[MapScript] Erebus Continent

Soon :)

It's been a bit busy here at work and with the overtime I haven't had much time to mess with the script.

If you use limited flavor it can cluster the civs closer together since the way they value starting plots changes and most of them end up with similar preferences. Your best best for craming them all on the map is to use full flavor, smart climate with minimal effects and manually adjust the climate to reduce desert, tundra and jungles. Medium or high cohesion with low sea level on a large map should give you enough room, be careful with medium cohesion though as that can create extra islands reducing the land on the main continent and forcing the civs to start closer.

I would have released the next version already but it's taking some time to get the player sorting exactly like I want it to. I post a test version, maybe this weekend, so anybody who wants to can help me test it.
 
But what triggers that event?
Building a city on top of them? Building an(other) improvement on that tile? Parking an explorer there?

It's a random event. You can't trigger it. If you have a city ruins in your territory (possibly city radius), there's a very, very small chance each turn that the event will occur. It's not worth planning for.
 
Would it be possible to adjust the way the Doviello and Clan of Embers are placed with Flavor start? Currently they get thrown into Tundra and Jungles respectively, but neither race has any real advantage in those terrains, so they end up (wisely) trying to move to a better location. What about giving them extra weight towards resources to try and make up for starting in poor terrain?
 
Make sure you're not using the flavor start option of any other mod, my map script does not give the Clan of Embers any preference for jungles. They have the same basic preferences as most other civs with the addition of also prefering to have close neighbors rather than an more isolated start. They may still start in the jungles, but if they do its because they couldn't find a better starting location anywhere else. If you use the 'Flavor Start' option in RiFE, Wild Mana or Flavor Mod (perhaps Orbis too?) I can't really help you there.

The Doviello will prefer tundra unless you use limited or minimal flavor. You are welcome to edit the script for yourself but I won't make a change like that for the 'official' version. It's pretty easy to modify civ preferences, just search for the name of the civ in the py file which you can edit with notepad.
 
Make sure you're not using the flavor start option of any other mod, my map script does not give the Clan of Embers any preference for jungles.

This was in base FFH. They started in the Jungle and then proceeded to spend the first four turns trying to get out of it so they could build their first city.

Looking at the mapscript code, I do see that everyone except for the Clan (and the Lanun), have a -2 for Jungle preference while those two have a 0.

It also looks like some civs don't have any flavor start options, such as the Grigori and Amurites. By design?
 
Make sure you're not using the flavor start option of any other mod, my map script does not give the Clan of Embers any preference for jungles. They have the same basic preferences as most other civs with the addition of also prefering to have close neighbors rather than an more isolated start. They may still start in the jungles, but if they do its because they couldn't find a better starting location anywhere else. If you use the 'Flavor Start' option in RiFE, Wild Mana or Flavor Mod (perhaps Orbis too?) I can't really help you there.

The Doviello will prefer tundra unless you use limited or minimal flavor. You are welcome to edit the script for yourself but I won't make a change like that for the 'official' version. It's pretty easy to modify civ preferences, just search for the name of the civ in the py file which you can edit with notepad.

Orbis has it too.

But RifE has code (which you wrote :p) that turns off the flavorstart aspect of the option when Erebus Continent is chosen as the map.
 
that seems correct to me, Clan should pretty much like jungle the same way doviello likes tundra i.e. a bit. Lanun also makes sense since they care about water more than land ;)
 
Looking at the mapscript code, I do see that everyone except for the Clan (and the Lanun), have a -2 for Jungle preference while those two have a 0.
Right, a 0 basically means they don't care, they should both have negative value for marshes though (wetlands for Orbis) which will generally keep them out of the jungles. With the Lanun, as Gekko pointed out, they care more about water so this allows them to start on a coast in the jungle region since they can deal with it far better than other civs, especially in RiFE and Wild Mana. For both, what this most often results in is them taking a jungle start over something really bad like a tundra/snow start but given enough space for the civs in the game they'll start in temperate grasslands like most other civs.

Placement order is critical, and random, which is an interesting combination to say the least. Depending on what choices you made for the climate and cohesion, how many civs you have (and what civs) you may have room for everybody to start somewhere good or you may not, if not whoever is unfortunate enough to be placed last will probably have a pretty bad start. I tried to compensate for this with the 'smart climate' but since I also still try to create a natural world it can't be perfect every time, at least generation time is down compared to the original version :)

The AI moving their settlers is another issue all together. While I like the idea it doesn't work so well in practice since the AI will tend to move much further than they should and doing so as a stack will eliminate the bonus moves that their starting settler receives.

It also looks like some civs don't have any flavor start options, such as the Grigori and Amurites. By design?
Any that aren't explicitly defined use the defaults that you can find just prior to the individual civ settings.

But RifE has code (which you wrote :p) that turns off the flavorstart aspect of the option when Erebus Continent is chosen as the map.
I keep forgetting that you finally released that :)

So yeah, use flavor starts with impunity in RiFE, they work well there since you get Flavor Mod's rules for placing unique features and forts/towers.
 
Ok, here is 2.65 BETA

I'm keeping it out of the first post since it's a test version, to avoid confusion :)

This changes the way the players chose their starting plots and the order in which they get to pick their start.

