Continents

[Cerilis]

Now I want a plate tectonics simulator.

There was a civ4 map though, that would simulate plate tectonics.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

I think just a little bit extra graphics diversity for terrain would be great, and correlating some of that to continents may be a good idea! However continents are more of territory delimitation thing and more ordered rather than a natural or biological organic delimitation so may end up with delimitation of nature features difference that don't look organic enough if they only follow continent borders (?)

 

[smartcanuck1988]

Civ V has totally screwed all map scripts by making the maps gamey and dependent on the number of players and, worse, city-states. Civ VI may be more clever as city states have innate bonuses, so the luxury resources may not be hard-coded to appear in the city-states borders.
Number of players is, by default, linked to map size, so it's a good approximation.

A good idea for the developpers would be to provide each continent with its own art-style. For instance, give oak forests to Europa and palm-tree forests to Asia. Make sure there's some kind of difference for basic plains and prairies, use different kinds of mountains and hills, maybe just color shading, so that the distinction becomes clear without requiring use of the lenses.
Of course, this would require a lot of graphics, as you'd need 4 sets for each terrain.

Agreed, the art style can definitely help with this. They took the trouble of giving different art styles for units of different civs, I'm sure they won't mind making 4 art styles of trees which is enough to separate the regions.

But I still hope that the separation is more pronounced in terms of the tiles themselves. Mainly to make the default behaviour of civs is to settle in their own continent first. It would also make the continent-related civ bonuses feel less arbitrary.

The border can be made of things like sea, mountain range, 2-3 tile thickness of desert, or 2-3 tile thickness of forest/jungle/hills. It can be a combination of different combinations of these features that stretch around the continent. Can a map script enforce these rules?

 

[LDiCesare]

A map script could easily enforce such rules.
I wrote the civ4 tectonics map script mentioned above. In it, I know during terrain generation, for each tile, which plate (continent) it belongs to. Mountain ranges happened where continents met (like the himalayas). It would be possible to force hill ranges or desert or plains or whatever on a border between continents, but whether this would look realistic remains to be seen. For instance, you could decide that in the west it's supposed to be rainy, so fore the terrain to prairie/forest, and in the east it's dry, so force that continent tiles to be desert, making a marked contrast. Adding abstract "climate" modifiers to plates/continents would probably work, but most of the time, you get lakes, hills or mountains at the borders.
However, there are also cases when the plates meet and frankly noone sees the difference (like in Siberai where American and Eurasian plates meet). It would be possible to create a hill range right there just for the sake of helping the player understand what's happening, but I think it's a bit artificial.

 

[smartcanuck1988]

A map script could easily enforce such rules.
I wrote the civ4 tectonics map script mentioned above. In it, I know during terrain generation, for each tile, which plate (continent) it belongs to. Mountain ranges happened where continents met (like the himalayas). It would be possible to force hill ranges or desert or plains or whatever on a border between continents, but whether this would look realistic remains to be seen. For instance, you could decide that in the west it's supposed to be rainy, so fore the terrain to prairie/forest, and in the east it's dry, so force that continent tiles to be desert, making a marked contrast. Adding abstract "climate" modifiers to plates/continents would probably work, but most of the time, you get lakes, hills or mountains at the borders.
However, there are also cases when the plates meet and frankly noone sees the difference (like in Siberai where American and Eurasian plates meet). It would be possible to create a hill range right there just for the sake of helping the player understand what's happening, but I think it's a bit artificial.

Nice! I agree that having ranges just for the sake of a border might look too artificial, but knowing it can be possible is awesome

I've been watching gameplay vids and I have to say that unlike the impression I was getting from the few screenshots posted here, the continents seem to be reasonably separated by different features. It's hard to know exactly what's going on at the border, but the early cities start sufficiently within the "heart" of their own continent. Every time a tooltip would show up to indicate the continent, I'd make a guess what I think it should be and it's been reasonable. I guess it's one of those things that we'll have to play ourselves or wait for someone to go over the continents lens more thoroughly than to rely on few select screenshots.

 

[demidyad]

I haven't been able to comb through every video - has anyone got a good look at the Continents lens?

 

[Silverdawn]

I think the best one is still the one I mentioned earlier in this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=14386588&postcount=55

Ed talked about it in the Germany livestream but the border was by the Mt. Everest mountain range and I couldn't see anything clearly.

 

[JimmyBanks]

I like the inclusion of "Continents" although it does make the concept of having a map design called Continents and then when you get on it a Continent has multiple continents on it a bit confusing.

 

[Polobo]

My first reaction is that the definition of continent for purposes of game mechanics should be a distance factor from the capital city location. I'd probably modify it from being a strict radius to something more like "total hex coverage" where if one direction is halted due to being on the edge of a map or at the deep-water boundary the lost tiles in that direction can be replaced with additional tiles in the other direction.

As it is now its an odd constraint for the game to have. I don't think I'd go so far as to says it either good or bad. It introduces an element of randomness to the game, which I kinda like, and while you can min-max here you don't have to. I would hope that at least the continental divide is placed beyond 7 tiles away from all starting settlers so the entire capital radius (assuming minimal movement) is all on one continent.

 

[JimmyBanks]

My first reaction is that the definition of continent for purposes of game mechanics should be a distance factor from the capital city location. I'd probably modify it from being a strict radius to something more like "total hex coverage" where if one direction is halted due to being on the edge of a map or at the deep-water boundary the lost tiles in that direction can be replaced with additional tiles in the other direction.

As it is now its an odd constraint for the game to have. I don't think I'd go so far as to says it either good or bad. It introduces an element of randomness to the game, which I kinda like, and while you can min-max here you don't have to. I would hope that at least the continental divide is placed beyond 7 tiles away from all starting settlers so the entire capital radius (assuming minimal movement) is all on one continent.

I seem to recall Ed Beach saying there would be an average of 2 Civs per continent, I'm not sure if he meant per continent as in "Continental Map" (land mass) or if he meant to civs per "continent" as in continents shown in game on continent map view?

 

[Silverdawn]

He was referring to continents shown by the lens not landmass.