Larger Worlds (Abandonded) 2.31

[Seven05]

Would it be easy / worth it for you to change the cap(s) based on the actual map size? So that an enormous map that was very underpopulated had a higher maximum than a smaller map underpopulated by the same amount?

See below

Thinking about it, a universal -- albeit potentially very very slow -- way to do it would be to calculate the starting distance based on the size of the map and the number of players; then, if not all players could be placed, decrement the starting distance and try again, iterating until you reach the minimum amount of space between cities or you succeed.

I have no idea if that's actually possible or not, though -- given that your initial buffer resulted in players missing, I suspect it isn't at least at the moment (I'm not on our gaming computer, so I can't go look at the lua code to see).

I had that as my original plan until something dawned on me- By default larger maps have more players! I know, it's amazing (that I didn't think of that originally and it would have saved me a lot of time).

What happens is that the total number of tiles per player stays fairly consistent using the default map sizes and the default number of players. This means the only thing we really need to handle better is games using a non-standard number of players so I greatly simplified things. We could stand to have some alterations to the starting plot "fertility" requirements based on the actual player count but certain things like the map options (sea level, rainfall, world age) aren't even exposed to the starting plot calculations so a script like this that's intended to work with any map script, including custom ones has to work on best guess a lot of the time.

There is still room for improvement but I guess deep down inside I was hoping for more patches this early in the game's life since there are quite a few bugs that still need fixing, I guess I envisioned this script as more of a temporary fix until we had a more stable game and the full mod tools. Compared to Civ 4 & 5 it is substantially more complicated to handle map scripts and custom map settings since we can't simply define those in the map script itself and this makes it tougher to make a script like this as user-customizable as it needs to be

 

[Seven05]

Seven05 updated Larger Worlds with a new update entry:

Fertility!

This is a quick test of modified fertility values based on the number of players.

Fertility of each tile is defined by the value of that tile plus all tiles within 3 hexes. Some important values are 100 for rivers, -10 for snow and -20 for ice.

This update adds an extra modifier of +/-8 fertility per player above or below the default number. For example: if you decide to play with 4 players on a map designed for 12 all starting plots will be considered to have 64 points lower fertility....

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Seven05]

2.31 is uploaded.

I need some help testing it using different values on various maps. What I'm looking for is two things:

1) On maps with fewer players than default (especially with a LOT less) all players should start in the best positions. Expect most, if not all, player starts to be on rivers with very few, if any, tundra starts. In this case the script should eliminate all but the best starting plots form the list that each player and city state chooses from.

2) On maps with more players than default (especially with a LOT more) there should be no cases of missing players or city states. In this case the list of available starting plots for the players and city states should contain a lot of otherwise undesirable starting locations since any start is better than no start

I added code to modify the "fertility" value of available plots based on the number of players compared to the map's default number. Right now it's simply the difference * 8 so with 10 more or fewer than default the fertility is adjusted by 80 points (compared to a river start being +100 or each nearby ice plot being -20). This basically means that on maps with very few players they will probably all start on a river since you'll need that +100 fertility to offset the -80 using the 10 player difference example. Fertility in this stage of plot selection really just means the value of any nearby resources with some modifiers like the +100 for being on a river. So I'm essentially enforcing a high resource start location if you have fewer than the default number of players. This will also spread them out a little since you'll need a decent sized cluster of resources in extreme cases. When you crowd the map with extra players it does the opposite, so using the 10 player difference again you can effectively negate the negative bias of 4 snow plots or 8 tundra plots. This makes more starting plots available but some of them may really suck.

 

[BrokenSky]

Regarding fertility: seems ok? Playing on small continents+ with significant reduction in the player numbers (like 8 or 9 players on an enormous map) and the game actually seemed to space people out sensibly, although I got a start with no river and tundra close (about 5-6 tiles away), and a 1 tile natural wonder about 7 tiles away. To be fair though the resource distribution close to the starting location was good. [Ananse's BFG modpack was also running, along with 50 turn counterespionage, but I don't think these mod affect map/placement?].

 

[Regul]

Great map script.

Unfortunately I do have 2 issues (1 gamebreaking):

- enormous map with continents choosen will create a single huge landmass with some sea arround

- having larger worlds active while choosing YnAMP will freeze game while choosing map in setup

 

[Seven05]

Regarding fertility: seems ok? Playing on small continents+ with significant reduction in the player numbers (like 8 or 9 players on an enormous map) and the game actually seemed to space people out sensibly, although I got a start with no river and tundra close (about 5-6 tiles away), and a 1 tile natural wonder about 7 tiles away. To be fair though the resource distribution close to the starting location was good. [Ananse's BFG modpack was also running, along with 50 turn counterespionage, but I don't think these mod affect map/placement?].