East-west flipping is now added, each civ will pick a plot with some weight added for east or west and this weight will alternate as each player is placed. The first player will randomly pick east or west and the other simply alternate back and forth. Since it's only a weight it will not force players to start on the east or west edge of the map it will only make starting plots on those sides worth morth than otherwise identical plots on the opposite side.

Neighbor value sorting is used when the player list is shuffled. I shuffle the player list so the starting plots are not always selected in the same order (player 0, player 1, player 2, etc). Now, after randomly shuffling the list I split them into three groups, those who prefer nearby neighbors, those who don't want neighbors and those who don't care. Then, the final player list is re-built with the isolationists first followed by the civs that want nearby neighbors and then finally everybody else. This means the civs that don't want nearby neighbors will always invalidate more of the nearby starting plots since they are always placed first, generally this means the other civs will start further from them.

Anyway... what to test? Well, make sure it works without crashing or throwing any python exceptions and then see if the overall dispersion of players is better. You shouldn't have very many occurances of most civs all starting in one big cluster.
 

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I'm committed the next 4 days but if you still need testing Thur/Fri I can do some then.
 
starting placement indeed seems a lot better, very well done! now you could try adding some north/south alternation to complement east/west, it could make it even better :D
 
screenshot, north/south could help avoid stuff like this... notice how there's plenty of room for the sheaim up north, instead they've been placed south with the lanun.
 

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[to_xp]Gekko;9151160 said:
screenshot, north/south could help avoid stuff like this... notice how there's plenty of room for the sheaim up north, instead they've been placed south with the lanun.
Are you certain the AI didn't move them?
 
well, the AI can move max 3 tiles on small maps, so imho it's still too close to the Lanun even if they moved 3 tiles south from their starting spot. too bad I'm pretty sure I no longer have a savegame to check.
 
If you're using the limits in Wild Mana I believe that's 3 turns, not 3 tiles. This means that since you're using the ancient ruins they can get quite far with some lucky placement of the roads between the ruins. Even looking at the screenshot you posted, three tiles further away from the lanun is still to close for the separation that should have been in place. If you still have logging enabled you can look in there and see exactly how many tiles they need between starts.
 
ouch, didn't know that. indeed three turns seems too much I'll have to tone it down. does changing it to 0 disable it correctly? right now the AI has issues cuz they don't view peaks as bad tiles, so I guess that would be the best thing for now.

btw you could also add a preference for "middle of the map" both on north/south and east/west, and set the preferences to go like:

NW -> SE -> SW -> NE -> N -> S -> W -> E

or something like that, I guess you get the point ;)
 
If you're using the limits in Wild Mana I believe that's 3 turns, not 3 tiles.

no, it's tiles, not turns. And 3 tiles is pretty common for humans as well. Played a few games in 2.64 (I believe, the one currently in Wildmana) and starting plots were always perfect. Much better than a versions ago :goodjob:
 
no, it's tiles, not turns.

Unless I'm completely misunderstanding the code, it's actually based on map size.

Code:
iSearchRange = GC.getWorldInfo(GC.getMapINLINE().getWorldSize()).getAISettlerMove();

However it then switches back to the default 6 range if the first city isn't founded after 3 turns.

Code:
iSearchRange = 6;
 
Unless I'm completely misunderstanding the code, it's actually based on map size.

Code:
iSearchRange = GC.getWorldInfo(GC.getMapINLINE().getWorldSize()).getAISettlerMove();
yeah, Gekko was talking about small worldsize

However it then switches back to the default 6 range if the first city isn't founded after 3 turns.

Code:
iSearchRange = 6;

This is only triggered if the AIs already start very close.

It could be that the AI rarely moves a bit more than in the worldinfo stated, but I haven't noticed any issues on pangea mapscript.
 
[to_xp]Gekko;9153392 said:
btw you could also add a preference for "middle of the map" both on north/south and east/west, and set the preferences to go like:

NW -> SE -> SW -> NE -> N -> S -> W -> E

or something like that, I guess you get the point ;)
Probably not... well, I *could* but I probably won't :)

I already have an 'edge value' in use for some civs, so they prefer starts closer to (or further from) the map edge. I also modify this settings based on your flavor preference, reducing it by 1 on limited and minimal flavor since those are most appropriate for MP games and the limited MP feedback I've received was that players would prefer more clustered starts. Discouraging civs from starting near the map edge forces them to cluster more.

I currently use north values for several civs, I use it obviously for 'cold' civs like the Illians and Doviello but it's also used for the Lanun to keep them from starting in the tundra which used to happen frequently. Y-wrap breaks this, of course, since you can have tundra in the north and south.

no, it's tiles, not turns. And 3 tiles is pretty common for humans as well. Played a few games in 2.64 (I believe, the one currently in Wildmana) and starting plots were always perfect. Much better than a versions ago :goodjob:
Well, that's good to hear, on both counts :) My fix has been simple though, I just use advanced starts so I don't have to worry about them moving since the results weren't always pleasant, especially in base FfH where they don't let you modifiy the range in xml.
 
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