Any good map scripts that work with VP?

[Navanod]

Ok, I found a mod that can like me easily present the map info for each script. Rotate Start Position mod LOL

I had set everything to as default as possible and at huge map size with 12 civs and 24 CS as per default.
Here are the results:

Tectonic


Planetary Sim


Communitas (loading took much longer!)


Continents


The differences are confusing!!! And can someone please explain to me what "Tiles", "Area" and the "Color" followed by a number in bracket means?
I think the values are only for the continent of the starting location that is selected?

 

[matlajs]

it seem to me Planet simulator outcoming like worst one in this matter. just look compare that number of coal with number of tilles and civs. and you still dont know where those deposits are. you may be lucky and become monopoly owner, or have none. while the others scripts seem to me even, something about +-20 coal for 1 civ( with even i dont mean having 20 coal for each is balanced, but to me definetly better)

 

[Navanod]

it seem to me Planet simulator outcoming like worst one in this matter. just look compare that number of coal with number of tilles and civs. and you still dont know where those deposits are. you may be lucky and become monopoly owner, or have none. while the others scripts seem to me even, something about +-20 coal for 1 civ( with even i dont mean having 20 coal for each is balanced, but to me definetly better)

I realized that those figures are based on the landmass that the currently selected starting location is on! So it will certainly look bad for certain spots on small isles.
I should just look at the totals on the monopoly screen instead. Will do that when I have the time...

 

[Zares]

Ok, I found a mod that can like me easily present the map info for each script. Rotate Start Position mod LOL

I had set everything to as default as possible and at huge map size with 12 civs and 24 CS as per default.
Here are the results:

Spoiler :

Tectonic

How can you have so little strategic resources on the standard resource setting (default) and a HUGE map? I hate having 80 horses per 10 Civs and I have:

• 83 Horses
• 50 Iron
• 59 (!) Coal

On SPARSE setting, standard size Tectonic map, 10 Civs, 20 CSs. It isn't sparse for me I want strategic resources to be really rare to avoid mass Knight wars and Factories/Seaports/Train Stations in every city. I want Civs to fight for these resources...

 

[matlajs]

i dont care so much about iron and less about horses. never had a game where i didnt ahve at least 10 of each. but lack of coal will degrade you in everything you are trying to achieve. Doesnt matter what production focus you have. If AI has all 3 buildings anywhere and desire same thing liek you, you will loose a whatever race. Especially wonders, unless you invest+ engineer it along with industry, you will not build it.

 

[Magean]

Why is Tectonic so popular ? I've generated quite a few Tectonic maps in the WB, and it turns out land is very scarce, even with the options "more land" and "low sea level". Two or three large islands at most. Definitely not enough for the base number of players not to be feel extremely cramped, even more than in a terra-like map where everyone starts on the same continent.

 

[heinous_hat]

The differences are confusing!!! And can someone please explain to me what "Tiles", "Area" and the "Color" followed by a number in bracket means?
I think the values are only for the continent of the starting location that is selected?

Completely forgot about Rotate Start Position. Does it still have the limitation where it leaves the mini-map defogged at the various start pos? Always liked this mod, otherwise.

Didn't remember the detailed terrain/resource tooltip either. Nifty .The color would likely be referring to the continent art style (as per the key in WB)... so resource totals, tile counts, percentages etc would be relative to the "continent" as determined by the tile painting method. It's not ideal for analytical purposes... you can have 1 or 2 tile isthmuses connecting otherwise distinct landmasses that get painted with a common art style. That could connect parts or all of the world even if the terrain is impassable. It's even less useful with PerfectWorld/Communitas which mixes tile art. So, yeah... the numbers aren't terribly useful in this case. You'd need to see the whole map.

I generally use Firetuner to test resource distribution with a live map, but of course that too ruins the current map for you. A working Reseed would be optimal.