That sounds about right as long as the resources were all within 3 tiles of the settler starting position since the tundra over 3 tiles away wouldn't have any influence. Right now I do the modification based on the number of players all the way at the end of the fertility evaluation, I can change that to modify some of those base values instead (or additionally) but when I tried that originally it turned into "every start on a river" regardless of much else. I'll try a few more tweaks to see what happens.

Great map script.

Unfortunately I do have 2 issues (1 gamebreaking):

- enormous map with continents choosen will create a single huge landmass with some sea arround

- having larger worlds active while choosing YnAMP will freeze game while choosing map in setup

This mod doesn't have any influence on the actual map generated, it just lets you pick larger sizes and adjusts how starting plots are selected.

This mod is currently incompatible with YnAMP since we both put our changes into the same LUA file, if the game picks my script over his the game will crash.

 

[BrokenSky]

That sounds about right as long as the resources were all within 3 tiles of the settler starting position since the tundra over 3 tiles away wouldn't have any influence. Right now I do the modification based on the number of players all the way at the end of the fertility evaluation, I can change that to modify some of those base values instead (or additionally) but when I tried that originally it turned into "every start on a river" regardless of much else. I'll try a few more tweaks to see what happens.

I think it's ok really? Maybe if the river evaluation just gave a smaller fertility bonus to tiles exactly two tiles away from a mountain, river or lake (i.e. settler ; interveining non-mountain tile ; mountain/river/lake) to get the potential for aqueduct? This is as an 'else' if they don't get the river start obviously. It might be ok to just do "within two tiles of a mountain" if that's too difficult to specify though.

Regarding the tundra stuff, it might be worth adding small bonuses/penalties for tiles within 6 tiles, but it's probably fine as is.

 

[Seven05]

I think it's ok really? Maybe if the river evaluation just gave a smaller fertility bonus to tiles exactly two tiles away from a mountain, river or lake (i.e. settler ; interveining non-mountain tile ; mountain/river/lake) to get the potential for aqueduct? This is as an 'else' if they don't get the river start obviously. It might be ok to just do "within two tiles of a mountain" if that's too difficult to specify though.

Regarding the tundra stuff, it might be worth adding small bonuses/penalties for tiles within 6 tiles, but it's probably fine as is.

That's a really good idea, I can evaluate locations for the possibility of an aqueduct and boost their value if they aren't already on a lake or river. I wonder if I should give a little bump for being 2-3 tiles from the coast too. Since this only affects the capital making sure it's as good as possible should be the goal so trying to increase the chance of fresh water and room for a harbor should be a big help.

I was thinking about extending the range tested for fertility but I have to be very careful with that. If I only look at things like ice, snow and tundra it shouldn't be too bad but if I start checking for other things it will bias most starting locations to be inland rather than on or near a coast.

 

[Seven05]

Ok, so I was playing around with the code block that scores each potential starting location and so far what I'm leaning towards is this basic list of pros/cons:

+ On a river
+ Salt water coast in the 2nd or third ring
+ Mountain in the second ring (if not on a river already)
+ Lake in the second ring (if not on a river already)
+ River in the second ring (if not on a river already)
+ Resource on a tile of any type (using the default code, I'm not 100% certain of the weighted value per resource)
+ Features (weighted, floodplains are better than forests which are better than jungles)

- Invalid tile (off the map edge within the city radius)
- Ice
- Snow
- Tundra
- Mountains (beyond the first)
- Ocean (without resources)

I'm unsure of using the following:

Hills
Unimproved food potential

Can anybody think of anything else that would be important for the first city location?

 

[Leyrann]

Imo a starting position has some hills, but not a lot. It means that, on one hand, you have some good unimproved tiles (grassland forest hills in particular are just awesome with 2f/2p each), while on the other hand you can put down a bunch of farms together to truly get that food production going once you got two or three builders (and feudalism). See for example the starting location in the added screenshot. I have a large amount of plains hills nearby (I'm Greece, after all), which means that I can only grow my city to ~size 3 or 4 before I just don't have any surplus anymore (luckily I'm playing with TCS's omnibus mod that adds +1 food to tiles one or two tiles away from an aquaduct, or it'd still be that size in the Industrial Era). (and yes, I do realize that this is actually nitpicking on my start, as I got iron, lots of production, a great campus, etc. But it's just to exemplify that you don't want too many hills either)

Unimproved food potential, imo, shouldn't play a big role, as long as it's improvable. Your first builder is going to give you 3 food/production/gold, and that is enough for the early game. Worst case you do not improve one of the bonus or luxery resources and build a farm instead.

