[MapScript] Erebus Continent

[Seven05]

2.57 is uploaded, have fun

 

[Sifaus]

Great! Can you make mountains-on-edge option for flat worlds? And make unique improvements more flavor?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

sweet, I'll have to try the new options

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

some combinations of settings give me python exceptions and make me start already defeated, check screenshots override selection + minimal flavour + x/y wrap + some civ combos make it go crazy

regarding smart climate not adjusting terrains for maps with y wraps, I actually think those are exactly the maps that need it more. I noticed they tend to be pretty weird due to the different way in which climate is handled. then again, I'd have to see how they behave now. edit: checked and, at least with ensure exist smart climate, it works great

regarding the reduced flavor options, they're great but one tweak would be definitely possible. I noticed that with both doviello and illians in the game, you get both a lot of tundra and snow. now while tundra is bad for both, snow is actually fine for the Illians. so, imho Illians should start in snow if there's a decent patch of it, in order to avoid having civs too clumped together ( if there's a lot of cold terrain and nobody starts in it, they definitely tend to get clumped )

advanced terrain can be On or Off), the ) seems unneeded

edit: also check the Hippus screenshot, there's 2 riverside desert tiles with no floodplains. this was with minimal flavour and ensure exist smart climate. weird. btw, alongside with marsh, tundra and snow the minimal flavour process could also get rid of some desert

another possibility, to make balanced and flavourful cohexist in starts, is to add resources to bad starts instead of changing terrain around them. flavourmod only takes food into equation, which leads it to value plains less than they actually are worth -> plains start are often uber due to food clumps. OTOH, clumped deer+fur in a tundra start are only fair. the method is sound and if you can smooth out the rough edges, it would be best imho

actually, right now things are working pretty well with tundra starts being the only exception. I guess Illians are the only ones who can get a SNOW start which is fine for them, so the only issue is tundra for Doviello and Illians. indeed, I think adding deer and fur to such tundra starts would look a lot better than changing terrain to grassland, the functionality is the same and the flavour is intact. if resource clumps annoyed you with FM normalization, it wouldn't be an issue here if you only apply it to tundra starts which REALLY need it ( and besides fur and deer tend to clump up in cold regions anyway due to XML rules, so it's not like it looks different than the rest )

edit2: btw, even minimal flavour isn't particularly trustworthy. check last screenshot for a Doviello start where for some reason it didn't work ( yes, this is with minimal flavour. the Sidar are way up north and the process turned most of their tundra to grassland. didn't feel like being as kind to the Doviello it seems )

 

[Wodan]

Ok, here's a problem. Lanun started up in northern tundra. Questionable but ok. But every inch of coast anywhere near their start was covered in by ice.

Not as bad but conceptually the same problem is if they're blocked in by the ice pack so that there's no route to the open ocean.

Best/easiest solution might simply be to make sure they don't start near either pole.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

ok, tried once with full flavour and yes, snow starts are definitely possible also for the doviello. doviello snow starts also would REALLY need clumped deer and fur to make it decent

this was with FM normalization on btw. weird. it added no food to this Doviello start, yet the Luchuirp who had plains got 3 wheat and 2 sheep ( obviously their score is way higher than the second ) O.o

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

funny, minimal flavour placed both the Sidar and the Balseraphs south of the Doviello

I think with the process that improves surrounding land, maybe the margin they get from the pole could be lowered?

edit: to reinforce this, I tried again with the same settings and the Malakim where southern than both Doviello and Illians

 

[a_civilian]

regarding the reduced flavor options, they're great but one tweak would be definitely possible. I noticed that with both doviello and illians in the game, you get both a lot of tundra and snow. now while snow is bad for both, snow is actually fine for the Illians. so, imho Illians should start in snow if there's a decent patch of it, in order to avoid having civs too clumped together ( if there's a lot of cold terrain and nobody starts in it, they definitely tend to get clumped )

I don't agree. They can survive, but lack of riverside commerce and lack of resources enabled by any basic worker tech puts them at a serious disadvantage.

