[Map Script] SmartMap

[surt]

First of all, a huge thank you for an impressive piece of work. This adds a ton to the game.

One minor issue is that snow and tundra seem to be too widespread at a variety of settings. I am assuming that this is a matter of taste, making me wish that, similar to peaks, you could actually select a percentage for these terrains. I don't really want to eliminate them, I just want to prevent them from taking over the map.

For me, a larger issue is the homogenous nature of the world. This might be beneficial in multiplayer, but I find single player a lot more fun if different regions of the world are very distinct. In fact, that is what I find lacking in Civ IV's terra -- the new world seems to be pretty much like the old world, so what's to get worked up over). Are there existing settings which overcome this? Is it even possible?

For less snow and tundra, try playing on tropical instead of temperate.

As for a less homogenous world ... I think that would depend on what you're looking for ... different continent shapes, or different terrains? Civ4 just doesn't have a ton of range (only 4 plot types, 7 terrains), and of those only 3 plot types are land (flat,hill,peak - and peak is pointless), and of the terrains, snow and tundra are pretty useless, really leaving just grass, plains, deserts to try to make distinctive areas with.

There's just not a lot to work with, and it's particularly difficult to make things un-varied yet at least plausibly fair to more than a couple of the players (human or ai).

Still I welcome ideas on how to do this. I'm also happy to integrate a new terrain / feature gen if you're python inclined.

 

[beorn]

For less snow and tundra, try playing on tropical instead of temperate.

I should have been more clear in my original post -- I already play on tropical, and still start in arctic waste about half the time. When I first tried Smart Map, and used other settings, I was getting maps that were overwhelmingly arctic.

As for a less homogenous world ... I think that would depend on what you're looking for ... different continent shapes, or different terrains? Civ4 just doesn't have a ton of range (only 4 plot types, 7 terrains), and of those only 3 plot types are land (flat,hill,peak - and peak is pointless), and of the terrains, snow and tundra are pretty useless, really leaving just grass, plains, deserts to try to make distinctive areas with.

There's just not a lot to work with, and it's particularly difficult to make things un-varied yet at least plausibly fair to more than a couple of the players (human or ai).

Still I welcome ideas on how to do this. I'm also happy to integrate a new terrain / feature gen if you're python inclined.

I see your point, especially about the fairness issue.

Some possibilities:
Terrain: Wetlands -- Not only would this be realistic, but it could also tend towards game balancing. Rivers have always been a huge advantage, but with the vast increase of available food along rivers, with the extension of flood plains to other plot types, rivers now make or break a civ. In truth, the presence of wetlands limits available usable land along rivers, and is also the source of significant disease.

Plot type: Mountain (the Civ 3 type, traversible, open to mining) - I think Peaks add a lot to the game, but losing mountains costs a lot to playability. Cities built in such locations are not likely to be economic powerhouses, but they sure are hell to conquer -- especially if troops are allowed to gain appropriate promotions.

Other possibilities: savannah and/or prarie

One other concern I have is that, except in Smart Map strict, the frequency of flood plains in hill, plains, and grassland squares is changing game balance too much. It would be nice to be able to choose to tone town the frequency of flood plains, without going all the way to "strict."

 

[Akuma-sama]

I just thought I'd share this one...

...I know canada is a cold country, but that's just ridiculous

(btw, I was using X-Y no loop because my video card has fog-removing issues with the map edges.)

How about preventing continents from landing on the ice like that? That'd solve the problem...
Or making loops Iceless? Or hell, Iceless maps?
Other than that, I'm gonna keep tweeking with those lovely settings...

 

[surt]

I should have been more clear in my original post -- I already play on tropical, and still start in arctic waste about half the time. When I first tried Smart Map, and used other settings, I was getting maps that were overwhelmingly arctic.

I will have a look, perhaps I've accidentally broken something. Tropical maps should have very little snow.

I see your point, especially about the fairness issue.

Some possibilities:
Terrain: Wetlands -- Not only would this be realistic, but it could also tend towards game balancing. Rivers have always been a huge advantage, but with the vast increase of available food along rivers, with the extension of flood plains to other plot types, rivers now make or break a civ. In truth, the presence of wetlands limits available usable land along rivers, and is also the source of significant disease.

Plot type: Mountain (the Civ 3 type, traversible, open to mining) - I think Peaks add a lot to the game, but losing mountains costs a lot to playability. Cities built in such locations are not likely to be economic powerhouses, but they sure are hell to conquer -- especially if troops are allowed to gain appropriate promotions.

