The Map Generator

[Zherak_Khan]

To sum up what I've found out, using Immortal, Small, Pangea, Qin Shi Huang, Latest patch (1.61?), Tropical, Random Shorelines.

Nearly all starts have fresh water. - It seems only starts which can't fit fresh water don't have it.
All or nearly all starts have 0 regular deserts, 0 tundra, 0 ice. - Disputed (map-type related?)
All or nearly all starts have at least one revealed resource. (Allegedly, at least one food resource or a flood-plain. Testing will tell.)
No starts are atop of a resource, revealed or not.
Plains incense does exist, maybe only in starting settler's fat cross. - Screenshot provided. Interesting, because it is allegedly not supposed to exist.
0/0/1 deserts do exist. - Seems a safe, maybe uninteresting, observation.

At least we think we know settlers won't start on resources. It also seems the Map Generator might do some "finishing touches" after starting settlers have been placed. I think it gives Fresh Water if able to, and convert crap tiles to something useful, maybe explaining the plains incense.

Now, while I'm sure intimate knowledge of the map generator is extremely practical, I don't have it. If anybody wants to share, feel free. One observation I have made, though, is:

Your settler's starting spot will never have any weak tiles in its fat cross. I have never seen a desert, and I don't think desert hill is possible either. It will also always have fresh water. It will never be atop of any resource, visible or hidden.The catch being, if you start in a lot of floodplains, maybe your warrior spots a few desert tiles, you know you are in the desert belt. Moving the Settler means you are risking to "gain" quite a few desert tiles. If you stay, you can't get any deserts, and you can't waste and Copper/Iron/Aluminium/Horse/Whatever by founding atop of it.

There is also some tips about the Desert Belts of the random maps. Essentially, all maps look something like this. I'd appreciate a better explanation, though:

Polar Caps
Tundra
Normal
Desert
Jungle (Equator, mirror around this line)


Feel encouraged to contribute any knowledge of the map generator.

 

[Petrucci]

Are all the resourses there prior to a technology being researched? I.E. is the Horse resource vieled by my ignorance of knowing what these four legged creatures are, and what use they can be applied to, or is it simply a RNG program picking where to place horses the moment I (or whomever) researches animal husbandry first? Noobish question i'm sure, but just occured to me!

 

[Lars_Domus]

Are all the resourses there prior to a technology being researched? I.E. is the Horse resource vieled by my ignorance of knowing what these four legged creatures are, and what use they can be applied to, or is it simply a RNG program picking where to place horses the moment I (or whomever) researches animal husbandry first? Noobish question i'm sure, but just occured to me!

All the resources are placed at the beginning of the game (just open the worldbuilder and see for yourself.) Researching the right techs just makes them visible.

 

[MrCynical]

Your settler's starting spot will never have any weak tiles in its fat cross. I have never seen a desert, and I don't think desert hill is possible either. It will also always have fresh water. It will never be atop of any resource, visible or hidden.The catch being, if you start in a lot of floodplains, maybe your warrior spots a few desert tiles, you know you are in the desert belt. Moving the Settler means you are risking to "gain" quite a few desert tiles. If you stay, you can't get any deserts, and you can't waste and Copper/Iron/Aluminium/Horse/Whatever by founding atop of it.

While a lot of this is true as a general trend, these are not hard and fast rules. You can end up with deserts (though it's very unusual except at the higher levels). Similarly you don't always start on fresh water (again, especially at the higher levels). The game attempts to give you a reasonable quality start, so you'll probably end up with some compensation for poor aspects. For example I once had a game where I started on a four tile island, but I had 8 assorted seafood resources to balance it out (very interesting map that one).

 

[Zherak_Khan]

Are you sure? I have to admit I do quite a bit of restarting, and I'm rather sure I have never gotten any Deserts, Tundra or Ice in Settler Starting position, even when there are loads of deserts all around. I noticed I had some Plains Incense once, which struck me as weird, because Incense is typically only in deserts, or?

Remember, moving Settler might confuse you. Though, I'm still not quite sure. I figure, on Tiny Islands, it should be really easy to get no Fresh Water, but playing Small Pangea/Continents with standard AIs, my observations seem to always hold true. Maybe I'll spam regenerate map and see what I can come up with. Do you always have resources in Fat Cross?

Though, of course, this thread isn't as much about me attempting to list truths and what I think might be truths as contributing our Hivemind's knowledge about the RMG (Random Map Generator...the Random seems a bit random, in there).

(Edit: My source material is generally from Monarch, Emperor and Immortal games.)

