On communitas map

[tu_79]

Don't give the Inca a cluster of mountains to start with. They're balanced around a hilly start with maybe a mountain chain, not lots of them like the current version.

By the way, I played 1.03 and felt that strategics like Iron and Horses have too high quantity in each source. You'll never need more than one source of those 9 Horses/Iron early game. Coal/Oil/Aluminium/Uranium are fine with few sources and high quantity, but Horses/Iron should spread out more so you have to settle what you need instead of just finding one source and be fine until Industrial.

Well, the idea is that you sell that stuff. Diplomatic options and such.
It also leaves more room, if we have fewer tiles with resources, but if you feel that's too low, I can increase it quite easily.


I want to share what I understand that Communitas is doing for making rifts. It looks quite smart overall, so I don't understand why this is not producing nice shapes. It has three different parts:

1. First, it finds out the best locations for an atlantic and a pacific type rift. The main difference between atlantic and pacific is that the atlantic should be clean, while the pacific may have some islands (Oceania). For the atlantic, it searches the vertical stripe (the size of the desired rift) with fewer altitude in the map. For the pacific, it searches the vertical stripe whose altitude is the median of the map. In theory, this should end up placing the Atlantic ocean where it is going to be deeper and the Pacific where it is going to be bigger. Only caveat is that it looks at the vertical stripe, but the real rift may wander too much, taking a path away from this stripe. (Note: I'm not sure which one is at fault, but currently one of the oceans doesn't look like it has been placed in the proper location, since the ocean stripe is too obvious).

2. Then, it builds a drift. It's made of tiles that fit within an area defined by a vertical sinusoidal core, a rift width at the poles (atlanticSize, pacificSize) and a rift width at the equator (atlanticBulge, pacificBulge). the sinusoidal core amplitude is defined by the constant 'curve' (pacificCurve or atlanticCurve), setting how many tiles will the core deviate from the vertical line at the equinoces.
Instead of building it rigth in the x location found in step 1, it tries different starting locations and takes the one with fewer removed land tiles. But this attempts are very loose. See:

    if bulge ~= 0 then
        -- see which curve direction fits the land better
              plots  = GetRiftPlots(x-2, midline-2, y, direction, totalSize, oceanSize, bulge, curve)
        local plotsB = GetRiftPlots(x+2, midline+2, y, direction, totalSize, oceanSize, bulge, curve)
        
        if GetMatchingPlots(plotsB) > GetMatchingPlots(plots) then
            plots = DeepCopy(plotsB)
        end
    elseif curve ~= 0 then
        -- see which curve direction fits the land better
              plots  = GetRiftPlots(x-1, midline-1, y, direction, totalSize, oceanSize, bulge, curve)
        local plotsB = GetRiftPlots(x+1, midline+1, y, direction, totalSize, oceanSize, bulge, -1 * curve)
        
        if GetMatchingPlots(plotsB) > GetMatchingPlots(plots) then
            plots = DeepCopy(plotsB)
        end
    else
        plots = GetRiftPlots(x, midline, y, direction, totalSize, oceanSize, bulge, curve)
    end

In the case bulge is not 0, builds a rift in location x-2 and another one in location x+2, and returns the best one.
In case bulge is 0, then if curve is not 0, builds a rift in location x-1 and another one in location x+1 with the curve sense inverted, and returns the best one.
If both bulge and curve are 0, builds the rifts in location x.
(Note: bulge and curve not 0 doesn't have a differentiated method, so if a small bulge value and a big curve value are provided, the inversed curved is not to be tested)

3. After the rift line is set, it fills a stripe around the rift line with ocean tiles. If it is atlantic, all tiles will be ocean. If it is pacific, some of these tiles might become coast if there is some coast or land nearby. Since the chosen location should be mostly surrounded by ocean tiles, the stripe should only be noticeable where it passes too near the continents. Finally, it sets rift tile altitudes to 0.

