Caldera

Zholef

Warlord
Joined
Feb 20, 2014
Messages
192
Caldera.py produces maps that not so much look, but very much play like the history of the Mediterranean Sea. It aims to be the perfect cross between a land map script like Pangea and a water map script like Archipelago by making water units optional rather than superfluous (on land maps) or obligatory (on water maps).

Replay Mediterranean history: As the Romans, conquer the Carthaginians' rich islands and face Hannibal's army coming over the Alps. As the Greeks, piss off the mighty Persians, then block their huge land army with a handful of phalanxes in a narrow choke, while your triremes dismantle their fleet. As the Ottomans, use your frigates to gain command of the sea, preventing your opponents' islands from reinforcing their motherland, then bombard their coastal cities for your cavalry to take. You can even use the Vikings as stand-ins for the mysterious "Peoples of the Sea". Or you can simply "go Lib", build 50 cuirassiers and conquer the mainland for a domination win.

Get it here!

About version 1.0:

The script isn't quite where I intended to take it, but it's been collecting dust on my hard drive for so long already that I fear I may never truly complete it. So now I'm releasing it without those few extra features I had in mind. Bug reports and any other type of feedback (even negative) are welcome.

Works with Vanilla, Warlords and BtS, if its prerequisites (map scripts: Oasis, Boreal, Arboria, Rainforest, Great_Plains and Inland_Sea) are met.

About version 1.1:

Fixed resource balancing.

About version 1.2:

Fixed a bug related to river creation.

About version 1.3:

Changed starting plot assignment to be more reliable and scale better.

About version 1.4:

Added a new option which allows civs to start anywhere BUT on the mainland.
 

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Thanks, keldath! I'm glad somebody likes the first map script anyone posted in over two years. I wonder if I should advertise it in some more active part of the forum.
 
Cool. I mostly play mods and thus can't really use it with them, but it looks very nice, very interesting. Is there one 'bump' per civ or can you adjust it to have two or more?
 
Is there one 'bump' per civ or can you adjust it to have two or more?

In 1.0 it's one 'bump' per civ, but you can allow starts outside of the mainland, leaving some of them empty.
 
Since the mod does not have an install guide, I will make one:

  • If using Warlords, copy Boreal.py, Arboria.py, and Rainforest.py from ${Beyond the Sword}\PublicMaps and put them in ${My Documents}\My Games\Warlords\PublicMaps
  • Unzip the file
  • Copy Caldera.py to the PublicMaps folder (where we copied the BTS files to)
  • Copy CIV4GameText_MapScript_Caldera.xml to a place like ${Warlords}\Assets\XML\Text or ${Beyond the Sword}\Assets\XML\Text
  • Verify it's correctly installed by seeing, when starting a Caldera custom game, custom options such as resources, etc. are visible

It’s really great to see a new map script after there not being one for a couple of years. The maps look like fun, and I think they would work really well with TAM (The Ancient Mediterranean) and other mods. Note that ${Beyond the Sword} is where BTS is installed (such as c:\Program Files\2K Games\Civilization IV Complete\Beyond the Sword or what not), ${Warlords} is where Warlords is installed, and ${My Documents} is one’s “my documents” folder. The exact location is system, version, and install dependent, so your mileage may vary.

2021 edit: Restore Unicode smart quotes munged in migration
 
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Updated to version 1.1. The only change is that resource balancing works again.
 
Would you be interested in updating your map script with RI-specific stuff so that we can include it into our mod? I like its concept very much, but it would be beyond my python knowledge to add in all the necessary stuff myself.
 
Would you be interested in updating your map script with RI-specific stuff so that we can include it into our mod? I like its concept very much, but it would be beyond my python knowledge to add in all the necessary stuff myself.

I'd be happy to help, but I'm not familiar with RI. I just downloaded version 3.25 and map generation seems to work just fine. So what is it that would need to be done?
 
I'd be happy to help, but I'm not familiar with RI. I just downloaded version 3.25 and map generation seems to work just fine. So what is it that would need to be done?

Well, actually it mostly feels all right, since it places all the mod-specific resources, and most mod-specific features well enough - so the main thing that would be cool is maybe a bit more of RI-specific features (it feels like there are too few being placed, especially when it comes to sea features), and Hot Springs feature seems to frequently be missing altogether (but since it's intended to be a mostly cold-climate feature, its absence from a Mediterranean-themed map is not so big of a deal).

Anyway, you are right in that your script works quite well with RI as it is already, and that is quite remarkable (and markedly different from a lot of other scripts out there). Excellent job! :goodjob:
 
Well, actually it mostly feels all right, since it places all the mod-specific resources, and most mod-specific features well enough - so the main thing that would be cool is maybe a bit more of RI-specific features (it feels like there are too few being placed, especially when it comes to sea features), and Hot Springs feature seems to frequently be missing altogether (but since it's intended to be a mostly cold-climate feature, its absence from a Mediterranean-themed map is not so big of a deal).

Anyway, you are right in that your script works quite well with RI as it is already, and that is quite remarkable (and markedly different from a lot of other scripts out there). Excellent job! :goodjob:

Thanks. :) However, you should definitely generate some test maps with each of the climate settings because those have great influence on terrain types, features and resources. You might not want to have citrus fruits grow in a boreal forest, but how would I know that? It looks like some customization will be necessary anyway, because Giant size seems to break the script.

Why don't you do some more extensive testing and get back to me with a list of changes you need and a list of changes you'd like?
 
For modmakers it is best to change all maps the way you need them to work, resources etc etc after the generation in the dll, so you can run every mapscript out there I think.

Even though I am leaning towards doing everything in dll and just having the mapscript as a front for options, since doing more advanced things are so slow in python.
 
For modmakers it is best to change all maps the way you need them to work, resources etc etc after the generation in the dll, so you can run every mapscript out there I think.

Even though I am leaning towards doing everything in dll and just having the mapscript as a front for options, since doing more advanced things are so slow in python.

In this case it's not the mod's fault. Caldera comes with a number of custom climates, which mess things up. I suppose I could release a compatibility version with all the problematic bells and whistles removed. I'll have to give that some thought.
 
I really like this mapscript and I am fascinated by how well it creates what is said in the opening post: "maps that not so much look, but very much play like the history of the Mediterranean Sea".

I encountered some problems: When I start a Huge map with "start on the largest landmass" with 11 players everything is ok if I pick small or standard for "size factor" option, i.e. 11 "bumps" are created and each civ starts on its own, but with large "size factor" 11 bumps are created but the westernmost bump is ridiculously overcrowded with 2-5 civs starting there and some of the other 1-4 bumps are left devoid of civs while the rest have 1 civ per bump. (I am playing K-Mod.)

EDIT: It also happens in BTS and those multiple civs actually start on the exact same tile.
 
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I really like this mapscript and I am fascinated by how well it creates what is said in the opening post: "maps that not so much look, but very much play like the history of the Mediterranean Sea".

I encountered some problems: When I start a Huge map with "start on the largest landmass" with 11 players everything is ok if I pick small or standard for "size factor" option, i.e. 11 "bumps" are created and each civ starts on its own, but with large "size factor" 11 bumps are created but the westernmost bump is ridiculously overcrowded with 2-5 civs starting there and some of the other 1-4 bumps are left devoid of civs while the rest have 1 civ per bump. (I am playing K-Mod.)

EDIT: It also happens in BTS and those multiple civs actually start on the exact same tile.

Thanks for the feedback. The starting plot problem is fixed now. The new method used is much more reliable and robust. I hope that will make you like the script even better.
 
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