Communitas map script

[mitsho]

Yeah, I wasn't thinking of a pretty solution, rather just putting a row of landtiles for the whole length of the "old world" part of the map. Chances are we connect the biggest land units for them. I now realize that's the opposite of pretty and goes very much against the core ideas of the mod..., so yeah, forget that. Terra should probably be somethign for the later stages anyways, let's concentrate on leaders et al

 

[Thalassicus]

I got Mediterranean-style inland sea connections working!



This took much less time and effort than I expected. I found the connections by copying a Dijkstra's pathing algorithm I found online, and encountered few problems. I designed it so I can connect any areas of the map. This will work for land too! Seas are basically the opposite of continents, so I can use this to connect continents when we want to.

I'm also testing this with lakes. The inlets at the top of the image were actually lakes, connected to the ocean by large water instead of rivers. It simulates extremely wide hard-to-cross rivers like the Mississippi. I think I might do this for any lakes close to the ocean. Splitting the landmass can get excessive for a tiny 1-tile lakes far inland.

 

[confus1on]

I have to say it looks like this map script is getting better and better. You're doing a beautiful job Thalassicus!

 

[Thalassicus]

I think I'm mostly done for now. I might try some things to improve Terra-style maps, if I can find easy tasks, but otherwise I'm probably finished. I'm very happy with how this turned out.

I figure working on this map gave everyone time to try out BNW for a while. It's why I focused so much on this topic the past few weeks. Now that more people understand how BNW plays, we can shift our attention back to the mod.

 

[Naeven]

Wow, that river just made Denmark so much more fun. And gives ranged navies more access & use in regular combat. Awesome work!

 

[pintocat]

I'm using this map for the first time, multiplayer with a friend.

I didn't really read through the thread until afterwards, so I was very (pleasantly!) surprised and impressed, particularly with the rivers-to-lakes-to-ocean thing you have.

I only used the .lua map file, and one thing I noticed so far is that (of the civs I have encountered), all of them had non-coastal starts. Portugal, Polynesia, Morocco, Inca. (Inca usually is inland anyway). I'm not sure if the sea resource balance affected the placement relative to coastlines, maybe... but it's weird for seafaring civs to not get placed on a coast...

 

[Bridger]

I am really missing the city-states in the Terra mode. Why did we move almost all of them to the new world? I'd rather see a more even split. It makes the CSD mod much less interesting IMHO

 

[Tomice]

I am really missing the city-states in the Terra mode. Why did we move almost all of them to the new world? I'd rather see a more even split. It makes the CSD mod much less interesting IMHO

I described how to change this setting a few posts ago: Link

 

[Bridger]

I described how to change this setting a few posts ago: Link

Ah thanks, I missed that one

I really can't see any upside to the current CS setup though, and I can identify a lot of negatives:

1) Trade becomes much harder. On the current Terra map setup, I usually spawn quite a ways away from my closest neighbor. City-States usually bridged that gap and allowed you to trade with someone until the major Civ empires got close enough.

2) It weakens the CS civs (Greece/Mongolia/Sweeden). In my game there was only 1 city-state anywhere near me that I could find, and one I found later on the other side of the Ai Civs. If I was playing any of the CS focused civs I would feel completely screwed out of my UA until Astronomy.

3) Many Civs will have 0 CS allies. This just feels odd to me. City-States are one of the coolest parts of the game, and to basically relegate them to only the 2nd half of the time playing doesn't sit well with me at all.

4) The map felt too easy to expand into. While exploring I found something like 6 spots I wanted to settle on and was easily able to grab them with room to spare for my neighbors. Now I don't want it to be super-tight "OMG I can't even found a 3rd city!" situation, but after founding the 6 spots I still had 3-4 open spots I could have grabbed, and this is by Astronomy! I had no reason to fight anybody for anything The map is just too big! Putting a few CS back onto the "largest continent" would make things tighter and encourage fighting for territory more.

5) I really enjoy the City-State Diplomacy mod, and this setup relegates it's effects pretty much until Astronomy and later. The whole point of the mod is to make Geography matter more (City-States nearby are easier to control), and putting a total of 1 city-state next to you means you have no choices. You don't get to think "hmm, do I want that culture city-state to be my ally, or do I go a bit further to get that military CS?" You only have one choice, and that's if the AI let's you have it.



Needless to say, I'll be utilizing your tweak to change it to 50/50 I think

 

[Tomice]

Ah thanks, I missed that one

You're welcome!

I suggest you try to tweak the settings a bit and share your experience!

Many - if not all - settings we need for finetuning are easily changed either from the main ingame menu or within communitas.lua. Once you open it with notepad++ (which offers drastically better orientation within the file compared to windows notepad) you'll be surprised how well-documented the script is. Both Cephalo (the original creator of PW3) and Thal have documented the code lines so well, it's fool-proof enough even for me!

