Any good map scripts that work with VP?

[matlajs]

and overall- 4 past games i wanted break without communitas, just bcoz it didnt create so much land and that it created looked ugly. but now im 100% sure since next game i will never play another. bcoz with communitas i have had some decent waring AI between themselve. with another mapscripts i have peacefull 8/18 AI, no matter what civs they are. And all of that with same setting with every mapscript.

 

[ElliotS]

I came to promote Tectonic as I too thought I was the only one. <3 It's honestly the best. I like to play with most of the settings on random, it makes things more chaotic and less predictable.

 

[heinous_hat]

im not sure communitas is creating more land than this do, but there is 120 coal on map and on 2 largest continents is just about 20 of it( 6 on ours = that is 6 for me, Sweden,Venice and Siam) I dont remember if i ever had a problem with coal with communitas. sure, i couldnt afford build whatever requiring coal everywhere, but in most important cities i could. Now in this game + in my mp game with cousin( but there we play small continents +) there is absolutely same problem= not total amount of any resource, but its distribution between some chosen ones.

and overall- 4 past games i wanted break without communitas, just bcoz it didnt create so much land and that it created looked ugly. but now im 100% sure since next game i will never play another. bcoz with communitas i have had some decent waring AI between themselve. with another mapscripts i have peacefull 8/18 AI, no matter what civs they are. And all of that with same setting with every mapscript.

So, I turned on debug logging for Communitas and ran a few maps through WorldBuilder (which likes to crash with that enabled ). Wow, it's placing 500-600 coal on a huge map. That is... quite a bit of coal. The default ASP gives you maybe 100-200.

I can definitely see why the difference would be irritating, if you've gotten used to a higher amount. What about selecting "strategic balance" for the resource option? I've never used it, but it's supposed to guarantee proximity to some strategics... not sure about coal. Otherwise, you'd have to look at editing the the ASP script to get what you want.

Also, 8 majors is a low number for a huge sized, continents style map. I'd double it and then adjust it a bit if it's too crowded on average. It's hard to get it just right when land varies with certain script settings.

 

[matlajs]

500-600 may be rly big surplus, but on the other hand it seems more fair to me. 500 coal with 14 players on map is 35 coal for one player + 24-28 cs. 120 coal on the other hand is 6 coal for 1 player with same settings and much more less chance you will be the one who gets it. pls can u try that option ,, strategic balance'' with that Worldbuilder? i would gladly play with this mapscript, but want to know what i should set.

 

[matlajs]

Also, 8 majors is a low number for a huge sized

? i wrote im playing with 13 AI(14 together with me + 26 cs). And there is bunch of place for everyone.

 

[matlajs]

and to another adition: there is 128 coal on map, but 187 aluminium, 540!!!! oil, and 88 uranium. thats doesnt seem to be balanced for VP purposes.

 

[Elhoim]

Planet Simulator is my current favorite one, really nice maps, with mountain ranges, passes, big deserts...

 

[heinous_hat]

and to another adition: there is 128 coal on map, but 187 aluminium, 540!!!! oil, and 88 uranium. thats doesnt seem to be balanced for VP purposes.

Well, oil has greater probability than other resources ... it can appear on land and sea tiles. So that's perfectly normal with any map script as terrain is a major factor in resource placement calculation. It's a deliberate choice that Firaxis made to tie resource occurrence to a somewhat random element and why you can get such disparity between different map scripts. I think it's great for variety and it certainly drives warfare, trade and diplomacy. But maybe it doesn't work as well in MP matches that are focused on fairness and balance instead of scarcity. Different animals.

I think it's the case that VP is balanced around the existing ASP script... the script never changes. What's concerning to me is that half the player base seems to be playing Communitas which has it's own (relatively skewed) weighting. And the other half is playing maps that rely on Barathor's common script from More Luxuries. It's difficult to judge balance and gameplay feedback when everyone isn't on the same page. Not that Communitas isn't a nice script... it makes interesting maps and has a wealth of custom routines designed to solve certain shortcomings. But it was also designed for a different project with different characteristics.

BTW, I looked at how the Strategic Balance routine works and it doesn't place coal. Only horse, iron and oil are added to starting regions. Sorry about the misleading suggestion. I also played bit of a test game (Planet Simulator, huge, 14 players, strategic balance) and eventually looked at the end game map. There were 166 coal units and 12 of 14 players had coal reasonably near to their start position (within 6 tiles). Only myself and my Roman neighbor lacked nearby coal. Interestingly, my neighbor also lacked horse and iron, despite the Strategic Balance option. That lead immediately to a difficult war with a numerically stronger opponent. Good stuff, but "strategic balance" clearly failed here .

