Communitas map script

[Ahriman]

I prefer rivers in deserts, and floodplains, over lots of oases. Floodplains are a good terrain and are worth settling. Desert tiles adjacent to oases are still useless without Petra (which is bordering on too strong now).

We have historic counterparts of great civilizations rising on cities in desert (Nile, Niger), but no civilization really arises from desert oases (Arabs were from the coastal areas where it rains, the desert dwellers were always nomads).

 

[mystikx21]

It was much worse, I admit. But it's still too high a frequency per desert city. It is still possible to get several per city. 1-2 per desert city might be okay, 3-4 is not. 5-6 was insane. See the difference between albie's and stack's screens for oasis' alone.

We get flood plains and rivers instead and this doesn't imbalance the city, they require improvement to be excellent tiles and are basically like grassland, but with the ability to build Petra.

 

[shaken]

The code doesn't place oases adjacent to each other... if that's what you mean by clustering? PerfectWorld originally could do that but I blocked it.

I had this happen in my game I started last night. My starting city has 6-7 Oasis Tiles, at least three of which are adjacent to eachother. This is using the Communitas version from July 14th.

 

[Ahriman]

Deserts without rivers should be very marginal terrain, we should not expect cities to see cities there. Even a large expanse of desert should only have a handful of oases.
It sounds like oases are being placed in an attempt to make desert areas much like any other area for settlement. I do not think this is desirable.

We get flood plains and rivers instead and this doesn't imbalance the city, they require improvement to be excellent tiles and are basically like grassland, but with the ability to build Petra.

Petra doesn't affect flood plains, right?
It gives the ability to build solar plants.

But yes, oases are good tiles, don't require an improvement, and benefit from Petra.

 

[mystikx21]

Flood plains often implies that you have will have a number of desert tiles around, for the purposes of building Petra and having it have some useful effect on number of tiles. The plains themselves don't get impacted, nor should they. Oasis probably should not either, but if it's 1-2 per desert city, that's okay if it would. Currently it's essentially making desert settlement equal to anything else plus Petra making it better than anywhere else.

Solar plants I agree is a nice benefit too (don't need to use uranium), but it comes late.

 

[mitsho]

The issue does seem to be a purely psychological one. Deserts should feel empty, they don't in the screenshots above. Floodplains did look quite empty, so it worked...

If it's about the total amount of yields, I rather up the oasis' once more and decrease their quantity again. Or do the other thing I proposed: Increase other bonus ressource that can be found in desert like Sheep. Though that seems to fail for CEP Basic as the Ressource placement requires lua, right?

 

[ExpiredReign]

Wherever a city is founded it surely should NOT have more than 2 oases within its boundary. It just doesn't make sense IMO.

All the great desert based civs of the world were focused around floodplains.

The Nile basin for Egypt and the Fertile Crescent for Babylon, Assyria etc.

Petra is not near a floodplain but rather has an (artificial) oasis. So having deserts without floodplains is good if you want Petra since any desert/floodplain tile is not getting a benefit.

So oases are rare, that's why their yields are better than floodplains.
Now you can, and should, have 2 floodplains together which means your 2 desert tiles are now giving 4 food which is better than a single oasis of 3 food (& 1 gold).

Any attempt to make oases appear more than 2 per city area is going against the concept and mechanics of desert civilization.

You don't build in the desert unless there is a river to flood and fertilize your fields.
If there is no river, there must be a very good reason to build there. Oases should be the very good reason, and if they are very good, they should therefore be rare.

 

[Teholb]

It sounds like oases are being placed in an attempt to make desert areas much like any other area for settlement. I do not think this is desirable.

QFT

I like the idea of harsh expanses of terrain that simply might not be suitable for settlement. A sufficiently large desert/mountain range can have a huge impact on regional military campaigns.


As an aside, I really wish units would take damage from ending a turn inside Desert tiles without access to fresh water. Maybe something small like 10, so it would be like attrition and painful to cross large deserts, but only a minor inconvenience otherwise.

 

[mitsho]

We try to simulate this with the higher movement costs on desert. Making them lose health would be bad for the AI since it doesn't calculate that into its decision. It would result in a huge boost for the human player, so the movement penalty is better.

 

[Teholb]

Ah, I didn't know the AI was incapable of that sort of thing, but yeah, it's more of a random desire than anything. I'm curious now, though: does the AI calculate religious attrition (unwanted proselyting without Open Borders), or does it simply spam missionaries/GPs until the job is done? I can't say I've ever seen a missionary prior to actually have OB agreements in place- is it specifically because they can't take the attrition costs into consideration properly, or am I just lucky/not seeing when it happens?

 

[mystikx21]

I've seen them try to send them through borders often. It might be calculating to avoid it but they only have so many movement points and get stuck. Agreed that two move deserts are probably sufficient to model the attrition factor (takes more supply to get through, something like that).

