Version 37.0
A Whole Lot of Nothing...
Introducing the following checkboxes:
...Plus Some Other Stuff!
- No Additional Lakes: prevents additional non-wonder fresh lakes from spawning after generating the landmass and extras.
- No Floodplains: prevents any type of non-wonder floodplains from spawning.
- No Forests: prevents non-wonder forests from spawning.
- No Geothermal Fissures: prevents non-wonder geothermal fissures from spawning.
- No Hills: prevents non-wonder hills from spawning.
- No Jungles: prevents non-wonder jungles from spawning.
- No Marsh: prevents non-wonder marsh from spawning.
- No Mountains: prevents non-wonder, non-volcano mountains from spawning.
- No Rivers: prevents rivers from spawning.
- No Volcanoes: prevents non-wonder volcanoes from spawning.
Introducing Geothermal Fissure Level: adjusts the number of geothermal fissures. Has no effect on Vanilla or Rise and Fall maps.
The Numerous Continents landmass now responds to Lake Level in the following additional ways:
Miscellaneous:
- Lake Level from Very Low to Standard now adjusts the size/existence of central inland sea(s). This was previously random.
- Lake Level from Standard to Very High now adjusts whether continents are shaped more like regular blobs or more like snaky mini-mazes. This was previously random.
Screenshots:
- Got Lakes no longer crashes when placing Kupe on a map that has no water tiles.
- Got Lakes no longer randomly crashes when placing coastal lowlands at Deluge or higher.
- Got Lakes now uses custom continent stamping to avoid crashing to desktop when the map has no water and no mountains.
- Fixed a bug that caused Got Lakes to start players abnormally close to each other on barren maps.
- Fixed a bug that caused Got Lakes to assign civs to unevenly-sized regions on barren maps.
- Civ start placement now has improved region-center bias and tie-breaking logic when choosing locations.
- Civ start placement is now more aware of already-placed resources.
- Updated Landmass-Based Circumnavigation option text to mention that Inverted Donut has no circumnavigation by default.
- Reworded some checkbox option text to say "prevents from spawning" instead of "removes from the map".
Spoiler Extreme Highlands :
Spoiler Plain Bagels :
Spoiler Nothing but Desert :
Spoiler Absolutely Nothing! :
Version 36.0
Introducing Four New Landmasses!
- Numerous Continents: a predictable number of rectangular continents. Generates 3-7 continents depending on sea level; possibly fewer if map size is extremely small.
- Megacluster: a single cluster of densely-packed islands. This was previously available as Clusters + No Extras, but now you can choose Megacluster with extras or instead choose Clusters without extras.
- Inverted Donut: a land-heavy world with a donut-shaped sea and whichever extra lakes you have selected. Just like with Donut, the sea's filling depends on the options that you choose!
- Hex: a pangea made of hexagons which are also made of hexagons! Recommended if you like European board games
Adjusted River Levels:
- River Levels have been adjusted as follows:
- Very Low: now even fewer rivers than the base game!
- Low: now roughly equivalent to the base game
- Standard: reduced, but not quite as low as the old Low setting.
- High: slightly reduced
- Very High: same as before
- This new range allows for fewer rivers than the base game AND spaces out each setting so that each river level is more distinct on average.
- Even so, note that river levels are less precise than other options due to restrictions on where rivers can spawn and how/where they can grow, so please be patient as your mileage may vary!
Miscellaneous:
- Added a fix to prevent natural wonders from being completely surrounded by impassable plots.
- Added recommendations to landmass option tooltips in the Advanced Setup menu.
Spoiler Screenshots - New Landmasses :
Spoiler Numerous Continents Landmass - Sea Levels at Standard Map Size :
Spoiler Hex Landmass - Hexagon Granularites at Standard Map Size :
Version 35.2
Added support for TCS Pedialite by fixing the contents of the Got Lakes Civilopedia page.
Adjusted the Turn Seas Into Lakes option to allow turning more seas into lakes: the barrier of coastal water between landmass/extras and lake clusters is now only enabled with the Connected Seas option instead of always enabled for ocean-heavy maps.
Updated option text for Turn Seas Into Lakes to mention Circumnavigation as a potential source of salt water after turning seas into lakes.
Spoiler Turn Seas Into Lakes (Adjusted) :
Version 35.0
Reorganized Options!
Support for Harmony in Diversity (HD)!