Why is Tectonic so popular ? I've generated quite a few Tectonic maps in the WB, and it turns out land is very scarce, even with the options "more land" and "low sea level". Two or three large islands at most. Definitely not enough for the base number of players not to be feel extremely cramped, even more than in a terra-like map where everyone starts on the same continent.

RNG probably has the biggest effect on the Tectonic script (relative to others) due to the number of options it provides regarding land masses (continent shape, land amount, #of plates, plate motion, island abundance). Don't judge it after just a few runs (more like a few hundred ). It can seemingly defy your will at times, but it also creates the most interesting terrain layout and body shapes (imho). Ideally, this script would have the capability to vary # of players according to land percentage and quality. I guess that's true for any map script, but more so here.

As for the experience you've described, I'd try using continents: blocky as well as plates: more and land: more. You shouldn't have to lower sea level. With all settings maxed on a huge map, I find that high sea level is actually sometimes necessary to avoid a pseudo-pangaea effect.

 

[Magean]

RNG probably has the biggest effect on the Tectonic script (relative to others) due to the number of options it provides regarding land masses (continent shape, land amount, #of plates, plate motion, island abundance). Don't judge it after just a few runs (more like a few hundred ). It can seemingly defy your will at times, but it also creates the most interesting terrain layout and body shapes (imho). Ideally, this script would have the capability to vary # of players according to land percentage and quality. I guess that's true for any map script, but more so here.

As for the experience you've described, I'd try using continents: blocky as well as plates: more and land: more. You shouldn't have to lower sea level. With all settings maxed on a huge map, I find that high sea level is actually sometimes necessary to avoid a pseudo-pangaea effect.

Interesting. I also didn't see that Tectonic uses sizes that are always one level larger than the norm. In other words, when I was generating 104x64 maps, I thought they were large and thus for 10 players, but in fact they were only normal in size. Tectonic's huge is 152x96, which isn't even selectable in the World Builder... Anyway, I'm going to try what you suggest, thanks

 

[Navanod]

Completely forgot about Rotate Start Position. Does it still have the limitation where it leaves the mini-map defogged at the various start pos? Always liked this mod, otherwise.

Didn't remember the detailed terrain/resource tooltip either. Nifty .The color would likely be referring to the continent art style (as per the key in WB)... so resource totals, tile counts, percentages etc would be relative to the "continent" as determined by the tile painting method. It's not ideal for analytical purposes... you can have 1 or 2 tile isthmuses connecting otherwise distinct landmasses that get painted with a common art style. That could connect parts or all of the world even if the terrain is impassable. It's even less useful with PerfectWorld/Communitas which mixes tile art. So, yeah... the numbers aren't terribly useful in this case. You'd need to see the whole map.

I generally use Firetuner to test resource distribution with a live map, but of course that too ruins the current map for you. A working Reseed would be optimal

Yes, the mini map issue is still there. Only way is to reload but if the reload is to point before rotating to other start positions, these positions may change as it is a random 6-7 out of the 12.

Figured out what the tooltip is about.
It is showing the stats of the selected start position's continent. Which is good enough to ensure I picked a game with a good chance of getting horses for Mongolia but without the extreme spoilers of Reseed!

Since the issue here is the coal balance, I suppose I can just get that figure from the monopoly screen and compare?

 

[ExpiredReign]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: it makes no difference about the quantities of strategics, it's the distribution that is important.
If the entire map has 100 of a resource and it is in only 10 or so tiles, that is an issue and will make monopolies a very big factor. On the other hand if those 100 are spread across 30 or 40 tiles it will play out pretty much the same for all players and there is no imbalance.

Take horses for example. If every player has access to 20 horses each, there really is no difference if they only had access to 5 horses each. However if one player had 20 or 30 horses and everyone else had very few, then the game is unbalanced. I see none of that with any of these scripts, strategics are different in number but the distribution is fairly straight-forward.

 

[Magean]

@heinous_hat : I've spent the last 45 minutes generating Tectonic samples in the WB and I must say I am quite happy with it now. First, increasing map size did have a huge impact on the quality of the result. Second, after many tests, I've been able to come up with quite satisfactory results.

