number of maps

[rafisher]

Are all the maps pre-configured---that is, made by
the programmers and included in the game so that
there are a fixed number (of maps)? Or does the program
itself generate new maps?

 

[duke o' york]

The game does it by itself. I have played far more games than the programmers could ever be bothered to design specific maps for and never had the same one twice. If I did have the same one, which is highly unlikely as I remember the rough details of loads of games, then the start positions were all different so that's basically a new map as far as the game is concerned - at leats until you have conquered the whole world and are just building cities everywhere. Ask someone who designs maps for Civ 2 how long it will take for a single one to be designed from scratch and you'll realise that the creators of civ 2 just couldn't be bothered to spend months before release making hundreds of different pre-configured maps. The hut and special patterns are always the same though, regardless of what the map is like, but remember that you never get specials on grassland and you never get huts in the water.

 

[starlifter]

The hut and special patterns are always the same though, regardless of what the map is like, but remember that you never get specials on grassland and you never get huts in the water.

Not exactly .


The hut pattern is fixed, in relation to the patter on placement of specials. However, the pattern of specials, and the location on a given map, depends only on one thing.... the initial seed value. If you choose a seed value of, say, 17 (use map editor), then that sets the mixure and patters of whales/fishes. There are 2 categories of patterns, BTW.... I call them whales and fishes, since in a 100% ocean terrain, that is how they "start out". As you change the underlying terrain, the special that will result is ordained. For example, a whale will always become a wine, if the ocean is changed to hills. Fish will always become coal. I like wine. I like whales. (so the moral is that whales are my favorite specials category, LOL ).

Specials come in groups of 8, and the mixture of whales/fishes within that group is determined by the seed value and does not vary, once the seed is set. It repeats again and again, until the map (whatever size) is covered.

The way it repeats is this: take the 8-special pattern, "copy" it, and paste it again and again horizontally, with a 3-diagonal tile spacing.

On the next "row" (horizontal pattern), "flip" in about the horizontal axis.

but remember that you never get specials on grassland

I think you're saying that you just can't "see" it in grassland. You can indeed have a grassland special -- but grassland does not get any extra bonus or outwardly visible indication that it is special. Mining or transformations will reveal the appropriate special.

Once one determines the special layout in a map, you can predict the location of every special on the map, and every hut on the map. We are going to do just that in our Democracy game, BTW . That hut is very telling, as soon as we verify a special or two, hehe.