[Map Script] Earth Flavour: historically appropriate starting positions

[SevenSpirits]

Not only that, the starting position normalizer replaces just about all desert and tundra (in the BFC) with plains, and turns plains into grassland if it thinks you don't have enough of the latter. It also removes all peaks and jungle, can add tons of forest, and usually ensures you have 3+ hills. So pretty much the only terrain you can pay attention to is water versus land, and Flood Plains.

 

[jkp1187]

Not only that, the starting position normalizer replaces just about all desert and tundra (in the BFC) with plains, and turns plains into grassland if it thinks you don't have enough of the latter. It also removes all peaks and jungle, can add tons of forest, and usually ensures you have 3+ hills. So pretty much the only terrain you can pay attention to is water versus land, and Flood Plains.

Well...at least that's something, no? Start small end big.

 

[lumpthing]

Now if you combined your original version with the bonuses and then used tundra and desert on some civs and jungles (feature, not a terrain) on others you might be able to influence their position with the cultural group.

You know I managed to forget that jungles aren't actually terrains. I wonder if that's why my scripts using terrains (or what I thought were terrains) never worked. I labeled the jungles as terrains. Nothing showed up in the error log though. I'll correct it some time and see if it works better.

 

[lumpthing]

Okay I've uploaded a new version which corrects the jungle error. I've done a few tests and it seems to be effective! Definitely a significant improvement on all the other versions I've uploaded at any rate. Thanks very much Seven05.

One thing I did that you may want to consider is adding rules for civs with unique buildings or units that have very specific requirments. For instance I have added the coastal city preference for civs like the Vikings with a UB that would be worthless if they started inland.

I've increased the Khmer preference for ivory and the Carthagians, Vikings, Dutch, Portuguese and Americans now all like ocean tiles (Americans for flavour reasons, others for unique buildings or units). I chose ocean tiles rather than coastal city preference because I think the script counts cities built by inland seas as coastal cities.

 

[Xenomorph]

Wouldn't it make more sense to place civs like Egypt closer to FEATURE_FLOOD_PLAINS than just desert? Just my two cents.

 

[lumpthing]

i doubt it would make much difference, the script doesn't affect the starting positions the game comes up with, it just chooses which of those starting positions a civ prefers. So if any starting positions have flood plains, they are likely to be taken by desert-preferring civs anyway (cos flood plains are always deserts as well of course).

 

[jkp1187]

Well, I guess the question is: which is more "Egyptian" -- Desert or Flood Plains?

If you put a preference Flood Plains instead of Desert, I assume that you'd end up with a starting location that includes both Flood Plains and Desert, just because if there's Flood Plains, there's also Desert nearby. If you prefer Desert instead of Flood Plains, don't you run the risk of just getting a starting location that has Desert and no Flood Plains?

 

[lumpthing]

Its impossible to put a preference for desert instead of flood plains because all flood plain tiles are also desert tiles. Anyway there's certainly no harm in making Egypt like flood plains as well as deserts so I may as well add that in. I guess Babylon, Sumeria and Persia should also like flood plains.

 

[SevenSpirits]

Look: unless you're using a custom map script that changes this, starting locations do not include desert that does not have a FP or Oasis. All such land (including plots with resources like Incense) gets turned into plains or grassland.

So all this talk of distinguishing between Desert and FP is really distinguishing between FP and Oases.

 

[jkp1187]

Understood. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

 

[lumpthing]

Need to clarify my terms: when I said starting position, I meant a 6-tile radius in every direction from where the initial settler is. This is the area which the scripts scans for preferred terrain. It's entirely possible for there to be FP/Oasis-free desert tiles within that 6-tile radius.

 

[lumpthing]

uploaded minor update: added flood plain preferences and more tundra preferences

 

[Elhoim]

It would be nice to have a "culturally linked starting locations" version of this mod, where all the civs from a same culture start clumped together. I really miss that option from Civ III...

 

[Psycadelic_Magi]

Hmmm, what am I doing wrong? I tried this with the 'perfect world' script as well as 'hemispheres' and in each case it destroyed the functionality of the script; leaving a grasslands map and removing the extra options for the script on the custom game screen...

All you have to do is put this script in publicmaps, and paste 'from Earth_flavour_mapmod import normalizeStartingPlotLocations' at the top of another script, and remove the '#' right?

 

[skweetis]

Any chance someone can reupload this one? Or know how/where I can find it elsewhere?

Thanks!

 

[lumpthing]

skweetis: I reuploaded it

magi: it may not be compatible with all scripts, i've only actually tested with tectonics and continents.

its been ages since ive been civving so maybe its something i did to the latest version and didnt test. Must check...

 

[skweetis]

Awesome! thank you very much!!!

 

[Jean Elcard]

@lumpthing: Hi there, Just want to inform you, that I've practically rewritten Dreiche2's mapscript module, you've based your mod on.

I've implemented a real optimization algorithm (no "First come, first serve" anymore), removed some bugs and added a lot of improvements. For example: The flavouring kicks in later now. All the starting area normalizations are done, when the script starts to evaluate the flavour of the available starting locations. You may even disable some of the normalizations (like removing "bad" terrain) to keep the starting locations more distinctive.

My main focus lay on Fall from Heaven and its modmod Fall Further, but it shouldn't be too difficult to make it work with Vanilla, Warlords or BtS civilisations as well. Maybe you are interested in doing the necessary conversions? Or maybe someone else?

Here is the link: FlavourMod Thread

 

[Master Kodama]

<snip>... Maybe you are interested in doing the necessary conversions? Or maybe someone else?

Well, I might take a crack at it, though my python abilities are pretty much non-existent.

 

[Angst]

Very interesting to be honest. I'll keep my eyes open.