[GUIDE] Map scripts

[vyyt]

I just had a Tectonic game (mostly all settings random) where the water level was so high that there was barely any land at all. I started only a couple tiles away from Germany, and founding my starting city effectively eliminated him from the game. All land tiles hand resources on them, and most coast tiles did as well.

I quit because it was stupid.

Wow, how did you achieve that? It could have been the random settings. Try going with the default/standard settings. The main reason for me for sticking with Tectonic is exactly the good balance of land vs sea with land massive enough to allow big battles without hindering AIs with too many chokepoints and snaky peninsulas.

Oh, and one more thing, the world sizes are about 1 step larger than standard, so huge is really huge.

And one more one more thing, make sure that you are playing Tectonic, not Tectonics - these 2 are different.

 

[ryanmusante]

Wow, how did you achieve that? It could have been the random settings. Try going with the default/standard settings. The main reason for me for sticking with Tectonic is exactly the good balance of land vs sea with land massive enough to allow big battles without hindering AIs with too many chokepoints and snaky peninsulas.

Oh, and one more thing, the world sizes are about 1 step larger than standard, so huge is really huge.

And one more one more thing, make sure that you are playing Tectonic, not Tectonics - these 2 are different.

Do we know if Tectonic is fully compatible with VP currently? Some have reported possible glitches. Although I couldn't confirm whether it was connected:
https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/issues/5165

 

[Rekk]

Tectonic is just a map script. It's got nothing to do with AI.

If you need more confirmation, the AI upgraded sugar just fine in my VP+Tectonic game.

 

[ryanmusante]

Tectonic is just a map script. It's got nothing to do with AI.

If you need more confirmation, the AI upgraded sugar just fine in my VP+Tectonic game.

I was concerned more about the allocation of resources/luxuries (More Luxuries) and issues that might reside in that part of the script.

 

[psparky]

Thanks for this thread. My longtime favorite is Planet Simulator, but I've recently noticed that there is virtually no forest on plains. IIRC, in vanilla the yields don't depend on the underlying terrain, but in VP they do, so it's a little boring. Having the choice to work an extra food or an extra production is nice.

Taking advice from this thread, I've played my last three games on Frontier and I've enjoyed the maps. It seems there are more different luxury clusters, and typically 5 or 6 of each rather than each civ having one with 8 or 9 copies. You get a choice of which to pursue or to get more than one monopoly. I really like this. I played one pangea and two continents maps. The only downside was that there were some large continents without a single mountain. Will certainly play again though.

I've just fired up a new game using Tectonic map for the first time, everything standard with recommended 10 civs and 20 CS. I've got two neighbors very close and a third not too far away. Certainly not what I was expecting. Is this typical, just bad luck, or did I mess something up?

Spoiler :

Ethiopia is south, they own that wheat.

Edit: Just checked and Spain have met all except one of the civs, so I guess it's a pangea - again, not what I was expecting.

 

[Bhawb]

I've been trying new maps recently and I just can't seem to find anything very good. Communitas is a bit wonky, but at least with how completely different every map is I can just peek at the map through IGE to see if it is worth keeping (IE: no lone-continent Inca with 100 mountains). Continents+ just throws every city state onto every possible island, Hellblazer's Pangea is a good Pangea but I'm not a huge fan of my capital starting in both Arabia and Zulu's "your capital is my territory" range, and Hellblazer's Continents just doesn't spawn islands.

All I want is a nicely varied map with appropriate variation in terrain and features for different civs without being OP and uninhabited islands and city states actually sprinkled throughout the map, is that too much to ask for? Cuz it seems like it, and its weird that a decent map is the most annoying part of the game.

 

[vyyt]

Wasn't there some Continents variation (Continents+++ ???) which put some city states inland?

 

[Bhawb]

Probably, but I'm not finding it too well. I'm just trying to play an Aztec game and I'm literally starting in the middle of the desert in most map types, except Continents Plus which will give me a jungle but then cities states are off in the middle of Narnia so you can't bully them early.

