Terra Incognita

Terra Incognita

Current version: 1.0 (v.1 in the mod browser!)

First of all, if you haven't tried out Civ5's version of Terra, try it. It's beautiful, interesting to explore, and balanced. What more could anyone want?

Well... I was never satisfied with the idea that you know there's a New World out there waiting to be discovered. There's not as much thrill in exploration if you know basically what you're going to find.

So, when you play Terra Incognita, you have no idea what's across the ocean. It could be a vast New World. It could be a few sad little archipelagos. It could be six Australia-sized continents. It could be diddly squat.

You'll have to get on a boat and find out!

How to install

You can install Terra Incognita from the in-game mod browser. Download it, install it, and click its check button to load it. Once it's loaded, Terra Incognita will appear in the map list.

Or, if you want it to always be in the map list, you can download it as a Lua file. Right-click the link, Save As, and save it in your My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization V\Maps folder.

 

Code:

v1.0 (9/29/2010)
- Released to the mod browser as v.1
- Added a painful workaround for what looks like a bug in MultilayeredFractal.
  Some continents were coming out with straight horizontal or vertical edges. You
  can even see them in Terra. So I regenerate until the edges don't suck.
- Added loads of options:
	- Sea level (despite Sirian's warning that it's wonky)
	- Old World can be allowed to be multiple continents (no guarantees)
	- New World can be forced to exist (if you like that kind of thing)
	- Start anywhere including the New World (if you like that kind of thing)
- Rebalanced city-state starting locations

v0.3 (9/28/2010)
- Stop messing with the Old World so much. It was fine to begin with.
  For example, Africa and India can be differently shaped, as in Terra,
  but they can't be missing (leaving a sad blobby Eurasia) like in 0.2.

v0.2 (9/27/2010)
- Australias can now appear in the New World.

v0.1 (9/26/2010)
- Original release. Lots of unnecessary randomization on all continents.

Screenshots from the current version:

 

In the usersettings.ini file if you enable debugging you press CTRL+Z to reveal the map.

 

Here's my first screenshot. Duel size, future era start. There turns out to be no New World at all.

 

Awesome, thanks! Time to actually test this script.

EDIT: Hmm, I can't make it work with CTRL+Z, but setting DebugPanel = 1 as well and pressing ~ does the trick.

 

More screenshots at various world sizes.

By the way, I recommend playing both Terra and this script with two more city-states than the default. (EDIT: Not anymore. I've now rebalanced the city states for Terra Incognita.)

 

How do you reveal the map? Ctrl Z nor debug-mode nor tilde did the trick for me :/
Too bad they removed the normal thingy they had in civ4 where the worldbuilder was integrated into the game.

edit: nm, the debug PANEL setting in the other configfile did the trick

 

I really like what you've done here. Nice. But why do you suggest 2 more city-states than normal?

 

Terra maps usually have more land than the equivalent Fractal map. (In Terra Incognita, this might not be the case...) The extra land comes in the form of unsettled continents that are inhabited only by city-states.

I've found that on Terra, you don't meet enough city-states until late in the game, because most of them are overseas. Adding more of them gives you more chances to find city-states who will mingle in politics with the big shots.

Of course, it also increases the chances of a really crowded Old World -- which I like because it motivates exploration, but I realize isn't everyone's cup of tea. So your mileage may vary on what the "right" number of city states is, but for me it's two more than usual.

 

Great...love it...

 

I have a quick question regarding revealing the map. Is there a way to bypass meeting all the players and all the city states and getting a splash screen for all the natural wonders? That burns like ten minutes and the barrage nearly crashes my computer lol.

Also, good job on getting the first player made map script for Civ5!

 

Awesome I love it! I hated to know that there is a new world, and to know what it would slightly look like, so that map would fix it i guess! Keep up the good work and thanks for sharing!

 

I like the random map types, i.e you don't know what kind of map type it will be till you have started playing and exploring, you could get continents or islands or a pangea, very nice, but it seems to be an old world/new world map type, with no actual civilizations spawing on the new world, now while some people may like this I don't, I want the randomness of your script but with normal spawning rules so Civ's are spread out on the planet.

Could you release a "Terra" Map type then to keep the random map types but remove the Civ spawn limit, so Civ's get spread out, I would like to play on that. Release on the Mod Browser please .

 

Use Fractal?

 

@12agnar0k

You might wanna try "small continents" from the advanced setup map drop down.

The problem is, without enabling the "view map" functionality it's hard to know what kind of variety you might see with the default scripts unless you play each to full exploration a few times, which would only take months.

 

Playing a game on this map now. Thanks

 

Huh. When I reveal the map with the ~ debug menu, none of that happens. Are you using a different trick?

 

Hmm. So some real civs should get stuck on a possibly-crappy island halfway around the world from everyone else? There goes the balance that the civ placement code tries to achieve. I agree that you'd be better off trying plain Fractal, or just Random Map.

But if you do want that kind of map, here's how to get it. Open up TerraIncognita.lua in your favorite text editor (I recommend Notepad++), and change

Code:

method = 1,

to

Code:

method = 2,

on line 1166. I haven't tested it, but it should work.

 

THE MAP EDITOR IS OUT! Oh, and ModBuddy, but right now I'm playing with the map editor. Now I can test this script like 100 times per minute. This is amazing.

I notice that it makes Eurasias that are basically a circle too often (I screwed with Eurasia for no good reason, and that's what I get). That's boring, and I'm going to fix it. Big changes coming.

 

Well the problem with the Terra Incognita map type is that the first person to get navigation and send settlers over to the new continent can settle as many cities as they want, this is because the "distance from capital" maintenance is gone, all you have to contend with is normal happiness mechanics, so whats balanced about that? Settling an entire continent is probably easier than conquering a few nearby cities. If all landmasses, or most anyway, are filled with Civ's, then this is removed. As for Civ's starting on a small island and remaining isolated, its not going to be as bad as Civ4, tech trading is gone, and a small empire can contend with large ones, the only thing you will be missing compared to the pangea containing everyone else, is resource trading (which is actually kind of vital, but is a manageable condition if isolated), tech research agreements, (which I don't find that beneficial), and XP from war's. Anyway, the imbalances of the past where a small island of players always progresses slower than a big island of players won't neccessarily hold true.

Thanks for the help, I will try Fractal, and see if it gives the kind of landmass randomness I want, playing on "Random Map" won't do it, it will just pick Continents or Pangea or Arcipelago, (and any others) but what you can't then get is the truely random there could be anything over the water or beyond the fog, as apposed to just one type of terrain style. I want the possibility of hacing anything and everything on the map .

Thanks again. I will try Fractal then.