 

[Seven05]

Great! Can you make mountains-on-edge option for flat worlds? And make unique improvements more flavor?

I don't do anything with unique improvements and I'm not sure I ever will as that will create another conflict with Flavor Mod and mods with Flavor Starts. I have a hard enough time trying to figure out if placement issues are caused by my script, the AI moving settlers or Flavor Mod shuffling them into worse positions

some combinations of settings give me python exceptions and make me start already defeated, check screenshots override selection + minimal flavour + x/y wrap + some civ combos make it go crazy

That will happen, yes

I STRONGLY suggest NOT using either Override or Modify selection options for the smart climate along with the reduced or minimal flavor start options. Once changes the civ preferences and the other reads those preferences to determine how to adjust the climate, nothing is 'hard coded' to allow me to add or remove civs as needed.

Y-Wrap is just... wierd, it really messes with a lot of the smart climate calculations because it moves the min/max latitudes and compresses the temperature zones (especially for people who insist on SMALL maps at the same time)

regarding smart climate not adjusting terrains for maps with y wraps, I actually think those are exactly the maps that need it more. I noticed they tend to be pretty weird due to the different way in which climate is handled. then again, I'd have to see how they behave now. edit: checked and, at least with ensure exist smart climate, it works great

The automatic adjustments for tundra/snow and jungle are based on the ration of land in the north vs the south. With y-wrap off this works great because I know that north = cold and jungles exist in the south. With y-wrap on... not so much. I do still evaluate continent sizes and adjust desert and plains on y-wrap maps, just not snow, tundra or jungles. I tried changing the process to figure out the percentages of temperature and rainfall on land but it's complicated, adds a good 20+ second to generation time and is prone to really wierd looking results (jungle next to tundra) especially on y-wrap maps and all but guaranteed on small y-wrap maps.

regarding the reduced flavor options, they're great but one tweak would be definitely possible. I noticed that with both doviello and illians in the game, you get both a lot of tundra and snow.

That sounds backwards, unless you increased the tundra and snow yourself and then added those two civs.

Do me a favor, enable logging in your civ4 ini file and then when you get a wierd map look in the PythonDbg.log or post that for me.

advanced terrain can be On or Off), the ) seems unneeded

I left that in just to bug you

edit: also check the Hippus screenshot, there's 2 riverside desert tiles with no floodplains.

I've seen this in Wild Mana and Flavour Mod but never in base FfH unless FfH places a lair or unique feature on the floodplain tiles, in which case, for some reason, it removes the floodplain.

another possibility, to make balanced and flavourful cohexist in starts, is to add resources to bad starts instead of changing terrain around them. flavourmod only takes food into equation, which leads it to value plains less than they actually are worth -> plains start are often uber due to food clumps. OTOH, clumped deer+fur in a tundra start are only fair. the method is sound and if you can smooth out the rough edges, it would be best imho

Not only does Flavor Mod only deal with food, it also TURNS OFF most of the normilization functions... grrr. Any work I do here is lost, even if Flavor Starts are not enabled. Also, with Civ4 it's easy, with FfH its more difficult and with some of the other mods like RiFE its virtually impossible. The problem is that yields can change per civ and certain resources have other side effects for certain civs. While it sounds easy enough, getting the computer to understand that is very difficult so don't expect to see much here.

edit2: btw, even minimal flavour isn't particularly trustworthy. check last screenshot for a Doviello start where for some reason it didn't work ( yes, this is with minimal flavour. the Sidar are way up north and the process turned most of their tundra to grassland. didn't feel like being as kind to the Doviello it seems )

That's you and your y-wrap again

North and south are irrelevant with y-wrap on, but I neglected to remind the computer of that fact when placing civs so it tries to push some civs to the north edge of the map even though y-wrap maps can have snow and tundra in the south. That's easy enough to fix.

Ok, here's a problem. Lanun started up in northern tundra. Questionable but ok. But every inch of coast anywhere near their start was covered in by ice.

Not as bad but conceptually the same problem is if they're blocked in by the ice pack so that there's no route to the open ocean.