 

[matlajs]

that was nice note. that about diference between mp and sp games. bcoz i cant imagine war without coal and as result build unit in 50 or more % longer time(untill atomic). but thats not only about warfare but about whole production. its a huge diference having cities with train station/harbor + factory and god, with coal plant its already above 300 production with some reasonable amount of base production. player with that city can simply produce more units than u can kill In my game those 128 coal is maybe distributed between 11/14 players. but 70% of that amount have 3 of them. its not even distribution and im going to go back for comunitas, comunitas with sparse. bcoz its not like fighting neighbour for city with at least 7 coal deposit, but overrun whole my(bigest) continent for overall 6 coal(that mean eliminate 3 majors for that ). And i will not speak about AI and their capabilites trading off their strategic resources.

 

[vyyt]

Correct me, if I am wrong, but hasn't the strategic resource distribution in Communitas been somehow aligned with the "standard" distribution upon ExpiredReign's tests recently?

 

[matlajs]

what that mean? that another option will not work but standard?

 

[ExpiredReign]

The Communitas mapscript, that is a separate mod, has numbers for strategic resources vastly different to other standard maps, I corrected this with the version that is supplied with VP.
Any figures posted here about weird strategic resource numbers should be vigorously tested against other mapscripts supplied with VP as the function that applies to standard maps also apply to Communitas.

To put it another way: the exact same function that assigns resources is used with VP's mapscript as with every other map ie. continents, pangaea, islands, etc.

 

[RMcD94]

Hellblazer's maps are fantastic:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KiFTUkF8zxbRdN_AmQ-jIwdUAjnriO2wYNGBuqphcCM/

However I couldn't get them to work with the extra luxes.

 

[heinous_hat]

The Communitas mapscript, that is a separate mod, has numbers for strategic resources vastly different to other standard maps, I corrected this with the version that is supplied with VP.
Any figures posted here about weird strategic resource numbers should be vigorously tested against other mapscripts supplied with VP as the function that applies to standard maps also apply to Communitas.

To put it another way: the exact same function that assigns resources is used with VP's mapscript as with every other map ie. continents, pangaea, islands, etc.

You disabled a number of functions with a comment block, correct? The override ASP flag (near the top of the file) should still be active, yes? That's what I see with the current script... don't have an older one on hand to do a diff.

Taking another look to see why those coal numbers were so high. It's a little irritating to test... enabling the log functions in Communitas is causing WB to crap out if you try to generate more than one map.

 

[Magean]

I would like to play more on Communitas but the thing is... the standard settings barely generate any desert at all. Just a few tiles, but nothing comparable to Central Asia, the Sahara, Arabia... This is one of the main advantages of Planet Simulator (or Tectonic). I don't find it plausible when standard options result in entirely habitable landscape. I tried setting rainfall to "arid" but then, there isn't enough forest and jungles. "Hot" temperature also has its own unfortunate consequences (few tundra, lots of jungle).

EDIT : I opened the lua script of the map, located at My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS\(1) Community Patch\Mapscripts, and found the following paragraph:

-- Rain
    mglobal.marshPercent            = 0.10 -- Percent chance increase for marsh from each nearby watery tile
                                           --    junglePercent to 1 : marsh
    mglobal.junglePercent            = 0.65 --    junglePercent to 1 : jungle
    mglobal.zeroTreesPercent        = 0.30 -- zeroTreesPercent to 1 : forest
                                           --      plainsPercent to 1 : grass
    mglobal.plainsPercent            = 0.50 --      desertPercent to plainsPercent : plains
    mglobal.desertPercent            = 0.25 --                 0 to desertPercent : desert

I gradually increased the figure (0.25) on the mglobal.desertPercent line and ran tests on the World Builder. At 0.67, I found the result satisfying. So, this is very easy to change. You just have to do it every time you reinstall VP.

Alternatively, there's a paragraph:

local oRainfall = Map.GetCustomOption(3)
    if oRainfall == 4 then oRainfall = 1 + Map.Rand(3, "Communitas random rain - Lua") end
    if oRainfall == 1 then
        print("Map Rain: Arid")
        mglobal.riverPercent        = mglobal.riverPercent        / 1.5
        mglobal.featurePercent        = mglobal.featurePercent    / 1.5
        mglobal.marshPercent        = mglobal.marshPercent        / 1.5
        mglobal.junglePercent        = 1 - (1 - mglobal.junglePercent) / 1.5
        mglobal.zeroTreesPercent    = mglobal.zeroTreesPercent     * 1.5
        mglobal.plainsPercent        = mglobal.plainsPercent        * 1.25
        mglobal.desertPercent        = mglobal.desertPercent        * 1.25
    elseif oRainfall == 3 then
        print("Map Rain: Wet")
        mglobal.featurePercent        = 0.9 -- should not go above 90%
        mglobal.riverPercent        = mglobal.riverPercent        * 1.5
        mglobal.marshPercent        = mglobal.marshPercent        * 1.5
        mglobal.junglePercent        = 1 - (1 - mglobal.junglePercent) * 1.5
        mglobal.zeroTreesPercent    = mglobal.zeroTreesPercent     / 1.5
        mglobal.plainsPercent        = mglobal.plainsPercent        / 1.5
        mglobal.desertPercent        = mglobal.desertPercent        / 1.5
    else
        print("Map Rain: Normal")
    end

Which is about the effect of the rainfall settings. You can tweak the desert percent there if you want to, to change the effects of the options: arid, wet, and normal (which has no effect, but you can add you own following the syntax of the other settings).