First thing that strikes to me is that the method for finding the 'StartX' location for the rift is right for a straight vertical line, but it may be completely the wrong place when the rift is winding. The idea is that if you need to cut through a continent in order to for the rift, you cut it where there is less land, but if the continent

 

[tu_79]

Good news. I found some more missing lines. These were in the function that fills the rift with ocean tiles. I'm performing some tests and will release a new version with fixed rifts soon, once I'm happy with the shapes.

I'm starting to think that a merge failed or something like that, because the map script was very bugged.

 

[tu_79]

Good stuff!
Version 1.05

Changelog:
Fixed missing rift code for filling with ocean tiles. Now an atlantic rift is always impassable, pacific sometimes.
Improved mid atlantic islands, now less frequent.
Fixed land percentage value. Now it recalculates water level thresholds after the rifts are created, ensuring the same land percentage in every map.
As a result, desert and jungle values had to change (deserts became too frequent in place of jungles).
Increased chance for features to produce more features, making more consistent patches.

To do:
Investigate why land masses are so separated from the poles.

 

[Txurce]

Good stuff!
Version 1.05

Changelog:
Fixed missing rift code for filling with ocean tiles. Now an atlantic rift is always impassable, pacific sometimes.
Improved mid atlantic islands, now less frequent.
Fixed land percentage value. Now it recalculates water level thresholds after the rifts are created, ensuring the same land percentage in every map.
As a result, desert and jungle values had to change (deserts became too frequent in place of jungles).
Increased chance for features to produce more features, making more consistent patches.

To do:
Investigate why land masses are so separated from the poles.

This looks really good. I'll start a new game soon and try it.

Where are you at re: luxuries and resources, vis a vis Continents,etc.?

 

[Mambo668]

Amazing job.
Show some screenshots of whole map please. Thx in advance!

 

[azum4roll]

To do:
Investigate why land masses are so separated from the poles.

What does this mean? They're always supposed to be separated.

 

[Txurce]

The resources are still way too high. I have a stable that looks to have four horses, but gives nine.

 

[tu_79]

What does this mean? They're always supposed to be separated.

Why? No Antarctica ever?

The resources are still way too high. I have a stable that looks to have four horses, but gives nine.

Mmm. I think I may reduce the frequency now that the shapes are more consistently blocky. About horses, the idea is to find a resource with enough strategics for the player to trade. Probably one of your neighbors is missing any horses. Or if you like to always find a horse, there's a strategic resource start you can set up. Right now, there's supposed to be 6 horses for each player, but I can reduce this.
How do you feel about the bonus resources, still too much?

There's a small bug that increases land by 5%. It's not critical, but I'll fix it soon.

 

[azum4roll]

It's a Communitas feature that ships can always sail through the northern and southern seas near the poles, not blocked by ice or land. It can be hard to circumvent the world with ships otherwise.

 

[vyyt]

It's a Communitas feature that ships can always sail through the northern and southern seas near the poles, not blocked by ice or land. It can be hard to circumvent the world with ships otherwise.

Yes, this is one of the great Communitas map features. I'd vote for keeping it.

EDIT: I would be against adding some polar snow lands if it is more than just a few tiles even if you somehow manage to separate the Antarctica from the other continents by a passable route. These useless regions would be just eating up space usable for bigger regular continents. This is where gameplay trumps realism.

 

[tu_79]

Ok, quick hotfix. Not worth changing the release number.
I had oversighted the amount of land created. I reused a piece of code that created 5% more land before the rifts (maybe that helped to achieved the right amount of land after the cuts?), but where I added the code it's no longer needed to have more land, so back to 30%.
I also reduced the amount of resources in all strategics and reduced the natural formation of strategics even further. Now it's only guaranteed to produce 5 of each resource (but uranium) for each player, although it might produce a little more, if plains become more abundant in the game you create (remember, different shapes, different land distribution).

