HoF Map Finder/Generator Utility 2016-10-05

[Moonsinger]

If the game generates an oustandingly big map, but with no cows in the starting nine tiles (when I asked for one), it would be great if it could be saved anyway so I can open it up and look to see what becomes visible in a few turns.

If you turn off the minimum # of cows option, you would naturally get the whole set of oustanding big maps (with and without cows). Anyway, I completely understand what you mean...a fall back position. You are set out to find the best possible map with a lot of cows, but if there are no cows of any type, you want to settle for the next best thing, right? I believe we have this similar discussion before some where in this thread between Dianthus and someone making this same request. And Dianthus replied with a song:

There's a song where the chorus goes :
"I'd much rather have a caravan in the hills than a mansion in the slums"

then suddenly at the end the singer has a brainwave and changes it to :
"I'd much rather have a mansion in the hills, what I mean is, I want it ALL"!

Basically, why would we want to settle for the second best when the very best thing is within reach? Unless we are asking for a nearly impossible map, given enough time, MapFinder will find us one. I guess what I mean is...if asking for a biggest mansion in a biggest hill is too much, then you may want to consider a smaller mansion on the biggest hill or a biggest mansion on a smaller hill instead. I'm sorry, it's really not what you want, but it's one of those things that we can live without (at least for now).

 

[EMan]

Your wish list if you have any! If there is something about this program that you wish to improve upon, please let me know. I can't promise anything, but if it doesn't take a lot of time and easy to do, I will see what I can do.

Nice to see you here, Moonsinger.
3 requests:
1. It would be nice to have the "View" column on the left side of the screen as I always have to scroll right to see the next screenshot. (Unless there is another way!?)
2. Ivory is an important resource for Cultural and some Sid games...Would it be possible to list it on the MF Report?
3. This is a BIG one: Could you add an option to count the Resouces for ALL the visible squares instead of just the 9 surrounding the Settler? Quite often you're going to move the settler a square or 2 before building the first town.

 

[Moonsinger]

Nice to see you here, Moonsinger.

Nice to see you here too, EMan!

1. It would be nice to have the "View" column on the left side of the screen as I always have to scroll right to see the next screenshot. (Unless there is another way!?)

You could easily solve that problem by getting a bigger view screen. Of course, I will move that column to the left - no problem!

2. Ivory is an important resource for Cultural and some Sid games...Would it be possible to list it on the MF Report?

No problem!

3. This is a BIG one: Could you add an option to count the Resouces for ALL the visible squares instead of just the 9 surrounding the Settler? Quite often you're going to move the settler a square or 2 before building the first town.

Sorry, EMan! You have to talk that over with Dianthus. Dianthus, my co-author of this utility, has full control of the black box (I mean that part of the code). Basically, Dianthus wrote the DLL that analyzing the SAV games (counting the domination limit, type of tiles, etc) and I wrote the interface to tell Civ3 how to generate map. Once I got the map from Civ3, I would pass the SAV file over to Dianthus 's DLL, then Dianthus does his magic and send the result back to me. Then I analyze that result to determine whether or not to keep or to reject the map. Therefore, it's really up to Dianthus to decide if he wants to spend time looking for all visible tiles surrounding the settler.

May be the following example would help explain what I'm trying to do next:

1. Dianthus had provided me a protonic engine of great power.
2. With that protonic engine, I set out to build a starship to carry us among the stars or least to put that protonic engine good use.
3. So far, the ship that I had buit wasn't totally aerodynamics; because of that, his protonic engine hasn't been running at its full potential. Therefore, I like to focus on re-designning my ship first, then after that, I may convince Dianthus to build me a protonic cannon to go with it. Of course, protonic shield, protonic armor will be next on my list... Btw, if you are able to convice Dianthus to come up with the next generation "Omega Particle" engine, I'm sure I will find a way to integrate it into my ship. No problem there!

