[Map Script] SmartMap

[RSL]

I was running a standard map and no other options changed. I've got 752M of RAM. an a 128M video card. I've rolled back to v7.2 right now.

 

[ShallowGrave]

Hi, I started to use Smartmap v8 and had the same problem as RSL. Actually I had to eventually reboot the pc because it seemed to be frozen.

Then I tried again but this time I changed the last options: override width and height. I chose "don't override" instead of the new random size generation that were default. It created the map quickly and without problems. I tried later with other options inside the override with and height and had no problems too.
So my guess is that the new options you added: random 16-64, random 32-128 and random 64-256 are to blame.

I have 2GB of memory.

 

[surt]

Hi, I started to use Smartmap v8 and had the same problem as RSL. Actually I had to eventually reboot the pc because it seemed to be frozen.

Then I tried again but this time I changed the last options: override width and height. I chose "don't override" instead of the new random size generation that were default. It created the map quickly and without problems. I tried later with other options inside the override with and height and had no problems too.
So my guess is that the new options you added: random 16-64, random 32-128 and random 64-256 are to blame.

I have 2GB of memory.

Thank you, that's the problem!!!
Will fix in 8.1. For now the workaround is indeed, just set to 'don't override'.

 

[surt]

I was running a standard map and no other options changed. I've got 752M of RAM. an a 128M video card. I've rolled back to v7.2 right now.

RSL: see above. The problem is that I added to the override list and forgot to make 'dont override' the default. Stupid mistake, but the easy work around is just to select 'don't override' for width and height.

 

[RSL]

Thanks as usual guys.

 

[surt]

Get it on the front page:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=154989

# 8.1
# Add Clump Health and Clump Both resource placement options.
# Clean up land placement code organization a little bit.
# Force release of spiral search memory, and reduce how far spiral search
# searches to improve performance.
# Fix the defaults for override with and height that were causing people
# to get out of memory errors.

 

[wicked_1]

I found a bug.. in hotseat your Smartmat placement doesnt work correctly (it places ALL human players even if u selected some AI players).. if u choose standard placement however.. all works fine..

 

[snapshooter]

Surt, is it possible to get a map with absolutely no ocean or coast ? Something like the default Great Plain minus the small patch of ocean in the lower right corner, or Inland Sea without the inland sea ! I tried some obvious setting but there are still coast lines along the top and bottom of the map.

Another question about the size of your map. Are maps generated by SmartMap roughly twice as large as ones by default scripts with the same size setting, right ?

 

[surt]

I found a bug.. in hotseat your Smartmat placement doesnt work correctly (it places ALL human players even if u selected some AI players).. if u choose standard placement however.. all works fine..

Thanks for letting me know, I will look into it, I've never tried hotseat.

Update: I'm not able to reproduce this. Note that if you restart a hotseat game, civ IV automatically defaults to all human players in a hotseat game. You have to make sure to set players to AI every time.

I started a hotseat game with 2 humans and 4 ai's, and everything worked as expected.

 

[surt]

Surt, is it possible to get a map with absolutely no ocean or coast ? Something like the default Great Plain minus the small patch of ocean in the lower right corner, or Inland Sea without the inland sea ! I tried some obvious setting but there are still coast lines along the top and bottom of the map.

Another question about the size of your map. Are maps generated by SmartMap roughly twice as large as ones by default scripts with the same size setting, right ?

It's actually just 30% more total area. If you wanted to force it to be the right size, and play in the default way, you can set the map size to 'large' for example, then select overrride width and height to match the usual 'large' size. This will cause the game to load the 'large' map rules (from the worldsize xml) and the map will be generated with the exact width and height you requested.

I had not really considered an all-land map. Would you want that without any water (no lakes?) Or just no ocean, but allowing for lakes (considering that lakes do occassionally turn into oceans if they get big enough)?