- The Landmass Shuffle and random-by-default options have moved to the top of Got Lakes' map options list. I highly recommend looking at these options first because they add chaos by default, have a massive impact on the map, and include many choices that are exclusive to Got Lakes.
- The two above-mentioned groups of options are color-coded in the menu so that they are easier to find. Landmass Shuffle options come first with a gold label, followed by the random "Customization" options in silver.
- The remaining options that are not color-coded are adjustments with reasonable defaults followed by miscellaneous on/off switches. Feel free to explore these once you become more familiar with this map script.
- Check out the tutorial for more info on these options and why they are grouped this way.
New/Updated Options
- Got Lakes is now compatible with the Civ6 Plus: Harmony in Diversity mod! If HD is enabled, then Got Lakes will adjust resource placement to match the distribution-across-continents overrides from HD.
Miscellaneous
- Introducing Connected Lands: if enabled, connects all landmass lands into a sprawling pangea! For Lakes and Pangea landmasses, this also connects extra islands to the landmass.
- Introducing Turn Seas Into Lakes which replaces Fresh Lakes Landmasses: if enabled, replaces most if not all of the world's salt water with clusters of fresh lakes. This applies to any landmass, unlike the old Fresh Lakes Landmasses.
- The Mountain Clumps option is now random by default.
- Updated menu option text for various options with additional info such as tips and recommendations.
- Fixed a load-order bug that was causing Got Lakes to ignore custom settings from other mods such as Terra Mirabilis.
- Got Lakes now checks actual terrain types on the map instead of just map option choices when deciding whether allow all strategic resource types anywhere on land. Ditto for deciding whether to allow luxuries on snow when Scrambled Land Luxuries is enabled.
Spoiler Connected Lands :
Spoiler Turn Seas Into Lakes :
Version 34.0
Extreme Coastal Lowlands!
- Introducing Coastal Lowlands: a new option that controls the placement of coastal lowlands. Choose from various levels ranging from None to Everywhere. If you choose Everywhere then you get lowlands at every single non-wonder non-mountain land tile, including hills! And of course you can randomize this option.
- Nere's Inland Flooding and Climate Change will no longer override placement of lowlands. However, you can still use that mod for its balance tweaks to CO2 and flood barrier costs.
- You can still adjust the frequency of lowlands with the CLIMATE_CHANGE_PERCENT_COASTAL_LOWLANDS global parameter, but the effect varies depending on what you choose for the Coastal Lowlands option.
- Acknowledgements / Special Thanks to Nerevatar: I used the Inland Flooding and Climate Change mod's lua overrides as starting code, and kept most of the logic for scoring potential lowland plots. The "Inland" setting for the Coastal Lowlands option is similar to what you get with Nere's Inland Flooding and Climate Change.
Support for Teams Together Strong (TTS)!
- Got Lakes is now compatible with the Teams Together Strong! mod! If TTS is enabled, then Got Lakes will still use its own start positioner for minor and water civs while using TTS for major land civs.
- I recommend using TTS for team multiplayer games only. Otherwise TTS provides little benefit since Got Lakes already has its own start positioner with start bias improvements.
- Warning: TTS with "Team mates on same landmass" selected works best on continental, pangea, and land-heavy maps; such a setup with maps that contain islands (including extra islands) may result in players getting stranded on tiny islands.
- Note: for stability reasons, Got Lakes uses the TTS "Min Distance between non-Team mates" option as more of a best-effort guideline than a hard rule. Potential starting locations for minor or water civs that violate this option are merely de-prioritized in case valid starting locations are not available.
- Added a TTS utility method override to ensure that all candidate plots for TTS are valid starting locations for a city (not just passable land but also non-wonder, non-oasis, etc).
- Hardened a TTS utility method table.sort() call against MP desyncs; note that there may be other slightly-risky table.sort() calls in TTS that Got Lakes cannot override.
New/Updated Options
- Introducing Desert Level: adjusts the balance of desert and fertile terrain. Stacks with Temperature, Tundra Level, and various other options that effect terrain.
- Mountain Clumps: you can now choose Random Maze or Hollow to randomly choose either Maze or Hollow.
- Climate Wrap:
- You can now choose Random Azimuthal or Globe to randomly choose either Azimuthal or Globe.
- You can now choose Random Azimuthal or Region to randomly choose either Azimuthal or Region.
Miscellaneous
- Adjusted the start positioner's spacing of civs for improved configurability and to encourage civs to start farther away from each other.
