[Map Script] PerfectWorld2.py

[cephalo]

Hey, it's been a while since I last played a game past 0 CE, and now I can't remember...
Is this kind of things normal in a prince-level game ? Most of the IA territory is still covered with forests in 1025 CE. I wonder if this is a bug, and if it could be related to some of the values I changed in the map script. For this map i made a mistake and put less than 1 in self.TreeFactor, and that resulted in disallowing jungles.
It doesn't seem related but this is the only "illegal" change i made, so...

Wow, that map is monstrous! Is that a huge size map? There seems to be almost no hills in this screen shot, maybe the ai is preserving the trees for production lol.

 

[Burned]

I changed the dimensions of the huge map to (36,24)... I have much free time and a relatively good laptop, might as well use it. It's a little too big : I don't think there has been any war yet (except my early rushes) and large chunks of rich land are still unclaimed on the AIs borders. But I picked these dimensions in this thread and i'm too lazy to test a smaller value that don't mess up the script.

And though i'd like an AI that plans ahead the use of its forests, I don't think that's the case here. Several cities with more than three hills are in the same situation.


The almighty dF>
There's variables for a desert treshold and a plain treshold in the script, change them both to reduce the size of the deserts.
On this point cephalo, it seems that you deserts appear in places far from the north and south oceanic coasts, and IRL they tend to appear in the parts of the continents wide from east to west coasts, like north africa, middle east, central asia and central north america...

 

[cephalo]

On this point cephalo, it seems that you deserts appear in places far from the north and south oceanic coasts, and IRL they tend to appear in the parts of the continents wide from east to west coasts, like north africa, middle east, central asia and central north america...

Well, there's a rainy belt at 60 degrees that on a globe is quite a small area. On a flat map however, it's a very significant portion of the land mass. Oh well.

It is adjustable though, I think the variable is called polarFrontLatitude or something. Put it closer to pole to mimic a less significant polar front.

 

[cephalo]

I actually started playing civ again, and so far on noble difficulty I've been getting my behind kicked. I always pick the wrong strategy for my starting position. I've started 3 games as Gilgamesh, and I figured that I would pump out my UU vultures and take somebody over, then start to develop.

For my first two games, I was tempted away from spamming my UUs for a bit too long and then someone would declare on me when I wasn't fully ready. My start on the second game gave me two gem plots, and I was ahead in tech but nothing terribly useful militarily, and then I got bogged down in a war and fell behind.

On my third game, I started in an area that was almost all hills. I figured this would help with unit production, but it cost me alot in tech. By the time I had captured about 3 of my target's cities, I was waaay behind in tech and then everyone else declared on me with units I couldn't handle.

This map very often starts you with a whole bunch of one thing, and a huge deficit of something else. Do I like that? I dunno if I like that. It's kinda fun and different, but maybe it's a bit too much? Maybe I just don't know how to play lol.

 

[aday]

^^ I think that's exactly why several people were clamoring for more food resources. With enough food (and I mean sufficient, like 1-3 resources, not boatloads) you can make almost any start work.

 

[Burned]

Why not an option to make the hill placement more random ? It's true that they tend to form clusters that make large parts of territory uninteresting.

Well, there's a rainy belt at 60 degrees that on a globe is quite a small area. On a flat map however, it's a very significant portion of the land mass. Oh well.

It is adjustable though, I think the variable is called polarFrontLatitude or something. Put it closer to pole to mimic a less significant polar front.

No, I was thinking about the monsoon climate rules.
A bit of ascii is worth more than a lot of words, so what bugs me is that

on a continent like         while on continents like this     
 this a desert is          there's no desert, and it's the  
 likely to appear           opposite of what happens IRL  
  in the middle
    _________                 ________________________
  /           \             /                          \
 |             |   south   |                            |
 |             |     V     |           here             |
 |             |           |        be forests          |
 |    here     |           |                            |
 |     be      |            \ ________________________ /
 |    sand     |          
 |             |          
 |             |              Or so it seems to me.
 |             |          
  \ _________ /

 

[cephalo]

No, I was thinking about the monsoon climate rules.
A bit of ascii is worth more than a lot of words, so what bugs me is that

on a continent like         while on continents like this     
 this a desert is          there's no desert, and it's the  
 likely to appear           opposite of what happens IRL  
  in the middle
    _________                 ________________________
  /           \             /                          \
 |             |   south   |                            |
 |             |     V     |           here             |
 |             |           |        be forests          |
 |    here     |           |                            |
 |     be      |            \ ________________________ /
 |    sand     |          
 |             |          
 |             |              Or so it seems to me.
 |             |          
  \ _________ /

Is this a depiction of what you think should happen, or what is currently happening in the map? I will assume it is what you are seeing in the map, and I think I can explain.

Anyway, a continent that is tall in the N-S direction will cross more climate zones that one that is long in the E-W direction. A tall continent is more likely to have portions of land under the 'horse lattitudes' that tend to be dry. Conversely, the long continent will be more influenced by the latitude band it sits in. If that is on the horse latitude, you should expect a big long desert. In fact there's such a continent in the game I'm currently playing.

