Civ designers know little about the Earth

[chazzycat]

I have a degree in geography and will vouch for the OP...the random map generator could be much more scientifically accurate. For instance it would be nice to see rain shadows, i.e. consisently dryer land on one side of a mountain range.

but the factors that determine climate are astronomically complicated. The best computers in the world still can't predict the weather more than a couple days out. In order to have scientifically accurate map generation there would have to be systems of plate tectonics, erosion, water currents, trade winds, etc....just way too complex to be generated on the fly with today's technology IMO.

so I am ok with it.

 

[Ozzy88]

Elfdemon it would be awesome if you created your own Earth Map that reflects the accuracy that you would like to see yourself in Civ 5. I play most of my games on the PerfectWorld 3 map because I like my maps to be somewhat accurate regarding geography.

Elfdemon if you haven't seen that map before, search for it in the mods section and see what the creator was trying to achieve.

I would be first to download your map if you put some effort into making an accurate reflection of Earth.

 

[historix69]

I think I remember that the manual of S.M.A.C. (1999) had a complete chapter just devoted to the theme of how to realistically simulate weather and climate on an artifical planet, with east-west-rotation, rainfall, water sheds, moisture, altitude, artificial mountains, artificial rivers, solar energy efficiency, rockyness of the soil, etc. all of them influencing the food harvest.

 

[Camikaze]

Civ designers know little about the Earth

And from the examples in the OP, thank goodness for it. They are meant to be implementing game balance, not realism. It would be terrible if they tried to accurately represent tile types, to the severe detriment of tundra and desert, and the game variance that can go with them.

 

[gozpel]

Not enough trees in the tundra?

Not ever close to the missing animals there, we should have walrusses!

And fishing whales and lots more.

But really, I don't really care, the map I''m given, I play!

 

[SammyKhalifa]

And from the examples in the OP, thank goodness for it. They are meant to be implementing game balance, not realism. It would be terrible if they tried to accurately represent tile types, to the severe detriment of tundra and desert, and the game variance that can go with them.

Map-wise, I would think people would be more concerned about why civs can't pick up the cows/horses/wheat/etc. from faraway tiles and put them down where their cities are. The spreading of cops and animals is one of the hallmarks of civilization, after all. I imagine you wouldn't have originally found cattle tiles in Texas or horses in the "Wild West" or wheat just about everywhere in the world. Gameplay-wise, though, it makes sense.

 

[formivore]

I've always been struck by the grassland/plains division, which is one of the atomic building blocks of the Civ experience, but isn't part of any ecological classification I've ever heard of. I don't know if "grassland" or "plains" are at all be scientific terms; I always thought they were two different words for the same thing. The two types of tile bases don't even produce much of a gameplay effect since the player can make them give equivalent yields by tweaking their improvements. I think they are mostly in the game to make the maps look pretty.

In Civ's defense, I've always rationalized grassland/plains was a kind of principal component breakdown of sub-arctic biomes into two categories: semi-arid and humid. So e.g. brown tile bases combine steppe and a Mediterranean biome, and green tile bases combine temperate forest and tropical forest (Actually, in the real world, aren't all humid sub-arctic climates covered with forest before man gets to them?). Whether semi-arid/humid is the first order split a real ecologist would make I have no idea.

 

[grandad1982]

Now all you need to do is work out how to put together a map script and put it out as a mod....

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I've always been struck by the grassland/plains division, which is one of the atomic building blocks of the Civ experience, but isn't part of any ecological classification I've ever heard of. I don't know if "grassland" or "plains" are at all be scientific terms; I always thought they were two different words for the same thing. The two types of tile bases don't even produce much of a gameplay effect since the player can make them give equivalent yields by tweaking their improvements. I think they are mostly in the game to make the maps look pretty.

In Civ's defense, I've always rationalized grassland/plains was a kind of principal component breakdown of sub-arctic biomes into two categories: semi-arid and humid. So e.g. brown tile bases combine steppe and a Mediterranean biome, and green tile bases combine temperate forest and tropical forest (Actually, in the real world, aren't all humid sub-arctic climates covered with forest before man gets to them?). Whether semi-arid/humid is the first order split a real ecologist would make I have no idea.

"Plains" described the terrain (flat) while "Grassland" describes what grows there. A plains can be a grassland, but it's not necessarily. My guess is that when they were originally designing the game, the tallgrass prairies here in America are what they had in mind. So yeah, I think in game it's just the amount of rainfall they get.

http://www.ehow.com/info_8536163_differences-between-plains-grasslands.html

 

[JWideman]

Civ has always had unrealistic map generation. But it's not meant to be a realistic simulation, and one shouldn't expect such. It "seems realistic enough" if you don't put too much thought into it. The tundra terrain isn't really tundra, and plains aren't really plains. Try not to get bogged down by the science and just enjoy it for what it is: a turn-based strategy game.

 

[headcase]

Sounds like they should rename plains to prairies. Would people be confused by hilly prairies?

If yields were increased a bit, It could make sense to make Taiga separate from Tundra (and have more yield than tundra but less than prairies).

Civ4 had mods that aimed for "realistic" map generation, don't know how accurate it was exactly.

 

[PhilBowles]

Whether semi-arid/humid is the first order split a real ecologist would make I have no idea.

Certainly we characterise biomes by rainfall - in West Africa, for example, the Sahel (arid grassland/semi-desert), Sudanese (semi-arid) savannah and Guinean (humid) savannah are the major ecological zones south of the Sahara and faunal distributions generally reflect that.

