The Continents mechanism is incredibly poor

[Ziad]

i don't think connectedness is the main principle of continent identification
theres no strict definition of continent at all

You quote a website from a Western source, written by Western views with Western biases compiled by people of non scientific backgrounds?

No there is one. Geographically speaking, a continent is a contiguous landmass, but geopolitical argumentation continues to fudge it because of a historic European superiority complex

Which is fair, since they are the ones who started the whole notion of continents. Well the Greeks did at least. Asia was basically just "not Europe" back then. In fact it was what they called Western Turkey.

Europe is part of the Eurasian continent. That's all there is to it.

If some people want to employ geopolitical definitions for continents to include mountain separations then I suppose the Western United States is its own continent, Peru isn't part of South America, India isn't part of Asia, etc. It's down the rabbithole you go.

I argue that Europe is a continent from a geopolitical perspective, and the same idea is used by Firaxis in Civ6. It is not a separate geographic continent because there are mountains, however obviously that lended itself to geopolitical differentiation as a result.

In fact, the "7 continent" model is actually pretty outdated even from a geopolitical perspective. Europe is technically subdivided into Western and Eastern Europe, for example.

 

[pgm123]

You quote a website from a Western source, written by Western views with Western biases compiled by people of non scientific backgrounds?

No there is one. Geographically speaking, a continent is a contiguous landmass, but geopolitical argumentation continues to fudge it because of a historic European superiority complex

Which is fair, since they are the ones who started the whole notion of continents. Well the Greeks did at least. Asia was basically just "not Europe" back then. In fact it was what they called Western Turkey.

Europe is part of the Eurasian continent. That's all there is to it.

If some people want to employ geopolitical definitions for continents to include mountain separations then I suppose the Western United States is its own continent, Peru isn't part of South America, India isn't part of Asia, etc. It's down the rabbithole you go.

I argue that Europe is a continent from a geopolitical perspective, and the same idea is used by Firaxis in Civ6. It is not a separate geographic continent because there are mountains, however obviously that lended itself to geopolitical differentiation as a result.

In fact, the "7 continent" model is actually pretty outdated even from a geopolitical perspective. Europe is technically subdivided into Western and Eastern Europe, for example.

I don't know if I would divide Western and Eastern Europe (there's a case to be made about the historical existence of Central Europe and there's a case to be made about the current existence of Southern Europe). But you're right that Europe is a fairly arbitrary subdivision. It's a European Subcontinent.

There is a pretty good case that Zealandia is a continent based on land masses. Oceania is just a political term, though. In terms of botanical continets, there are 9: Europe, Temperate Asia, Tropical Asia, Australasia, Africa, Northern America, Southern America, the Pacific, and Antarctica. There are some things here that contradict other information, though (Papua is a part of tropical Asia, but there's other evidence that it should be a part of Australasia).

 

[BarbarianHunter]

I don't know what you are talking about...it seems fine to me.

Spoiler :

View attachment 515275

No, no. It's broken .

Spoiler :

 

[Lord Lakely]

Here's a screenshot from a current R&F game I'm playing, on a Fractal map. As you can see, there are five different "continents" squished together in a fairly small area — with no apparent logic at all behind their boundaries.

View attachment 515196

Surely the designers can do better than this, can't they? Let's hope it gets fixed in the GS expansion.

Why can't I have this start when I roll England. UGH.

 

[criZp]

I don't really see what the problem is. Can you define specifically why you consider this to be a problem.
If it is the size of the continents are you suggesting continents should be more equally sized?
If it the position of the continents are you suggesting they should not border more than two continents?

Jesus dude, it's because it looks ridiculous and looks nothing like continents.

 

[Cyon]

One thing I wish for in a patch/DLC/third expansions is more regional diversity. It would be cool if not all woods looked like Christmas trees, maybe they look like bamboo on one continent, oak trees on one and pine trees on the third. I think the art theme could give them a consistent enough look to still be recognizable. Also, other terrains could have small variations, like different shades of grass with different flowers on them. Some resources like furs and deer could also have variants of them. Idealy you should be able to see the continents without the lens.

 

[qadams]

Jesus dude, it's because it looks ridiculous and looks nothing like continents.

Yep. What he said.

 

[Futumch]

I'm looking forward to see if the next expansion has better continent modelling. Mountain chains forming continental margins, volcanoes on tectonic hot spots, undersea rifts (tsunamis), that sort of thing.
The climate modelling was already ok. Rain shadow seems present in-game, but there doesn't seem to be the difference in hemispheres that the real world has (prevailing winds run west to east here in the southern hemisphere, opposite north of the equator).
Now that I've just typed that, I think I need to go back and check it to make sure.

 

[Zaarin]

No there is one. Geographically speaking, a continent is a contiguous landmass

I think a definition based on tectonic plates is more useful than contiguous landmasses, though that results in some potentially strange results if taken too literally: Kamchatka and Japan being in North America, Iceland being split between North America and Europe, and a sliver of land along the northwest Pacific coast of North America getting its own continent San Juan de Fuca, for example. But if we take it a little less literally and consider Kamchatka and Japan part of Eurasia, Iceland part of Europe, San Juan de Fuca part of North America, then it becomes a more useful definition IMO.

 

[God of Kings]

I'm looking forward to see if the next expansion has better continent modelling. Mountain chains forming continental margins, volcanoes on tectonic hot spots, undersea rifts (tsunamis), that sort of thing.
The climate modelling was already ok. Rain shadow seems present in-game, but there doesn't seem to be the difference in hemispheres that the real world has (prevailing winds run west to east here in the southern hemisphere, opposite north of the equator).
Now that I've just typed that, I think I need to go back and check it to make sure.