 

[jray]

Love the new 8.1 options! Here are some glitches I've noticed in generating lots of Small, Tiny, and Duel maps:

1. Very few rivers (and ones that do get generated aren't very long), even at 'many rivers,few lakes.'

2. With 'normal forest' (and any jungle setting), about 2/3 of the time the entire map (except for maybe a handful of tiles) is covered in forest. The other 1/3 of the time it looks okay. I remember this issue being reported previously:

Hi, I think I found somewhat of a bug: when you set the forest/jungle settings to "normal forest, light jungle", it covers almost all of the map in forest. Literally all but two spots were covered in forest.

edit: same happens on "normal forest, normal jungle". I found literally ONE square on the map that didn't have forest on it.

3. Some settings are not remembered. For example, Wrap seems to change haphazardly every time I re-enter the Custom Game dialog, and Sealevel always reverts to Medium.

 

[surt]

Love the new 8.1 options! Here are some glitches I've noticed in generating lots of Small, Tiny, and Duel maps:

1. Very few rivers (and ones that do get generated aren't very long), even at 'many rivers,few lakes.'

2. With 'normal forest' (and any jungle setting), about 2/3 of the time the entire map (except for maybe a handful of tiles) is covered in forest. The other 1/3 of the time it looks okay. I remember this issue being reported previously:



3. Some settings are not remembered. For example, Wrap seems to change haphazardly every time I re-enter the Custom Game dialog, and Sealevel always reverts to Medium.

#1 I will have a look at. I don't do many small maps in my testing, so I may have missed something.

#2 I have never seen, unfortunately, but I'll try to reproduce a few more times.

#3 is interesting. I'll have a look. I unforunately cannot fix the sea level setting, that's handled by civ IV, but if wrap is wrong that is mine.

 

[snapshooter]

It's actually just 30% more total area. If you wanted to force it to be the right size, and play in the default way, you can set the map size to 'large' for example, then select overrride width and height to match the usual 'large' size. This will cause the game to load the 'large' map rules (from the worldsize xml) and the map will be generated with the exact width and height you requested.

I had not really considered an all-land map. Would you want that without any water (no lakes?) Or just no ocean, but allowing for lakes (considering that lakes do occassionally turn into oceans if they get big enough)?

Thank you for your quick reply. One of the best customer service I've ever experienced . About the all-land map, I only dont want ocean. Lakes of the size few tiles ( and rivers ) are OK, as long as they are not too big to be an inland sea.

 

[surt]

Thank you for your quick reply. One of the best customer service I've ever experienced . About the all-land map, I only dont want ocean. Lakes of the size few tiles ( and rivers ) are OK, as long as they are not too big to be an inland sea.

I made an option for each. One that is no ocean, another that is no ocean and no lakes. With just 'no ocean' you'd run a small risk (bigger risk on bigger size maps) that multiple lakes might combine to form a small ocean. With no ocean and no lakes, you'll get no water tiles. Will put it out shortly after I try to reproduce some of the errors people have complained about a few more times, particularly the forest over everything one.

 

[jray]

#3 is interesting. I'll have a look. I unforunately cannot fix the sea level setting, that's handled by civ IV, but if wrap is wrong that is mine.

I think I've narrowed down the problem now... it seems that Random is not remembered as a selection. It appears to be the same bug as the one with the Random selections in 'Play Now!' in vanilla 1.52. Whenever you choose Random, start a game, and then come back to the menu, the selection is changed to whatever the random number generator rolled before.

 

[surt]

I think I've narrowed down the problem now... it seems that Random is not remembered as a selection. It appears to be the same bug as the one with the Random selections in 'Play Now!' in vanilla 1.52. Whenever you choose Random, start a game, and then come back to the menu, the selection is changed to whatever the random number generator rolled before.

Ah, that's correct (unfortunately). There's no way for me to know (again, unfortunately) if random was chosen. All my script gets is what you 'picked' and random is converted to a pick before it reaches the script. So all I can do is put up the same setting, since I can't tell the difference between you choosing random and you choosing something else deliberately.

Sorry about that one, looks like it won't be fixed (by me: firaxis can fix it if they're paying attention).