 

[Sir Spanky]

I play this script with the XXL World Mod on the largest map size... 60x40 or something and the land masses seem Earth like to me. Large areas of forest, areas of Desert and Jungle, a little on the poor side of resources but then again... resources are really not all that Abundant in the real world either... most were "introduced" especially food resources where they transplanted by colonies.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

what about adding scrubs and marshes to the next version? would make it more interesting imho.

 

[Tholal]

I've been playing this map a lot since I discovered it several months ago. In fact, it's the only one I use unless I just want to get a quick jump into a new game. I used to play on huge maps, but moved down to standard or small size as PerfectWorld2 creates large-sized maps.

But I have to agree with those commenting on the large interior desert. This seems to be pretty much a staple with this mapscript. I'm not sure what's going on but just because an area is landlocked doesn't mean that it's a desert. For example, the middle of the US is a large swath of land that isn't anywhere near the ocean, but it's actually quite wet and developed into the Great Plains. Another example is the Amazon. The weather tends to roll in from the west and hit the Andes, but instead of forming a desert on the other side, the clouds turn into snow and run down the east side of the mountains in thousands of streams creating a huge expanse of jungle.

In short, excellent, fun mapscript, but it could still use some tweaking so I hope that it isn't considered a completed project.

 

[TheLastOne36]

I've been playing this map a lot since I discovered it several months ago. In fact, it's the only one I use unless I just want to get a quick jump into a new game. I used to play on huge maps, but moved down to standard or small size as PerfectWorld2 creates large-sized maps.

But I have to agree with those commenting on the large interior desert. This seems to be pretty much a staple with this mapscript. I'm not sure what's going on but just because an area is landlocked doesn't mean that it's a desert. For example, the middle of the US is a large swath of land that isn't anywhere near the ocean, but it's actually quite wet and developed into the Great Plains. Another example is the Amazon. The weather tends to roll in from the west and hit the Andes, but instead of forming a desert on the other side, the clouds turn into snow and run down the east side of the mountains in thousands of streams creating a huge expanse of jungle.

In short, excellent, fun mapscript, but it could still use some tweaking so I hope that it isn't considered a completed project.

Agreed, I work with Tourism here in Venezuela, and one of the things we do is Rafting.

We raft on the rivers coming from the andes mountains through the Llano (Plains in Spanish). Those rivers end up at the Orinoco (and to a lesser extent, the Amazon) and form rainforest after the Llanos.

 

[Sir Spanky]

Cephalo,

Do you think your script would be compatible with the map Script Full Of Resources by Sto?

Where is script allows changes to be made to resources, units and things before the game starts?

I think the two of you should get together and see if it would work.

Linkie Full Of Resources

 

[cephalo]

But I have to agree with those commenting on the large interior desert. This seems to be pretty much a staple with this mapscript. I'm not sure what's going on but just because an area is landlocked doesn't mean that it's a desert. For example, the middle of the US is a large swath of land that isn't anywhere near the ocean, but it's actually quite wet and developed into the Great Plains. Another example is the Amazon. The weather tends to roll in from the west and hit the Andes, but instead of forming a desert on the other side, the clouds turn into snow and run down the east side of the mountains in thousands of streams creating a huge expanse of jungle.

Hmm, I'm no climatologist, but the stuff I read said that the winds at the equator flow toward the west, not from the west. In fact, on the leeward side of the Andes we have the driest desert in the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama

The reason why you often see desert in the middle of PW continents is because they do tend to be surrounded by mountains, somewhat more so than the real world. So the water tends to be blocked off fairly quickly. The things that cause desert in this map are the horse lattitudes, and too many cumulative obstructions between the ocean and the wind direction. Any continent centered around 25 degrees is gonna have a huge desert almost guaranteed, and this map does generate alot of those. Hey, it's not easy! You gotta have rules!

 

[cephalo]

Cephalo,

Do you think your script would be compatible with the map Script Full Of Resources by Sto?

Where is script allows changes to be made to resources, units and things before the game starts?

I think the two of you should get together and see if it would work.

Linkie Full Of Resources

Full of Resources is an amazing script. Anytime there's something about Civ modding I need to know Sto is one of the first guys I ask. However, hooking up an interface like that to PW would be alot of work. I don't really wanna do that. I don't think Sto wants to do that either. Especially since I would probably want to change something in the map on a whim and break the whole interface.

EDIT: also, go ahead and open the map with a text editor you will see a great many tunable options for resources and stuff.

 

[Ramesses]

Full of Resources is an amazing script. Anytime there's something about Civ modding I need to know Sto is one of the first guys I ask. However, hooking up an interface like that to PW would be alot of work. I don't really wanna do that. I don't think Sto wants to do that either. Especially since I would probably want to change something in the map on a whim and break the whole interface.

You can always keep a previous version of the script saved as a backup.

