[GUIDE] Map scripts

[ryanmusante]

@JMA2286 I see, it wouldn't let you attach a lua, so you can also just rename the file after downloading.

 

[Leondegrance]

How do these mapscripts compare to each other regarding Civ start terrain bias ?

I play mostly Tectonic and it is not uncommon to see Morocco start at tundra or jungle.

I used to love Perfectworld but it generates way too much deserts in the world.

And also, which is really important to me, how do they compare in map size ? Which one is the biggest on Huge and recommended for playing 43 Civs and 20 City States ?

 

[DrBaryon]

One thing I noticed with Communitas is that playing as India I found it completely impossible to get a start with floodplains to make extra use of the UB. I tried setting temperature to hot and restarting 10+ times, with no success. Wheras it took 2-3 tries on Continents. I think floodplains might just be super rare on that map.

 

[tu_79]

One thing I noticed with Communitas is that playing as India I found it completely impossible to get a start with floodplains to make extra use of the UB. I tried setting temperature to hot and restarting 10+ times, with no success. Wheras it took 2-3 tries on Continents. I think floodplains might just be super rare on that map.

You need to increase rivers as well.

 

[DrBaryon]

You need to increase rivers as well.

I spawned on a river like 50+% of the time. Always on plains and grassland. A shortage of rivers isn't the problem, it's a shortage of rivers through desert. The script doesn't seem very good at generating a Nile, Fertile Crescent, or Indus, and given the historical importance of those rivers I'd say that's an oversight.

 

[ryanmusante]

How do these mapscripts compare to each other regarding Civ start terrain bias ?
I play mostly Tectonic and it is not uncommon to see Morocco start at tundra or jungle.
I used to love Perfectworld but it generates way too much deserts in the world.
And also, which is really important to me, how do they compare in map size ? Which one is the biggest on Huge and recommended for playing 43 Civs and 20 City States ?

How important is start bias? I disable it because I want each civ including myself to have to fight for survival from the start.

 

[neo_arcadia]

For example, when a totally random location of Iroquois are not near jungles-heavy region and instead thrown to the desert they are not going to be able to compete with that unsuitable condition. Plenty of civs want to stay away of mountain chain where Inca supposed to be located and instead you find Mongol there. For me it's an unbalanced and crippling condition for any of my competitor when their UA,UI, UB are heavily influenced by terrain and so I never turn start bias off. I don't know about the sequence of game generation when starting a new game, is it map first and then suitable civ (if random) second or random civ from civ pool first and then map second. Those two different kind of sequence are different in effect.

 

[azum4roll]

One thing I noticed with Communitas is that playing as India I found it completely impossible to get a start with floodplains to make extra use of the UB. I tried setting temperature to hot and restarting 10+ times, with no success. Wheras it took 2-3 tries on Continents. I think floodplains might just be super rare on that map.

I just got one with all random settings, so it's just luck.

 

[ryanmusante]

For me it's an unbalanced and crippling condition for any of my competitor when their UA,UI, UB are heavily influenced by terrain and so I never turn start bias off.

That's a good point so I restored start bias as I'm looking for more balance, not less.

 

[black213]

I decided to also make some changes to the Communitas.lua file and share my settings that have very similar percentages of land to my Planet Simulator file.

There's actually quite a bit more to play with there, so Earth-style Communitas looks promising.

Instead of having to download it like with Planet Simulator, Community Patch gets it in the mapscripts folder of the main file.

Edit - I tweaked the settings a bit after some trial and error, and one of the things that you'll notice is that Eurasia-style continents are much more realistic than with the default settings. There are Mediterranean / Baltic inland seas, and much more land that is continuous, which makes Domination victories more palatable.

If you want more island-hopping WW2 America vs. Japan gameplay, tweak the continental scatter settings. I'd recommend incrementally upping that percentage, because it can get really goofy, like all of Eurasia being like SE Asia goofy, if you go too high too fast.

I also reduced the desert %, because my 33% standard was based on the definition from rainfall, which doesn't necessarily mean hot deserts. Antarctica is technically a desert, but it's freezing cold. I'm not finding reliable %s, so I'm just putting it at 15% so there's a Sahara desert potential.

Did you intend to also add forested deserts? Just downloaded your edit of Communitas and am noticing that oddity.

 

[JMA2286]

Hey yall it's been a while, busy.