You should be able to tweak these settings ingame (among others):

• rough map size
• number of players
• number of city states
• sea level

And these are changeable within the lua file:

• percentage of CS's outside of the starting continent
• percentage of old vs new world
• detailed world size (exact number of tiles)

Reading your description, it seems like you should try 2 civs more, one map size smaller or alternatively higher sea level as a starter (in addition to the change to CS distribution).
Note that the map script is slightly more random than vanilla maps (which many people like), so you might just had some bad luck.



Thal is no Terra player himself, so he has to rely on us for feedback. The settings so far come mostly from creating test maps, they still need extensive playtesting.

 

[jacktannery]

I made you up some real islands from satellite maps - I'm not sure if they are good enough to use, but you could give it a try (saved as .pngs for transparency & I altered colours to match civ blue).

 

[Thalassicus]

@Bridger
I'm using the vanilla terra-map method of placing citystates right now. I'm testing ways to improve it. The next version should be better.

@pintocat
It's unusual for coastal civs to get inland starts. It would be interesting to see what your map looked like. You can get a good large screenshot of the strategic view this way:

1. save your game
2. from inside the game, go to menu -> retire
3. replay button -> map
4. press print screen
5. upload the screenshot to imageshack (or another website) from this location:
   
   \Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\ScreenShots

@jacktannery
Thank you! That should be very helpful when it's time to replace the isle graphics.

 

[Seek]

Thal - you never cease to amaze! Well done on the Mediterranean Sea change, should be a lot of fun.

One small last tweak I think is necessary, though: There seems to be vast swaths of desert in many of my games, probably too much. Most vanilla maps usually generate Deserts large enough for 2-3 cities, and I'm seeing Deserts large enough to plant 6-7 quality cities with 5+ resources nearby. These are visible in the two screeshots you posted above. It makes Desert Folklore extremely powerful, particularly with the Desert terrain yield changes making Desert a more desirable settling location.

 

[Thalassicus]

I'd like to ask a question for people who like Terra maps. Do you enjoy crowded starts followed by later expansion onto unclaimed continents? I think this sums it up, if I understand right. I changed the Terra option to create this situation more often. I included this for today's update.

I reduced terra-option map sizes, and shifted the Atlantic slightly towards the center, both of which will crowd the old world more.

Terra maps look for the biggest continent to place people on. Let's call this Eurasia. Communitas map is more unpredictable than vanilla terra, so Eurasia can randomly appear very small, less than a fourth of the total land area. This pushes citystates off Eurasia. When that happens, if we connect Eurasia to its neighbors (like Africa through Egypt), we form a bigger continent, which can hold more citystates. I adapted the sea-to-ocean method to link Eurasia to smaller continents when Eurasia is too small for citystates. This allows us to use normal CS placement instead of the inhabited/uninhabited method.


@Seek
I reached the same conclusion, and reduced the desertPercent setting in the map globals.

 

[shaken]

I think I figured out a way to solve the Terra citystate situation. My past half dozen test maps showed a better arrangement. I'm going to include this in today's update.

Terra maps look for the biggest continent to place people on. Let's call this Eurasia. Communitas map is more unpredictable than vanilla terra, so Eurasia can randomly appear very small, less than a fourth of the total land area. This pushes citystates off Eurasia. When that happens, if we connect Eurasia to its neighbors (like Africa through Egypt), we form a bigger continent, which can hold more citystates.

I adapted the sea-to-ocean method to link Eurasia to smaller continents when Eurasia is too small. This lets us have more citystates on Eurasia. It will only affect maps made with the Terra option.


@Seek
I reached the same conclusion, and reduced the desertPercent setting in the map globals.

Just want to say I really appreciate your very impressive work on this mapscript Thal. I've used it for a number of games over the past week or so, and the landmasses it creates are extremely varied and make for interesting gameplay.

And I'm glad to hear the desert issue was noticed. I took to turning the settings to cold / wet so I could get less desert in the maps I was generating.

 

[Tomice]

I adapted the sea-to-ocean method to link Eurasia to smaller continents when Eurasia is too small. This lets us have more citystates on Eurasia.

Sounds very promising!

 

[mystikx21]

That looks awesome.

Good on the desert change too.

 

[PKLarson]

The latest changes look great! When will the next version be ready to download, can't wait to try it out.

 

[pintocat]

@pintocat
It's unusual for coastal civs to get inland starts. It would be interesting to see what your map looked like. You can get a good large screenshot of the strategic view this way:

1. save your game
2. from inside the game, go to menu -> retire
3. replay button -> map
4. press print screen
5. upload the screenshot to imageshack (or another website) from this location:
   
   \Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\ScreenShots

As it's multiplayer, even loading it solo I don't seem to have any Retire option.

But here's a copy of the save.

Marrakech (Morocco) was me, and actually did start inland; I used my first turn to move him 3 spaces to the coast.

Yes, my friend and I are filthy casuals.

 

[Stalker0]

I'd like to ask a question for people who like Terra maps. Do you enjoy crowded starts followed by later expansion onto unclaimed continents?

i think this sums up my desire for terra perfectly.

Early on i like the fierce competition with a lot of close neighbors.

Later on, i love the age of exploration and getting to explore and expand to new lands.