About the circumnavegation, maybe there's a way to make the world circumnavegable without having so many canal cities in snowy locations. I personally hate to find a city with just 1 tile of water that might or might not have fish, more or less forced to settle along the coast so I can send trade routes and not being able to use 60% of the city's territory. It's like having a maritime route in North Siberia. What's worse, you all know where to find it.
In the several iterations I've performed, the world ended up being circumnavegable even without the poles canal, anyways. There's a code for making an horizontal rift I may adapt to force circumnavegation in a random place near the poles. That would allow a player to circumnavegate the world (if no civ is blocking the path) but he would need to find the passage.

Disclaimer: I haven't tested the hotfix, but the changes were so minor that it should work.

 

[tu_79]

EDIT: I would be against adding some polar snow lands if it is more than just a few tiles even if you somehow manage to separate the Antarctica from the other continents by a passable route. These useless regions would be just eating up space usable for bigger regular continents. This is where gameplay trumps realism.

This is exactly what I think when I see 8-10 rows of ice in each map and a mostly useless and predictable water canal between ice and land. I think we would be better thinking that we are working on a zoomed map, so ice is mostly out of the playable map, and land is used up to the borders.
Snow is admittedly bad for settling over, but I'm giving snow a much bigger chance to hold resources, so settling near snow might be benefitial. Tundra has more resources too. Anyways, it wouldn't take much space, not more than marshes.
I don't want to force maps with the Antartica either, just leave the posibility for a small continent to form very near the poles and have some snow on it, but not that much that it becomes unworkable. Like south Greenland.

BTW, there's already a code working to reduce the formation of ice when there is land. More land = less ice. But we don't see it in practice because there is no land where ice can be. I guess it only works if we set map temperatures to be cold.

So, my plan is:
1. Reduce ice to just 2 rows (S & N), maybe one or two extra ice tiles in empty ocean.
2. Make land able to reach the ice. (Guess it has something to do with map wrapping). Snow and tundra are enhanced with more resources already, so they are not worthless.
3. Make a circumnavegable horizontal 1 tile rift, taking the lowest elevation path to avoid canals, at a latitude dependent on elevation, so it's not always in the same place.
(He! Easier said than done. Point 3 is a major coding commitment, but if I like the outcome, I may change vertical rifts too. In my head it sounds like something feasible. Sum the altitudes of the first columns to find where the water is deeper to take as starting point, then draw a line that follows the lower altitude path with a spring function that is stronger at the map borders, so the borders match. Then turn each tile in the passage into ocean if it is completely surrounded by water, into coast otherwise. Update elevation map).

 

[Asterix Rage]

You are becomming an excellent mapping engineer now. It's awesome. Keep going, we need someone like you. Beyond this communitu_79 you're forging, they a lot good things to do about maps. Like land/ressource/looking oriented scripts (communitu based)
Or even more: Maps design (turn 0 mini scenarios) with very special features well drawn and well fit for VP. With that, you can turn repetitive games in great adventures. Plenty of room for your unlimited imagination here + amazing gift for VP

I don't know you but in my end, map scripts as Mods don't work. The only way to have them is to copy .lua in map folder. No big deal, but I don't know why

 

[Txurce]

Actually, I was on a land mass with Attila, and he had all the horses. I took one of his cities, and that one had nine. But he had two other horse resources. My preference is for resources to more closely mirror the more standard maps. In these, someone has enough horses to trade, and someone is short. That's where the fun lies for me. But the more important part is that the overall number be lower.

Luxuries seem okay. Given their importance in VP, I'd again try to ensure that they match the total number on the more standard maps.

I argued strongly against circumnavigation on the original Communitas map, because it went against what all Civ maps were at that time. Thal changed it because he didn't like the idea of it. Now I hate not being able to attack a neighbor because I'm blocked! You mentioned having a circuitous one, and that would be fun.

I'd keep snow low, because I'd rather have more usable map, but it's a really minor point for me.

Overall the map is working very , very well.The last factor I'd keep in mind is the varied, shape of continents. This is what made Communitas stand out the most. I love ffor example a long, narrow water pasage that bcomes critical for war and defense.... or impregnable bays. That sort of thing.