Anyway, I bet if you put up a poll asking whether people A.) really want you to join forces with Sto or B.) don't care, you'd get a lot more votes in A.

 

[MadMage86]

This probably isn't as big an issue for most people, but it's a huge pet peeve of mine... is there a way to keep this script from generating continents on the edge of the screen? Even in a cylnidrical world where it wraps it bugs the hell out of me when the main continent is on the side of the minimap - I like it being more centered.

Also... the randomness of the map is cool but because of the way the resources were set to generate, if you end up with more/less than 3 landmasses you get problems with how resources are generated... some island chains will have no food at all, while other maps will be lacking an entire resource. Would an option on the number of continents and/or a fix to the way resources are assigned to landmasses (for example, a designation that corn will appear on 2 island chains) be viable?

 

[JA_Lamb]

Hi, this is a beautiful map generator script. Congratulations.
It is also one of the most well commented code I've seen. It makes it easy to follow the instructions and tweak the map generation to whatever a player would want even with very limited coding knowledge like me. Thanks for taking the trouble.

Question, how can I add a new feature like scrubland so that the map generator can incorporate it? I copied the scrub Art, and XML's from FFH2 into my personal Mod editing so that it should work correctly. I can now place scrub on desserts manually. They're not generated with the map script. Changed the values in the XML to govern their appearance from 0 to 10000 but nothing works. (Oasis are at 500 and well represented).

Is it possible that I have to define scrub within the map script? and define rainfall parameters within the cusp of plains/dessert? If so, sorry I don't know how to do this without instruction and messing up a very good application, I'll continue to use the manual method.

Thanks for a great resource. I no longer play on any other maps but these generated by PerfectWorld2, all the others are rather... flat tasting you know.

 

[cephalo]

This probably isn't as big an issue for most people, but it's a huge pet peeve of mine... is there a way to keep this script from generating continents on the edge of the screen? Even in a cylnidrical world where it wraps it bugs the hell out of me when the main continent is on the side of the minimap - I like it being more centered.

Also... the randomness of the map is cool but because of the way the resources were set to generate, if you end up with more/less than 3 landmasses you get problems with how resources are generated... some island chains will have no food at all, while other maps will be lacking an entire resource. Would an option on the number of continents and/or a fix to the way resources are assigned to landmasses (for example, a designation that corn will appear on 2 island chains) be viable?

There are options you can edit that will place margins on the map edges, search for 'eastMargin' to find the place where you can edit these. The thing is you might also have to edit some other climate variables to get a map that makes sense. For example, if You use a northMargin and a southMargin, you might not see any tundra or snow unless you make tundra and snow appear more readily somehow.

Even on duel size you should be getting at least one resource of each type. Also, usually food resources will appear on one main continent plus a few islands. I'm not sure what problem you are seeing with the resources.

 

[cephalo]

Hi, this is a beautiful map generator script. Congratulations.
It is also one of the most well commented code I've seen. It makes it easy to follow the instructions and tweak the map generation to whatever a player would want even with very limited coding knowledge like me. Thanks for taking the trouble.

Question, how can I add a new feature like scrubland so that the map generator can incorporate it? I copied the scrub Art, and XML's from FFH2 into my personal Mod editing so that it should work correctly. I can now place scrub on desserts manually. They're not generated with the map script. Changed the values in the XML to govern their appearance from 0 to 10000 but nothing works. (Oasis are at 500 and well represented).

Is it possible that I have to define scrub within the map script? and define rainfall parameters within the cusp of plains/dessert? If so, sorry I don't know how to do this without instruction and messing up a very good application, I'll continue to use the manual method.

Thanks for a great resource. I no longer play on any other maps but these generated by PerfectWorld2, all the others are rather... flat tasting you know.

Hey if you mess up you can just redownload. Adding terrain types and feature types to this map is a bit of work, because I don't use the XML for those. If you want to reasearch how I handle that, just search for 'terrain' and 'percent'. That part of this script is not as complicated as some of the other parts. If you can see how I add plains and jungle, you can figure out marshes and scrub.

 

[MadMage86]

There are options you can edit that will place margins on the map edges, search for 'eastMargin' to find the place where you can edit these. The thing is you might also have to edit some other climate variables to get a map that makes sense. For example, if You use a northMargin and a southMargin, you might not see any tundra or snow unless you make tundra and snow appear more readily somehow.

Even on duel size you should be getting at least one resource of each type. Also, usually food resources will appear on one main continent plus a few islands. I'm not sure what problem you are seeing with the resources.

Yeah, I found the margin controls (I think) and it sortof helped it for the most part...

About the resources... yeah, at least a few will always show up I noticed, though if the map is small enough it will be VERY few. I've been playing a few 'huge' games that had in excess of 6 larger islands and about 3-4 would often have no food resource at all for some reason (probably due to already having enough spawned on larger landmasses). I've taken to opening the map editor and resetting the map multiple times to try and get one with 3 larger continent type landmasses or 2 and 1 good island [chain] to optimize bonus distribution, but as you can imagine this takes ages.