Terra Oval

[DeAnno]

Like the elegant consistency of the Oval map script? Ever wish there was some new land to discover when you got to Compass? Wish no more, Terra Oval is here.

In this map script I made some minor edits to the Oval logic to generate a pair of extra mini-ovals in the north and south sections of the open sea area to the east/west of the main oval. No major civs will start on these mini-ovals, but they will tend to get some City States distributed on them randomly. All three of the oval continents generated should be separated from one another by Ocean, though in some cases small islands might splinter off of any of them accessible by coast.

The map is expanded in area a bit to add space for it all, and also to make sure ships can sail over the north or under the south side of the main oval. The main Oval is slightly reduced in size too, but not by very much; the effect tends to be that especially on larger map sizes there is more total space to settle (Oval by default is a pretty small map though, so it shouldn't feel too expansive.)

I attached a couple screenshot images to give you an idea of what you're getting into, have fun.

EDIT: Slightly revised version that handles different map sizes in a little more normal of a way.

 

[saucyape]

Long time reader, first-time poster, had to make an account to say that I had an excellent game on this map, thank you!
Request for another variation: I would love to try a game with reversed spawns from this map, where each civ spawns on their own small oval and is stuck until they reach compass and can colonize the big oval. Unfortunately, I'm on Mac, or I would've tried my hand at making my own script.

 

[DeAnno]

I remember thinking about variations, but one trouble was when I made this I didn't (and still don't) understand how Oval's built in spawning logic even works. I just added the land at the start with the use of some geometry added to its land generation script, and somehow Oval knew to not spawn civs there ever.

It might also be awkward to make too many well spaced ovals; as is I sort of abused the seam in the map, and what looks like two small ovals was generated by four unbound outward facing rays of land, pointing away from the map's center. I think that's the more solvable problem, though if I make the setup too sensitive it might not work well on all sizes like it does now.

Overall I'm happy someone used it though, I've been playing a lot of standard sized low seas maps of it and they've been quite satisfying, they feel "fair" while still having some shakeups in them.

 

[saucyape]

Interesting.. are those limitations caused by keeping the map in a scaleable "script" form? I.E. could a non scaleable map be made to look something like the attached but still have random or semi-random terrain and resource generation? I have a small group that’s been searching for this kind of map forever (think we played it in Civ 3 or Age of Mythology) but haven’t found anything quite right. Might have to put it in map requests and offer a couple bucks to see if I get any takers.

 

[DeAnno]

You could in theory do that with brute force circle generation, just to make the land (though itd be super hard to adapt it to different numbers of players), but I dunno how to make the spawns right.

 

[DeAnno]

Minor update with a bays option, to make there be more of a choke point between east and west. Also added an option to control the new world size somewhat.