The map generator should have a more parameters to control what sort of world you get. They should broaden pangaea/continents/archipelago to be a rough number of landmasses. With a 100x100 map, you could have up to 2450 separate 1 tile landmasses (which would be stupid, but you could do it), assuming the poles are bounded by water. With a 400x400 map, you could have up to 15800. Together with the ocean coverage parameter, that would effectively determine the average landmass size.
You need more than just average, though. I would also like to see a parameter for variation in size of the landmasses. One end of the spectrum would be for all landmasses to be the same size. The other end would be for the landmasses to be from 1 tile to whatever, as long as the total number and land coverage were within the specified parameters. That way, you could end up with a map that has one Eurasia and half a dozen medium-sized archipelagos, with the average landmass size being of a South America. Or you could have 8 landmasses from the size of Madagascar to the size of Africa. Or you could have 12 continents all the size of Australia.
I'd also like to see a parameter to control distance between landmasses. This value would have to be constrained by the choices of landmass number and size. You'd have choices like Really Close, where all landmasses are separated by only one coast tile, or Really Far, where all landmasses are separated by 20 tiles of ocean (on average). Perhaps this could be expressed instead as a number of landmass groups. Africa and Europe are separate continents (well, let's pretend they are), but they're in the same group, as they're only separated by what would be a tile or two in Civ. Landmass groups are separated by lots of ocean, while continents within a group might only be separated by a tile of coast.
Since I'm on the subject, perhaps there could be shape parameters. Are the continents like Africa, which has relatively convex? Or do they have all kinds of weird dangly projections like East Asia? Are they long and thin or short and compact? This is a little less fully baked, though.
According to the CFC info page, map generation is done in Python, so hopefully someone can add parameters like this (assuming they make sense mathematically).
You need more than just average, though. I would also like to see a parameter for variation in size of the landmasses. One end of the spectrum would be for all landmasses to be the same size. The other end would be for the landmasses to be from 1 tile to whatever, as long as the total number and land coverage were within the specified parameters. That way, you could end up with a map that has one Eurasia and half a dozen medium-sized archipelagos, with the average landmass size being of a South America. Or you could have 8 landmasses from the size of Madagascar to the size of Africa. Or you could have 12 continents all the size of Australia.
I'd also like to see a parameter to control distance between landmasses. This value would have to be constrained by the choices of landmass number and size. You'd have choices like Really Close, where all landmasses are separated by only one coast tile, or Really Far, where all landmasses are separated by 20 tiles of ocean (on average). Perhaps this could be expressed instead as a number of landmass groups. Africa and Europe are separate continents (well, let's pretend they are), but they're in the same group, as they're only separated by what would be a tile or two in Civ. Landmass groups are separated by lots of ocean, while continents within a group might only be separated by a tile of coast.
Since I'm on the subject, perhaps there could be shape parameters. Are the continents like Africa, which has relatively convex? Or do they have all kinds of weird dangly projections like East Asia? Are they long and thin or short and compact? This is a little less fully baked, though.
According to the CFC info page, map generation is done in Python, so hopefully someone can add parameters like this (assuming they make sense mathematically).
