[MapScript] Erebus Continent

[Seven05]

Send me a crate of live lobsters and we'll call it even ;D

I did some testing on my own, the randomly shuffled plot list is working our better than flipping the order of the list for each player.

The only bit I have no control over is the AI deciding they don't like their spot and moving. Sometimes it's not really a bad choice but other times it doesn't really make any sense. Sometimes that can walk around for a couple of turns and the FfH starting settler can cover a LOT of ground in a couple turns. Sephi told me how to disable this in Wild Mana so if you don't like what the AI is doing I can post the xml change you need to make to stop it.

The updated version in up now (2.53).

 

[Immaculate]

i made a photoshop map based on your map script.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

awesome, thanx for the new version!

btw, the ancient city ruins look great with graveyards, roads and haunted lands. the only issue is that with clustered ruins, it becomes a bit too easy to lower the AC sanctifying city ruins

it would be nice if city ruins changed to explorable haunted ruins after a while... that's something for modders

 

[Wodan]

Send me a crate of live lobsters and we'll call it even ;D

Out of season now. Couple of months ago we got a half dozen 1.5lb lobsters for $25 on the docks.

 

[Seven05]

awesome, thanx for the new version!

btw, the ancient city ruins look great with graveyards, roads and haunted lands. the only issue is that with clustered ruins, it becomes a bit too easy to lower the AC sanctifying city ruins

it would be nice if city ruins changed to explorable haunted ruins after a while... that's something for modders

I passed that request on to both Sephi and Valk when I was first implimenting them, I think a different 'ancient ruin' improvement that was explorable and not sanctifiable (is that a word?) would be fun. Fortunately, from what I've seen, the AI builds over them more often than they sanctify them so the AC issue is limited mostly to players.

Out of season now. Couple of months ago we got a half dozen 1.5lb lobsters for $25 on the docks.

Ok, no more maps for you!

 

[Seven05]

i made a photoshop map based on your map script.

You should try that with a huge map, you'll get more interesting coastlines and islands

 

[Valkrionn]

awesome, thanx for the new version!

btw, the ancient city ruins look great with graveyards, roads and haunted lands. the only issue is that with clustered ruins, it becomes a bit too easy to lower the AC sanctifying city ruins

it would be nice if city ruins changed to explorable haunted ruins after a while... that's something for modders

I'm planning something like that... Ancient Ruins.

Just as I'm planning to implement Deep Ocean for him, and a few other features.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

btw, I generated a map with 2.53 and it's awesome, plus the civs are spaced around evenly. thanx Seven05!

 

[Seven05]

No problem

One thing I've noticed is that sometimes the AI will move pretty far from their starting plot. Most of the time they do what I do and move a tile or two but sometimes I don't know what they're thinking as they march past some good spots to settle down three tiles away from another civ. The easiest way to ensure this never happens is to use advanced start and adjust the points as desired.

If this version works well for everybody I'm going to start messing around with the different map types (mediterrainian, etc). I don't know yet if I'm going to include that as an option for this script or make a seperate script entirely.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

that weird starting settler behaviour may be something Sephi is able to tweak/fix... indeed it's very annoying when they settle right next to someone else.

 

[Seven05]

You can adjust it yourself for the Wild Mana mod in the assets/xml/gameoptions/CIV4WorldInfos.xml file, there is a setting for each world size. He pointed me to it but I haven't messed with it myself so I'm not sure exactly what that controls but I assume it's the maximum distance the AI will move.

 

[Verdian]

I made a few maps as the Elohim, all unique features. I noticed that on both medium and large maps, the unique features are really bunching together. Could you put in a required amount of space between them, based on map size, so that that doesn't happen? Four features should not be close enough to exist within one city's bfc.

 

[Seven05]

I don't do anything with the unique features, lairs, goblin forts, etc. Those are all placed by FfH itself or, if you use it, Flavour Mod. I might just steal all of Jean's code from Flavour Mod so you don't need to worry about it, but I don't have any plans at this time to work on supporting them directly.

 

[Valkrionn]

I'd prefer you don't, as it would slow down the map initialization.

Maybe as an option?

 

[Verdian]

My mistake, I am not entirely aware what goes into a map creation script. I'd love a flavor start option, though, that effected UFs and civilizations. But perhaps that is just getting greedy.

 

[Valkrionn]

Civilizations are already done, and quite well.

 

[Seven05]

I'd prefer you don't, as it would slow down the map initialization.

Maybe as an option?

Does that mean I have to take out that 30 second 'pause for effect' code? Wait, that only affects you, nevermind

The other reason I don't plan on doing the unique features is that Flavour Mod does very well with them. They're a bit of a pain to work with since they get placed by the game after the map is generated but before it's finalized so I'd actually have to cycle through all of the map plots, remove them as I come to them and then replace them.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

yeah, the only thing that's not working super fine atm is the placement of Maelstrom, it's supposed to be in a small inner sea but so far I've had some inner seas and maelstrom was always in the bottom left corner, in the middle of the ocean. maybe it requires a CLOSED inner sea, while mine were all connected to the ocean by a narrow passage ( they looked GREAT btw ) . maybe Jean Elcard can look into it once he gets back into service

 

[lordrune]

Played a small map in vanilla FFH with the 2.53 script, with 7 civs (I like rubbing shoulders with my neighbours). Looks nice, although some starting spots can be tricky. The Khazad AI started in a tundra area, and his first city was almost half ice in his city radius, and no food resources (there were a couple of fish nearby, one space out from the coast). I'd have been screwed if I started there

 

[Seven05]

If you like craming in a bunch of extra civs make sure you use the smart climate, in the case of a small map with 7 civs using the 'Override Selection' smart climate option would probably work best. You can still get some less than perfect maps but it tries to make sure there is enough of each terrain type for the civs in the game without making it look too fake. Also, when you see things like somebody moving into the tundra make sure the AI didn't move their settler up there on their own.

If you have logging enabled you can also check to see if the civ found a good spot in the first place, or if their placement was forced. Each civ gets three tries to find a start, the first is very picky and gives the best results, the second pass is less restricted and still tries to be flavorful but is a bit more flexible, if both of those fail (rarely happens) they simply pick a random spot that is open.

Bacause of the flavorful starts you have to be a little more careful than you would using Civ's default starting plot slections. A massive desert, for example, will make it harder for everybody except the Malakim to find a good, flavorful start. A lot of players on a small map will have similar results, the first few civs will have excellent starts but the last couple placed may be... less than ideal. The new Smart Climate options try to compensate for these cases, another way is for you to manually pick your opponents and then change the map options based on your choices, something as simple as turning off the tundra when the Doviello and Illians aren't in the game will open up a lot of land for the rest of the players.

Of course, the opposite is true if you want a big map with fewer players as you can use massive deserts and overwhelming tundra or jungles to reduce the amount of easily accessible land.

Just play around with the different options and stick with what you like most. I like not knowing my opponents which is why I added the smart climate options, this way I can get good maps without giving up the mystery of who I'm up against.