 

[doublex55]

I've been trying new maps recently and I just can't seem to find anything very good. Communitas is a bit wonky, but at least with how completely different every map is I can just peek at the map through IGE to see if it is worth keeping (IE: no lone-continent Inca with 100 mountains). Continents+ just throws every city state onto every possible island, Hellblazer's Pangea is a good Pangea but I'm not a huge fan of my capital starting in both Arabia and Zulu's "your capital is my territory" range, and Hellblazer's Continents just doesn't spawn islands.

All I want is a nicely varied map with appropriate variation in terrain and features for different civs without being OP and uninhabited islands and city states actually sprinkled throughout the map, is that too much to ask for? Cuz it seems like it, and its weird that a decent map is the most annoying part of the game.

@Bhawb make sure to increase the map size if you are trying to play a standard 8 player game. Hellblazer is automatically set to a small size. You want 80*52 for standard I believe. My problem with the map is the lack of forest but you can easily fix that by editing the map script feature placement file. The default is 37% jungle and 10% forest. Anybody know what is the vanilla standard?

 

[Bhawb]

@Bhawb make sure to increase the map size if you are trying to play a standard 8 player game. Hellblazer is automatically set to a small size. You want 80*52 for standard I believe. My problem with the map is the lack of forest but you can easily fix that by editing the map script feature placement file. The default is 37% jungle and 10% forest. Anybody know what is the vanilla standard?

Good call. I opened up FeatureGenerator.lua, which appears to be what the map scripts reference for feature generation, and line 41: local iJunglePercent = args.iJunglePercent or 65; line 42: local iForestPercent = args.iForestPercent or 31; so 65% and 31% seem to be the default? I can dig through the scripts easily enough but I don't know all the various functions they reference that aren't in the local script. I'll give those %s a go and see what happens.

Edit: after checking HBFeatureGenerator.lua, it is definitely 65% and 31%, they are basically the same lines of code.

Edit2: so I put those values in and the jungle/forest definitely increased to a good point. The jungle looks pretty good particularly, the forests are a bit too universal for my tastes, I like having at least a single region of plains.

 

[doublex55]

Good call. I opened up FeatureGenerator.lua, which appears to be what the map scripts reference for feature generation, and line 41: local iJunglePercent = args.iJunglePercent or 65; line 42: local iForestPercent = args.iForestPercent or 31; so 65% and 31% seem to be the default? I can dig through the scripts easily enough but I don't know all the various functions they reference that aren't in the local script. I'll give those %s a go and see what happens.

Edit: after checking HBFeatureGenerator.lua, it is definitely 65% and 31%, they are basically the same lines of code.

Edit2: so I put those values in and the jungle/forest definitely increased to a good point. The jungle looks pretty good particularly, the forests are a bit too universal for my tastes, I like having at least a single region of plains.

After looking a bit more it seems that default oasis is 6% while Hellblazers is 25%. Probably gonna want to lower that too.

I dunno how you feel about tundra but I feel like there is way too much in the standard maps, so im gonna lower that. Hopefully that lets me have a region of plains that inst forested. If u notice in the Hellblazers script there is so much unforested tundra.

The last thing I want to do is change the strategic resource amounts back to the original values. I dont wanna find exactly 1 iron, that sucks. 3 horses is porbably pretty balanced tho. i might make all iron 3 also actually.

For the luxuries i would like them to spawn a little closer together so that getting your starting monopoly isnt sometimes impossible, but that might be too complicated for me to change. All the other stuff is just changing a single number in the fie, while that is probably (hopefully not) more complicated.

Can you find where the HB resource generator is? I cant.

Edit: Looking more through the files and i forgot, there are an obscene amount of lakes in that script. Lake settings are in the file HBMapGenerator. We'll see if just turning them down in the setting works out ok.