Interesting tidbit: Deserts by river are not always flood plains. Sometimes, they are just crappy 0/0/1 unimprovable (?) deserts.

 

[MrCynical]

Have you been using modified map scripts? Plains incense and deserts adjacent to rivers should not be appearing. I've been through an awful lot of maps, and I've never seen inconsistances like those. All desert tiles adjacent to a river should be floodplain. The only time I've seen this go wrong is if a city is founded on a floodplain and then destroyed. This makes it revert to desert.

It's certainly possibly to start without fresh water on pangaea or continents maps, though it is more unusual than on archipelago. I've certainly had maps with desert and tundra present at the starting position (no I'm not getting mixed up with moving the settler). Snow I can't immediately recall personally, but I have seen a numbe rof starting positions on the forum with it present.

As to resources in the fat cross, I have never seen a start that didn't have at least either one visible resource present, or some floodplain. The few starts where I haven't had resources present have always had some floodplain present, though that may be a quirk of the fact floodplain can't have resources. It could be deliberate to ensure a reasonable food supply though.

 

[Zherak_Khan]

Oh my god. That crappy advertisment destroyed my post. Here we go again.

Immortal, Pangea, Qin Shi Huang, Random Shoreline, Tropical.
I've got FFH and TAM installed, by they are in seperate folders and should not affect anything.
I have 1.61 or whatever that latest patch is.

Ran 20 regenerates.

Fresh water: 20/20 (A few from lakes, a few from 1-tile-rivers on coast.)
No desert/tundra/ice: 20/20 (A few oasies.)
Resources: 2.8 (Max 5 (1), min 1 (1)). I world built the last; it had alum and horses as well.)

I got a screenshot of plains incense in second regen. I think it is a desert converted by map generator to follow the "no-crap-in-fat-cross"-rule.

I'm very positive about the no-FP 0/0/1 deserts. I had 4 of them in a neat row, which kind of made that ultimate GPF a crappy spot.

(EDIT: I'm not sure where that attachment went? It says in progress, so I'll see if it materializes, else upload it again.)

 

[Zherak_Khan]

Ten characters?

 

[Pantastic]

Yeah, the map generator will definately make deserts next to a river, I've run into that a bunch. Typically there will be a river that runs that just doesn't get any floodplains; quite annoying since it's a wasted river. I usually play pangaia, terra, or lakes.

 

[MrCynical]

Something seriously strange is going on here. I've run 50 regens as a quick test. No plains incense or deserts adjacent to rivers. I don't think I've ever seen these anywhere, on any start in any game. They certainly aren't as commonplace as you're getting (four bugged deserts next to each other?!).

I really wouldn't be that certain about your no tundra/ice/desert rule. You're playing a tropical map, which will severely discourage these terrain types, and the seem fairly common in my games.

I turned up a couple of starts that didn't have fresh water, so on pangaea it is quite unusual not to have it. It is very common on archipelago maps though, and is the norm on tiny islands.

The resources rule seems more sound. I would actually say it is more specifically there is always at least one food resource (cows, pigs, sheep, wheat, corn, rice, bananas, crabs, clams, fish) or floodplains in the fat cross. I've also never seen a resource on the settler square, or appear there later.

 

[Zherak_Khan]

Map settings might have much more impact than we realize. I have only seen plains incense twice, and remember my surprise. I have seen 0/0/1 desert twice as well, different games though, and was greatly dissappointed.

I do, however, strongly doubt whomever wrote the map generators would have put so much into it as to allow/disallow certain kind of terrain and starts on Pangea, so on. The tropical, though, which can be applied to many maps, might have a huge impact. I've always picked tropical assuming it would give more "good" terrain, including jungle, seeing as I don't find it quite as fun to wring three shields out of a Tundra Fishing village as getting 480 beakers out of Scienceville.

EDIT: I'm starting to think the MGenerator gives fresh water *when it is able to*. On tiny islands, it will frequently be impossible to grant fresh water with a one-tile river (seeing as the island is too thin!) or lake (that would split your island in two!). Does this match your observations?

 

[MrCynical]

EDIT: I'm starting to think the MGenerator gives fresh water *when it is able to*. On tiny islands, it will frequently be impossible to grant fresh water with a one-tile river (seeing as the island is too thin!) or lake (that would split your island in two!). Does this match your observations?

Seems plausible. On both the last pangaea starts without freshwater I had, the settler was stuck on the end of a narrow peninsula.

 

[DaveMcW]

0/0/1 deserts are common on Inland Sea map.

 

[ggganz]

Always use Terra. I've never seen fresh water desert, not floodplains.