 

[Dianthus]

3. This is a BIG one: Could you add an option to count the Resouces for ALL the visible squares instead of just the 9 surrounding the Settler? Quite often you're going to move the settler a square or 2 before building the first town.

Eman, I'm a little unclear what you mean. Do you mean:

• Resources of tiles visible in the starting .sav without moving any units (I.e. mountains/hills nearby, so revealing more than the standard 9 tiles).
• Tiles that would become visible after moving units.

If a) then I would be happy to make my dll output that information.

I would only be happy to do b) if MapFinder actually moved the units. Then I could return the information for the map after the units have been moved, and that would be your starting .sav. (Assuming Moonsinger would be prepared to do the unit moving).

 

[superslug]

Tiles that would become visible after moving units.

That would constitute spoiler information and would jeopardize MapFinder's HoF legality.

I'm not looking to censor MapFinder in any fashion, but I thought I should point that out.

EDIT: Typo

 

[Dianthus]

That would constitute spoiler information and would jeopardize MapStat's HoF legality.

I'm not looking to censor MapStat in any fashion, but I thought I should point that out.

Don't worry boss, I realise that (and I'm sure Moonsinger does too). We'll make sure MapFinder (MapStat was a typo, right?) remains HoF legal.

 

[superslug]

Don't worry boss, I realise that (and I'm sure Moonsinger does too). We'll make sure MapFinder (MapStat was a typo, right?) remains HoF legal.

Typo fixed, thanks.

 

[EMan]

Eman, I'm a little unclear what you mean. Do you mean:

• Resources of tiles visible in the starting .sav without moving any units (I.e. mountains/hills nearby, so revealing more than the standard 9 tiles).

If a) then I would be happy to make my dll output that information.

Yes, would be very nice!

Here's an example of a legitimate starting position whereby you will see 3 GRASSLAND squares OUTSIDE the "Standard 9":

There is a 1-square Lake square adjacent to the Settler and 3 Grassland squares, OUTSIDE the "9", touching the Lake....those 3 Grassland squares WILL be visible in the Starting Map!.......so it would nice to have an option to apply the resource and/or terrain check to ALL visible squares. Currently, MF may reject some excellent maps that have say cows, ivory, etc. visible outside the "9".

AND, an "Unlikely" example (To illustrate the point):

Your Settler is surrounded by Grassland for "miles" except that there are 4 Lakes, 1 on each inside corner of the "9"........You will be able to "See" the 16 Grassland squares on the "9"'s Perimeter!

 

[superslug]

-so it would nice to have an option to apply the resource and/or terrain check to ALL visible squares. Currently, MF may reject some excellent maps that have say cows, ivory, etc. visible outside the "9".

I'll second that one! This happens a lot for milk maps. Since I specifically look for fresh water/1 cow, I get lakes a lot but don't know about the cow for sure until I view the screenshot.

 

[Moonsinger]

Don't worry boss, I realise that (and I'm sure Moonsinger does too). We'll make sure MapFinder (MapStat was a typo, right?) remains HoF legal.

Not to worry Superslug, we will make sure it remains HoF legal. Please keep in mind that we can't and we will never move the starting settler; it would be HoF illegal if we move the starting settler. Now, we have to study all the possible permutation of what we can possibly see at the starting location without ever moving the settler. Sound simple, right? Well, not quite....In addition to EMan's example, here is another rough example of some things we may run into:

1. The starting position is on top the hill and right next to a mountain, what are all the visible tiles (assuming we are just looking at one direction).
2. The above scenario plus a hill next to the starting settler, what do we see now?
3. Plus a lake right next to the starting settler
4. Plus another hill on the opposite tile or whatever....
.....

I think you get the idea, there actually quite a bit of permutation we need to consider. IIRC, If the starting location is right on top of a hill, we can generally see 1 extra tile from all directions. Of course, if a mountain blocking our view...then we can see the sides of the mountain but not behide the mountain, etc. Since Dianthus (big huge and thanks) is willing with the enhancement, I will try to outline a pseudo interface tonight.

