[MapScript] Erebus Continent

On a huge map it's a common result, smaller map sizes have much more reasonable amounts of forests. There are a few cases of similar behavior that I need to handle based on map sizes, hopefully I can get that in soon but I've been a bit busy lately. On the bright side, when I get a chance to finish and upload the next update you'll have some control over the placement of rivers and lakes which will also have some impact forest & jungle density. Also, although I do thin out the forest & jungle regions when the map is generated if you leave them 'wild' for a little while the natural feature growth will fill them out pretty quickly.
 
Have I just been really unlucky or does the Erebus continent mapscript (in combination with flavourmod 2) greatly reduce the number of mana sources (as well as other resources btw) compared to the normal Erebus mapscript.
I've started 5 or 6 games now on Erebus continent, and it seems like there are about half the number of mana sources that there were on the Erebus maps...

Is it just me, or is anyone else experiencing the same thing?
 
There really seem to be fewer resources, but I don't think it's a bad thing.

I wasn't trying to imply that it was bad, I just wanted to know if the maps I got were "normal" for erebus continent.

New question:
Mapsizes. The maps seem to be considerably larger using this mapscript. I'm now playing small sized maps (low sea level, high cohesion, normal speed) with 8 AI's and I still had plenty of space to build 12 cities. Most AI also have at least 8 or more cities. Varn Gosam and Einion Logos have 15 each... And no AI has died yet... And there are still 3 regions of unsettled land at the edges of the continent as well as 1 fairly large island (should be able to hold at least 4 cities).

So, any recommendations on how many civs to use for each map size?
 
Sorry I haven't been on the forums much, nor have I had time to finish the latest changes. I should be able to get to that this week, probably by the weekend.

The resource placement uses the rules defined in the XML files, the actual code to place them is identical to the default Civ4 routine with one important change. The change is that resource that can't co-exist with a feature will ignore features when determining where they can be placed. Essentially this means that the vast forests won't result in too few tiles being available for resources. The XML rules will have an impact due to the 'pangaea' style worlds since certain resources are supposed to be spread out on different areas and these maps tend to not have multiple areas and when they do they aren't always large enough for the resources. I can probably just ignore a few of the XML variables to remove that effect, it won't always mean you'll have more resources but it should make sure all resources are treated equally.

The map sizes themselves are using the standard sizes as of version 2.0. Using medium sea level you'll end up with about 70% of the map covered in water, low sea level maps can actually get as much as 50% land but should be closer to 40% most of the time. This can get thrown off on cases where you had several large inland seas (100 tiles or smaller) that were filled in before rivers were generated. In most cases this is insignificant and doesn't throw the land percent off by much. The landmass itself tends to be large though, so even though it doesn't really have more land tiles than other maps, more of them are attached and in a bulky landmass rather than a long, snakey continent so they will seem larger, especially on low sea level maps.

The default number of civs should be good for a game with plenty of room to grow, if you don't want to add more players you can effectively reduce the amount of useable land by increasing the deserts and/or mountains. If you really want to play with low sealevel without adding more players you can run with increased mountains and massive deserts, that should give you about the same number of useable land tiles as you would expect from medium sea level. The catch is that the useable plains and grassland tiles can end up spread out into small regions surrounded by deserts, ocean and/or mountain ranges. Of course, you may als end up with all of the player crammed onto one side of the map with the rest being mostly useless deserts. Since FfH lets you terraform the tiles this can still result in a lot of land and huge empires later in the game, particularly for the human players.

Personally, I tend to play with 10 players on standard sized maps and it works well for me. I used to use 12 but after I changed the grid sizes in 2.0 standard is a bit small for 12 civs, for me anyway.
 
ok. where to put the sucker? meaning: where should i save a new map like this one to? simply not able to find the right place...
 
Psych: For me, it's C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Fall from Heaven 2\PublicMaps
 
Varn Gosam is quite often a technological runaway. Maybe a slight nerfing of his start position is in order?

And maybe the script needs to delete the Goblin Forts, Lairs and Lizardmen Ruins in a certain radius next to the starting positions, mostly for the AI's sake.
 
Just commenting to show my appreciation for this script; startup times are trivial to me when you know you'll have a good map ;). Both single player and a couple of MP games saw good experiences with this script, I very much like it.
 
Varn Gosam is quite often a technological runaway. Maybe a slight nerfing of his start position is in order?

I think this has to do with river prevalance.... lotsa rivers means Malakim get Floodplains galore..... I've seen it that way when I've played Malakim anyway.