Best/easiest solution might simply be to make sure they don't start near either pole.

Make sure the AI isn't moving their settler and check the log file to see if they were forced into a start they didn't like.

this was with FM normalization on btw. weird. it added no food to this Doviello start, yet the Luchuirp who had plains got 3 wheat and 2 sheep ( obviously their score is way higher than the second ) O.o

Yay! Not my fault

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

That sounds backwards, unless you increased the tundra and snow yourself and then added those two civs.

why backwards? that's exactly the behaviour I expect out of smart climate, 2 civs that like cold --> lots of cold terrain. unless I'm missing something obvious

anyway, glad I managed to spot a couple possible issues for you. this was primarily for testing, I don't really plan to play games with Y wrap on right now since it doesn't really add anything to the game due to bad naval AI. but, it's definitely playable now while it used to be really weird, so kudos to you for the latest tweaks

aside from the possible tweaks I mentioned, I'm liking the less flavoury starts option, it tends to make starts balanced which is vital to my enjoyment of the game. smart climate on ensure exist works fine, although I might try modify settings since I like High Cohesion Low Sealevel, which tends to create lots of desert. then again I might also try reduced deserts, I'll see how it behaves.

I've played normal maps for a while, and Wild Mana performance is excellent as it stays playable in the lategame. still, small maps are large enough for me so I'll use those in the future so the game can be more enjoyable when it gets to high tech stages.

so, thanx again for the effort and keep up your brillant work

 

[Seven05]

why backwards? that's exactly the behaviour I expect out of smart climate, 2 civs that like cold --> lots of cold terrain. unless I'm missing something obvious

With minimal flavor starts neither of them favor snow or tundra so they no longer count as 'tundra civs' when the civs are evaluated and the climate adjusted. Once you go to minimal flavor the Doviello, Illians and Jotnar lose their preference for snow and/or tundra completely so at that point they're really not different than any of the civs using the default values.

anyway, glad I managed to spot a couple possible issues for you. this was primarily for testing, I don't really plan to play games with Y wrap on right now since it doesn't really add anything to the game due to bad naval AI. but, it's definitely playable now while it used to be really weird, so kudos to you for the latest tweaks

Y-wrap is the bane of all that makes a quality map!

What I'll do for the smart climate on them is add in a way to handle the tundra/snow levels, I'm not sure it will be better all of the time but it should work better most of the time just by reducing both tundra and snow max temperatures by about 10% (varried by map size and sealevel) if y-wrap is on.

An the naval AI is the whole reason for the script's existance, pangaea maps just work better which si really a shame since I like the Lanun so much.

aside from the possible tweaks I mentioned, I'm liking the less flavoury starts option, it tends to make starts balanced which is vital to my enjoyment of the game. smart climate on ensure exist works fine, although I might try modify settings since I like High Cohesion Low Sealevel, which tends to create lots of desert. then again I might also try reduced deserts, I'll see how it behaves.

The adjustment to deserts & plains based on continent size isn't too severe, it's just enough to help offset getting way too much or not enough. With low sea level it should be a stronger effect now that you mention it, I'll add that evaluation to it.

so, thanx again for the effort and keep up your brillant work

Keep up the feedback so I don't get lazy

Oh, and for performance, try a large map, high cohesion, high sea level. You should get about the same land area as a normal sized map but it will generally be more interesting looking. (add Tame Wilderness in Wild Mana to avoid too many water critters)

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

actually, I don't think there's any water critters in Wild Mana yet

high sea level may be more interesting looking but it also tends to mean more islands and I don't like those. plus, there's not much meaning in having a huge amount of water no one will use. but thanx for the kind suggestion ( too bad we don't have the smilie that offers a flower as a gift )

looking forward to your next tweaks, particularly interested in the "smarter climate with low sea level" one

 

[Sephi]

actually, I don't think there's any water critters in Wild Mana yet

no, but deep oceans will have some surprises for those who dare to explore them

 

[a_civilian]

Oh, and for performance, try a large map, high cohesion, high sea level. You should get about the same land area as a normal sized map but it will generally be more interesting looking. (add Tame Wilderness in Wild Mana to avoid too many water critters)

I've been getting isolated (occupied) continents on any sea level above Low (with high cohesion), so given the state of the naval AI I always use low sea level.

