Perfect World 2

[MagisterCultuum]

Personally I like the 1 tile choke points in Erebus, but I hate how the vast majority of the coastline is covered wiht peaks and thus pretty much useless. I also wish that peaks provided some yields, at least +1

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

yep, you are right. although, I always modded Erebus to make it toroidal, so it kinda looks like a planet anyway for me especially with high sea level you definitely get continents. edit: plus what MC said, those coastlines full of peaks look really bad and take away the usefulness of coastlines imho ( which is not much in FFH btw, since coastal tiles kinda suck unless you're Lanun ) . I think that boats are already not useful enough, no need to have most of the coasts walled in

 

[Opera]

I really like Creation (I don't know if there's many differences between it and Erebus) for a classical fantasy feel... But I never thought it could be the cause of the AI doing crap. Why would the AI be better on PW2?

Anyway, PW2 is pretty good but has some issues. Even with FlavourMod, Malakim won't start in deserts. I don't know if it's fixed in ErebusContinent... The last time I tried, I didn't start in a desert.

 

[Valkrionn]

ErebusContinent works fine for the Malakim, it's just that sometimes there aren't any desert starting locations. Hard to get from a single continent.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

well the AI is better because it doesn't have to think about how to get out of their tiny "room" if they happen to be blocked in, and you can't place a single unit on a checkpoint as barb deterrent, plus general whacky behaviour. PW2 is fine, of course the AIs are not very good at intercontinental warfare though. that's what I liked so much about notque's AI mod all in all, right now ErebusContinent with high cohesion IS the map that gives the best FFH experience.

 

[loffenx]

Choosing the "allow pangeas" option and raising the land-ratio has produced many nice pangeas for me, and sometimes something more like Big and Small (i think, haven't played Big and Small since 2007 or something). They are more fractued though, so there's plenty of use for navies, but there's usually atleast one land-route for the naval-incompetent AI to take.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

hey, that's actually a nice idea. I might try that. what percentage of land are you using?

edit: wow, I tried 40% land and it did create a huge, natural shaped pangea with a lot of jungle on the equator, and a smallish continent in the south separated by ocean. it looked like it would be a joy to play on! of course, a continent so huge means lots of deserts, so Wild Mana is badly needed so that the AIs can get water mana and use it to spring, otherwise you'd be at a great advantage the first try looked great, I'm generating another right now to see how consistent it is ( which, of course, would require lots of regenerations... but still )

edit2: the 2nd map is as good as the 1st... loffenx, thanx so very much for your suggestion!

 

[loffenx]

40% is what I use myself, loving it I also use the "start anywhere"-option, but don't really know the impact of that.

I've been pondering the deserts but I've been trying out Turinturumbar's economic mod simoultaneously so i have been at quite the disadvantage myself

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

you could use Wild Mana, most of Turinturambar's mod is in ( and most of Skyre Noktis' as well ).

Start Anywhere is only useful in non-pangea maps, it means that civilizations are not going to spawn only on the bigger continent, but anywhere. doesn't work very well with FFH though as it turns out, you often end up with someone being stranded all alone on a smaller continent

 

[Senethro]

I've modified this mapscript for Pangaeas, a map size closer to typical Civ4 sizes and reduced deserts. I'm finding it a bit foresty which is causing my AIs problems. Any suggestions on a simple way to reduce forest cover?

 

[Tasunke]

well, alot of the MP maps I haven't made yet start out by generating a creation/ or erebus/ mapscript, and then looking for the errors inherent and perfecting it towards my vision. And then testing it to see if I broke it or not ^_^


also, if there was a way to reduce forest cover it would be much, MUCH helpful ... like on settings before map generation. Most of what I did on the last map I tweaked was nothing more than getting rid of un-neccesary jungles and forests, and flattening out hills, and redistributing the starting locations to make the empires more spread out and flavorful ... instead of all crowded into one half of the map, with 3 starting in almost all jungle ?!?!?!?!

yea half of that jungle was turned into forest, and the other 2 civs moved to the other side of the map ... unfortunately that map was lost cause it was made on a crappy computer. hrrm. Off to make some maps! ^_^

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I've modified this mapscript for Pangaeas, a map size closer to typical Civ4 sizes and reduced deserts. I'm finding it a bit foresty which is causing my AIs problems. Any suggestions on a simple way to reduce forest cover?

I'm pretty sure that reducing self.TreeFactor = 1.5 to a smaller number ( try 1.4 first ) should decrease the number of forests. what did you do for pangeas, just increased the land percentage?

 

[Tasunke]

lofenx, can u post a Perfect World mapscript with 45% landmass? or is that just low sea level option?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

40%

anyway, it's very easy. just open the mapscript file with any text editor, search for "self.landPercent" ( without " " ) and change that from 0.29 to whatever percentage you like.

 

[Senethro]

I'm pretty sure that reducing self.TreeFactor = 1.5 to a smaller number ( try 1.4 first ) should decrease the number of forests. what did you do for pangeas, just increased the land percentage?

Is this the correct name of the factor? I couldn't find it. There were also only 3 things set to 1.5 but none of them were forests!

And yes, all I'm doing is using a high land %age (48).

 

[loffenx]

There you go. But as said, editing them yourself is really easy, just open the file and scroll through the settings.

Any thought on hills? I feel I've been getting a bit few lately.

View attachment PerfectWorld2.rar

Edit: Seems i had it at 45%

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Is this the correct name of the factor? I couldn't find it. There were also only 3 things set to 1.5 but none of them were forests!

And yes, all I'm doing is using a high land %age (48).

umh. that's weird. are using the latest version, 2.03?

edit: wow. try it at 50% , I've generated two maps and they were all awesome. very Erebus-ish too ( the map, not the mapscript )

 

[Senethro]

Wrong install, I was using an old version. self.treefactor doesn't look as useful for making forests with holes as

#This is the maximum chance for a tree to be placed when rainfall is above jungle level.
#use a value between 0.0 and 1.0
self.MaxTreeChance = 0.87

If I've understood the behaviour of the above correctly, wouldn't it make 1 in 8 tiles that would otherwise be a forest into an empty tile? (its usual value is 1.0)

So anyway, I've added my changes to the most recent version and have been very pleased by the results except for one thing.

Theres no fresh water - No rivers, no oases, no fresh water lakes.

What have I broken?

 

[Senethro]

Ioffenx: Peaks and Hills don't scale with increased landmass. If you increase landmass by 50%, you have to increase peaks and hills by 50%

 

[Tasunke]

it seems that at least Base Perfect World 2 plays towards the strengths of the Lanun. Since deserts, Ice, forests, and Sea give bonuses to certain players, maps have to weigh in against giving all the favor to one particular civ style. For instance ... people also see Amazonia, which is a nearly all jungle map, as giving civs that Start with Fire mana and/or favor bronzeworking an undue advantage.

Although the benefits Malakim recieve on the deserts are nothing close to normal terrain ... but simply that they do better there than other civs of the same.

The main 2 things with any mapscript is to go easy on the usage of water and forest. Mainly because they grant much reward without much effort. Of course, this is usually only a bad thing when the map is practically ALL coast and/or ALL forest. And we can only really consider the good tiles for this comparison. If the inland is all or mostly crappy tiles, then the point still stands.