[BTS] Is it possible to exclude Mountains from maps?

[Grandpa Troll]

I am not a "Modder" per se, however make my own maps from those available and "tweak" them.

I enjoy maps with lots of rivers and no mountains since they are fairly useless to me.

Is it possible to make a map without Mountains?

(as in change a line in a file somewhere?)

Currently I have to manually remove by turning tile into an ocean tile then adding something back like grassland or plains or hills.

Thanks in advance!

Gramps

 

[Nightinggale]

The short answer is yes.

Inside PublicMaps or PrivateMaps there are files ending with .py. Those are the map generator scripts. You can change one and being python it will have an effect the next time you use it. You don't have to use a compiler for it to have an effect.

The question is what to do in the file and the answer is: it depends on which file you want to mod. It's possible to have a completely unique design in each file, meaning nobody can answer this question in general.

 

[f1rpo]

[...] Is it possible to make a map without Mountains?

(as in change a line in a file somewhere?)

I'd try Assets\XML\GameInfo\Civ4ClimateInfo.xml in the Civ 4 (base game) directory – the expansions haven't updated this file. I'm not sure if there's some difficulty in adding a new climate, but, as a hack, you could just set iPeakPercent to 0 for the Temperate climate setting or for whichever settings you normally use. You may want to make a backup first or copy the file into a mod.

Not all map scripts have climate options, but most do, and I'd expect those to take into account the peak percentage. Several (most?) scripts use the FractalWorld terrain generator in CvMapGeneratorUtil.py. FractalWorld turns iPeakPercent of the map's hills into peaks.

Currently I have to manually remove by turning tile into an ocean tile then adding something back like grassland or plains or hills. [...]

I can directly change peak to hill in WorldBuilder. I think this is because peak, hill and ocean are plot types as opposed to e.g. grassland, which is just a terrain type. Well, hopefully, that won't matter anymore.

Edit: I kind of missed this line:

I [...] make my own maps from those available and "tweak" them.

Not sure if a permanent change that applies to more than a single map script is desirable then; if not, adding a new climate type that eliminates mountains could still be a good solution. Climate is not going to help when starting from a scenario (.WBSave) though.