 

[Wodan]

Y-wrap is the bane of all that makes a quality map!

With that in mind, you might condider removing it as an option.

Why permit players to shoot themselves in the foot? If it honestly generates a sucky result which has nothing to do with preferences and everything to do with the way the algorithms work, it's not a good option to present to the player. To make a quality software product, sometimes you have to protect the user from himself.

And, regarding the options which are mutually exclusive and/or cause Py exceptions, can you add a check which looks for one of them, and automatically changes the other to something that makes sense?

Honestly, IMO there are too many choices right now. And, half of them are esoteric or have ambiguous names. The player really has to memorize what these names mean, which is kind of crappy.

/This is a wonderful script, trying to make it better! Less is more!

 

[Valkrionn]

Because the moment he removes them, people will about it. When the map was first released, there were no wrap options; They were added due to popular demand.

Personally I despise y-wrap (Send a ship over the North Pole and pop out of the South? WTH?), so I wouldn't have any issues with it being removed at all.

As for option names... Honestly, they're self-explanatory to me.

 

[Abremms]

a couple times since downloading 2.57, i've had games where no land is generated at all. just get a "you have been defeated" popup straight out the load screen. unfortunately i haven;t had loggin enabled, i'll try to catch it if it happens again. but it seems to happen when i use the Minimal Flavor option.

 

[Seven05]

high sea level may be more interesting looking but it also tends to mean more islands and I don't like those. plus, there's not much meaning in having a huge amount of water no one will use. but thanx for the kind suggestion ( too bad we don't have the smilie that offers a flower as a gift )

looking forward to your next tweaks, particularly interested in the "smarter climate with low sea level" one

Well, my personal favorite is medium cohesion and low sea level but that will end up with almost the same amount of land as high cohesion low sea level, just with a few more islands. I like the islands because in both RiFE and Wild Mana by the time you can expand onto the islands they have some tough, highly promoted barbarians or animals and can be just as tough (tougher really, in most cases) to conquer as another civ.

no, but deep oceans will have some surprises for those who dare to explore them

Mmmm... deep oceans. Also, due to the placement rules, they make a great place to spawn the pirates and any water barbs you may add that might be less complicated that your current mechanic. There will always be at least two tiles between deep ocean and land and counting the total number of deep ocean tiles will give you a better idea of the ocean size than counting oceans, coasts or both. Regardless of the map size and settings the map edges will always be deep ocean too.

Why permit players to shoot themselves in the foot? If it honestly generates a sucky result which has nothing to do with preferences and everything to do with the way the algorithms work, it's not a good option to present to the player. To make a quality software product, sometimes you have to protect the user from himself.

It's not that it generates a 'sucky' result so much as it really messes with assumptions I made to speed up several processes. It also complicates the climate options due to the shift of the min and max latitudes. If it weren't for the climate shift issues it's be no different than any other map, but since I prefer maps that simulate part of the world rather than the whole world (Civ maps are too small for a whole world IMO) I have to deal with y-wrap changing that. Honestly, since I never use it, it's pretty low on my priority list though.

And, regarding the options which are mutually exclusive and/or cause Py exceptions, can you add a check which looks for one of them, and automatically changes the other to something that makes sense?

Any python exceptions are bugs so they need to be fixed. They're also not likely to be caused by a specific combination of options but rather me missing something that can cause an exception like a list being shorter than expected. There aren't any mutually exclusive options, the few that exist are all different selections of the same option so it's impossible to mix them anyway. There are some combinations that I think look wierd and there are some combinatiosn that people try that will create certain issues, but how to I cancel them out without people coming back and complaining that they don't work? Sometimes I'm amazed that somebody will try a small world with increased mountains, high sea level and 10 civs and then complain that starting positions are horrible, but if they can't figure that out ahead of time what can I really do?

