Map and province improvements for 1.4
- Thread starter AbsintheRed
- Start date
Siberia in current RFCE?Its something new
What I meant was, you could add in part of the ME without making Russia take up too much of the map.
El Bogus
Prince
I think that's a really good idea. 45 degrees might be a bit much though.
AbsintheRed
Deity
All of you should read through this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=448645
We even had some exact map proposals around page 5-6.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=448645
We even had some exact map proposals around page 5-6.
Those discussions occurred 4 years ago, though. Are the plans made still relevant?
AtlantaMarty
No longer active
Yay for semidesert and islands!!!
I think that the map change that is most needed right now is a switch over to Blue Marble. Cic IV default terrain is really ugly.
I think that the map change that is most needed right now is a switch over to Blue Marble. Cic IV default terrain is really ugly.
AbsintheRed
Deity
I was quite enthusiastic initially (it was my project after all), even though we knew at that point that 3Miro is retiring.
I heavily counted on Morholt's help though (Morholt was the modmodder of RFCE++) as it's a huge task, fortunately he also seemed very enthusiastic about it. We had some ongoing PMs about how we imagine development for 2.0, talked about a lot of things in detail.
The problem was that Morholt suddenly disappeared, had some personal problems IRL. I knew I could count on merijn, but he only knew some basic xml modding back then.
So nothing major happened for 2.0, apart from some initial changes I started back then.
Now.. I'm not sure. Would still love to see 2.0 come true.
In the last couple years merijn picked up some python skills too.
So yeah, the plans are definitely relevant.
On the other hand I don't always have this much time for modding.
We will see. I will probably reconsider restarting development for 2.0 at some point.
But for now I want to keep focused on the 1.x series. We already have an insane amount of improvements over the 1.0 version, but IMO there are still lot to do.
gilgames
Priest-King
Cheers mates! Keep up the work as long as you can
Ps: There is an iron near Abo, covered with dense forest. Change it to normal forest pls. 2 tiles east and 2 tiles north from indy Abo.
Ps: There is an iron near Abo, covered with dense forest. Change it to normal forest pls. 2 tiles east and 2 tiles north from indy Abo.
AbsintheRed
Deity
I would prefer if someone took the task, and make a simple modmod which adds Blue Marble.
Not everyone prefer Blue Marble, let's have it as an optional addon.
Terrain setup don't usually change, the current plans for 1.4 are an exception.
So it's not only easy to make, but also it's maintenance is nonexistent after the graphic updates of 1.4.
There are other resources set up this way too.
It's intentional in most cases - either for balance or for flavour.
AtlantaMarty
No longer active
Maybe put it in the main mod, and put a button in the menu to turn it on or off?
I don't know if that's feasible or not, though.
Also, I'd love to see screenshots of Semidesert and Islands in this mod...
AbsintheRed
Deity
Art is not something you can easily switch that way.
At least it would require an irreasonably big effort, with setting up many files differently.
Not something I'm willing to do for such a small benefit.
Also:
Someone wants to always play with Blue Marble, or always without it
Don't really see a need for a switch button.
Much more straightforward to have it as a separate modmod, which anyone can copy over if wants to use it.
While doing some research into Scottish place names I discovered that Orkney had never had much Celtic influence, and seemed more closely related to the Norse in terms of culture. Yet in game it is considered to be a Natural Area of Scotland, due to its proximity. I feel that to be more historically accurate, it should be a separate, Potential/Border Area rather than a Natural one, and should not be included in the Celtic Union UHV.
DC123456789
Deity
Remember that The Isles province includes the Southern Isles and Mann as well as Orkney. Your suggestion would be odd unless Orkney was made its own seperate province.
The Southerner
Warlord
Probably not the place or time for this post but anyway ... I've been thinking about city placement in the two scenarios. There's a conflict between randomness and set placement of cities. In 1250AD there are many pre-placed cities on the map and I'd expect the AI 
sad to settle in particular places (to maintain the ratio of cities to space/historical feel/etc if you know what I mean). The problem (or not depending on your opinion) is that the AI settles incongruently.
It's a question of whether the game should be more like Total War (all preplaced cities - which would be achieved by having extremely high settlement values for particular plots, etc, so the AI is guaranteed to settle these) or make it random. I'd love to play a scenario that was random (in as much as cities were settled by the AI on other values besides historical accuracy). I'm fond of either or - "historically directed AI city placements" or "city placements based on the suitability of the plots for growth, etc" - but not really a combination (or conflict) of the two.
