HoF Map Finder/Generator Utility 2016-10-05

[boogaboo]

moonsinger, I got a problem -
The mapfinder automatically goes to quick start on PTW.
I've tried everything (including the checkbox..).
Please patch me up..

Edit - It does work! but only if you press ok AFTER "new game", otherwise it will automatically start a quicky..

EditEdit - A more important patch would be to identify.. cattle!
I'm trying to get cattle and may end in a flood plain...

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by boogaboo
moonsinger, I got a problem -
The mapfinder automatically goes to quick start on PTW.
I've tried everything (including the checkbox..).
Please patch me up..

Edit - It does work! but only if you press ok AFTER "new game", otherwise it will automatically start a quicky..

You forgot to read the operating procedure at the beginning of this thread (second post). Here is the operating manual again (please note the "very important" and must do part in step #2):

Originally posted by Moonsinger
How to use this utlity:
1. Launch the "mapfinder" utility before/after launching Civ3/PTW/C3C
2. Start a "New Game" (very important! You must do this!)
3. Choose Your World! (very important! You must do this!)
4. Go through "Player Setup" and select "Difficulty" level or whatever you like. (again, this is part of the starting up new game process! You must do this before you can play!)
5. That's it! You are now at 4000BC. If you look at the screenshot in my previous post, you will see an icon "M" on the top right hand corner. If you click on it, you will see the setup screen (as show in previous post). Now, make sure you set the minimum domination limit of the type of map that you are looking for. You must also set the "Output/Save Directory" to an empty directory (for savegame) then click "Ok". That's it! Now go to sleep or check back in a couple hour and you may have some good map to play.
6. In order to stop the map finding process, just simply press and hold down the "Window" key on your keyboard few second or simply swap Civ3/PTW/C3C to the background by {Alt-Tab} to another application.

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EditEdit - A more important patch would be to identify.. cattle! I'm trying to get cattle and may end in a flood plain...

That would be nice! However, it's really up to Dianthus because he knows the format of the SAV file and inside his SAVUtils.DLL backbox is where he does his magic. Since I don't really know what is going on inside his SAVUtils.DLL blackbox (what is possible or what isn't possible), you may want to ask him.

 

[DaveMcW]

There is a small bug with river tiles.

When rivers make a right angle, civ3 considers the tile opposite the right angle a river tile. But Map Finder doesn't.

In this screenshot, I count 6 river tiles and 6 bonus food.

 

[Moonsinger]

Thank you Dave! I will talk this over with our friend Dianthus.

 

[sabrewolf]

what am i doing wrong?

first: great idea, great tool!
i may not be a milker, but i want to try a sid game with a very good starting location.

i tried running this on fairly reachable settings (something you'd usually get every 5 tries), but nothing came through except an alert:

"cannot find the file 'c:<games<civilization' (or one of it's components) [....]"

two things seem wrong to me: the smaller-than sign '<' instead of a backslash '\' and the truncated part after civilization (my subfolder is 'civilization iii'.
after clicking away the error message, it starts a "run"-box with following:
c:<games<Civilization III<Conquests<Civ3Conquests.Exe

i presume, the restart game after 50 iterations causes this.

but it still doesn't explain why i don't get a single savegame reported!

what am i doing wrong?

 

[Moonsinger]

Hi Sabrewolf,

In future update, I will see if I can make it to work for other non-English keyboard layout. At the moment, Andy-K's solution is the only work-around that I know of. Andy's solution is as follows:

Originally posted by Andy-K
When running different keyboard layouts than english, such as swedish that I run, the \ key is not where it is on the english keyboard, in my case the + is there instead. So by changing the keyboard to english the program works just fine.

Andy's original post can be found here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=1666169#post1666169

 

[sabrewolf]

oh, thanks... sorry for being too lazy to read through the whole thread (i got about half of them ).

so do i get it right, that you actually use a macro for entering the data and not a string as a whole?

anyway, thanks for the fast reply

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
so do i get it right, that you actually use a macro for entering the data and not a string as a whole?

MapFinder is like a robot that sitting at your keyboard and type for you while you are sleeping. Sadly, in this case, my little robot doesn't realize that the keyboard layout isn't universal.