Other possibilities: savannah and/or prarie

This is unfortunately beyond what you can do in a map script, this sort of change requires an actual mod. I'm currently avoiding making any mods in SmartMap because I want to keep SmartMap compatible with other mods.

One other concern I have is that, except in Smart Map strict, the frequency of flood plains in hill, plains, and grassland squares is changing game balance too much. It would be nice to be able to choose to tone town the frequency of flood plains, without going all the way to "strict."

This I will look at a little. It's something of a preference factor, but probably not worth a bunch of new menu options. I'm going to try to move more of the 'unusual' configuration of SmartMap to an obvious place so that people can edit it to their preferred style.

 

[surt]

I just thought I'd share this one...

...I know canada is a cold country, but that's just ridiculous

(btw, I was using X-Y no loop because my video card has fog-removing issues with the map edges.)

How about preventing continents from landing on the ice like that? That'd solve the problem...
Or making loops Iceless? Or hell, Iceless maps?
Other than that, I'm gonna keep tweeking with those lovely settings...

Yeah, you're getting a lot of ice/snow because you have non-wrap in both direction. I'm going to look at tweaking this a bit in the next version, and i'll make no-ice an accessible option somewhere.

 

[Fosse]

I like the call for areas of the map that feel different from each other. I also understand why you can't make different regions of the world vary too much as far as what tiles they get, making a grassland continent and a plains continent so that the player feels the land is very different.

But what if on a "Varied Regions" map you might have some continents that are compact collection of islands, mini archipelagos if you will, some that are "Round/No fragments," and some that are "Very Round/No Fragments" Another option that would be fairly balanced is to have one region of the world get most of its fresh water from lakes (80% maybe) and another to get most of its fresh water from rivers. The irrigation and commerce should kind of level out, but the two areas look remarkably different from each other and therefore feel like different lands.

Other ways I can think of to make continents fair (a roughly equal mix of tiles types) but still feel varied:

"Regionalized Resources." This option would use the standard amount of luxury and health resources, but would restrict each one to occur in something like 2 Regions of the map, with each region covering about 10% of the land area. This is better than clumping them so one civ can get them all with a well placed city because it lends a whole area of the map a unique feature... only in the southeaster continent can you get spices, for example... but those spices might be spread out over 3 civs.

Percentage of "useless territory." One continent could have triple the amount of peaks as another, but also be much larger. So the usable space on the continents are equal but once again they each feel very different.

 

[Bringa]

Hi surt,

I'm using 9.1 and I got a rather strange map, resource-wise. My resource settings were "clump both"and "very high levels of all". The thing is, there aren't very high levels of food resources at ALL. There's not a single wheat resource in the whole map, not a single rice, exactly ONE cow and ONE sheep...

I'm using Sevomod3.0c with the megalopolis addon, in case that matters.

 

[awaro9]

Hello,

we get a big, ugly, red message into the middle of the screen when trying to player a multiplayer game with SmartMap 9.1, Sevomod 3A and Civ IV patch V1.61 on both PCs.

Anyone any suggestions?

Thanx

 

[Officer Reene]

Hello,

we get a big, ugly, red message into the middle of the screen when trying to player a multiplayer game with SmartMap 9.1, Sevomod 3A and Civ IV patch V1.61 on both PCs.

Anyone any suggestions?

Thanx

if the message is "OUT OF SYNC... users are need to reconnect..." or something like that....

well it's probably your sevomod 3A Mod, not smartmap


Smartmap doesnt cause OOS errors (at least im aware of)

Ive been using smartmap for while (all versions) and I never get that OOS error... (I play MP all the time with my brother through a LAN or Direct IP connection)


FYI:

OOS errors are usually caused by python (possibly SDK... dont know since I havent used any SDK mods) editing where AI behavior changes/scripts are added...


any python editing that doesnt change or modify AI usually works fine...

since smartmap does not change AI behavior... it shouldnt cause any OOS

In my experience Any xml editing does not cause OOS errors...

if that the error message is not OOS ... please ignore my post

(and maybe post what the error msg is, so surt can help you better )


hope that helps


EDIT: I just read your subject line... silly me so your error is OOS and I believe my info applies...

 

[Kopiano]

Hi Officer Reene, Thnx for your explanation regarding our OOS message with Awaro9!

Well, the reason why our suspicion fall on Smartmap was the fact having no problems in our multiplayer games without smartmap9.1, but with Sevomod3A...