The "randomness" of the earlier versions of RFCE was really attractive. It's a tough compromise.
What do you think?
sad to settle in particular places (to maintain the ratio of cities to space/historical feel/etc if you know what I mean). The problem (or not depending on your opinion) is that the AI settles incongruently.It's a question of whether the game should be more like Total War (all preplaced cities - which would be achieved by having extremely high settlement values for particular plots, etc, so the AI is guaranteed to settle these) or make it random. I'd love to play a scenario that was random (in as much as cities were settled by the AI on other values besides historical accuracy). I'm fond of either or - "historically directed AI city placements" or "city placements based on the suitability of the plots for growth, etc" - but not really a combination (or conflict) of the two.
The "randomness" of the earlier versions of RFCE was really attractive. It's a tough compromise.
What do you think?
That's what I was thinking - make Orkney a separate province from the isles, and change it to be either a potential area for both Scotland and Norway, or a natural area for Norway and border area for Scotland.
AbsintheRed
Deity
Yeah, Orkney already has reasonable war/settler values for the Norvegians.
I do see the AI settle there fairly often (also on the northern part of Ireland, which is much less historic, but I do find it feasible enough)
So the Norvegian presence is definitely wanted there.
On the other hand I usually try to avoid very small provinces, that's why those 1-2 tile islands were put in the same province (Isle of Mann was a separate province at one point)
Malta and Rhodes are still small islands provinces though.
Isn't it confusing to have those around?
If you own a province, it's the same value in the game (for UHVs and such), no matter how big it is.
Thus Malta/Rhodes equals with a normal-sized province, which feels somewhat strange.
AbsintheRed
Deity
Probably not the place or time for this post but anyway ... I've been thinking about city placement in the two scenarios. There's a conflict between randomness and set placement of cities. In 1250AD there are many pre-placed cities on the map and I'd expect the AI
It's a question of whether the game should be more like Total War (all preplaced cities - which would be achieved by having extremely high settlement values for particular plots, etc, so the AI is guaranteed to settle these) or make it random. I'd love to play a scenario that was random (in as much as cities were settled by the AI on other values besides historical accuracy). I'm fond of either or - "historically directed AI city placements" or "city placements based on the suitability of the plots for growth, etc" - but not really a combination (or conflict) of the two.
The "randomness" of the earlier versions of RFCE was really attractive. It's a tough compromise.
What do you think?
I'm also all for "feasible randomness"
IMO the best would be to have many good sites for the AI, while it randomly settles them, so there would be significant variance (of good AI placement choices) between different games.
It's not trivial at all how to achieve that with the AI though
You cannot really make that many potential city tiles equally tempting for it.
How would you solve this?
The base mechanics for AI city placement is still based on resources and most other aspects present in vanilla Civ IV
It's heavily modified with the values on the settler map, but it still just some modification over those base values.
If a potential map spot is much worse in itself, the AI won't really choose it in RFCE either.
That's true, but at the same time small island provinces like Rhodes and Malta still have access to sea resources in their BFC, so they're not completely different from single city land provinces like Bavaria for example. And IIRC there are no UHVs which require you to hold a specific number of provinces, so the size of the province doesn't really affect it from a UHV point of view.
Although I don't entirely agree with removing Orkney from the Scottish UHV - it was originally settled by the Picts, within the timescale of this mod, then conquered by the Norse and finally annexed by the Scots in 1462. So I think it fits with the Scottish UHV of forming a wider Celtic kingdom, same as holding territories in France fits within the English UHV, even though there were almost no English people living there.
Is there any way to alter the vanilla restrictions on city placement, to set it so that cities must be three tiles apart rather than the current two? That would help avoid the issue of AI city spamming and poor placement, whilst also meaning there is still some flexibility to ensure randomness from game to game.
AbsintheRed
Deity
Yeah, there are various rules.
Minimum distance between cities is a BtS setting, a very easy change in the dll
But here in RFCE we also have civ-specific modifiers
We can individually set how clustered AI civs will place their cities.
For example Byzantium will only settle cities with maximum 7 overlapping tiles with other cities, while Muscovy with maximum 5 tiles.
The average is around 9-10.
Civs with small territory have bigger values, it's 14 for Venice and Prussia for example, which makes it possible for them to have close cities.
So most of those clustered cities are intentional
IMO that's not part of the issue though. Why would it avoid poor placement if cities were only placed 3 tiles apart?
Also the primary issue is not even the poor placement, rather that the AI settle the same cities in most games, so there is too little variance.
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