 

[tu_79]

Actually, I was on a land mass with Attila, and he had all the horses. I took one of his cities, and that one had nine. But he had two other horse resources. My preference is for resources to more closely mirror the more standard maps. In these, someone has enough horses to trade, and someone is short. That's where the fun lies for me. But the more important part is that the overall number be lower.

Luxuries seem okay. Given their importance in VP, I'd again try to ensure that they match the total number on the more standard maps.

I argued strongly against circumnavigation on the original Communitas map, because it went against what all Civ maps were at that time. Thal changed it because he didn't like the idea of it. Now I hate not being able to attack a neighbor because I'm blocked! You mentioned having a circuitous one, and that would be fun.

I'd keep snow low, because I'd rather have more usable map, but it's a really minor point for me.

verall the map is working very , very well.The last factor I'd keep in mind is the varied, shape of continents. This is what made Communitas stand out the most. I love ffor example a long, narrow water pasage that bcomes critical for war and defense.... or impregnable bays. That sort of thing.

Thank you for the feedback.

I did reduce the frequency of strategics and increased the amount each tile provide, hoping that the total strategics remained the same. In the hotfix there are fewer quantities, but it might be still too much. I agree that the total amount should be similar to other standard games, although I think harsh terrain can do with more resources.

I didn't touch luxuries, nor Communitas does anything with them but calling an external function (probably from CSD). Nothing I can do about it.

The best thing is that if we don't like the distribution of the other resources, we can change it! I wouldn't have thought this possible two weeks ago.

If there are other things that you want to change, I might try to look at it, but I don't promise anything

 

[Txurce]

Thank you for the feedback.

I did reduce the frequency of strategics and increased the amount each tile provide, hoping that the total strategics remained the same. In the hotfix there are fewer quantities, but it might be still too much. I agree that the total amount should be similar to other standard games, although I think harsh terrain can do with more resources.

I didn't touch luxuries, nor Communitas does anything with them but calling an external function (probably from CSD). Nothing I can do about it.

The best thing is that if we don't like the distribution of the other resources, we can change it! I wouldn't have thought this possible two weeks ago.

If there are other things that you want to change, I might try to look at it, but I don't promise anything

Glad to hear luxuries are essentially "standard." And there's nothing else I'd want. You've done a fantastic job with it, and I look forward to making this my default map.

 

[vyyt]

Regarding strategics, I like the way @Txurce has worded it. I also like it when some civs have more to trade and some less (and have to fight or trade to obtain them). I'd rather lean away from arbitrary numbers for every civ. I think that we have the strategic balance option for guaranteeing that everyone has enough of everything (TBH I have never tried it, so I maybe I don't know what I am talking about).

And yes, I like that Communitas creates these strategic chokepoints, safe bay-harbors, etc. - it is not only that they look great, they are fun to play and the AI is usually able to make a proper use of them.

Ther reason why I abandoned this map long time ago was the craziness with resources (both the huge quantities and also littering the whole map and blocking farm triangles), too many small islands and not having proper rifts between the continents (possibly made worse on my end by adding extra civs).

It seems that you are addressing all these and I am eager to try out the new Communitu_79 once I finish my current game. Thank you very much!!!

PS: I know we are annoying, but can you post more screenshots? Cheers!

 

[tu_79]

I don't know you but in my end, map scripts as Mods don't work. The only way to have them is to copy .lua in map folder. No big deal, but I don't know why

It also failed me now, don't know why. Maybe I have many copies of the same mapscript everywhere... Trying to solve it.

 

[Stalker0]

I personally like strategies down to 4 on average per civ per strategic. At 4 the unit is a stable but still limited part of the army. After that it just becomes a default unit imo.

 

[Txurce]

I personally like strategies down to 4 on average per civ per strategic. At 4 the unit is a stable but still limited part of the army. After that it just becomes a default unit imo.

This is a good basic figure, in my opinion, together with random arrangements that make for varied games.