Arrakis.py map script discussion

[cephalo]

One form of 'islands' on the Arrakis map are the Dunes. Can we use those in some way? Plenty of spice out there too.

 

[Deliverator]

Well, the Dunes terrain is meant to be made from sand just like the Deep Desert/Desert Waste. I don't think we should mess with that as I like the way they look.

A mapscript option to have more broken up landmasses roughly as shown in Ahriman's paper diagram would be nice. At the moment, it seems that we are a bit stuck. The issues are now well documented in this thread. What do you think of my suggestions a couple of posts ago?

My prefered solution is a two pronged approach: (i) at least have the option for thinner landmasses and more islands in Arrakis.py, (ii) alter the game system, perhaps along the lines I suggested a couple of posts ago to make spice harvesting and cultural borders interact in a better way, teaching the AI stuff where necessary.

 

[God-Emperor]

If the stuff in the DLL you are using doesn't work out for giving ownership of plots around harvesters...

It is possible to make plots part of your cultural area without actually adding any culture to the plot.

Final Frontier does this for the starbases. Because of this, if you destroy a starbase the ownership it was spreading to the tiles around it goes away without specifically doing anything. The plot ownership is done in the updateStarbaseCulture in CvFinalFrontierEvents.py via the function call "pLoopPlot.setOwnerNoUnitCheck(iPlayer)" as it loops over the pltos in the area around the starbase. Plots also have a plain .setOwner function, I'm not sure what the difference is. It is applied every turn, via onEndGameTurn.

 

[Ahriman]

Another thought:
Regarding offshore "islands" outside the main ring, take a look at the canon Dune map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_Arrakis.jpg
There are several such offshore island ridges. The Sihaya ridge, the Habbanya ridge for example.

These are definitely part of the fictional Dune.

 

[Ahriman]

The terrain seems to have stabilized for now. Would there be any interest in me making an actual Arrakis scenario map, based on the north pole map from the books? I've never made a map before, but it seems like it could be fun.

 

[Deliverator]

Final Frontier does this for the starbases. Because of this, if you destroy a starbase the ownership it was spreading to the tiles around it goes away without specifically doing anything.

This sounds like something worth exploring.

The terrain seems to have stabilized for now. Would there be any interest in me making an actual Arrakis scenario map, based on the north pole map from the books? I've never made a map before, but it seems like it could be fun.

I've thought that this would be good too. The starting point would probably be to create a two-tone version of the map and use BMP to WBS converter to make the basic outline of landmasses. Creating the whole thing by hand in World Builder would take ages.

 

[Ahriman]

Creating the whole thing by hand in World Builder would take ages.

Its taking a while, but not that long, hopefully won't be too inaccurate.
The perils of being technologically incompetent, I wouldn't know how to do this: "create a two-tone version of the map and use BMP to WBS converter".

Deliverator, could you take a look at the disagreement David and I are having about terraforming in the Modpacks forum thread? I feel pretty strongly that no-terraforming until you have a Reservoir (the second of the two buildings, so requiring a high level tech) is a bad way to go.

 

[Deliverator]

This is the BMP to WBS converter - it's just a time saving way of making scenario maps. It takes an image and converts it into a map. I might try this approach at some point and see how it compares with the version it sounds like you are making.

 

[davidlallen]

I feel pretty strongly that no-terraforming until you have a Reservoir (the second of the two buildings, so requiring a high level tech) is a bad way to go.

That is fine. Today, the decision to terraform a plot is to check if you have fresh water and the civic and at least one reservoir; then the chance of terraforming is 2% plus 0.5% per reservoir.

What condition and percent chance do you suggest?

 

[Ahriman]

Here was my suggestion:

Suggest alternative: terraforming begins as soon as you have way of liet civic. [Or way of liet civic and at least 1 catchbasin]

Terraforming happens only on fresh water plots.

Fresh water comes only from wells.
Catchbasins provides fresh water in 1 tile radius around the city.
Reservoirs provide fresh water in 3-tile radius around the city.

Each of your tiles with fresh water has X% chance to terraform up 1 step per turn.
X = a + b*#catchbasins you control + c*#reservoirs you control.

Maybe:
a = 1%, b=0.25%, c=0.5%.

This is the BMP to WBS converter - it's just a time saving way of making scenario maps.

Thanks, I might try it.
I am currently working on a Standard size map, screen shots attached, terrain placed, just starting to add bonuses.

I wonder if Large might be more appropriate for ~9 civs.

I decided to use graben for the basins, rock for land in the lee of the shield wall, and rugged for land exposed to the winds.

Any initial thoughts appreciated.

The converter looks like it would take a while to figure out how to use, I might hold off on that for now.

 

[Deliverator]

That's more or less how I would have done it except I would have used Mesa for the edge of the sheild wall, the mountains and for bits like the Attendant and outlying ridges. Maybe you are, but it's hard to see.

 

[Ahriman]

I don't have the mesa right up against the edge of the land, I generally have the mesa as ridges, with some flat land on either side. This seemed more geologically realistic to me, and its unclear from the maps I'm working on exactly where the ridgeline is supposed to be anyway.

Do you have a suggested map I work from?

Plus, we have to keep into account that you can't build cities or cottages on mesa tiles, so there need to be some flat land tiles around to build on.

 

[Deliverator]

When I was thinking of using the BMP converter, I was thinking of using this one as a base.

 

[koma13]

Sorry for my ignorance, but what is the idea behind disallowing city founding on mesa/hills terrain? I often see good city sites but can't build a city there because it is mesa. I even ended up opening the wb to change these tiles to flat terrain.

 

[Deliverator]

I would love to have cities on Mesa and we can easily enable it. The trouble is that they look awful. This is because Mesa is actually Peaks under the hood, and there is some nasty code somewhere that makes the buildings appear in a ring around the tile rather than on the tile. See here and here. There may be something obscure in an XML file somewhere that will fix it... but I haven't found it yet. My fear is that this is hard-coded in the game engine.

So we can enable them, but I think everyone will say - 'why are the graphics broken when I built a city on Mesa?'. Enable them in the XML - it looks bad.

 

[koma13]

My fear is that this is hard-coded in the game engine.

I thought building placement is related to the lsystem...

 

[davidlallen]

I thought building placement is related to the lsystem...

AFAIK the l-system is not sensitive to the terrain height. So if building placement is different for peaks, that is not controlled by the l-system. We had a related problem in Fury Road; we wanted to have a feature, which tiles like forest, but did *not* get cut by roads passing through. After a long discussion including some Firaxis devs, we learned it was not possible even with maximal sdk modding. It is inside the exe.

 

[Deliverator]

I searched the Lsystem before and found no references to peaks. I've searched the whole of the XML for Peak and couldn't find anything that looks like it would do anything.

The only way that would work graphically is to swap the heights and roles of PLOT_PEAK and PLOT_OCEAN since cities appear fine on PLOT_OCEAN - Use PLOT_PEAK for Ocean and PLOT_OCEAN for Peak, but I don't think that is a feasible change and the look would be different again from what we have now.

I know Cephalo did a bit of investigation into the SDK to try and see if it was possible to switch PLOT_PEAK and PLOT_OCEAN without affecting gameplay but I don't think he turned up anything.

 

[Ahriman]

A draft Arrakis map.

*edit*
Added start locations.

Comments appreciated.

 

[Ahriman]

Tweaked resource placement.