- Replaced the ASP_MIN_DISTANCE_BETWEEN_CIVS constant in GotLakes.lua with the following:
- ASP_MIN_DISTANCE_BETWEEN_MAJOR_CIVS
- ASP_MIN_DISTANCE_BETWEEN_MINOR_CIVS
- ASP_SAFE_DISTANCE_BETWEEN_TWO_MAJOR_CIVS
- ASP_IDEAL_DISTANCE_BETWEEN_TWO_MAJOR_CIVS
- Got Lakes can now make an additional (third) attempt at placing major civs if the default placement fails. This is a last resort that effectively treats major civs like city states.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the GL start positioner to ignore top/bottom portions of the map for globe maps with cropped poles.
- Slightly reduced the effect of Temperature on desert frequency in order to balance Temperature with Desert Level.
- Tilted Axis + Region Climate Wrap + Donut no longer fixes the hot pole at the center of the map.
- Fresh Lakes Landmasses + Lakes Landmass now defaults Landmass-Based Water Starts to None. This improves spacing between water civs and land civs.
- Added NaturalWonderGenerator, ResourceGenerator, and CoastalLowlands overrides to harden table.sort() calls against desyncs...this covers every call to table.sort() from the base game's map generator! Note that there could still be calls from other Lua-overriding map mods, depending on what you have enabled.
Spoiler Coastal Lowlands :
Version 33.0
Support for Sukritact's Oceans
Improved Handling of Start Biases
- Got Lakes now overrides kelp forest generation so that kelp forests respect various options such as Climate, Sunlight, and even Climate Granularity.
- Introducing Kelp Forest Level: controls the base quantity of kelp forests; defaults to Same as Rainfall to match the original behavior of Sukritact's Oceans.
- Introducing Kelp Forests: whether there are no kelp forests (None), standard kelp forests to match Sukritact's Oceans, or kelp forests that are not necessarily adjacent to land but still in shallow water (Kelp Creep).
New/Updated Donut Fillings!
- Added a new algorithm to the start positioner so that start biases now have a much greater impact on start locations than they do in the base game!
- What the base game does:
- Choose N generic start locations for N players.
- Do a tiered round-robin to assign players to locations based on start bias. In other words, the first player chooses the best out of N plots, while the last player is stuck with an arbitrary location.
- What Got Lakes now does:
- Choose at least N generic regions for N players.
- Scan every city-capable plot in every region to determine each player's "interest" in each region based on a sum of tier-weighted start bias plot scores. If a player has no start bias then treat that player as slightly interested in every region.
- Use backtracking constraint satisfaction (kind-of like solving a Sudoku puzzle) to maximize the number of players that are at least slightly interested in their assigned region, while also initially assigning regions in order of highest interest.
- Choose a location for each region while considering the assigned player's start bias among other things such as fresh water access and distance to other civs. Locations that have a start bias score and are not completely dry take priority over other locations.
- Note that even with this algorithm, it is still possible to get an undesirable location since some maps might simply not have the right starting areas to satisfy every player. Don't expect Russia to find tundra in a Sandstorm climate, or Nubia to find sandy desert on a Snowball. Also, if you have for instance three players that prefer tundra/snow but only two cold regions in your map, then there is only so much that Got Lakes can do.
- That said, hopefully this will cure "Restartitis" as long as you have reasonable settings and/or expectations for your maps! Perhaps you will need only a 1-2 rerolls to get a good spot instead of a dozen *fingers-crossed*...
(*)Forest, Jungle, and Marsh spawn also depends on biodiversity and terrain/feature combo checkboxes.
- Kelp Forest: Sukritact's Oceans game mode enabled + Kelp Creep + Very High Kelp Level
- "Kelp" Forest (forest in water): Sukritact's Oceans game mode disabled + Kelp Creep + Much More Forest (Forest/Jungle Mix)
- Kelp "Forest" (jungle in water): Sukritact's Oceans game mode disabled + Kelp Creep + Much More Jungle (Forest/Jungle Mix)
- Arid (no forest, jungle, or marsh on land): Very Arid Rainfall
- Forest*: Very Wet Rainfall + Much More Forest
- Jungle*: Very Wet Rainfall + Much More Jungle
- Marsh*: Very Wet Rainfall + Wetland Biome + Standard Forest/Jungle Mix
- Forest and Jungle*: Very Wet Rainfall + not Wetland Biome + non-extreme Forest/Jungle Mix
- Forest and Marsh*: Very Wet Rainfall + Wetland Biome + More Forest
- Jungle and Marsh*: Very Wet Rainfall + Wetland Biome + More Jungle
- Tundra: Region Climate Wrap + Standard Sunlight + Snowball or Ice Age Climate + Very High Tundra Level
- Grassland: Region Climate Wrap + Standard Sunlight + Standard or Greenhouse Climate + Much More Grass Grass/Plains Mix
- Plains: Region Climate Wrap + Standard Sunlight + Standard or Greenhouse Climate + Much More Plains Grass/Plains Mix
- Desert (updated): Azimuthal Climate Wrap + Two Suns Sunlight + Sandstorm Climate
Miscellaneous
- Fixed a typo that disabled coastal ice in maps that had circumnavigation disabled.