Edit 2: Ok and i found the resources. Its in HBAssignStartingPlots. Its scary as fudge. I'll try to change the strategic resources but luxuries are out of the question. I'll leave that to somebody with more modding experience.

 

[Stalker0]

The last thing I want to do is change the strategic resource amounts back to the original values. I dont wanna find exactly 1 iron, that sucks. 3 horses is porbably pretty balanced tho. i might make all iron 3 also actually.

2 is the sweet spot for me. I feel like its useful (1 feels a bit worthless), but once I get a few 3 patches the resource goes from strategic to "basically infinite" pretty quickly. And god forbid I get one of those crazy 6 patches, those are nuts.

 

[Bhawb]

Next Sunday I have a travelling workweek, which means a ton of extra time for me, so I'll mess around with the mod a bit. From what I saw earlier, all the map script functions are relatively simple once you understand the 4-5 different inputs they consider, so I'll give them a look. HellBlazer definitely does some good things, and then randomly puts lakes in the middle of nowhere and other assorted strange decisions.

 

[doublex55]

So i got some really nice looking maps. I adjusted the rivers to have slightly less of them and they are way shorter. I adjusted tundra so it doesnt show up on the main Pangea except maybe the 2 most north/south tilles. (There sometimes spawn islands above or below which will be tundra usually. Mostly hills so still settlable.) There are less oasis overall. Lake settings I adjusted because there is an obscene amount of lakes, even the sparse setting was too many. I also adjusted forest and jungle levels to vanilla standard. Lastly I adjusted strategic resource quantities to smaller numbers.

They key to this script is using very high sea level. In the original script the pangea is way to big so the coastlines have no room for variation. Also, there is no room for islands above or below the pangea.

I also found the place to change the amount of bonus and strategic resources it places on each terrain type, so I will mess around with that too tomorrow. Even with sparse there are too many strategic and bonus resources, especially fish.


The last thing i need, which i cant figure out how to do, is to make the spawning range for your starting primary resource smaller. Currently the range is too big and can make it difficult to get your monopoly. If you could figure out how to do it that would be amazing.


I didn’t change anything which isnt strictly a number adjustment, which is why I’m apprehensive about changing the luxury spawn range. Hopefully somewhere there is just a number that says how many tiles from the center of the zone the luxury can spawn.

I can post/send you pictures of the script as well as the files I changed if you want. Most of it isn’t too hard to find.

 

[doublex55]

Next Sunday I have a travelling workweek, which means a ton of extra time for me, so I'll mess around with the mod a bit. From what I saw earlier, all the map script functions are relatively simple once you understand the 4-5 different inputs they consider, so I'll give them a look. HellBlazer definitely does some good things, and then randomly puts lakes in the middle of nowhere and other assorted strange decisions.

Strange decisions include:

1. Obscene amount of lakes: Once this is fixed it will actually be really nice that lakes can spawn in the islands. (I’ve got a bit of work to do to find the right inputs.)

2. Massive deforestation: Is chopping OP in the NQ mod? It was in vanilla right? If so, that’s probably why. (Fixed)

3. Tons of oasis: Desert probably sucked using the NQ mod so they added tons of oasis to make up for it. (Fixed)

4. Cross continental rivers: If you load the original script 10 times, 10/10 will have an east/west river spanning the entire continent. 100% garunteed or your money back. In fact rivers were so long that it hardly ever spawned north/south rivers just because there wasn’t enough room for them. (Fixed. It’s way easier to fix this than communitas’s infinite single tile rivers, but....)

5. Infinite Bonus and Strategic Resources: Obscene amount of lakes? Hold my beer. I wonder if there is even room for any UIs on normal resource settings. Even sparse has too much. (Working on this tomorrow.)