 

[EMan]

In addition to Hills & Lakes, there may be the odd Coastal square that gives you a view of land outside the "Standard 9".

(In addition to Hills & Mountains, I guess Volcanoes will block your view too.)

Ahhhh, it's soooooooo good to have you back Moonsinger!

You're still the

 

[Moonsinger]

Finally, I just got Civ3/PTW/C3C all installed back to my computer. In addition to what EMan just said, I also noticed that the "Forest" and "jungle" would also block the view too....well kind of...if the tile behide it has a higher angle of elevation, we would still be able to see it. For example, the hill and/or mountain behide the forest will still be visible because hill/mountain has a higher angle of elevation than the forest. It's making perfect sense...we can see the mountain behide the hill, but not the hill behide the mountain, etc. I have reviewed my code and sent a pseudo plan to Dianthus 's PM box. Thanks!

 

[TimHobbit]

I have been thinking...may be I should upgrade this program once more time.

#4. Your wish list if you have any! If there is something about this program that you wish to improve upon, please let me know. I can't promise anything, but if it doesn't take a lot of time and easy to do, I will see what I can do.

Well, if you’re asking for wish list items, here is one; I have no idea how hard the calculations would be, sorry.

Would it be possible to have an entry for the min number of extra/bonus food generated under Despotism, which can be used for growth?

Currently there is a min bonus food option, but it only represents the number of resources, i.e. 2 cows or 2 sugars are both 2.

But, under Despotism if the cows or sugar are both on plains with irrigation then 2 cows = 2 extra food & 2 sugar = 0 food for growth.

Then if we could put in that we wanted to have 5+ extra food to make a good settler-pump it would be easy.

I recently started a game which looked good before I realized that those 6 sugars (3 in the basic 9 squares) on the river, but on plains would not be of much help until I could get out of Despotism. I was bummed.

 

[Moonsinger]

Update: I haven't forgotten you guys...it still needs about 4 more hours of works. Happy New Year!!!

 

[Moonsinger]

I have been running this baby with C3C for at least 8 hours now...no problem whatsoever! I set it to restart C3C every 32 cycles and 5 seconds delay for both loading and saving on my P4@3.4 GHz machine; if you have a slower machine, I recommend giving it more DELAY time...for example, on a 1GHz machine, the delay time for loading or saving should not be greater than 15 seconds (or 15000 ms). Anyway, the new zip file of the latest version can be downloaded here:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/MapFinder2005v2.zip

Please remember three things when running this new version:

1. File/Setup menu is your friend. Always check your setup and verify your setting before generating new maps.
2. Be sure to tell MapFinder the correct AUTO SAVE directory of Civ/PTW/C3C (depending on which version of the game that you are playing). If you forget to do this step, MapFinder won't generate map (it still run just fine, but it won't give you any map)
3. Remember to start "New Game" first and to activat MapFinder during or after 4000BC but not before 4000BC. Actually, this is the same as in any version of MapFinder.

Happy New Year and Happy Civing!

 

[Moonsinger]

Here is a sample screenshot of the new MapFinder during the setup process:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/mapfinder2005a.jpg

Changes made to the tile/resource/food/whatever detection rule: Those total values are now calculated based on the total of VISIBLE tiles at the starting position...therefore, all the food bonus/resources/whatever within the visible range will be included/calculated. You can thank Dianthus for enhancing this rule and EMan for suggesting it.

 

[superslug]

I can't wait to get home from work and run this!

 

[Moonsinger]

I can't wait to get home from work and run this!

I can't wait to see how it behave on yours and everyone else systems. So far, it has been working really really great on my system.... I have rebuild its programming structure by starting over from scratch which means there will be plenty of room for enhancement down the road.

 

[superslug]

I'll install it on my system and start running it before I go to bed, then I'll report back on the results after it goes eight hours.

 

[bed_head7]

I can't figure out why I am recieving the following error message:

The only change to the conquests.ini file was adding the noaipatrol line, and I can't figure out why that would do it.