Really, I'm surprised that people don't simply turn the 'bad' terrains off or at least down if they don't like the results. That's why those options exist

I mean, if the multiplayer games are ruined when somebody starts in the tundra... turn off tundras, problem solved! (Wow, you have no idea how long I've wanted to say that ) And yeah, I know, no fur or deer.

I will say that one thing is mutually exclussive... realistic and balanced. A lot of people seem to want maps that are realistic (I think I have that part covered) AND balanced... at the same time... seriously? That's literally impossible, sure you can have a balanced map that looks good, but it won't be realistic. And you can have a realistic map that isn't horribly imbalanced, but it won't really be balanced. Ironically, these maps are made for one of the least balanced games (ok, mod) ever created. Now, for me, that's the fun of it. I like FfH because of the absurdly overpowered situations that can arise and I like realistic maps because they aren't fair. As long as I have fun with it does it really matter if I crush everybody else under my thumb or go down in a blaze of glory? For all of the complaints about the Doviello and Illians in the tundra they are almost never stuck at the bottom of the scoreboard in my games whether controlled by me or the AI. So is that 'unfair start' really that bad?

Hmm... got a bit sidetracked

Right, anyway, on to the next...

Honestly, IMO there are too many choices right now. And, half of them are esoteric or have ambiguous names. The player really has to memorize what these names mean, which is kind of crappy.

Which have ambiguous names? I have a character limit to work within but if there is something that would be better with a different name I'd be happy to change it. I can't think of any though, I named them for what they do, so things like 'Cohesion' are just that, no effort is made to force a specific type of landmass so any other name is really inappropriate. The different terrains are all chance modifiers, you aren't setting an exact amount of a specific terrain, just the chance that it will appear on the map. The smart climate options do exactly what they say, be it nothing (off), only making sure a specific type exists if needed (Ensure Exists), completely overriding the climate selections you made (Override Selections) or modifying the climate selections you made (Modify Selections). The new flavor settings are pretty basic, full, limited or minimal. I don't know how else to explain that in a simple map script that can't have tooltips, popups or it's own pedia entries.

I agree that there are too many, but it's better than the alternative. How else would I give you the ability to setup the map the way you want it? I could bundle all of the climate options up into a single list, but then that list would have way too many selections and they'd have confusing names. Personally, one of my favorite aspects is the fact that I can completely turn deserts, tundra or jungles off. I can have a world with massive jungles and huge expanses of tundra but not a spot of deserts if I want to, what other map script lets you do that? Since Fall From Heaven is a fantasy mod I want a map script that lets me generate fantasy worlds and I want to know that I'm getting the world I want without having to open up world builder to make sure because that ruins the fun of exploring the world. The options for advanced features and city ruins are pretty essential. Although I like them what if you decide you really enjoy RiFE but you hate kelp and haunted lands?

Yes, a lot of this could be handled with variables in the map script that you edited, but that is a pain to deal with in MP games since you'd have to distribute the same file to everybody and if you had a different file than me we'd never be able to connect, even if you just had a different script in the folder and we weren't using it it can cause problems.

/This is a wonderful script, trying to make it better! Less is more!

Feedback is always appreciated, just look at Gekko, I haven't even tried to strangle him yet

Because the moment he removes them, people will about it. When the map was first released, there were no wrap options; They were added due to popular demand.

You beat me to it

Honestly, I don't even notice that option exists anymore and I almost always forget to test them until the last minute.

 

[Seven05]

a couple times since downloading 2.57, i've had games where no land is generated at all. just get a "you have been defeated" popup straight out the load screen. unfortunately i haven;t had loggin enabled, i'll try to catch it if it happens again. but it seems to happen when i use the Minimal Flavor option.

If somebody with logging enable could catch that for me it would be a huge help. I'm going to try a bunch of tests here in a few minutes to see if I can catch it myself

 

[Seven05]

Ok, fixed a couple already...

There was an index out of bounds in the roads placed for the ancient ruins caused by me limiting the available plots for them.

The occasional riverside deserts without floodplains was caused by flattening the hills.