I agree that in mechanical terms savannah would be a better term for the 'plains' terrain type, not because it represents a dry habitat (as above, Guinean savannah is part of the humid tropics, as is the Brazilian Pantanal), but because it replaces a food with production. A dry grassland doesn't obviously lend itself to production more effectively than a wet one, however a savannah by definition is a combination of grassland (food) and trees (production). As you say, though, this is one of those hallowed institutions of Civ which, like the Zulus as a civilization, a 2050 end date, a 21st Century spaceship bound for Alpha Centauri, and Dan Quayle as the joke score, which is likely to remain with us forever more however inaccurate or anachronistic it now seems.

 

[Manlius]

I have a degree in geography and will vouch for the OP...the random map generator could be much more scientifically accurate. For instance it would be nice to see rain shadows, i.e. consisently dryer land on one side of a mountain range.

but the factors that determine climate are astronomically complicated. The best computers in the world still can't predict the weather more than a couple days out. In order to have scientifically accurate map generation there would have to be systems of plate tectonics, erosion, water currents, trade winds, etc....just way too complex to be generated on the fly with today's technology IMO.

so I am ok with it.

Rain shadows are a phenomenon encountered on spherical planets. The scientific background of the world generator is perfectly accurate when it comes down to cylindrical planets. I'm not sure about the scripts that create planar maps though...

 

[chazzycat]

The scientific background of the world generator is perfectly accurate when it comes down to cylindrical planets.

LOL! Actually thinking about it, rain shadows might be even stronger on a cylindrical planet, if it was possible for such a planet to exist. Assuming it spins...

 

[Lmaoboat]

I also noticed everything seems to be aligned to some sort of hexagonal grid and people are a hundred miles tall, which also does not happen in real life. This should be rectified immediately.

 

[thadian]

peru is in south america not south africa.

 

[Bibor]

There are many bad designs in the game due to mis-conceptions, and the designers also have a lack of fundamental understanding of the Earth system, resulting in totally unrealitic maps.

I can immediately see from the tone of your post that you have absolutely no clue how previous civilization games worked or even how Civilization V works. Everything, including terrain, in Civilization games is abstract.

Oil and most other "strategics" spawn in less fertile terrain (tundra, desert, marsh) for game balance.

Flood plains are "always there" near desert rivers for the simple reason that you can have a desert start. The same is true for desert hills that yield normal production.

Plains vs. Grasslands is something that stuck from previous Civ Games. Prarie would be the correct name, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that you have two types of lowlands. Again, for better gameplay.

Tundra represents all terrain that's colder (and less productive) than "grasslands" and warmer than ice. That's why you see "tundra forests" which would be an equivalent of taiga.

 

[Naokaukodem]

I can immediately see from the tone of your post that you have absolutely no clue how previous civilization games worked or even how Civilization V works. Everything, including terrain, in Civilization games is abstract.

That's the most unclever of a sorry excuse i've seen so far.

Oil and most other "strategics" spawn in less fertile terrain (tundra, desert, marsh) for game balance.

Then why not let those terrains to nature, if not delete them completely ?

Flood plains are "always there" near desert rivers for the simple reason that you can have a desert start. The same is true for desert hills that yield normal production.

Then why not tell the game not to make us start in desert ?

Plains vs. Grasslands is something that stuck from previous Civ Games. Prarie would be the correct name, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that you have two types of lowlands. Again, for better gameplay.

Actually plains are plains, they just named it after its default constitution. That's not exclusive of grassland, but instead of naming grassland "plain grassland" they just named it grassland.

Tundra represents all terrain that's colder (and less productive) than "grasslands" and warmer than ice. That's why you see "tundra forests" which would be an equivalent of taiga.

Tundra is tundra, if the developers would have had respected that, we would have ended up with more varied lands, for better gameplay. That's not as if we were stuck in 1980 in term of computer power.

 

[headcase]

Then why not tell the game not to make us start in desert?

For variety, it's sensible to have a variety of starts. I agree though that this doesn't necessarily mean "every river desert flatland should be a flood plain" (in fact, that works against the variety since you might as well be on grasslands). If desert starts meant more gold or faith (in G+K), or defense against opponents that are not accustomed to desert, or a population that can adapt and generate more with less (while fertile starts create a "lazy" or even rebellious population), those could make up for a desert start, if done in a way that is easy to understand and strategically satisfying.

Currently, the quality of starts varies quite a bit, flood plains or not.

 

[brianshapiro]

And from the examples in the OP, thank goodness for it. They are meant to be implementing game balance, not realism. It would be terrible if they tried to accurately represent tile types, to the severe detriment of tundra and desert, and the game variance that can go with them.

Personally, rather than having a forced game balance, I would prefer every game map to be unique, which would be helped by realism. There's nothing worse than every game being almost exactly the same, except with cosmetic differences. It makes things incredibly boring.

As people should know from my other posts, I'm a big promoter of realism in game in general for the same reason; I feel it makes Civilization more organic, and less mechanistic. It creates more variety, more complexity, more player choices, and more challenges.

More important than terrain types to me, though, has been the fact that Civ historically has had poor terrain generation, the maps it produces are much more featureless than what exists in the real world. There are no real things on Civ maps identifiable as peninsulas, ithimuses, bays, straights, etc., continents tend to be big "blobs". The end result is that the terrain has much less strategic value and strategic use than in the real world. I think figuring out a way to make this more realistic would improve the quality of gameplay.