[MapScript] Erebus Continent

[Sephi]

interesting

if I want to add a Civ, will this do?

#added wildmana
	pref = CivPreference(GetInfoType("CIVILIZATION_FAERIES"))
	pref.desertValue = -2
	pref.plainsValue = 1
	pref.grassValue = 2
	pref.marshValue = -2
	pref.tundraValue = 1
	pref.snowValue = 0
	pref.hillValue = -1
	pref.peakValue = -2
	pref.forestValue = 2
	pref.jungleValue = -2
	pref.neighborValue = 0
	pref.needCoastalStart = False
	pref.northValue = 0
	pref.westValue = 0
	pref.edgeValue = 0
	civPreferenceList.append(pref)
#wildmana end

also, what does neighborValue do and what are valid numbers?

thanks

 

[Valkrionn]

interesting

if I want to add a Civ, will this do?

#added wildmana
	pref = CivPreference(GetInfoType("CIVILIZATION_FAERIES"))
	pref.desertValue = -2
	pref.plainsValue = 1
	pref.grassValue = 2
	pref.marshValue = -2
	pref.tundraValue = 1
	pref.snowValue = 0
	pref.hillValue = -1
	pref.peakValue = -2
	pref.forestValue = 2
	pref.jungleValue = -2
	pref.neighborValue = 0
	pref.needCoastalStart = False
	pref.northValue = 0
	pref.westValue = 0
	pref.edgeValue = 0
	civPreferenceList.append(pref)
#wildmana end

also, what does neighborValue do and what are valid numbers?

thanks

That looks correct to me (from what little I know, though I did provide the preferences for the new civs).

On NeighborValue - Here's a quote from the RifE team forum, there's actually a rather large thread there by Seven05 about the script.

Neighbor value is a chance to allow other players to start close to this one. When this civ selects therie starting plot they will remove all vacan starting plots around them and this value modifies how far they will clear. A negative value will clear vacant plots further away and a possitive value will clear fewer vacant plots. Since I start with a list of start plots that is far greater than the number of players this can work very well but it is highly dependant on the order that civs are placed in since it only affects civs placed after this one. Currently the placement order is completely random to avoid the lower numbered players from always getting the best starts.

 

[Seven05]

interesting

if I want to add a Civ, will this do?

#added wildmana
	pref = CivPreference(GetInfoType("CIVILIZATION_FAERIES"))
	pref.desertValue = -2
	pref.plainsValue = 1
	pref.grassValue = 2
	pref.marshValue = -2
	pref.tundraValue = 1
	pref.snowValue = 0
	pref.hillValue = -1
	pref.peakValue = -2
	pref.forestValue = 2
	pref.jungleValue = -2
	pref.neighborValue = 0
	pref.needCoastalStart = False
	pref.northValue = 0
	pref.westValue = 0
	pref.edgeValue = 0
	civPreferenceList.append(pref)
#wildmana end

also, what does neighborValue do and what are valid numbers?

thanks

That will work perfectly, if they're in (or going in) I can add that to the base script so you won't have to worry about it. The only thing in there you may want to change is the negative hill value, the -2 peak value will push them away from mountain ranges but hills are everywhere so it may result in taking a poor start or forcing them to the coast. Also, unless you actually want them to start in the tundra I wouldn't put any possitive value for that or snow. If you just want them to start near the tundra try leaving that at zero, setting snow to -1 and giving them a northValue of 1 which will push them as close to the cold area as they can go with putting them too far in.

neighborValue modifies the range of plots around them that are flagged as invalid for other civs to pick as a start. The exact range is determined by world size and cohesion with the lowest possible value being 5 and the highest being 14. Safe values are -2 through 2 as that will work on any map size. Negative values work for civs that don't want close neighbors, possitive for civs you want to be able to pack in closer. This isn't an exact science since it depends so much on the order civs are placed in and this only affects civs placed after this one.

 

[Seven05]

Bah, Valk did it to me again!

