Water world map

[Skybeach88]

Hey guys, if i knew how to do this i would do it myself. But i think it would be cool if there was a map that had no land tiles at all. An entirely water world to play on.

 

[PonderThis]

Hi, I saw this and thought it was an interesting idea. I've produced a map (based on TinyIslands) that comes close. I couldn't get it to give me a total water world but I've got it to where it produces around 20-24 1-hex islands on a normal size map.

To those experienced modders out there, what's the normal process to get people to test it before calling it done and posting it on Steam Workshop?

 

[Skybeach88]

Awesome, i kinda figures the game would require you to have somr land. Kinda disapponting to me since we know of a few real planets that may actually be just giant oceans. Id you post it to steam let me know so i can subscribe is love to check it out

 

[Doviello]

Post it and we'll play. I'm interested in a map like that at least. But i don't see many problems arriving from a fully water map. Oh well i can predict one: the AI will build a ton of land units

 

[PonderThis]

OK, I've posted it as Very Few Islands. My Steam name is "GkarJr" because apparently PonderThis, Ponder_This, Ponder-This, and _Ponder_This_ are all already taken.

I've set the map so it adjusts the number of islands via the ocean level. Go into Advanced Setup and select "High" to get the fewest number of islands I mentioned above. The normal "Medium" level produces perhaps twice as many islands with a small number of 2-hexers.

 

[Doviello]

That was fast, thanks!

Is it impossible to spawn zero land tiles?

 

[Doviello]

Ok so after several try i think this mod isn't working for me. This is the best water world i got:

Spoiler :

I used the advanced menu, and picked High Sea Level with every combination of aquatic map (Atlantean, Tiny Islands, Equatorial, etc), and they all give me normal looking maps like that above. What am i doing wrong?

 

[poom3619]

You can modify the map generation XML. Go to a map type you prefer (I prefer Pangaea ), there are a variable like

SEA_LEVEL_LOW=73
SEA_LEVEL_MEDIUM=78
SEA_LEVEL_HIGH = 81.

change the value, 0 means all land map, 100 probably means all water map. The practical number may be less extreme through, but try replace whatever number after SEA_LEVEL_HIGH to 98 in the PANGAEA map (or whatever it called in BE) so that tiny remnant of land will be in a same place.

Backup before change the value, and if the game crashed, try less number like 95 or 90.

 

[PonderThis]

Ok so after several try i think this mod isn't working for me. This is the best water world i got:

Spoiler :

I used the advanced menu, and picked High Sea Level with every combination of aquatic map (Atlantean, Tiny Islands, Equatorial, etc), and they all give me normal looking maps like that above. What am i doing wrong?

You should get a "Very Few Islands" map to select. If you're not getting that that means the mod didn't put it in the right place, which is probably my fault, I'll have to figure out why that's not happening. Meanwhile, if you go into the mod (My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth\MODS\Very Few Islands") and copy the file "Very_Few_Islands.lua" to the user Maps directory ("D:\Users\tomla\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth\Maps") you should then have an actual world called "Very Few Islands" to select.

 

[PonderThis]

Oh and as far as a 100% water world, I couldn't figure out a way to do it. I suspect BE has a fail-safe that forces at least a few islands to show up so that the "land-based" civs sponsors have a piece of land for their first city.

 

[Doviello]

The mod isn't working for me, but moving the file into /Maps did. Really cool, it's now one of my favorites map scripts!

Spoiler :

 

[PonderThis]

I found out why it didn't show up for you originally. It was, as suspected, my fault; I hadn't marked the file in the ModBuddy project as a map script. Once I did that, it showed up in the maps section when the mod was enabled.

However, the best way to use this map is still to copy the file to the Maps directory (and then DESELECT the mod itself so the map doesn't show up twice). This way you can use the map even if you want to play a straight no-mods game.

 

[PonderThis]

Question for any map script modders out there: One problem this map has is it will occasionally land a sponsor on an island completely surrounded by ice. Is there some sort of way to keep the landers out of the arctic areas of the map?