Also, I disagree with putting floodplains above forests, though I guess it comes from a truly gameplay point of view. This because forests grant both food and production and don't block placements of districts. Then again, I could see them needing a minor plus to balance out the minus I suppose desert gives you (isn't mentioned in the post though?).

What about coastal + river by the way, does that get an additional plus?

 

[BrokenSky]

A coupe of things to be aware of, the mountain/river/oasis/lake in the second tile should one fire once if any of the conditions are met, and luxuries > strategics > bonuses resource wise, I think?

Also multiple mountains is ok (though not within the first ring). They're like hills tbh. 1 or 2 is good, 4 or 5 far less so.

It might be nice to have a bonus for having at least one natural wonder tile within 6 tiles? Alternatively you could make them reduce fertility so you have to explore to find them

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

does this mod do anything if I play small maps with default number of civs?

 

[Seven05]

A coupe of things to be aware of, the mountain/river/oasis/lake in the second tile should one fire once if any of the conditions are met, and luxuries > strategics > bonuses resource wise, I think?

Also multiple mountains is ok (though not within the first ring). They're like hills tbh. 1 or 2 is good, 4 or 5 far less so.

It might be nice to have a bonus for having at least one natural wonder tile within 6 tiles? Alternatively you could make them reduce fertility so you have to explore to find them

Everything is scored by tile with a few exceptions. So if a mountain is -10, for example, that's mostly insignificant until you have several of them considering that a riverside start is +100. But if two potential starts are otherwise identical the one with fewer mountains will be considered better.

That's how the scoring works for almost everything- each tile in the workable radius is +/- a few points.

does this mod do anything if I play small maps with default number of civs?

Yes

The minimum landmass size limits, adjusted starting location scoring and custom city state placement code all works. I generally play on the vanilla large size with the default number of civs myself.

 

[Kavden]

I cannot seem to start a massive or enormous size Inland Sea map. I've tried all the others and they work fine. None of them take overly long to load; most of them pop up shortly after Sean Bean stops talking. Whereas the Inland Sea on either massive or enormous crashes to desktop shortly after beginning to load, usually within five seconds after the leader screen appears.

 

[BlackEmperor]

I have a short question.
I often play your Enormous map size and also use it for World Builder. The thing is, I can't place the Great Barrier Reef nor the Galapagos Islands on the map if I have placed Ice on the northern and southern map edges.
Now I haven't ever had either natural wonder appear when I generated a standard game on Enormous as well. In Features.xml, both wonders are in a table called "Feature_NotNearFeatures" and have both Ice listed as a feature. Here's the catch: there's a comment stating that the distance is defined by the map size.
So I just wanted to ask if there's something regarding this distance that you might have forgot to define or change when writing the map scripts or if that is a bug in the game itself. Removing both wonder statements in the table allowed me to place them again, so it has to do with the distance (if the ice is far away enough, I can place them as well - problem is that it has to be as far away as half of the map width or so).

 

[ITcore]

You're probably aware but just to let you know that Larger/Detailed worlds doesn't work with the new update.

 

[Leyrann]

You're probably aware but just to let you know that Larger/Detailed worlds doesn't work with the new update.

It doesn't for you? It's been doing fine for me, though I did pick a Huge map, not Massive or Gigantic. Do have Fractal - Detailed, however.

 

[ITcore]

It doesn't for you? It's been doing fine for me, though I did pick a Huge map, not Massive or Gigantic. Do have Fractal - Detailed, however.

None of my map changing mods work. I use either Larger/Detailed for random maps or YnAMP for my Earth maps. Neither work at the moment for me. I get to the starting splash screen with the era and leader quotes and it just stays there indefinitely.

 

[Seven05]

I'll take a look at it when I'm back home tonight, I haven't had a chance to test things out since the update but it's normally not a big deal.

 

[plus]

i started a game with the enormous size ,16 civs, islands map, and it's great,except for one thing..
i found england stuck on an island so small ,that it's basically doomed until shipbuilding..