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

kickass update, thanx very much

 

[Wodan]

Just started a new game with 2.5 and got Lanun randomly... noticed it isn't populating any pearls at all, on the whole map.

 

[Seven05]

kickass update, thanx very much

There will be another shortly with the Faerie civ added and a correction for a typo that can cause an error in starting plot placement once in a blue moon.

Just started a new game with 2.5 and got Lanun randomly... noticed it isn't populating any pearls at all, on the whole map.

Which mod were you playing?

Also, if you enable logging in your My Documents/My Games/Beyond the Sword/CivilizationIV.ini

; Enable the logging system
LoggingEnabled = 1

You can the go into your My Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\Logs folder and look for PythonDbg.log to see if it's trying to place them but can't. There's a whole section for bonus placement that looks like:

Spoiler :

Trying to place 1 of BONUS_SHEUT_STONE

Could not place 1 of BONUS_SHEUT_STONE

Trying to place 1 of BONUS_TOAD

Could not place 1 of BONUS_TOAD

Trying to place 8 of BONUS_IRON

Successfully placed 8 of BONUS_IRON

Trying to place 1 of BONUS_FAERIE_TOAD

Could not place 1 of BONUS_FAERIE_TOAD

Trying to place 10 of BONUS_COPPER

Successfully placed 10 of BONUS_COPPER

Trying to place 11 of BONUS_HORSE

Successfully placed 11 of BONUS_HORSE

Trying to place 22 of BONUS_MANA

Successfully placed 22 of BONUS_MANA

Trying to place 8 of BONUS_GUNPOWDER

Successfully placed 8 of BONUS_GUNPOWDER

Trying to place 5 of BONUS_MITHRIL

Successfully placed 5 of BONUS_MITHRIL

Trying to place 9 of BONUS_INCENSE

Successfully placed 9 of BONUS_INCENSE

Trying to place 8 of BONUS_REAGENTS

Successfully placed 8 of BONUS_REAGENTS

Trying to place 5 of BONUS_MARBLE

Successfully placed 5 of BONUS_MARBLE

Trying to place 6 of BONUS_SALT

Successfully placed 6 of BONUS_SALT

Trying to place 6 of BONUS_STONE

Successfully placed 6 of BONUS_STONE

Trying to place 19 of BONUS_SHEEP

Successfully placed 19 of BONUS_SHEEP

Trying to place 3 of BONUS_WHEAT

Successfully placed 3 of BONUS_WHEAT

Trying to place 1 of BONUS_BANANA

Could not place 1 of BONUS_BANANA

Trying to place 10 of BONUS_DEER

Successfully placed 10 of BONUS_DEER

Trying to place 7 of BONUS_RICE

Successfully placed 7 of BONUS_RICE

Trying to place 20 of BONUS_PIG

Could not place 7 of BONUS_PIG

Trying to place 15 of BONUS_CORN

Successfully placed 15 of BONUS_CORN

Trying to place 14 of BONUS_COW

Could not place 8 of BONUS_COW

Trying to place 4 of BONUS_IVORY

Successfully placed 4 of BONUS_IVORY

Trying to place 5 of BONUS_GEMS

Could not place 5 of BONUS_GEMS

Trying to place 8 of BONUS_SPICES

Successfully placed 8 of BONUS_SPICES

Trying to place 7 of BONUS_FUR

Successfully placed 7 of BONUS_FUR

Trying to place 5 of BONUS_SUGAR

Could not place 5 of BONUS_SUGAR

Trying to place 5 of BONUS_DYE

Could not place 5 of BONUS_DYE

Trying to place 5 of BONUS_SILVER

Successfully placed 5 of BONUS_SILVER

Trying to place 5 of BONUS_AMBER

Successfully placed 5 of BONUS_AMBER

Trying to place 6 of BONUS_TEA

Successfully placed 6 of BONUS_TEA

Trying to place 7 of BONUS_WINE

Successfully placed 7 of BONUS_WINE

Trying to place 17 of BONUS_BISON

Could not place 16 of BONUS_BISON

Trying to place 7 of BONUS_COTTON

Successfully placed 7 of BONUS_COTTON

Trying to place 7 of BONUS_SILK

Successfully placed 7 of BONUS_SILK

Trying to place 7 of BONUS_GOLD

Successfully placed 7 of BONUS_GOLD

Trying to place 23 of BONUS_FISH

Successfully placed 23 of BONUS_FISH