@Earthling: I'm glad we converted you.... it took forever to talk people into trying this map in MP : )
 
Any idea how to prevent the mountain on which the Guardians spawn from being downgraded to a hill?

Funny looking.... but not gamebreaking : )
 
would it be easy to add the way ice/snow clumps in the middle of the map on toroidal maps in this map to PerfectWorld2? it's cool that cephalo added toroidal maps and they are perfect for FFH, but that long string of ice in the middle of the map is really, really annoying... especially after I got used to how nicely it works in this mapscript :D
 
Any idea how to prevent the mountain on which the Guardians spawn from being downgraded to a hill?

Funny looking.... but not gamebreaking : )
Are you using Flavour Mod? The only times I've had this happen are when I run that with Flavor starts enabled. When I run the cleanup around player starts it ignores tiles with resources or improvements (FfH specific items) to avoid things like this.

[to_xp]Gekko;8054639 said:
would it be easy to add the way ice/snow clumps in the middle of the map on toroidal maps in this map to PerfectWorld2? it's cool that cephalo added toroidal maps and they are perfect for FFH, but that long string of ice in the middle of the map is really, really annoying... especially after I got used to how nicely it works in this mapscript :D
Easy? I don't know about 'easy' but it's quite possible, you can open up both scripts in a text editor of your choice and search for 'feature_ice' in this script you'll see quite a few extra lines. The problem is that I use different map variables to determine if the player selected a map with z-wrap so you'll have to change a few of those to work with PW2.

I think this has to do with river prevalance.... lotsa rivers means Malakim get Floodplains galore..... I've seen it that way when I've played Malakim anyway.
I have a newer version with some control over rivers & lakes but it needs some clean-up work before I can upload it. 2.0 uses the new river generation code from Cephalo's Perfect World 2 which was a bit different than the old code so I didn't have time to properly test it and adjust it for the differences with deserts.

Just commenting to show my appreciation for this script; startup times are trivial to me when you know you'll have a good map ;). Both single player and a couple of MP games saw good experiences with this script, I very much like it.
I'm glad it's getting some use, hopefully things will slow down a bit here so I can get in and actually play a game :)

If there are any issues let me know and I'll see if I can make some adjustments to improve it. Aside from the creation time anyway, that's the cost of getting nice world shapes.

Varn Gosam is quite often a technological runaway. Maybe a slight nerfing of his start position is in order?

And maybe the script needs to delete the Goblin Forts, Lairs and Lizardmen Ruins in a certain radius next to the starting positions, mostly for the AI's sake.
I'll see what I can do for the special features.

thx.

follow-up question: is it my equipment, or does this map take ages to generate for everyone?
It takes a while, although on a high-end CPU with a bit of extra RAM it doesn't take more than about a minute. Python isn't exactly fast, especially when it comes to loops and the map generation run a lot of loops over the entire set of tiles. Smaller maps will generate faster, but they still won't be fast.

Bah. I thought PerfectWorld 2 would be awesome, and it is, but it refuses to allow Malakim to start in desert or Doviello in Tundra. I'm still using this one exclusively as a result. :p
Yes, you'll run into that unless you get into PW2 and adjust the value of different tiles used for setting starting plots. That part is a pain and I ended up re-writing the starting plot code a couple of times before ending up with the current implimentation, which still isn't 'perfect' but I think it works fairly well.... most of the time anyway. :)

I'll try to get my lastest code into something I can share and upload it this weekend. It adds controls for the rivers and reduces the number of added resources around starting plots. I'll look and see if I can clear out goblin forts and lairs close to player starts as well.
 
I tried upping the river threshold by 1. Then I upped it to 10. Then 20. Then 100. Even with 100, there's an overabundance of rivers in any area that isn't tundra or desert. (huge map, high cohesion, low sea level are the settings I used)

Since 100 seems like a ridiculously big number, I'm wondering if there is something else you have to change to get less rivers?
 
I can't seem to span the globe.

I must have picked the wrong option for the world wrap I guess. I thought I left it at default, but I managed to pop a Jotnar Skald out of a lair, gave him water walking and started the long trek of proving the world was round.

He's now hit the edge of the map and can't cross to the other side.

So...well, yeah so. Um. Not sure if this is a bug, or intended. I read the short description of the map script, but did not find much info on the different wraps.

Using FF 51, patch B. Perhaps this is an FF bug? I'll go browse the bug threads over there.
 
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