If Smarmap itself is not able to cause such OOS problems, maybe it doesn't work well together with Sevomod???

Well, i have to confess, we missed to try Smartmap without Sevomod, but this will be our next task, I guess...

We consider it as a disaster, playing without Smarmap, so pls, help!

 

[Rag55]

Wow this looks great, can this be used to start a Multiplayer game?

 

[surt]

Hi surt,

I'm using 9.1 and I got a rather strange map, resource-wise. My resource settings were "clump both"and "very high levels of all". The thing is, there aren't very high levels of food resources at ALL. There's not a single wheat resource in the whole map, not a single rice, exactly ONE cow and ONE sheep...

I'm using Sevomod3.0c with the megalopolis addon, in case that matters.

Clumped resources use the standard generator currently. At some point I'll write my own clumper but I haven't gotten around to it. In any case, any resource that falls in the clumped category will currently just get the default amount created, regardless of how high you set the resource level.

 

[surt]

Hello,

we get a big, ugly, red message into the middle of the screen when trying to player a multiplayer game with SmartMap 9.1, Sevomod 3A and Civ IV patch V1.61 on both PCs.

Anyone any suggestions?

Thanx

There is some possibility of a bad interaction between SmartMap & Sevomod. I know a lot of people are using SmartMap in multiplayer in general. I'll try to look into this when I get a chance, but it will be at least a week or so before I can.

There's really very little reason why SmartMap should be different from any of the standard map scripts in terms of OOS errors, though. So my first suspicion is going to be something in SevoMod.

 

[surt]

Wow this looks great, can this be used to start a Multiplayer game?

Pretty much yes. There are occasional reports that it doesn't work right with some specific mod, which so far have all turned out to be a problem with the mod.

 

[Sidewinder00Q]

I had an issue, with SmartMap 9.1. It worked fine for a while, on a whim I installed Dale's Combat Mod. It worked with that. But then tried a MP game with OUT the mod, and it came up OOS. I have deleted the Combat Mod, but I still get the OOS errors...not quite sure what to make of that. It happens less often, but it still happens. AFAIK the mod is a completely seperate entity and if it's not loaded it shouldn't cause any problems.

 

[Rag55]

Hey again, these map formations are great !

I see a problem that someone mentioned before but it goes a bit beyond simple bonuses.

Ive noticed in regular default map maker that resources are somewhat region specific. In the smartmap there seem to be an overabundance of resources, and they are scattered all around, (Bananas 3 spaces from tundra) (5-6 different resources available to 1 well placed city.)

Also seems likely some players would'nt benefit diplomatically from trading because they possess all of the resources available.

 

[surt]

Hey again, these map formations are great !

I see a problem that someone mentioned before but it goes a bit beyond simple bonuses.

Ive noticed in regular default map maker that resources are somewhat region specific. In the smartmap there seem to be an overabundance of resources, and they are scattered all around, (Bananas 3 spaces from tundra) (5-6 different resources available to 1 well placed city.)

Also seems likely some players would'nt benefit diplomatically from trading because they possess all of the resources available.

You probably want to set the resource option to 'clump both' and maybe reduce the resource density as well. You can also use 'standard' resource distribution which will look just like normal maps.

 

[Officer Reene]

Hi Officer Reene, Thnx for your explanation regarding our OOS message with Awaro9!

No Problem

I had OOS errors in MP and I was determined to find out what the cause was...

Well, the reason why our suspicion fall on Smartmap was the fact having no problems in our multiplayer games without smartmap9.1, but with Sevomod3A...

did you play a game all the way through?

Sometimes OOC errors dont occur right away...

a couple of times I was playing games that the OOC error didnt apppear until 1600's AD (normal Game Speed)

If Smarmap itself is not able to cause such OOS problems, maybe it doesn't work well together with Sevomod???

as surt says, it may be a an interaction between the two mods...

that is why I try to use mods that edit XML files and only make minor Python Changes without major AI behavioral changes...

 

[Rag55]

In Mp, getting OOS, using no other mods. game says to rejoin and after rejoining settler is in a different spot, with no movement points. Screen below.

also settler is preset to move on rejoining as shown..?



btw those tips on resources work cool , thx.

this happened twice, 1st time settler was in another spot, this time he was in same spot rdy to move.

 

[Sto]

Hi , i took a look at the script because i had an OOS too ... So may be you can try that waiting for Surt ' improvement . All player must select smartmap into the single player menu before launching a mp game . I think that can solve the problem but i can test it so i'm not sure !

Tcho!