[C3C] Map inquiry possibilities being explored for single player pleasure

[Grandpa Troll]

I first want to thank you the CFC Community for as long as I have been Civin (a long time) you have been gracious and kind to assist. Here we go, couple inquiries FIRST: I want an all land map or as close as possible. Even some small amount of ocean/water is fine. Basically I want to have a scenario with massive land and minimal water. SECOND: Currently I have a 250 X 250 map, 5 player (4 plus me) I auto generate the map and add some terrain via the editor. Many moons ago it seems I read where you could make a map without having to do the size squares of terrain addition that is currently possible. I wish there was a way I could just make an area without the tedious small additions at a time. THIRD: Beside manually adding rivers, is it possible to auto generate rivers on a massive or larger scale? Forgive me if Im not completely clear, but currently you can click river and then add where ever you so desire, I would rather be able to add say "75%" rivers (just a figure) and bam it is done. Thank you for any help, minus ridicule. This is what I enjoy about this community, I dont mind critiquing may because im 65 on or about that I really enjoy modding for my own experience and entertainment, replay capability is so important to me, Thanks in advance for any input. It is very much appreciated.

 

[tjs282]

FIRST: I want an all land map or as close as possible. Even some small amount of ocean/water is fine. Basically I want to have a scenario with massive land and minimal water.

(Sorry, but AFAIK) The only way to achieve this is to make most of the map yourself.

You can make a good start by asking the Editor to generate a Pangaea (single land-mass) map with only 60% water (the lowest %water available in the map-generator), but you'd then have to landfill all the Oceans with whatever terrain you want there instead.

SECOND: Currently I have a 250 X 250 map, 5 player (4 plus me) I auto generate the map and add some terrain via the editor. Many moons ago it seems I read where you could make a map without having to do the size squares of terrain addition that is currently possible. I wish there was a way I could just make an area without the tedious small additions at a time.

There are several brush-sizes available in the map-editor menu (I think the largest is 5x5 tiles?), so after you've selected a terrain-type you can paint large swathes of it onto the map, and use increasingly smaller brushes to adjust the fine details afterwards. But on a 250x250 map, yes, that would all still be a lot of manual labour.

There is (was?) also a homebrew utility available to download called "BMPtoBIC", which would convert a colour-coded BMP file (that you can import into or build from scratch in even such a basic utility as Windows Paintbrush) into a Civ3-compatible mapfile (I think only .bic format, which was for Vanilla Civ3 — but those files can be opened in the Conquests Editor, edited, and then resaved as .biq files).

I have a vague recollection that BMPtoBIC was made by @Quintillus — who later (also?) wrote a much more flexible, cross-platform Civ3Conquests Editor — but I could be wrong about that.

THIRD: Beside manually adding rivers, is it possible to auto generate rivers on a massive or larger scale? Forgive me if Im not completely clear, but currently you can click river and then add where ever you so desire, I would rather be able to add say "75%" rivers (just a figure) and bam it is done.

I don't think that's possible — unless along with the "redistribute starting positions/ resources/ Goody-Huts/ etc." options, there's also a "redistribute rivers" function that I never noticed.

 

[Quintillus]

I have a vague recollection that BMPtoBIC was made by @Quintillus — who later (also?) wrote a much more flexible, cross-platform Civ3Conquests Editor — but I could be wrong about that.

Yup, that was me! The basic idea is "the BMPtoBIC utility is cool, but you still have to do a bunch of color-coding yourself, wouldn't it be nice to just be able to have the program scan an existing satellite/map image and do that work for you?" It's now part of my editor (link in signature).

It's not completely "give it an image, get a map" - it does require that you convert the image to a 16-to-256-color BMP file first, and then choose which color matches to which terrain (including the option of mapping to landmark terrains). Sometimes it can be difficult to differentiate between forests and jungles on the source map, but I've found that generally it works well for getting a base map of land/water, and within land, tundra (snow), desert, forest/jungle cover, and open lands, often with some differentiation between wet open lands and dry steppes. Then once that is imported, I can go back and add the hills/mountains, fix areas where it got jungle and forest confused, add rivers, and generally make the map complete.

Theoretically, if you have at atlas that does a good job of color-coding Civ3 terrain features, you may get better results than from satellite images.

I've thought about trying to add an option to use a DEM (Digital Elevation Model) import option for the hills and mountains more automagically, but almost all the guides I've found on finding good DEM files are from the '90s, and even when the FTP sites they refer to are still up (which is rare), the file structures have changed. Odd though it may be, we seem to have gone backwards technologically in that area. ArcGIS does have one map layer that might work for it though - it's possible to shade the areas that have the most elevation change, which would work for "is this a hill or a mountain", even as it's not quite the same as the original DEM concept (which is about height above sea level - in a DEM file, a high plateau will be shaded a appropriate shade of gray, whereas in the ArcGIS layer it would be shaded white because it is essentially flat).

 

[Grandpa Troll]

Once again I am very appreciative of sound input. The Pangea idea is probably my best option. CFC is and always has been a true community. Funny, I read threads and am amazed of the complexities that go into altering without breaking a game. I am less than a month from 65 and my wife found me a bunch of older machine (laptops and tower desktops). I dont need internet for the ones that run CIV II so its perfect!! Take care one and all for graciously answering my inquiries.