There are two things I tried to avoid: ugly, massive Pangaeas that look like polygons dropped on the map; and its polar opposite, an abundance of small landmasses that give a Small Continent/Large Islands feeling. I want strategic depth inland and I want naval civs to be balanced, neither OP nor UP. Plus, the sheer abundance of land is also a big factor.

I discovered that the Islands setting is very important. For a given % of land, less islands means that continents will be larger, or that one-tile islands will be merged into more relevant large islands. This is a big improvement. On the one hand, it may salvage a small-continentish setting by making the landmasses bulkier. On the other hand, it may alleviate the Pangaea issue by creating Australias or Madagascars. It can also remove coastal water and thus make Astronomy more relevant. Besides, less islands is also fairer for the AI, which has a tendency to lose settlers on irrelevant Falklands-like tiles. Overall, the results improved substantially after I reduced Islands frequency. Besides, setting Islands to None doesn't remove them entirely; there are still a few one-tile ones left, and there will be large islands with this setting, but no archipelago. I strongly suggest you experiment with Few or None to Islands.

Besides, in my opinion, any Sea Level above Low has too high a risk to generate scarce land, so I avoid raising it. Likewise, I stick with More regarding land.

When it comes to Plate, More Plates help avoid a blocky Pangaea. However, it may also result in the small continent feeling I described above; with the other settings set as I describes though, the risk is low.

Finally, I avoid blocky continent as the risk of a fat rectangle dropped on the map is too high. Standard and Snaky are both valid choice provided the options are set as above; the choice depends on what risk I want to minimize: Pangaea or scarce land + small continents.

The other options are left at default values.

Anyway, thanks for making me try this map again!

 

[Navanod]

Wow, so if we are going Tectonic, best is to use Few for islands, Low for sea levels, More for plates and Standard for continents.

 

[tu_79]

Don't be afraid of smaller lands. That means fights will happen more often, but you can still thrive.

 

[Navanod]

For anyone who is still interested, I generated a set of maps using different scripts at "Huge" world size and here are the strategic resources tallied:



Planetary Sim was done using all default except islands, which is changed to "Large and infreq" in a bid to have more usable isles.
Tectonic Def is using all default settings while Tectonic Def is using some of Magean's recommendations, namely, "Low" sea levels, "Few" islands, "More" lands and "More" plates. Other settings are left as default.

I mainly compared against Continent as the baseline.
Communitas is actually the one with the most coal! Other resources differs slightly but are not exception.
Planet Sim is very close except in Oil.
Tectonic is really the wild one here as the Alt and Def differs by a large margin, mainly due to the amount of land generated I'm sure. If I ignore the Alt, it would be somewhat scarce compared to the others, except for Oil, which is strangely quite generous, although not as extreme as Planet Sim.

As ExpiredReign pointed out, the total resource does not take into account the distribution i.e. resource per tile, so any insights would be welcomed.

 

[Magean]

Don't be afraid of smaller lands. That means fights will happen more often, but you can still thrive.

It depends what one means by less land. On Vanilla maps such as Continents, you're perfectly right : the default number of civs will result in them stating too far apart, thus making the game quite dull, with a lot of room for expansion, and less trouble with neighbors. As a result, civs tailored for early wars are somewhat nerved, as the latter become more difficult and less necessary. Although I'm not an aggressive player, I typically increase the number of civ by about 25%. E.g. I put 10 civs on a Normal map.

However, in my WB tests with Tectonic, I've seen maps which would practically feel like a European/Middle Eastern start in a TSL map. See what I mean ? It's not a balanced way to play. This time, the balance shifts too heavily toward early military might, while civs strong at colonizing can't really make use of their abilities. In my opinion, every civ should start with about enough room to safely found 3 or 4 cities. Subsequent ones would drag it dangerously closer to a neighbor's natural territory.