Trying to place 26 of BONUS_PEARL

Successfully placed 26 of BONUS_PEARL

Trying to place 1 of BONUS_CAMEL

Successfully placed 1 of BONUS_CAMEL

Trying to place 12 of BONUS_CRAB

Successfully placed 12 of BONUS_CRAB

Trying to place 10 of BONUS_CLAM

Successfully placed 10 of BONUS_CLAM

Trying to place 4 of BONUS_WHALE

Successfully placed 4 of BONUS_WHALE

Trying to place 17 of BONUS_PATRIAN_ARTIFACTS

Successfully placed 17 of BONUS_PATRIAN_ARTIFACTS

No room at all found for BONUS_GEMS!!!

No room at all found for BONUS_SUGAR!!!

No room at all found for BONUS_DYE!!!

No room at all found for BONUS_SHEUT_STONE!!!

No room at all found for BONUS_TOAD!!!

No room at all found for BONUS_BANANA!!!

No room at all found for BONUS_FAERIE_TOAD!!!

Near the end you'll see the 'No room at all ...' messages for the bonuses that it couldn't place. If you don't see it even trying to place a specific bonus that's an issue with the mod's XML file since the bonuses are read directly from there to get the placement rules. You can see in my example it placed 26 pearls on my large map in a Wild Mana game.

You can find other fun things in the same log like:

Smart Climate On

Smart climate -  1 Desert: 0.200000 -1

Smart climate -  2 Tundra: 0.400000  0

Smart climate -  0 Jungle: 0.000000 -2

So you can see how the Smart Climate adjusts settings based on the number of players for each terrain type.

Oh and if you find a map you really like and save the:

Random seed (Using Python rands) for this map is     4307988678942749

You can manually force that seed in the map script to get the exact same map again with different players or different climate options if you want.

 

[Seven05]

I just uploaded 2.51 which fixes a very rare indexing error in starting plot selection and adds the Faerie civilization code as posted by Sephi.

 

[Seven05]

And the starting plot bug persists because I apparently can't tell the difference between min and max

I'm going to run it through a bunch of tests on a known broken seed to make sure it can't possibly recreate the bug and then I'll post the fixed version.

 

[Wodan]

Seven, RifE 1.20 w/hotfix.

Ok, did all that, and it seemed to work ok, though it had trouble placing camels. Went back to my other game, and found that it did indeed place pearls... I had just missed them. Sorry about that.

They were a lot less frequent than I would expect, is all. Given that many sea resources end up in unworkable tiles, and that there are fewer unique sea resources than land resources, should they be more frequent?

 

[Seven05]

Hehe, ok, no worries

I'm going to plug in a little fix for water resources... actually, I probably have to ditch the change that allows coast tiles to be placed by ocean depth. I like how it looks but it messes with the game too much, as you've seen with the resources and it opens up too much water for units that can't enter the ocean.

Oh, and there is no bug with the starting plots, it's the AI playing tricks on me and moving around their starting settler.

 

[Seven05]

And 2.52 is uploaded with a fix for the coasts, they're ugly again but it works better in the game. Now if Valk would ever get around to adding those deep oceans to RiFE we could make it look good again

For the camels, keep an eye on that and let Valk know if he needs to adjust their values in the xml files. I follow those rules closely so the number placed is based on what's specified in the xml files, I only ignore the xml rules for area limits to make sure we get all of the resources on the main continent and not isolated on some small island.