Now I feel the itching to play a game on Communitas.

 

[ExpiredReign]

You disabled a number of functions with a comment block, correct? The override ASP flag (near the top of the file) should still be active, yes? That's what I see with the current script... don't have an older one on hand to do a diff.

Taking another look to see why those coal numbers were so high. It's a little irritating to test... enabling the log functions in Communitas is causing WB to crap out if you try to generate more than one map.

No. the function: AssignStartingPlots:GetMajorStrategicResourceQuantityValues() in the original version assigned values vastly different to every other mapscript, I simply changed those values back to vanilla.

My testing regime was a lot simpler than yours. I just generated a handful of maps with each mapscript and using FireTuner I revealed the entire map and the resources and then manually counted the number of tiles and the totals of each resource.

 

[Magean]

Damned... Communitas crashes on the last 09/30 version. When I click start to launch a new game, the game seems to be loading, but before I get the leader-specific loading screen, it crashes. I tried reinstalling the previous 19/09 version, and it works fine. Reinstalling the last version again causes the crash to occur once more. Anyone else having this problem? It's not tied to the modification I've done since reinstalling doesn't solve the problem.

 

[heinous_hat]

No. the function: AssignStartingPlots:GetMajorStrategicResourceQuantityValues() in the original version assigned values vastly different to every other mapscript, I simply changed those values back to vanilla.

My testing regime was a lot simpler than yours. I just generated a handful of maps with each mapscript and using FireTuner I revealed the entire map and the resources and then manually counted the number of tiles and the totals of each resource.

Damn, that takes patience . It is the only way quantify the actual distribution though. I'll see if I can add a tile count to the logs.

I'm not entirely certain I trust results from WB with Communitas. The script has additional functions that dress up starting regions and don't run until game start. Need to compare the results I'm getting in WB vs some live games. I'll post results in a while. At present though, I see very high totals for both horse and coal in Communitas relative to More Luxuries ASP. Trying to keep # of land tiles approximately the same between scripts is also challenging.

We should have a sub-section for maps, ASP scripting and the like alongside the other balance discussions. These random threads tend to get buried.

Damned... Communitas crashes on the last 09/30 version. When I click start to launch a new game, the game seems to be loading, but before I get the leader-specific loading screen, it crashes. I tried reinstalling the previous 19/09 version, and it works fine. Reinstalling the last version again causes the crash to occur once more. Anyone else having this problem? It's not tied to the modification I've done since reinstalling doesn't solve the problem.

It runs ok here with the last public beta, strangely faster in game then in WB. But it can only manage a single map in WB... it crashes the civ5 engine and requires restart after that. Do you get repeated failures in game? Did you make multiple attempts? It is prone to the occasional hiccup.

 

[thunderbird_14]

Been converted to Tectonic recently (of course, Communistas will always have a place in the top scripts) and I'm actually surprised that when I enable High Sea Level, it actually creates vast oceans (compared to a few Communistas) and vast deserts . It's a really fantastic script!! (Sorry for echoing others)

 

[heinous_hat]

Been converted to Tectonic recently (of course, Communistas will always have a place in the top scripts) and I'm actually surprised that when I enable High Sea Level, it actually creates vast oceans (compared to a few Communistas) and vast deserts . It's a really fantastic script!! (Sorry for echoing others)

I use 'high seas' in Tectonic to keep land amount under control when you set the other options to their extremes. It has the capacity to become land dominant, otherwise. But yeah, you can really get any sort of map you want once you figure out how various options interact. Superb maps for explorers and tinkerers.

Planet Simulator, by contrast, goes out of it's way to separate continents in most cases. It does place deserts reliably and evenly (often large ones) and it keeps desert and forest buffered (looks nice). I also really like the coastal width option... helps keep your units from getting stranded by expanding borders. I dislike that there isn't an early diplomatic agreement in the game for passing sea borders or that they aren't simply open until you reach 'open borders'... so that solves a pet peeve. One of the script's few weaknesses is the way it sometimes creates a banded look when placing features, like forest and jungle... too many clean edges in spots.

Communitas has a unique character unto itself. It comes up with random land masses, squeezed into a predictable format (via the rifts). It's sort of deterministic randomization . It also has custom methods for creating passes in long mountain chains and converting terrain at extreme latitudes to something more useful. Aside from the resource issues, my only other problem with it is that it can often be as ugly as it is beautiful. The mixed art style doesn't always blend well and the abundance of rivers intersecting with lakes shows off one of Civ5's worst map art deficiencies. Estebanium's terrain mod (which has grown on me) doesn't fit the concept either... looks like some alien world.