- Ice can now spawn adjacent to plots that have rivers as long as no river mouth faces the ice.
- Tweaked Standard Sunlight + Ice Age Climate latitude bands to reduce tundra for fixed latitude (Region + Standard Sunlight) maps.
- Halved Tundra Level adjustment for Standard Sunlight + Ice Age Climate to avoid extremely low/high amounts of tundra on fixed-latitude (Region + Standard Sunlight) maps.
- Added logging to indicate whether YnAMP has custom starts enabled (YnAMP's custom starts override the Got Lakes start positioner).
- Fixed a harmless but scary-looking "nil function" error message in YnAMP's override to AssignStartingPlots that was caused by Got Lakes not using the base game's feature generator.
Spoiler Mini Donuts with Kelp Forests :
Spoiler Improved Handling of Start Biases :
Version 32.0
Circumnavigation!
- Introducing Circumnavigation: controls the type of east-west channels that Got Lakes may add to allow naval circumnavigation. Possible choices are None (leave the map as-is, like the base game), Edges (clear out the non-wrapping edges of the map), Paths (create a few random horizontal-ish paths), and Edges and Paths. Of course, you can also randomize this option.
- Note that Got Lakes will only add Edges/Paths if needed to ensure circumnavigation. Most island maps will not lose any land as a result of this option.
- When enforcing circumnavigation, Got Lakes will also 1) remove all coastal ice, 2) prevent impassable natural wonders from blocking naval chokepoints, and 3) create paths through any ice chunk that touches both the north and south edges of the map.
Spoiler Circumnavigation :
A new way to adjust forests and jungle!
Improved ice/water options
- Introducing Forest/Jungle Mix: adjusts the balance of forests versus jungle. Stacks with Temperature, Tundra Level, Rainfall, Climate, Biome, etc.
Mountains and Extras: now with less chaos if you so choose!
- Introducing No Ice: if enabled, removes all ice from the map.
- Connected Seas, when enabled, now also removes all coastal ice and prevents impassable natrual wonders from blocking naval chokepoints.
- Added support for Yet (not) Another Map Pack's "No Ice Near Land" checkbox, which appears below all of Got Lakes' options when Y(n)AMP is enabled. This checkbox now has the same behavior as the No Coastal Ice checkbox (previously was ignored). Requires Y(n)AMP.
Miscellaneous
- Added Random Moderate to the Mountains option: randomly choose between only the moderately-rocky mountain ranges (Tectonic Plates, Fractal Ranges, Scattered Crags, Clustered Highlands, and Uncanny Valleys). Recommended if you enjoy randomness but want to avoid the extremely rocky choices for this option.
- Added Random Moderate to the Extras option: randomly choose between only the moderate choices for extras (all choices except None and Everything). Recommended if you enjoy randomness but want the quantity of extra islands to be more predictable.
- The Minor Starts option no longer randomly chooses "Same as Land Starts" when set to Random (avoids a bias towards the Land Starts option).
- The Biodiversity option may now randomly choose "Climate-Based" when set to Random (adds a bias towards the selected climate so that Random is less likely to result in something crazy).
- Updated a log message to be less scary when Got Lakes tries to connect seas on a completely dry map.
- Improved logging of checkbox selections.
- Improved logging of Natural Wonder generator's search for candidate spots.
Version 31.0
Minor Starts
- Introducing Minor Starts: adjusts the start positions of city-states! You can assign all city-states to the largest area, place them the normal way, assign each one to a separate area, treat them like major civilizations, or let the Land Starts option decide what to do. And of course you can randomize this option!