 

[Valkrionn]

And 2.52 is uploaded with a fix for the coasts, they're ugly again but it works better in the game. Now if Valk would ever get around to adding those deep oceans to RiFE we could make it look good again

For the camels, keep an eye on that and let Valk know if he needs to adjust their values in the xml files. I follow those rules closely so the number placed is based on what's specified in the xml files, I only ignore the xml rules for area limits to make sure we get all of the resources on the main continent and not isolated on some small island.

Yeah, once I'm done merging the stuff Grey Fox has been working on I'll put together a flavor patch... Will try to include a Deep Ocean for you to work with.

On Camels; There aren't supposed to be many. 4-5 on a huge map. I actually set the xml values based on how it was placed in ErebusContinent.

 

[Wodan]

And 2.52 is uploaded with a fix for the coasts, they're ugly again but it works better in the game. Now if Valk would ever get around to adding those deep oceans to RiFE we could make it look good again

For the camels, keep an eye on that and let Valk know if he needs to adjust their values in the xml files. I follow those rules closely so the number placed is based on what's specified in the xml files, I only ignore the xml rules for area limits to make sure we get all of the resources on the main continent and not isolated on some small island.

Sounds good, and will do.

(For pearls, we still might want to make them more frequent. I'll keep an eye and see how it reacts with the change, but regardless given that they're invisible to anybody who can't use them, seems OK to me to up the frequency. Frankly, it would be (and was) kind of sucky to have a huge stretch of coast (I was on two separate peninsulas plus a couple of islands) and not see any pearls... that's one of your benefits as Lanun.)

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

there's only one thing I dislike about ErebusContinent now: civs tend to start too clumped. I understand this is due to a high neighbourvalue ( in my current game for example, the Bannor are very close to my Svartalfars and I'm pretty sure they have a high value for that ) , but it feels like the script is not "optimizing the space" . I'd much rather have it try and space around civs evenly using all the land, also because civs dying quickly to a warrior rush just makes the game less interesting.

check the screenshot as an example, khazad/sheaim and svart/bannor are way too close imho, while the whole left half of the map is completely empty. Sheaim could easily have started more towards the west as there's great land there. west from the Malakim is not great, but still good and the fact that there's a lot of it all for oneself makes it better

this is just an example, as I've noticed similar behaviour in the maps I've generated lately to check out, i.e. one half with all the civs and half with none

 

[Wodan]

I'm noticing that as well, Gekko. The main thing that's problematic about it (in my mind) is that civs who happen to start in the "middle of the clump" are seriously hosed for expansion, while civs that start on the edge have a huge benefit by being able to expand outwards. In fact, a human (or a lucky AI) will expand inwards first and then expand outwards with impunity.

 

[Seven05]

Very few civs have a positive preference for neighborValue and even fewer use the edge/north/south weights. Even in those cases it only makes a difference of 2 plots in most cases.

I'll turn the plot list shuffle code back on as I think what you're seeing is the result of several plots having identical values so the first of those is selected and it starts the check from the lower right corner (0,0) so you end up with nobody to the upper left. That would also explain why civs with similar terrain values (most of them like grass over plains for example) end up clustered.

I can't post it now since I'm at work, but I'll do that when I get home and upload it tonight.

If you see any really close it's because the AI will move their settler around before founding their first city.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

you rock

 

[Seven05]

So it's quiet here at work today and I was thinking about just making the quick change and then uploading it again but as I was looking at it I had an idea (uh oh).

I can do this two ways. The easiest is to simply shuffle the plot list before any of the players cycle through it looking for their new home. This will distribute them more randomly over the land so clusters will still be possible depending on how well you've manage to appease the random number gods.

The seond way is to 'flip' the order the players cycle through the plot list. So, every other player will go forward through the list while the others go through the list backwards. This can potentially result in a more even distribution of players but can potentially cause two distinct clusters depending on the world map shape and climate. Since the player order itself is randomized this won't result in specific civs always appearing in the same general locations or anything like that.

Maybe I'll upload two test versions and let you guys decide, anybody interesting in testing a few dozen maps tonight?

 

[Wodan]

I would but I have to work late tonight. Sorry...