 

[Seven05]

I have a water world map script that doesn't allow starting plots to be selected in the latitude range of ice. You can adjust it on your own fairly easily if you want to learn how to do it, you just need to replace the method used in regional division, like this:

function StartPlotSystem()
	-- Get Resources setting input by user.
	local res = Map.GetCustomOption(1) -- No random option needed
	local iW, iH = Map.GetGridSize()

	print("Creating start plot database.");
	local start_plot_database = AssignStartingPlots.Create()
	
	print("Dividing the map in to Regions.");
	-- Regional Division Method 4: Rectangular
	-- 4. Rectangular: Civs start within a given rectangle defined by arguments passed in on the function call.
	--                 Arguments required for this method: iWestX, iSouthY, iWidth, iHeight
	local args = {
		resources = res,
		method = 4,
		iWestX = 0,
		iSouthY = math.floor(iH * 0.15), -- TODO: Use temperature setting
		iWidth = iW,
		iHeight = math.ceil(iH * 0.7), -- This plus double the multiplier in iSouthY needs to equal 1.0 to center the boundry
		};
	start_plot_database:GenerateRegions(args)

	print("Choosing start locations for civilizations.");
	-- Forcing starts along the ocean.
	local args = {
	mustBeCoast = true,
	};
	start_plot_database:ChooseLocations(args)
	
	print("Normalizing start locations and assigning them to Players.");
	start_plot_database:BalanceAndAssign()

	print("Placing Resources and City States.");
	start_plot_database:PlaceResourcesAndCityStates()
	
	-- tell the AI that we should treat this as a naval + offshore expansion map
	Map.ChangeAIMapHint(1+4);

end

I added extra comments to explain some of the parts, let me know if you have any questions. My map doesn't use the normal map options (no rainfall or temperature) so the top portion were "res" is defined may need to be changed to match what you already have.

 

[Seven05]

I should also add the other quick & dirty option which is to simply not place any ice by adding this to your map script:

function FeatureGenerator:AddIceAtPlot(plot, iX, iY, lat)
	-- Do nothing. No ice to be placed.
end

 

[poom3619]

^That's actually the script that many would love to use

 

[PonderThis]

Thanks for the info, Seven05! Since I like having polar ice on a map I initially attempted the Regional Division Method. Unfortunately this had the side effect of forcing all sponsors, including the two water-preferring sponsors, to default to an island landing for their first city. For the human player this isn't that much of a problem, as you can elect to land in adjacent water, but it meant that the AI would always choose land and even as the human player your landing options were limited. I dove deep into Civ BE's lua code to try and see if I could override this behavior, but it way too complex way too fast. The code for selecting a landing site is fairly huge and I wasn't willing to rewrite all of it for something so simple.

So instead I decided to override FeatureGenerator:AddIceAtPlot(), but I did add a bit of code that still allows ice for the first two north and south rows. That way I get the icy poles that I like and those Sponsers that seem to like polar landings don't get ice-locked.

For you guys that have already downloaded this and copied the Very_Few_Islands.lua map over to the maps directory, before you start your next game you should: (1) Fire up Civ BE and go on into Mods selection. (2) Click the [Update] button but do not select the mod. Exit Civ BE. (3) Recopy the file over to the maps directory, overwriting the earlier version. (4) Play Civ BE as normal, either with or without mods.

 

[PonderThis]

Say, does anyone know anything about modding on the Mac? I got a report on the Steam page for this that this doesn't work on Macs. I spent several hours installing BE on a Mac Mini, tried to use this map, and BOOM, it crashes right away.

Now I am no good at Macs. It took me a good thirty minutes or so to find the logs directory because I didn't know about hidden folders (why can't I just flip a switch like in Windows and they just show up?). Anyways, I checked the logs and there's nothing -- it must've crashed immediately upon loading the map.

So if anyone has any clues for me, I'd like to buy one.

 

[PonderThis]

I've done some messing around on the mac and I've found a workaround, but it is really screwy. I would not recommend this unless you are really sure of what you're doing. It involves altering the application package so you'll probably want to make a backup copy of the package before doing anything else.

1. Get a map script file (filename.lua), by either:
   • Subscribe to it on Steam but do NOT enable the mod after it downloads, or
   • Download it from some other location, such as an attachment here on civ fanatics.
2. Open a finder window and go to the folder where the file is.
3. Open up another finder window and go to the folder where the Civ app is. For me, this was: /Users/myusername/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth
4. Right-click on Civilization Beyond Earth.app and select "Show Package Contents".
5. Navigate to Contents/GameData/assets/DLC/DLC_SP_Maps/Maps
6. Go back to the first finder window and copy the map script (filename.lua)
7. Go back to the second window and paste it right there along side the standard DLC map scripts. For some reason I could not drag and drop the file, I had to right-click on filename.lua and select "copy" in the first window, then right-click on the Maps folder and select "paste item" in the second window.
8. Run the game and you should see and be able to use the map script.

Because the lua file works when it's in one of the game's internal map directories but not when it is in the regular mod map directory I believe this problem is strictly due to a bug in the Mac version of Civ BERT.

BTW, this method is only going to work for custom map scripts. It will not work for mods that use lua files; for those you'll just have to wait until Aspyr fixes this bug.