the vanilla preset maps (so an archipelago map can have varying sizes and numbers of landmasses, but all will be essentially temperate, 4-billion-year-old worlds, and so with similar numbers of mountains, and ratios of plains to grassland or forest).

As I say, though, I don't find this makes a clearly detectable difference in practice. There also doesn't seem to be a temperature variable as in past Civ games: your worlds will always have a polar region grading latitudinally into a jungle zone, with similar arrangements of intervening terrain types - you don't get cold worlds with disproportionate amounts of tundra, or hot desert worlds with little or none.