map generation

[CIV-RAZOR]

is it me or does civ IV seem to waste loads of map space by placing everyones starting locations too close to each other.

for example i made a custom scenario using the "earth2" map with only three players

America, England, Germany...

i choose the earth map because i know its a fairly decent mixture of land and water and theres plenty of expansion space to enable you too get a fair way through the tech tree before having to worry about your borders to much.

however with about 10turns i had met the other two civilizations, i thought bloody marvelous just what i was trying to avoid by only playing two ai civs.

so i started it again, and again i found that the starting locations were next to each other again, so i entered the world builder tool which reveals the map to see just where we had all started.

it had placed us all in the centre of europe (all 3civs) which meant all the following were wasted space..

america side, africa, austrialia, russia, etc

so i ran a few test, started creating random (huge maps) with only 3civs and each time just entered the worldbuilding tool to check where the computer had started everyone, and sure enough regardless of how big the map was it started everyone really close when compared to the map itself.

not only that, alot of the time i had chosen continents and the computer decided on odd occasions to produce just one sorta circle (this is pangea in my view) in the centre of the map with nothing else but sea around it ;lol

it really does seem to have a thing about making the starting locations really close to each other...

not so much a big deal i know but does anyone else find this annoying ?

 

[mrwookie]

well if your playing huge maps with 3 player..
I think the generator will put the 3 player in the top 3 slot....

if you want you may try to put the 3 players separated with each other ( one at the bottom, one at the top and one in the middle)

like this you shouldn't be on closed to each other.

ps: I never tested that, its just a programer impression of how things works.

 

[BufordTJustice]

Well, I think you are playing an Earth map and this means that the starting civilizations are put close together. "In the old world", as the description of the map says. I'm sure it depends on the map script.

 

[Sian]

i'd guess that the reason was that civs would be placed where they're spawnpoints ... and theres tons of spawnpoints in and around Europe so ... chances that all would be in that area is rather big

 

[CIV-RAZOR]

i dont know it just seems compared to other versions IV tends to place most civs really close to each other, have to look into that worldbuilder and sort it out

 

[Willem]

If you go into the GlobalDefines.xml file you can adjust the minimum distance between civs at start up. What you're probably seeing is the game trying to place the civs according to the default setting, which is 10 tiles with some modifiers based on map size. These are the specific lines you're looking for:

<Define>
<DefineName>MIN_CIV_STARTING_DISTANCE</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>10</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>

Don't go too crazy with your values though, you might end up with civs starting right next to each other if you set it too high. I've set mine for 20 and that works out fairly well.

 

[Badtz Maru]

i'd guess that the reason was that civs would be placed where they're spawnpoints ... and theres tons of spawnpoints in and around Europe so ... chances that all would be in that area is rather big

Earth2 does not have predefined spawn points. The resources are randomly allocated and only the terrain is the same as real Earth. Spawn points are chosen the same as in random maps.

Now, it may be that, because of Europe's naturally diverse terrain, it is more likely to have a diverse collection of resources which might make the game more likely to choose start points in Europe, but I think if the first spawn point was chosen to be somewhere in the Americas, it would have started those other civilizations in the Americas too, as long as there were decent starting points available there.