So I did a little more research and found out a way to refine climates by latitude to a point I didn't think was possible before. There are 4 settings for climates in the map, as well as 4 general latitude regions, but for whatever reason I didn't consider using the polarfront latitude as a temperate latitude before.

These settings I've uploaded set up 4 general regions - the Tropics, Subtropics, Temperate, and Boreal.

The Tropics are going to be heavy jungle near the equator, from about 22 degrees N to 22 degrees S. Jungle start civs should spawn here just about every time, like the Mayans.

The Subtropics are going to be heavier on desert, just like they are on Earth. There should be flood plains, oases, etc. and civs like Morocco, Arabia, etc. should start there. This will roughly be from 23 degrees to 35 degrees N and S.

Temperate is going to be where plains, grassland, and forests mostly reside, along with tundra the further you go north or south, similar to Europe, East Asia, and how the northern United States and southern Canada are. This will be from 35 degrees to 62 degrees N and S.

Boreal climate is where ice and snow are, from 62 to 70 degrees N and S. In order to really have regions like this, I adapted the map settings so that landmasses do not skip these latitudes. Russia isn't really Russia without Siberia right? Neither is Canada without that massive northern area. There is still room to circumnavigate the world up north or south though.

The trick is temperature settings. Even though the polarfront setting was designed for the boreal climate, I have the temperature settings divided into 3 major settings. Desert minimum temperature starts at around 35 degrees, making Mediterranean climates a thing. Jungle minimum starts at 23 degrees. Tundra starts at around 50 degrees. This makes for North Africa, Middle East climates, Congo & Amazon rainforests, and Northern Europe / Siberia regions.

This is in contrast to the way it was before, which did not include a Subtropic region. There was a general "horses" latitude that included everything from subtropics to the arctic. This isn't how climate actually is on Earth - the Subtropics is how the Southwest US and Mexico is so dry, along with N Africa, Middle East, and Southern India. I also aligned monsoon winds with the latitudes they coincide with IRL. This will make for even more diverse subtropics than before, since that latitude region is also where the monsoon winds are.

The end result is probably the best Earth-like maps I've seen randomly generated. Each region fits the mold, and trying to conquer the world like this will be interesting to say the least.

Just copy and paste the text file's settings into the Communitas.lua file in the Mapscripts folder of the Community Patch

Hope you enjoy the results!

 

[ryanmusante]

Hey yall it's been a while, busy.

Just copy and paste the text file's settings into the Communitas.lua file in the Mapscripts folder of the Community Patch

Hope you enjoy the results!

Can I rename and move Communitas Regions.lua into the My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/Maps folder? Would that also work and not conflict becaus of separate name?

 

[JMA2286]

The text in the file itself is what needs to be copied and pasted. The title would mess things up, it needs to be a .lua file for the script to work

 

[ryanmusante]

Done like this, does it work OK loading from the Maps folder or does it have to be activated via Mod?

 

[JMA2286]

That would interfere with the Communitas.lua file in the Mapscripts folder of the (1)Community Patch folder in the MODS folder of Civilization V via My Games, if you use Windows.

If you use that one, you would need to delete the Communitas.lua file in the Mapscripts folder.

 

[ryanmusante]

The end result is probably the best Earth-like maps I've seen randomly generated. Each region fits the mold, and trying to conquer the world like this will be interesting to say the least.

These inputs should be added to base VP communitas in the next patch. Can the same be done with Tectonic or is it a completely different setup?

 

[tu_79]

Much appreciated. Would it be much work for you to fix the fish spawning? We love Communitas map, but the lack of fish makes it unbalanced. I looked into the code but wasn't able to find how to fix that. We're currently relying on really advanced setting for adding a few more fishes, but that's not something you can ask everyone to do.
Thanks a lot!

 

[JMA2286]

I have a suspicion about where that is coming from, but I'm going to test it for a bit.

Thanks, yall. Glad to contribute

 

[black213]

I have a suspicion about where that is coming from, but I'm going to test it for a bit.

Thanks, yall. Glad to contribute

Civs seem to start very near to each other in your edit. There's only 6 tiles between Moscow and Carthage in my game.

 

[JMA2286]

Civs seem to start very near to each other in your edit. There's only 6 tiles between Moscow and Carthage in my game.

Yep, it's intentional. The land percentage is Earth-like, so the distance between capital spawns can be pretty close together. Usually, though, that means there's an island chain or another landmass nearby.