Totestra: A new PerfectWorld2 fork

[vktj]

224810008f3d2735334af

One option in the menu is the option to add bonus resources. The name of the option is "Player bonus resources" (It's hidden: You might have to scroll down to see this option; it's the very last one) and values go from "None" to "Lots". Choose "Lots"; if that is too many resources, tone it down ("Some" or "A little"). I can see from this tag that the "player bonus resources" option was set to "none".

- Sam

 

[vktj]

Here, I have attached two pictures from the starting position in the map En Dotter was playing and felt was low on resources. In the first picture, we see only two crab resources near the start, which may have been too low for En Dotter's preferences. If bonus resources is set to Lots, it would have been more like the second screenshot, where the start has twice as many resources.

- Sam

 

[En_Dotter]

No can do that cus i started 2nd random and i lost autos. I remembered about seeds after i started 2nd game .

 

[En_Dotter]

Im not talking about sea resources but land food resources. In that starting point i just moved one tile diagonally up/right if i remember well and i had 4 sea resources (awesome!) but really low land food like deer, wheat, corn, rice (there was some nearby though), but the continent was really poor in those in my point of view.

EDIT:
I saw those options u mentioned but i didnt wanna meddle with all the stuff at once. If i change all things i wont know what should be the original like and thus understand the "advanced" options for map script. Also i dont want advantages in comparison to AI.

 

[En_Dotter]

My starting location is different from one u gave here. Here is the screen shot i made (starting turn of the game - autosave 4000 BC):

 

[vktj]

No can do that cus i started 2nd random and i lost autos. I remembered about seeds after i started 2nd game .

Would having twice the bonuses work for you?

 

[En_Dotter]

Its not about the pure amount of bonuses. Its about the map that looks barren. When i open any other map script (fractal, terra, big and small...) i see the map filled with resources of different kind and i can see wheat and corn and rice all around. When i say all around i mean i dont have to move a lot to place a city near the food resource, but with this script it seems the land food is almost as rare as uranium in other scripts. Sea food seems fine. Strategic resources seem fine. Animals also. Just the crops seem a bit off.
Maybe i just got unlucky cus i started 2 games and i know its statistically not justified so ill start several more random seeds and compare to some other game and ill tell u the result. Ill even count it and see if im wrong.
This is what i will do. 10 random seeds of Terra map and count resources (all of them) and 10 random seeds of your map and count them as well.
Then i will post the results for each resource.

 

[vktj]

Well, I just took the easy way out and added an option to (roughly) double the resources on the map. Attached are two comparison screenshots. There does appear to be something to En Dotter's complaint about there being not too much food on this map; I will look to see how to disable Cephalo's "only this resource on this continent" code which has generated so many complaints over the years. (Done)

The updated version can be downloaded here: http://Civ4.vk.tj/

Cephalo's resource allocation code resulted in a lot of complaints and even prompted FuYu to revamp that code. I would use his changes, but don't have permission from him in writing to do so.

The attached screenshots show how changing the "Map Resources" parameter affects resource distribution on the map En Dotter was complaining about.

- Sam

 

[vktj]

My starting location is different from one u gave here. Here is the screen shot i made (starting turn of the game - autosave 4000 BC):

Note to self: Add a simple checksum to the service tag to protect it from being mangled by transcription errors. DONE

Update May not be that. En_Dotter may be playing a mod or he may be using a Macintosh. I know that mods generally do not affect the landforms on a map, but they usually affect where the player is placed.

 

[En_Dotter]

Ill keep this post for counting results. Settings are always the same: Few continents, no bonuses boost for player, standard size with earth like shape.
Here is the 1st counting of food resources.

Wheat|6|3
Corn|13|10
Rice|9|2
Banana|9|5
Deer|1|3
Cow|15|9
Pig|7|1
Sheep|8|3
Crab|9|6
Fish|28|28
Clam|10|12
CROPS|37|20
CATTLE|30|13
SEAFOOD|47|43
DEER|1|3

Crops = wheat + corn + rice + banana
Cattle = sheep + pig + cow
Seafood = fish + crab + clam

 

[vktj]

Ill keep this post for counting results.

Since I don't see any service tags, I will cheerfully ignore this post. Again, please don't give me statistical analyses of averages over dozens of maps unless you have a service tag for each and every map that you feel has a problem. Without the service tags, I can't reproduce your concern.

Now, on the one map you complained about and did have a service tag for, the issue is that the continent with corn is small; Perfect World attempts to reflect reality by having each resource only on a single continent. Since Civ players are not used to such a realistic resource placement, they get upset when PerfectWorld generated maps don't work the way they are used to.