There better be earthquakes and tsunamis in the expansion pack after Gathering Storm. Earthquakes and tsunamis are major natural disasters that did change the course of human history completely. After all, mountains, rift valleys, and oceanic trenches are the products of continuous earthquakes over time and volcanoes often appear tectonic plates as well (and some volcanic eruptions are known to cause earthquakes). The expansion pack could be called "Tectonic Shift."

The Inca could have an additional bonus making them immune to earthquakes (due to the ashlar technique often used by the Inca) in the "Tectonic Shift" expansion.

 

[isau]

Considering the fact that continents have unique luxury bonuses, a world that had that distribution of resources likely would develop continental boundaries similar to what you see on that map. It's an unusual world, sure. But what you should really be concentrating on is how, strategically, all the world powers would want to control that tiny region in order to monopolize the supply of the resources there.

Sadly, Civ 6 doesn't do much with resource monopolies. That map in a Civ 5 Vox Populi game would be a ticket to holding several monopolies.

 

[dagriggstar]

Taking a continents denote geopolitical boundaries approach, we should expect continental boundaries to still be denoted by geographic features.

Looking at the screenshot
Green Red boundary appears split by a cut out jungle. I can't think of an example of a real world situation where you could consider a jungle as a continental boundary (Central - South America being split mostly by Ocean). Further, rivers encourage people movement, this the presence of that long rivers draining to the lake would probably encourage cultural similarities.
Red Purple boundary purple at least appears on a plateau but so does northern Red area.
Purple white boundary is cutting the calcutta part of the plateau by a third. There is also a major river between both continents
Aqua purple at least appears highland lowland.

Red Green boundary should be right at the edge of the screenshot at least there are mountains and hills there. Gives Red a geographic boundary
Purple should include calcutta area

Thats at least how I see it anyway. As is purple Red both look arbitrary imo.

Better to just not have continents imo. Too difficult and random to implement. Like Royal Naval Dockyard could easily be +0.1 gold for every tile away from the capital. Consistent, easy to understand, same gameplay effect.

 

[BrotherInJah]

Continets idea in real world and Civ 6 are different things. IRW continets are defined by geographical features, culture and point of view of those who decided what is what back then. In a game it is just a game mechanism, nothing else, there's no flavour attached.. you don't feel like your empire is intercontinental at all. It's broken base on RW rules, but at the same time it doesn't break the game.

There is general rule in Civ 6 that all the different layers are detached from the map and it's topography. Religious/loyalty pressure ignores mountains, big water bodies even if there is no technology available which would add little bit of sense to it. It's same pressure from city behind Himalayas and one cross the river. It leads to situations where you can't get your missionary to such city, but it still messes your religion only by high population. And this is broken too, but this time it breaks the gameplay..

 

[Leathaface]

I was watching Marbozir play Civ VI before, he was on a small map and FIVE of the 6 Civs were on the same continent while the last Civ had the only other continent to itself.

Yep, the continents algorithm is pretty messed up.

 

[Tomice]

I really hope for improvement now that they take tectonics into account. Continental divides sometimes seemed arbitrary and strange in the past, but that was probably mostly a side-effect of unrealistic landmass shapes and topography.

 

[Dustbrother]

They're using a Voronoi algorithm.

If you're interested, it's this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronoi_diagram

It works by picking random center points on the map and then for each tile assigning the nearest center point as its continent id.

To fix the problem in the OP's picture you need an iterative spacing routine so the center points are evenly spaced out across the land mass.

 

[BrotherInJah]

Well.. it doesn't fix it as it isn't spacing problem (it take part in it, but it isn't the bottom of a problem). Voronoi still ignores tiles type, while it should simply stop on mountains (includes mountains to closest center, but in general it should stop there). Shouldn't be hard to do, as fxs already has that for trade routs paths (not perfect but still..).

 

[Dustbrother]

Well.. it doesn't fix it as it isn't spacing problem (it take part in it, but it isn't the bottom of a problem). Voronoi still ignores tiles type, while it should simply stop on mountains (includes mountains to closest center, but in general it should stop there). Shouldn't be hard to do, as fxs already has that for trade routs paths (not perfect but still..).

It would fix the clustered odd shaped continents that the OP was complaining about.

To have mountains be borders you do this with the iterative spacing routine:

Each point moves one tile away from it's nearest neighbor incrementally. UNLESS there is a mountain or coast tile closer than its nearest neighbor, in which case move the center point away from the mountain or coast tile instead. Repeat this 100 times and you'd get the result you were looking for. The border lines would follow the mountains.

 

[qadams]

It would fix the clustered odd shaped continents that the OP was complaining about.

To have mountains be borders you do this with the iterative spacing routine:

Each point moves one tile away from it's nearest neighbor incrementally. UNLESS there is a mountain or coast tile closer than its nearest neighbor, in which case move the center point away from the mountain or coast tile instead. Repeat this 100 times and you'd get the result you were looking for. The border lines would follow the mountains.

I'm not a programmer, but this seems like a sensible solution to me. Why hasn't Firaxis implemented something like that? I suppose it's just not a priority, but I really wish they would. The current mechanism is so illogical and improbable that it breaks immersion.

 

[BrotherInJah]

Voronoi calculation works no from center but from the point you want to assign. So instead shorthes distance you need to go around obstacles. And this 100 calculations is actual calculation for each tile.. that's why i have mentioned that this mechanism is aleady used in trade routes.

Currently you can observe situations where peninsula is part of different continent despite there isn't any land connection. So now even coast do not block it.