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[Map Script] Tectonics

Even if using th default ressource placement, it might give you unexpected results with a custom land/climate script. Some ressources will only appear in certain terrain/climate.

Just for example - if you remove all cold climate tiles from the map you will end up without Furs, Whales and probably witout Deer and Silver as well.

My guess on the elefants is: the game usually places some resources only on one continent. So if if the continent where it chooses to put the elefants only has very few plains - elefants like to live in plains - they all end up in a big herd on the few available plains. Well. Elepants are herd animals anyway :P
 
Even if using th default ressource placement, it might give you unexpected results with a custom land/climate script. Some ressources will only appear in certain terrain/climate.
I don't want to touch the resources placement, but indeed that one's a bit over the top.
 
I don't want to touch the resources placement
I have similar feelings about it. Mainly because there is almost no reference/examples in the default scripts. All is handeled by C++ it seems.

What i tried to say, is that you not necessarily need to touch ressources - perhaps tweaking the climate, so that plains areas are a bit more common, could solve the whole issue.

Also i dont think it is that big of a issue - i played some tectonic maps, where there were no ressource problems at all. And even if something weird - like those epefants - happens, it's not a big deal - there are supposed to be monopoly ressources anyway.
 
What i tried to say, is that you not necessarily need to touch ressources - perhaps tweaking the climate, so that plains areas are a bit more common, could solve the whole issue.

In fact ,You will have the opposite effect . civIV first decide the number of resources to place in function of the number of available tiles the resource can be placed and the xml random values . Take a look at the SDK for the resource placement (i don't have it on this pc , but if i remember well all is in CvMapGenerator.cpp : addBonuses , addUniqueBonus , addNonUniqueBonus and countNumberBonus ... something like that ) and you will understand why all elephants are placed in such a small place .

Tcho !

Edit : now i'm on my pc and i've taken a look at the sdk . the function that count the number of bonuses to place is calculateNumBonusesToAdd . But this function is called without knowing if the process place an unique bonus ( like ivory that will be placed in only one area ) . So if there is a lots of tiles where ivory can be placed the number of ivory placed will be high . But if the random selection of the area (where all the ivory are placed) choose a small area where there is few tiles where ivory can be placed : all of them will be placed on this tiles .
 
a couple ideas, ive been playing nothing since tectonics since i got it, and thought about some minor quirks.

what would be the effect of making tundra more likely to appear around lakes and coastlines where it is otherwise ice (coastlines are usually less desolate the the interior of ice continents?

could you put icebergs over the northernmost ice land? it deosnt make sense sometimes to have ice on the water, but just because its land, it gets to be icecap free

less plains? they seem too common. what if you put a random 50% chance of grassland on borders between plains and grassland? or put a random chance of desert in plains (much less common) i hardly ever see any deserts

and could it be possible to add more random hills inland? inland cities seem too priduction light, and there are many reasons for hills (plate folding, lava domes...) could account for more hills

is it at all possible to try to center the minimap on the largest continent?

its a beautiful script, better then anything ive seen from the basic maps, but a few little things could make it perfect.
or, could anyone show me how to do something lke this?
 
or put a random chance of desert in plains (much less common) i hardly ever see any deserts

Yeah I always play arid to get some decent-sized deserts. In reality, Earth has many huge desert areas, so I think there should be more in tectonics.

But for me the one big area for improvement is pangea maps. Has anybody played on one? It's very monotonous - just a strip of plains, followed by a strip of desert, followed by a strip of plains again, folllowed by a strip of jungle-grassland etc etc. I'm sure the real Pangaea wasn't like that.

Anyway that's not a huge problem cos I just never play Pangaea. It certainly doesn't stop this from being the best map script going in my opinion.
 
Hi Alex, sure it would. Damn, maybe I should upload the latest version though. Not sure, it's got more peaks, but that may be a bit unbalanced and I haven't tweaked it enough yet.
 
I uploaded a new version.
This one adds more peaks (uses two passes of tectonics, with some erosion after the first one).
There are also more hills due to fault lines being more common (mostly on bigger maps).
I also corrected the starting plots code.
Last, there is a Terra option. It's not really Earthlike in many places, but you've got North and South America with Andes and Rocky mountains, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia. Mountains in the old world may be a bit too peaky (particularly north east of Africa, and the Ural may be a bit too high). All civs start on the Old World.
 
Put tectonics.py into your Public Maps folder (in My Documents\My Games\civilzation IV), and now the tectonics map type will appear in "Custom Games".

I just put v313 into the Civ4 PublicMaps folder (even though I'm running BtS) and renamed Tectonics.py to be Tectonics313.py. When I open BtS, Single Player, Custom Game, Tectonics313, the system generates a beautiful, green plain (with some trees) that covers the entire map.

Surely my name change didn't affect the code's implementation (I'm going to rename it back and try it anyway)... but what could I be doing wrong that would generate a map consisting exclusively of grasslands with a few trees?

I really liked using the older versions of Tectonics so I look forward to getting this new version to work for me.

Thanks!
Spocko

OMG! Renaming the file DOES make a difference! Beautiful maps now!! Thanks LDiCesare!
 
Hi Laurent,

I got long endless loop during the starting plot finder on my first attempt. My debug file was 114k of this kind of thing:

pass

2178

failed

player

5

pass

2179

failed

player

5

Edit: hmm second attempt also
 
I probably screwed the starting location when putting specific code for the Terra option. Which setting were you using?
 
I had that problem on Earthlike 70% water and on 60% water.

On Lakes, I got a series of these:

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "Tectonics", line 1458, in findStartingPlot

UnboundLocalError: local variable 'value' referenced before assignment
ERR: Python function findStartingPlot failed, module Tectonics
Traceback (most recent call last):

Do you have your popups turned on? Without popups, this last error will just silently use the default starting plot code, so you might not have caught it.
 
3.14 uploaded. Fixes starting plot error.
Cephalo, thanks for the notice.
My fault, I didn't test it on all settings, only on the new Terra one :blush:
 
3.14 uploaded. Fixes starting plot error.
Cephalo, thanks for the notice.
My fault, I didn't test it on all settings, only on the new Terra one :blush:

Ok, it works now. I really like those mountain ranges. The Terra option is really cool too. I generated a few maps and got some interesting looking mediterrainian seas, but always recognizable as such. :)
 
I like the Terra concept. Just three comments:

1.) It would be nice (and easy, I think) to include an extra "Terra - Unrestricted" option that does not use "allOnBest = true".

2.) I really like how the mountain ranges dominate central Eurasia and the Americas' West Coast.

3.) On the other hand, I generated five maps in a row, and the Americas always looked like a sort of misshapen hourglass, and Africa like a misshapen circle. Just an aesthetic thing for me, but is it possible to vary the continent shapes?
 
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