6. City States: Minor qualm but I wish 2-4 city states spawned on islands. Oh well it’s fine. More room for settling. (Doubt I can fix this)

7. Sea level: i don’t know why they make the Pangea so fudging big. The script actually has decent coastline variation with nice minor bays and peninsulas, but it can’t show it unless you set it to very high sea level. (Just use settings)

8. Luxury resource placement: For a script so concerned with balance, it seems weird they wouldn’t wanna make sure it’s not too hard too get your starting monopoly. (Someone help!)

Awesome decisions include

1. Highly Configurable: Don’t be mislead, changing the options in game doesn’t fix the problems the script has. But they make it easy to fix their mistakes if you are willing to dig into the files.

2. Islands: not gonna lie this is almost the only good thing about this script, but it does it so well that it’s well worth fixing all the other problems. Islands are big enough to settle 2 or even 3 cities if placed properly, usually 3*4 or bigger. They have plenty of hills so production won’t even be an issue, and sometimes they even come with fresh water! Communitas wishes it’s tons of 4-6 tiles could even come close to comparing.

3. Starting Placement: Starting Placement is really balanced. They got that one right too. Nobody gets landlocked in the middle of the Pangea. Access to city states is fine too, and distance from other civs is really equal.

 

[azum4roll]

What I want to change for Communitas:

1. Strategic resource amounts in a single tile. A 2-9 range for Iron, Coal etc. is too wild, maybe make them all 3-5.

2. Those 1-2 tile island chains. Communitas does have small islands with 1-3 City States on them, why can't they make more of these and fewer (but not none of) 1-2 tile islands?

3. I'm already used to the amount of bonus resources, but there could be less Sheep and Deer and slightly more Bison and Fish.

4. Again, I'm used to around 2 of the luxury resources only available in City States and 1 luxury only appearing on/around outlying 1-2 tile islands, but this does make getting WLTKD difficult and could need a change.

5. Too many mountains in the current version (they literally form a one-tile wide hill maze in some regions) but that can be easily changed.

 

[crdvis16]

Attached is continents++ in case anybody is interested. It's like continents except it spawns useful islands and also doesn't push all CSs to those islands.

 

[Txurce]

Attached is continents++ in case anybody is interested. It's like continents except it spawns useful islands and also doesn't push all CSs to those islands.

I just played it. Islands are indeed more useful. But in my game at least, most CS are still on islands. Worse, it created an easy leapfrog to explore the entire planet with Carthage before the Medieval era. I'm surprised by how many continents maps allow this (certainly not just this one).

 

[crdvis16]

I just played it. Islands are indeed more useful. But in my game at least, most CS are still on islands. Worse, it created an easy leapfrog to explore the entire planet with Carthage before the Medieval era. I'm surprised by how many continents maps allow this (certainly not just this one).

For CSs, the median in my games seems to be something like:

-8-10 or so CSs on the mainland of the continents
-6-8 or so CSs on islands, but still lots of open islands as well

Occassionally there will be a mini continent populated by CSs, too. My recent Venice game had a subcontinent with 6 CSs on it, but that is not the norm.

You also sometimes get 3 continents populated by AI, frequently broken down with 4 civs on a bigger continent, 3 on a medium one, and a civ alone on a smaller one. If I happen to be a civ stuck on a mini continent alone I typically restart.

As for being able to reach the other continent- it seems to be like a 50-50 split in my games whether or not you can find the other continent before Caravels. Even if there is a shallow water connection or a narrow enough deep ocean that a trireme can jump across, it is sometimes difficult to find it quickly and sometimes things like lack of open borders blocks you anyway. Exploring and trying to find that spot that gives you access to the other continent (if it exists) is usually a fun part of the early game.

Edit: also, if you took the +sight/+movement promotions on your quinquereme then it would be extra easy to find the other continent even if they were separated by sizable deep ocean tiles. You're almost as good as Polynesia in exploring if you go that route.

 

[tu_79]

I'm thinking about making a set of map scripts customized for Vox Populi. Just taking the most popular ones and change basic stuff like map size and terrain proportions, to make it more balanced for our beloved mod.

Anyone interested in helping?