Update: actually, I realize I could offer my own custom 'random smartmap' option ... I'll have a look at how hard that would be to do.

 

[surt]

Get it from the front page:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=154989

# 8.2
# Add option for 'no ocean' that will place nearly all land.
# Note: takes longer to generate high land count maps. Be patient.
# Add option for 'no ocean, no lakes' that will place all land.
# Improve the placement performance of smartmap placement on high land count
# maps by ruling out very low scoring placement positions earlier.
# This will improve overall map generation performance slightly.
# Small improvements to forest and lake placement, attempt to cure the
# rare 'all forest tiles' on normal forest problem (I've never reproduced
# this, but the chance that any such bug survived should be low.)
# Added 'smartmap random pick' option to all (smartmap controlled)
# menus, this makes a choice from among the more typically desirable
# options, and also stays random the next time you create a map,
# unlike the standard 'random' option, and even randomly re-picks if you
# choose to 'regenerate map'. I highly recommend using this in place of
# the standard 'random' option.

 

[snapshooter]

It is real quick, surt ! I try the "no ocean" option in the new version and it does exactly what I was looking for . Civ IV just became a little more interesting to me.
Thank you a bunch for it, surt

 

[jray]

# 8.2

Sweet!!

FYI, I have generated some awesome "mini-game" maps using these settings:

- 6 AI opponents, Size = Tiny
- Terrain = standard, Bonuses = SmartMap Clump Both
- defaults for the rest

This seems to be the magic combination to get similar gameplay as a vanilla Size=Standard game, but with more interesting world shape & terrain features, more fair strategic resource allocation & start placement, more goodie huts, and less micro-management (due to smaller world size). It rocks!

Terrain=standard ensures that all terrains and resources can spawn (see comment #2 below for further details). Bonuses = SmartMap Clump Both is absolutely perfect for getting similar results for happy/health as vanilla Civ4 (which I happen to like) but much better stone/marble/copper/iron/horse/coal/aluminum/oil/etc. allocation.

Some more hopefully constructive comments after playing around with 8.2:

1. I mentioned the scarcity of rivers before. That was with Peaks set to low. With Peaks set to normal, rivers seem okay now.

2. Using Terrain = SmartMap with any world sizes smaller than Standard (and Climate=Temperate/Sealevel=Medium), I rarely get any desert, tundra, or ice. In fact, on Tiny or smaller and dozens of tries, I've never seen any of those 3 terrains! As a result, several resources are always missing (incense/deer/beaver), and others are very scarce (most notably oil... I would regularly get only 2 spawns of oil on the entire map, and both in the ocean).

3. I wonder if it's possible to add a Bonuses = SmartMap Clump Both Many/Few option (or do you pass control onto Civ4, disallowing this possibility?). Not a big deal, because I like it as-is, but just curious for even more variety.

 

[surt]

Sweet!!
1. I mentioned the scarcity of rivers before. That was with Peaks set to low. With Peaks set to normal, rivers seem okay now.

Rivers are more likely to spawn at peaks, but I did tweak it a bit so that at least if you turn on 'many rivers' you should get a lot of rivers even with few peaks. I'll probably look at making rivers from hills more likely if your peak count is low to correct for that problem more.

2. Using Terrain = SmartMap with any world sizes smaller than Standard (and Climate=Temperate/Sealevel=Medium), I rarely get any desert, tundra, or ice. In fact, on Tiny or smaller and dozens of tries, I've never seen any of those 3 terrains! As a result, several resources are always missing (incense/deer/beaver), and others are very scarce (most notably oil... I would regularly get only 2 spawns of oil on the entire map, and both in the ocean).

It's quite possible that there is some tweaking needed for those smaller maps. I'll have a look at that. I mostly play on standard / large maps myself.

3. I wonder if it's possible to add a Bonuses = SmartMap Clump Both Many/Few option (or do you pass control onto Civ4, disallowing this possibility?). Not a big deal, because I like it as-is, but just curious for even more variety.

I'm passing control to civ4 for clumped resources, so I can't really do much about this.