 

[Thalassicus]

It sounds like oases are being placed in an attempt to make desert areas much like any other area for settlement. I do not think this is desirable.

Civ 5 terrain generation equalizes terrain value everywhere on the map. It's always been like this since Civ 5 released. This is heavily integrated into the vanilla map generation system. I would not ever want to return to Civ 4's extremes of good and bad terrain, because it makes our success depend too much on random map luck. It would be too vast a change for me to attempt, because map generation involves tens of thousand of lines of code, and this fundamental principle is embedded everywhere.

I keep deserts the same value as vanilla maps.

We could set desert tiles around oases as floodplains, then make oases spawn 15% as often. This compromise would keep about one third of desert tiles valuable, while maintaining the realistic look of few rivers in deserts. I'm going to try it out.

I did this compromise. It makes deserts look more like the Sahara while keeping the percentage of valuable desert tiles unchanged from vanilla Continents Plus. I expect to release this update tomorrow.

(I know most deserts are actually scrub-brush, not rocky plains, but they designed desert artwork in Civ 5 to look like the Sahara. I'm not too talented at artwork so changing the visual style to scrub-deserts is beyond the scope of my capabilities.)

 

[ExpiredReign]

This screenshot http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12606624&postcount=21 shows oases appearing like pimples on a teenager's face.

All points aside regarding graphics and actual desert qualities. Does this not show terrain modifying oases in an area that should be harsh and unforgiving?

If I placed a city 2 tiles to the right of that barb camp I would have 9 oases within my city's radius. Significantly greater than a river with floodplains running through it.

 

[Thalassicus]

Version 3.0.6 should have fewer oases, while maintaining the same terrain balance as earlier versions and vanilla maps.

 

[AnthonyG]

Got a map with this script (using 3.0.5) that was basically two large continents facing each other with the middle blocked off by ice at either end of both continents (I was on the outside of one of them). Made it interesting, but without being able to cross the ice, bar subs, it's not something I'd like to play too often.

 

[Thalassicus]

I'd love to see a screenshot of the minimap if you still have a savegame, AnthonyG.

 

[AnthonyG]

Sure thing. Here's some pics of the 4 blocked areas and one making it clear where I started as Germany.

 

[Teholb]

I keep deserts the same value as vanilla maps. I keep repeating this but it seems to get lost in the conversation. It's just visually different, and I'm working on improving the visuals.

Hey, I'm just some random guy that likes your work. I don't really care how vanilla is, which is why I favor your stuffs

But I wasn't trying to argue against your decision. I understand the reasoning behind it, I just always like "flavor" additions. Sorry if I came off as demanding/insistent, I really was just throwing stuff out there.

 

[Ahriman]

Civ 5 terrain generation equalizes terrain value everywhere on the map

But it does it by region, right? Not literally by every possible place you could build a city. So the arctic and desert areas still tend to not be very good for map placement.

I keep deserts the same value as vanilla maps. I keep repeating this but it seems to get lost in the conversation. It's just visually different,

Changing from flood plains to oases is not just visually different, it has gameplay consequences. Oases don't require an improvement, and are improved to super-tiles by Petra. Flood plains require an improvement, give you some flexibility over this improvement, and are not improved by Petra.

We could set desert tiles around oases as floodplains

This doesn't really make geographic sense though, it has really weird flavor. Floodplains flood (because they're on rivers). Oases don't.

Flood plains make good flavorful sense: the Nile valley civilizations and the Niger valley civilizations and the Tigris/Euphrates civilizations and the Indus civilizations grew around flood plains in arid areas, because they were on long rivers where the rainfall happened elsewhere. They are the cradles of civilization. No civilizations grew up around desert oases.

I don't think we want maps like the Sahara; the Sahara is basically uninhabitable. It is a terrain barrier.

If a map looks like the Sahara but can still have good cities in it, then something is wrong.

I'll take a look at the new version and see how it looks, but I don't understand why we would be trying to reduce/remove flood plains or remove rivers going through desert areas. We're fixing something that isn't broken.

The photo from space isn't very helpful; it's true that the river valley floodplains don't take up a lot of area. But they are hugely important and take up a lot of civilization-space. Most of the space on the real world map is empty, but that isn't how cities in the game work - cities in Civ have large hinterlands and work on tiles over large areas. So the rivers/floodplains model works better.

 

[ExpiredReign]

I'll take a look at the new version and see how it looks, but I don't understand why we would be trying to reduce/remove flood plains or remove rivers going through desert areas

This is probably the best advice for ALL of US.

I am currently still playing through the vanilla BNW just to see what Firaxis has done so I haven't even seen the 'Communitas map' at work.
(Part of the being in a part of the world that isn't USA is you get the expansions later.)

Reading this discussion it LOOKED like oases where springing up all over the place and I made my comments based on that.

If Thal says the calculations are correct and the map generation will not produce "stupid" deserts, then let us play and see. I'm willing to pull my head in and defer to greater skill.