 

[sabrewolf]

doesn't really matter, that part works fine after switching to US keyboard.

what doesn't function: if you have WindowsFileBox=1 set in conquests.ini... not a big problem, as one can switch, but still it would be nice if this would work too

other nice-to-haves:
- checkbox "coastal start" (for seafaring civs)
- checkbox "start by river/lake" (not all starts with river tiles in the 9 tiles start immediately next to the river)
- "potential despotic 4-turn-settler-pump" (at least 3 surplus food (don't forget that irrigating can give this food too, even without bonus resources, eg. with flood plains) ... and just 2 surplus food for agricultural civs if starting near rivers)

great work

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
what doesn't function: if you have WindowsFileBox=1 set in conquests.ini... not a big problem, as one can switch, but still it would be nice if this would work too

other nice-to-haves:
- checkbox "coastal start" (for seafaring civs)
- checkbox "start by river/lake" (not all starts with river tiles in the 9 tiles start immediately next to the river)
- "potential despotic 4-turn-settler-pump" (at least 3 surplus food (don't forget that irrigating can give this food too, even without bonus resources, eg. with flood plains) ... and just 2 surplus food for agricultural civs if starting near rivers)

Those features will be on the TO DO list for next version, hopefully after they officially release the next (and final) patch for C3C (coming very soon...so they said). Since Dianthus will be doing most of the above enhancement and he is really busy (me too) with works at the moment, we may not do anything about those this month.

 

[superslug]

Thursday night I started up Mapfinder for a run. I just got back home and it was still running four days later! Have I got the record? Has anyone had theirs run for more consecutive hours?

 

[Darkness]

Originally posted by superslug
Thursday night I started up Mapfinder for a run. I just got back home and it was still running four days later! Have I got the record? Has anyone had theirs run for more consecutive hours?

And now you've got to check how many maps?

 

[superslug]

Originally posted by Darkness
And now you've got to check how many maps?

Less than 90...it won't take long. Anything with a flood plain or jungle tile gets immediately tossed.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by superslug
Less than 90...it won't take long. Anything with a flood plain or jungle tile gets immediately tossed.

Yup! Just just do a slideshow of those JPEGs and immediately hit delete of image that I don't want. Then any SAV file that didn't have a screenshot JPG will be deleted by group. I could easily narrow a hundred SAVes down to 5 or 10 a few minute.

 

[Svar]

Since using MapFinder I have developed a routine. I search for maps with cows in the starting screen, if only 1 I will settle the city to see if more show up. If more are within the city 21 tile future border I save the start file, if not I delete.

In my last series of HoF 20 K culture fastest finishes at regent on standard worlds, I have submitted the first and am looking for a great second submission. I have searched over 12,000 worlds using MapFinder. I have no idea how many were actually started and abandoned when no decent second city location could be found. My criteria for the 20 K culture city is a railed 20 citizen population city having 55 shields or more. My last submission had 62 but was played badly. Played well and lots of luck a 55 shield city will do fine.

In my present situation I have 8 games that meet the criteria at 1000 BC, 3 of them played to 10 AD. There were other games that were played to 10 AD and abandoned. I ran out of new worlds to start and last night ran MapFinder again. Currently I have 10 new starts, 1 with 1 cow and 1 wheat, 1 with 1 cow and 1 game, 7 with 2 cows and 1 with 3 cows. In 6 of those games I haven't settled the first city yet so the total food bonus could be greater.

I don't know what is more fun playing the game or searching for new worlds. The potential for all the new starts is always greater than reality but you never know when a killer world will emerge. This long winded post is just a great big thank you to the team that developed and upgrades this great utility.

 

[Moonsinger]

Just want to let you know what's coming...Dianthus is currently working on subroutine to provide us with cows (or whatever resources) at the starting location. This mean...if we just want cow or deer (not wheat) at the starting location (just for those 9 tiles at the starting location), we just simply check the cow box and the deer box and Mapfinder will do the rest.

 

[EMan]

Can MapFinder be currently (or potentially) set to accept only maps with a minimum of 5 shields for the starting city with a population of 2? (viz. Settler builds the city & immdiately adds back the worker.)

For example, if you want to generate maps that you could use for an Aztec Conquest victory on a Tiny Map, you would need to generate at least 5 shields per turn from your city of 2. (i.e. 2 forest squares)

 

[microbe]

Sorry for a dumb question: what is domination limist? (not familiar with HoF terms)

I find this tool to be useful as I want to get a good start for an OCC game (like next to coast/river, have one bonus tile). How does this "domination limist" come into picture?

Or am I misunderstanding what this utility is for?

Thanks.

 

[Dianthus]

The domination limit is the number of tiles of territory you must have before you trigger a domination victory. If you're going for a milked HOF entry then a high domination victory is important for a high score as the score is mostly dependent on territory size.

 

[microbe]

Thanks. I guess higher limit == less water in the map? But with the same game setting, it should be always the same, isn't it?

It would be good to take coast tiles into account too. An ideal OCC start would be:

Next to river
Next to coast (but not too many coastal tiles)
bonus food
lux nearby