Additionally, less land on a Tectonic map typically results in a small continents/large islands feeling where sea power becomes much more important at the expense of land power. Just like I dislike dull blocky Pangaeas as they make navies somewhat irrelevant and prevent naval civs from using their potential, I also am not fond of maps where there's no inland strategic depth, since they overpower naval civs. Vanilla's Continent script strikes IMHO a relatively good balance between sea and land power, but isn't satisfactory for other reasons which we seem to agree upon; otherwise, we wouldn't be discussing alternative scripts. In the Tectonic outcomes I try to avoid, landmasses are so thin that most relevant cities would be coastal ones.

I'm not opposed to a Pangea that is snaky, made of several subcontinents, featuring inland seas, isthmuses and peninsulas, as it doesn't really feel like a Pangaea (excepted for the lack of Renaissance exploration).

stuff

Very interesting results, thanks for the experiments. I didn't suspect my preferred settings on Tectonic resulted in such an overabundance of resources. I should run some tests with scarce resources for better balance.

 

[krazyhades]

I use Hellblazer's NQ map script. In my experience, Communitas makes for maps that are *way* too big relative to the number of players. I don't like it at all.

 

[Magean]

@Navanod : before I forget, there are caveats to your tests. The effective map size will not be the same across the scripts. A huge Continents will have 128x80 tiles, just like a huge Planet Simulator (which may be why they result in similar resource dotations), while a huge Tectonic is 152x96 (this is really huge) and a huge Communitas is only 92x62 tiles large. One would expect a very large map to have more abundant resources. Of course, the land/sea ratio will not be the same either. For example, Communitas typically generates large continents, therefore having as much land as a larger map. It would also be interesting to note the number of land tiles if such information is available.

 

[heinous_hat]

...while a huge Tectonic is 152x96 (this is really huge)...

Does that actually work? I keep forgetting to count tiles in game and WB has hard coded limits.

 

[Magean]

Does that actually work? I keep forgetting to count tiles in game and WB has hard coded limits.

I've just tried and counted 154 tiles on the length side of a huge tectonic map. Must have been 152 then, so apparently it works. I didn't bother with counting width tiles... it's not easy because there's no black line to follow along the poles. Anyway, it must have worked as expected then. This map was really, really big.

EDIT : been generating Tectonic samples again. 128x80, aka Large size for Tectonic (would be huge for Vanilla maps). As before, I set sea level to low, land to more, and islands to none. However, I decided to give more of a try to Snaky continents. The results were good. The sea level, land and islands options prevent Snaky's bad outcomes, that is to say continents that are merely stripes of land akin to large islands.

First, I generated five such maps with Plates set to more:






Then, I switched Plates to less (I avoided "normal" as an extreme setting was desirable to better emphasize the setting's effects), here are the results:






As you can see, less plates result in bulkier and in my opinion less interesting landmasses, that are nearly always true Pangaeas (taking the other settings into account). More plates create large islands and subcontinents, for a more interesting gameplay and better aesthetics. Note that More plates can quasi-consistently generate an inner sea somewhere, which is a feature I love and would like to be able to control at map generation.

A good alternative is to set Plates to more, continents to standard and sea level to medium. The end results are somewhat comparable. Medium sea level is compensated by standard (hence, blockier) continents. There'll be less land on average, but the overall shape of the outcome will be similar.

 

[Navanod]

@Navanod : before I forget, there are caveats to your tests. The effective map size will not be the same across the scripts. A huge Continents will have 128x80 tiles, just like a huge Planet Simulator (which may be why they result in similar resource dotations), while a huge Tectonic is 152x96 (this is really huge) and a huge Communitas is only 92x62 tiles large. One would expect a very large map to have more abundant resources. Of course, the land/sea ratio will not be the same either. For example, Communitas typically generates large continents, therefore having as much land as a larger map. It would also be interesting to note the number of land tiles if such information is available.

Thanks for the reminder.
Even so, we can probably draw some conclusions based on the ratios of resources.
I personally would like even bigger maps, hehe.