How change the Map Size

[Chieron]

Hi everyone,
I wonder how I can change the size of a map, its tile number that is, not small/standard/large/..
While it seems to be theoretically possible to add the plots into the Worldbuilderfile, this approach would be extremely cumbersome and prone to errors.

So how to get maps of arbitrary dimensions like 40x87,53x99,.. and so on?
Similarly, being able to add or remove areas would be nice.

any help is appreciated.

 

[Refar]

You can take a look at the Civ4WorldInfo.XML - this is wehe the size for the maps is defined. You can also overrule size definitions in a mapscript (look Terra.py for a example).

Note however - the grid size used in xml/python is actually multiplied by 4 - so any grid is 4x4=16 tiles on the map. As consequence of this, you probably can not get completely arbitrary size that is not multiple of 4.

 

[Chieron]

well, I could live with multiplies of 4. So hacking the xml can give a map of the needed dimensions - but is there also a useful way to change it later (having to plan maps completely beforehand instead of being able to tweak the edges a bit seems annoying)

 

[Refar]

AFAIK you can't change the map dimensions in WorldBuilder.

It might be possible by hand-editing whe WBS file would be a lot of copy/paste work tho (i think you will know what i mean if you look into a WorldBuildersave in notepad - there entries dor dimensions that you can edit, but you will need to crete/replicate the plot information for those)

There was a 3-rd party map editor aroung (look Tools/Utilities forum). No idea what possibilities it has.

Also custom map scripts would allow you to input custom size. SmartMap was such one - but it wasn't updated in while, no idea if it's still working. There might be others, i dunno.

 

[Gooblah]

This leads me to another (slightly related) question:

I edited a map in XML to make it 10x20 tiles. That mean the corners were (0,0), (0,19), (9,0) and (9,19), right? Yet whenever I try to open the file, it results in a debug error, and I can't figure it out at all.

Can someone please offer their expertise?

 

[Refar]

perhaps because 10 is not multiple of 4 ? Have you tried 12x20 ? I am not sure what importance/significance this 4 plots per grid thingie has for the engine...

 

[Gooblah]

Aargh! It seriously has to be a multiple of four?

Hmmm. My scale became 1 tile=25km. So if I extend the x-axis to 12 tiles, that becomes (*hasty calculating*) a 500x300 map. Which means I'll only have to extend the map, not change the scale (*trails off*)....
Yeah, I guess it'll work. Thanks, Refar.

edit: hmmm, still doesn't work. I'm thinking this is not an XML error of sorts. Could someone try loading this?

 

[Chieron]

Got the SmartMap, the script tself seems to give interesting maps (desert/tundra heavy), but it will be useful in getting a blank map to start from.

 

[Willem]

perhaps because 10 is not multiple of 4 ? Have you tried 12x20 ? I am not sure what importance/significance this 4 plots per grid thingie has for the engine...

No it doesn't need to be a multiple of 4, any value will do.