Something VERY important and often underrated: realistic terrain placement

[poncratias]

When I think about what was one of the (rare) major downsides in Civ 4, it was the way terrains were placed on the maps.

They were nowhere close to any climate realism, you got deserts EVERYWHERE, even near the poles, pinewood near tropical jungles, etc.


There were some rare custom mapscripts out there like "perfect world 2" or "planet generator 0.68" , which then did a major thing by generating BELIEVABLE climate regions for the world.

I hope that this time this is something of a standart for CiV, and I hope it doesn't get underrated again by the developers.

After all it shouldn't be that hard for the developers to paste something like that in.
Just look what our mapscript modders did, and do the same or better:

just give us some basic stuff like global parameters like temperature, equatorial and polar climate change, and maybe even climate drifts!

And use them in the right way!! nomore deserts near the poles!!!

 

[Bobbtjoe]

Deserts near the poles? I have yet to see that happen.

 

[Jewman]

im totally with you dude, after a while i started hating the way all the maps looked and the climate was that i just played earth maps. thats all i really play on anymore

 

[Ramesses]

You can apparently adjust things like global rainfall, temperature, and sea level, so it probably is going to try to create more realistic landscapes with more complex algorithms. But if not, it seems to me that it'll be easier than ever before to mod in a mapscript that does this sort of thing.

 

[PinkHammurabi]

Tbh I typically preferred the more crazy and unrealistic terrain placement. It just made the game more fun for me, not sure why.

But even if the only available options were geared toward more realistic terrain I wouldn't complain.

 

[dra]

I ran some of those map scripts. Results were always layers of desert, layers of jungle, layers of grassland, than plains, tundra, snow. Realistic, ok, but almost unplayable if you got your spawn in wrong place.

Imo much more important from civ5 perspective would be how many hills and bottlenecks are there. For troops placement reasons.

 

[Tylerryan79]

The only thing I didnt like about perfect world 2 was too much desert sometimes. Besides that it was ok. LIke PinkHammurabi I prefered the craziness of the terrain placement, too a degree.

 

[SirSaab]

The most annoying thing for me wasn't necessarily climate variation, but the fact that the most acceptable map (IMO), Terra, would always bug out on Huge maps, and you'd get land mass in the arctic at both the north and south poles. Very immersion breaking to see AI cities built on the very edge of the map.

There always did seem to be an inordinate amount of desert squares, though...

 

[Calouste]

The most annoying thing for me wasn't necessarily climate variation, but the fact that the most acceptable map (IMO), Terra, would always bug out on Huge maps, and you'd get land mass in the arctic at both the north and south poles. Very immersion breaking to see AI cities built on the very edge of the map.

There always did seem to be an inordinate amount of desert squares, though...

There is an inordinate amount of desert on Earth, about 1/7 of the Earth land is desert. Good for realism, bad for gameplay.

 

[SirSaab]

There is an inordinate amount of desert on Earth, about 1/7 of the Earth land is desert. Good for realism, bad for gameplay.

And 0/7's of the Earth consist of land masses which mysteriously fall off it's surface!

 

[Seven05]

I hope all of the generic map scripts included with the game suck so I have something to mod

 

[Thormodr]

There is nothing unrealistic about having deserts near the North and South Pole. Many areas of the Arctic are actually very dry and effectively deserts anyway.

 

[SirSaab]

I'm not talking about deserts, I'm talking about how the Terra maps would generate terrain (any terrain) so close to the poles that you would have no "floating ice" squares, and no arctic straits, and the world would just... end, in the northern and southern arctic regions.

Edit: Well, that's what happened often on huge maps. I pretty much only play huge maps.

 

[grant2004]

I'd love to see more realistic terain. In addition to climate, I'd also like to see realistic mountain ranges. After tectonics was released it was pretty much the only map type I played because it felt so bad every time I tried to play a map script without decent mountain ranges.

With the 1upt rule realistic mountains will be even more important in Civ V.

 

[whats a navy]

I agree with Grant. Mountains should have more importance. I see one peak here or there but never those great ranges that make blocking easy and shield's my from my neighbor's wraith.

 

[CoolLizy]

I don't see how "continents falling off the map" is any different than, say, Antarctica or Greenland. Every world does not need to have arctic straights.

As for mountains, this is the reason I always play on Tectonics in Civ IV. I'd love to see the default map generator in Civ V use them more liberally.

 

[Ahriman]

There is nothing unrealistic about having deserts near the North and South Pole. Many areas of the Arctic are actually very dry and effectively deserts anyway.

But these are more effectively modeled with tundra and ice terrain. The Desert tile with sandy graphics tends to represent a hot desert. One that, for example, camels might have a combat advantage in.

 

[Mango Elephant]

I agree! And this may be hard to impliment, but the generated maps usually look nothing like a real world. Most continents are big blobs with little variety. I want inlets and big peninsulas and all that!

 

[Xetal]

I would also love to see more realistic maps.

Having said that, I think that it would be easy to make realistic maps that "tweak" quantities of land. For example, you could easily have a realistic map with 1/14th of the world as desert instead of 1/7 and it wouldn't detract from the realistic feel any while making it more playable.

One other thing that would be extremely important for realistic maps is an intelligent system of placing starting spots. Civilizations that start in the less valuable terrains of the world should have their neighbors further away and civilizations that start in the "terrain jackpot" areas should have closer neighbors. It would be a way of balancing gameplay for terrain without sacrificing the realistic maps.

 

[Caeserportugal]

Yes realistic maps will be cool but I belive that should wait until the gameplay is totally configured