Cephalo considered it a feature. One goal I have is to be faithful to Cephalo's vision...but allow players who don't like it to be able to turn it off.

 

[vktj]

OK, fixed. There's now a parameter called "map resources" with three different possible values:

• "Perfect World". Cephalo's defaults
• "Resources evenly spread" This option acts more like Civ4's factory map generators, evenly placing resources across the continents.
• "Full of resources". For people who just do not think their maps ever have enough resources. Makes things unbalanced, but, you know, it's not like anyone is playing these maps in Hall of Fame contests

This parameter will hopefully put the "Perfect World doesn't give me resources" issue to rest.

I understand that in the real world, corn was only in the Americas, rice was in the far east, and wheat comes from Egypt, but a lot of Civilization players aren't comfortable playing maps that this closely reflect reality.

- Sam

 

[The_J]

Random note: En_Dotter, you should activate python exceptions in your main .ini file. Because if something breaks a map script in the middle (which can happen with mods, which change quite some things), then you get strange results (most people will know that as a big map full of grasslands, only a few forests, hills and resources around the starting location, and nothing else on the map).
Could maybe have happened here, you never know.

 

[En_Dotter]

I have been thinking and i decided to give it more testing before anything.
I know what u wanna say about continental resource localization and i will give it a shot.
From now on i will be posting suggestions and/or criticisms with service tags always. I havent slept night before so i might have sounded ******ed and so on but ill give my best to help u develop this scrip.

Tnx The_J! Ill try that now.

 

[vktj]

En Dotter:

• I have updated the map generator three times today to fix your problem. There is a new setting: "Map resources". Download the map generator again at http://civ4.vk.tj and see if changing "map resources" solves the resource creation problem.
• In addition to putting service tags on the map, if you have turned on Python logging, service tags are also placed in PythonDbg.txt with the words "SERVICE TAG" next to them.

Thank you for your feedback. Have fun!

- Sam

 

[En_Dotter]

Im still playing with the "old" version of the map and i have question if this is normal or not: 2 starting locations are really close and borders are touching at the corners. Screen shot is below (turn 2 in-game) and service number is: 224910004eceb2bbd8853.

 

[vktj]

2 starting locations are really close and borders are touching at the corners. Screen shot is below (turn 2 in-game) and service number is: 224910004eceb2bbd8853.

What mods do you have installed? I'm getting the same maps you are, but different starting positions.

To answer your question: Since you selected more islands, Totestra/Perfect World tends to make maps with more stringy continents. This is because of how the simulated plate tectonics works: creating more land masses results in the land masses being more stringy.

The largest landmass on this map is quite stringy and it's a little tricky for the map generator to find starting locations on it, so players are closer together. To fix this issue, either choose a larger map than "standard", have fewer players on the map, or select "Start anywhere reasonable" for the "Civ placement" option. Or just regenerate when you get a start you don't like, the way the pros do. [1]

Edit Playing with this map seed some more, another reason why this continent was so stringy is because a lot of meteors broke it up. To reduce the number of meteors, choose the "Pangaea rule" of "Allow Pangaeas". Note that allowing Pangaeas makes it more likely that everyone starts on the same continent and that there is no "New world" to explore in the midgame (it can still happen even if we try to break pangaeas; Perfect World is somewhat unpredictable)

I have uploaded a new version of Totestra today with a single update: A new preset map seed to reproduce En Dotter's map with the player start issue.

- Sam

[1] The Hall of Fame files include a tool that will regenerate the map for you until you get something with just the right starting resources.

 

[En_Dotter]

Tnx for the explanations and suggestions! Im using latest K-Mod (1.30 currently) and that is all. K-Mod has an option to regenerate map but i never used it and i dont know what it actually does.

Since i will be playing this script for a while please tell me which version of your script i should use in order to send u up to date feedback.

 

[vktj]

Since i will be playing this script for a while please tell me which version of your script i should use in order to send u up to date feedback.

The latest one: 20120517. Each new release is (or should be) compatible with the previous one and all releases will make the same maps as Perfect World will when given the same parameters, unless one chooses a toric map (my code handles ice bergs on toric maps differently).

- Sam

 

[En_Dotter]

I have been playing this for a while and i like it really much. Only thing i might like to see more is rivers. Maybe its my personal preference but i think more rivers would be welcome. It happened a lot of times that i have 3-4 cities that have no river access at all and i kinda dont see any lakes.
What do u think about adding a bit more rivers (not much, maybe 10-20% more) and some lakes?