Random Mountains

[Ebrim]

One thing I've been seeing in various videos and screenshots is far too many "random mountains" that is to say a bunch of plains/grassland with a single mountain in the middle. Mountains, generally (there are some exceptions), should be in ranges and not found interspersed here and there throughout the world. I understand that due to adjacency bonuses perhaps the map scripts have been made in such a way that mountains are more dispersed for balance... But somehow that doesn't really make me feel any better about it.

I hope at the very least we get some options in the vanilla game for controlling how mountains are generated including a "more realistic" option.

Thoughts?

 

[malekithau]

I think it's a matter of scale. A single mountain isn't just a single peak in my mind. Just like a city is more like a province.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

It probably has to do with making the territory more balanced because mountains are so valuable.

 

[Amrunril]

This is probably a deliberate choice to prevent access to adjacency bonuses from being too uneven. In my mind, though, if this needs to be done, it's probably a sign that mountain adjacency bonuses are too important .

 

[Ebrim]

I think it's a matter of scale. A single mountain isn't just a single peak in my mind. Just like a city is more like a province.

That's a good point. Still though a single tile without surrounding hills just seems geologically odd.

 

[Atlas627]

There ARE random mountains all over the world. Look at a topographical map of a small region and you'll see mountains. Not all regions are mountainous compared to the whole world, so if you look at a huge topographical map then some areas look positively flat that are actually quite hilly and have mountains.

Also, the mountains have been well placed when looking at the scale of game world to real world.

 

[BrokenSky]

I think it's a matter of scale. A single mountain isn't just a single peak in my mind. Just like a city is more like a province.

It would be nice if mountain tiles sometimes had more than one mountain on them though.

 

[Ebrim]

There ARE random mountains all over the world. Look at a topographical map of a small region and you'll see mountains. Not all regions are mountainous compared to the whole world, so if you look at a huge topographical map then some areas look positively flat that are actually quite hilly and have mountains.

Also, the mountains have been well placed when looking at the scale of game world to real world.

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say. That relatively even flat areas have mountains? As someone who has spent much of the last few years either in Buenos Aires province or Illinois I can assure you that perhaps there's more topographical difference in these places than their "flatness" may suggest but there are certainly no mountains.

 

[Zaarin]

Plate tectonics are complicated and I don't expect the game to simulate them, but it would be nice if it could at least "fake it" (same with continents).

 

[Mort_Q]

Realism doesn't always make for a fun or balanced game.

I'd rather the game be fun than model real world tectonics.

 

[Ryika]

I'm happy with random mountains in the middle of nowhere . Gameplay comes first, and the NoQuitters Maps show how much more fun relatively open maps can be over the standard maps that often have huge mountain chains that act as natural borders and make defense very easy.

The more open the maps, the happier I'll be.

 

[Atlas627]

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say. That relatively even flat areas have mountains? As someone who has spent much of the last few years either in Buenos Aires province or Illinois I can assure you that perhaps there's more topographical difference in these places than their "flatness" may suggest but there are certainly no mountains.

In game scale, Buenos Aires would reach the mountains near Chile, but not part of the mountain range. Illinois might touch the Appalachians, though that is a mountain range.

The entire Great Plains region is called that because it is a giant anomaly; not a mountain around. The Northeast US would have the occasional mountain, Eastern Europe, really anywhere that is mostly flat but even has a super tall hill would have a mountain in games terms.

In game, mountains are impassable terrain and good places to see the stars. These are both relatives to the local terrain. If you're used to living in flatland, a huge hill is impassable and also by far the most holy site.

It is also waaaaay better for gameplay.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Consider this a reference to Tolkien's Lonely Mountain.

 

[Amrunril]

I'd rather the game be fun than model real world tectonics.

I don't see any reason the two need to be mutually exclusive. If the game is unbalanced with some players lacking mountain access (and we don't know yet whether that's the case), then in my mind that's a sign that mountain access is too important. Other terrain types should provide different benefits with their tile yields and adjacency bonuses, but those benefits should be comparably powerful. As for Ryika's point about warfare specifically, I can't speak to those specific maps, but I've always thought that it makes for more interesting gameplay for some parts of the map to be easier or harder to move armies through. I could see it being an issue in competitive play, but probably not more so than a salt start in Civ V or spawning particularly close to or far from neighboring civs.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I don't see any reason the two need to be mutually exclusive. If the game is unbalanced with some players lacking mountain access (and we don't know yet whether that's the case), then in my mind that's a sign that mountain access is too important.

No, it means what terrain diversity is important. And that's quite good thing.

 

[gunnergoz]

Some thoughts off the top of my head, since you don't want them from the other end.
First we haven't seen any of the map scripts that will ship with the game, so we don't know what variety of maps to expect, which in turn will tell us something about the variety of mountains we'll see.
Another thing to consider is the interplay of the game's design, with cities reaching out 3 rings and how that is supposed to scale in the game world. We can't have realistic sized cities even on a huge map. The game is going to give us cities that are always the same size in hex terms, whether we play on a tiny map or a huge one. Mountain ranges thus have to scale with map size but only in a practical way that allows the game cities to function...too many mountains makes for a region that is basically uninhabitable since you can't build a city worth having if there are too few hexes to place districts.
This unpacking of the city has definitely altered the way we have to think about map design.

 

[Krajzen]

Whatever happens, I have nothing against map with less hills and mountains as it would be far less frustrating regarding logistics. Most land in the worls is relatively flat (well not exactly but in civ terms) and mountain ranges as well as random mountains are rare compared to the amount of arabke traversible land.

Wait, why do I care about realism at all? I don't care about it, just give me setting or general map bias against such logistical nightmare as in civ5.

 

[Alphons Rodulfo]

That's a good point. Still though a single tile without surrounding hills just seems geologically odd.

Yes. Just tweak the map generator a bit to add a few hills around isolated mountains. Thhat should do it. Or make them hot spot volcanoes.
Inselbergs do exist in reality, but they are not so big that they could be called mountains.

 

[kaspergm]

This is probably a deliberate choice to prevent access to adjacency bonuses from being too uneven. In my mind, though, if this needs to be done, it's probably a sign that mountain adjacency bonuses are too important.

100 % the highlighted part. I hate how mountains (and jungle) have become the make it or break it between a good and bad start. We saw in some of the preview videos how players who started with no mountains or jungles (take Quill18 videos for example) were seriously hampered because they were completely stunted on science in early game. The fact that flat district yields are based entirely on adjacency bonuses seems to put a rather unhealthy emphasis on starting conditions which again makes some poor balancing acts necessary.

 

[Amrunril]

No, it means what terrain diversity is important. And that's quite good thing.

I'd agree that terrain diversity should be important in the sense that civs should benefit from having more than one type of terrain and that different terrain types should have different advantages and disadvantages. I don't think, however, that it should be important for every civ to have every type of terrain. In my view, that just promotes unnecessary homogenization.

As I think more about it, I realize that isolated mountains tend to negate the trade offs that usually come with mountain cities. Ordinarily, a city near a mountain range gains access to campus and holy site adjacency bonuses and the ability to build certain wonders at the cost of having fewer tiles to construct improvements, districts and wonders. An isolated mountain offers a slightly watered down version of these benefits but, by nature of consuming only a single tile, comes at virtually no cost. I don't think this is a problem if it happens occasionally- all civ maps have some particularly advantageous spots, but if mountains like this are commonplace, it seems like it will reduce the ability of different starts to encourage different strategies.