In my screenshot there is no water yield there.
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I think this experiment is one *input* to faction balancing, which is the point of this particular thread.
This is a fair point, and I agree. It can help guide us, and evaluate the impact of changes.
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"Better" may be subjective. Better how?
These are of course subjective.
More decent city spots, fewer useless city spots or islands that are too small to support a city, more connected land that is contested, cultural contesting actually important, more space for resources, larger graben/saltpan "sinks" that actually look like sinks (rather than little 2-3 tile channels).
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Also, how would the game change if we deleted the size 3 islands?
Fewer junk city spots.
More aesthetically pleasing look; I think the small 1 and 2 tile islands look bad.
Remove worrying about the AI issue of unloading on small islands.
Less human exploit of building forts on the small islands (just inside culture) to expand culture range and capture more spice.
With regards to small saltpans - this is to do with the shape of the landmasses.
Agreed. Overall the maps are good, but they still often have a lot of empty space where no good cities can be built.Overall people might want different things from different games so I think a range of options is good.
changing the default land percent from 22% to 24%
I actually like Archipelago and play on it most games, but not because of it being first in the list. I do see your point concerning new players though. IMO, maybe Arrakis should be made the first choice in the list, while still keeping Archipelago as a choice for those who like it.I am tempted to remove Archipelago map for 1.8. It's a bit ropey these days since it hasn't had any of the city placement logic added or any other refinements. The reason to remove it is that I think Arrakis now offers the best gameplay experience for Dune Wars and I'm concerned a lot of new players will play Archipelago since it is first in the list. I have advocated keeping two mapscripts in the past, but I think I've changed my mind.
From a quick glance, the added mesa to break up big blocks of rock/rugged works pretty well. We might have a tiny bit too much mesa now, I'll have to play more and look at some more maps to see.
#How many map squares will be above peak threshold and thus 'peaks'.
self.PeakPercent = 0.065
Jester Fool said:I actually like Archipelago and play on it most games, but not because of it being first in the list. I do see your point concerning new players though. IMO, maybe Arrakis should be made the first choice in the list, while still keeping Archipelago as a choice for those who like it.
From a quick glance, the added mesa to break up big blocks of rock/rugged works pretty well. We might have a tiny bit too much mesa now, I'll have to play more and look at some more maps to see.
#How many map squares will be above peak threshold and thus 'peaks'.
self.PeakPercent = 0.065
Jester Fool said:I actually like Archipelago and play on it most games, but not because of it being first in the list. I do see your point concerning new players though. IMO, maybe Arrakis should be made the first choice in the list, while still keeping Archipelago as a choice for those who like it.
From a quick glance, the added mesa to break up big blocks of rock/rugged works pretty well. We might have a tiny bit too much mesa now, I'll have to play more and look at some more maps to see.
#How many map squares will be above peak threshold and thus 'peaks'.
self.PeakPercent = 0.065
Jester Fool said:I actually like Archipelago and play on it most games, but not because of it being first in the list. I do see your point concerning new players though. IMO, maybe Arrakis should be made the first choice in the list, while still keeping Archipelago as a choice for those who like it.
Locate the file Arrakis.py in your Dune Wars/Public Maps folder. Early on in that file there is some code:
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#How many map squares will be above peak threshold and thus 'peaks'.
self.PeakPercent = 0.065
0.065 means the 6.5% of the map squares will be Mesa (Peaks as far as the code is concerned).
If you change the 0.065 to 0.06 or 0.0625 then you can reduce the overall amount of Mesa slightly to compensate for the extra Mesa tiles that are being added. If you find a nice value for that setting then I can include in 1.8 which I'll probably try to assemble this weekend.
2. I think we need a band of Desert Waste between the Polar Desert Waste and Land otherwise you get graphical glitches.
3. We need to add the same city placement logic that was done for Arrakis. Stop civs starting on Polar.
I am not sure what to do exactly. If there is land in the third row, I guess your suggestion is to convert it to normal coast. But, that will throw off some of the other calculations about mesa, won't it? If it looks OK to go from polar, to *normal* coast, to normal land, then perhaps the calculation on the second row should "look ahead" to the third row. If there is normal land, put normal coast; otherwise put polar coast.
If you are seeing archipelago polar terrain starts, then either, this is not working, or archipelago locally overrides AI_foundValue. I have not traced very far. So, the local placement "should" already prevent polar terrain starts on archipelago.
AFAIK they don't, although I have seen the AI, and been able to myself, start with access to the polar terrains (BFC). IMO, this is not a problem but a unique part of playing archipelago maps.Stop civs starting on Polar
Tweaking the archipelago map should probably be the *last* priority if you ask me.I think I would rather focus on other things than figuring this out right now.
AFAIK they don't, although I have seen the AI, and been able to myself, start with access to the polar terrains (BFC). IMO, this is not a problem but a unique part of playing archipelago maps.Tweaking the archipelago map should probably be the *last* priority if you ask me.