- One example of what is now possible: choose Separate Areas for Land Starts and Largest Area for Minor Starts for a Pangea landmass with Sprinkles extras. This will place each major civ its own island while cramming all of the city-states onto the pangea.
Spoiler Minor Starts :
Terrain Flags
Improved Isolation for Large Islands
- Introducing No Desert, No Grass, No Plains, No Snow, and No Tundra checkboxes: each one prevents a certain type of terrain from appearing on the map!
- If you remove three or more terrain types then Got Lakes will compensate for lack of variety by allowing all strategic resources such as horses to appear on any terrain type.
- What happens if you enable all of these options? Got Lakes will randomly remove one to three terrain types from the map!
Full Compatibility with Terra Mirabilis
- The Large Islands landmass, when Isolated Coasts is enabled, will now separate each large island from the others with a barrier of ocean. Previously, the large islands were only isolated from extra islands. Now each major civ on a Large Islands map with Isolated Coasts can enjoy total isolation until ships can cross oceans.
Miscellaneous:
- Added custom-placement support for the Rock of Gibraltar and Mosi-oa-Tunya (Victoria Falls) natural wonders so that Got Lakes is fully compatible with Terra Mirabilis.
- Got Lakes now uses its custom start positioner to place city states. This allows city state placement to succeed for even the most extreme maps such as islands with all terrain types disabled except snow. Note that the base game still handles start biases for both major and minor civs, and that Got Lakes is still compatible with YnAMP's Culturally Linked Starts.
- Scrambled Land Luxuries now allows luxuries on snow if snow is the only terrain type enabled.
- Scrambled Land Luxuries now allows luxuries on volcanic soil. Volcanic soil is only possible with the Donut landmass--see the landmass guide in the Got Lakes discussion page on Steam for more info.
- Setting Snowball climate and/or less than three terrain types enabled now allows strategic resources on volcanic soil.
- Updated menu text for the Volcano Level option to indicate Low as closest to the base game; Standard is (and has been) more like twice the base game's standard number of volcanoes.
- Updated menu text for Scrambled Land Luxuries to mention avoidance of geothermal fissures.
- No changes were needed to support the Feb 2021 Barbarian Clans update.
Version 30.0
Expanded Coastal Expansion
- Introducing Coastal Expansion: adjusts the balance of shallow water and deep ocean.
- Introducing Isolated Coasts: if enabled, prevents coastal expansion from connecting lands that are separated by ocean. Also prevents extra islands from expanding the coast of the landmass for water-heavy maps. Recommended if you enjoy crossing deep oceans.
- Removed No Coastal Expansion, which has been replaced by the above options. Simply set Coastal Expansion to None and enable Isolated Coasts to achieve the same effect.
- Shallow waters from Tectonic extras are now controlled by Coastal Expansion instead of Sea Level
Spoiler Coastal Expansion versus Isolated Coasts :
More Flexible World Wrap!
New/Updated Donut Fillings!
- Introducing Climate Wrap: controls whether the world's climate is global (north/south poles and matching bands of latitude) or regional (poles and latitude bands vary depending on the Sunlight option).
- The World Wrap option no longer controls poles or latitude bands, but instead only controls whether the world wraps east-west.
- Climate-affecting option combos that previously involved World Wrap now involve Climate Wrap instead. For example, the "cropped oval" landmass is now Oval Landmass + Cropped Icy Poles + Globe Climate Wrap + Snowball or Ice Age Climate.
- Introducing Azimuthal Climate Wrap! Setting Climate Wrap to Azimuthal will fix one pole at the center of the map and the other at the edges!
Miscellaneous:
- Shallow Water: set Coastal Expansion to Very High (previously was Very Low Lake Level)
- Salty Lakes: set Coastal Expansion to Very High and set Lake Level to Very High.
- Snow: set Climate Wrap to Azimuthal (was previously Region), and Climate to Snowball and Sunlight to Standard.
- Ice: set Climate Wrap to Azimuthal (was previously Region), and Climate to Ice Age and Sunlight to Standard.
- Hill Level and Volcano Level will no longer randomly choose "Same As Mountain Level" or "Same as Hill Level" when set to Random.
- Biodiversity will no longer randomly choose "Climate Based" when set to Random.
- Fixed some off-by-one fractal-based-landmass bugs which were adding awkward one-tile islands to the map.
- Minor rebalance to the Start Positioner to increase chance of coastal starts instead of inland starts.
- No changes were needed to support the Oct 2020 Pirates update.