Weird deserts

[Peuri]

For a while now the deserts have been giving me a headace, I am no longer able to play the game because this rediculously small thing makes me enter the WorldBuilder and to cover the old desert areas with plains and make a couple of large deserts here and there where they seem to fit (areas where mountain ranges block the rain from entering the plains beyond them etc.) And entering WorldBuilder always destroys the joy of exploring the continent where my civilization is and the wonder of reaching the shorelines of the New World.

Currently I find the manner how the deserts form quite ridiculous. There are desert squares one here, three there and perhaps even 6 somewhere and almost always closer to the arctic circle than the subtropics, which to me makes no sense. Correct if I'm wrong, but what I know about deserts is that they tend to form in areas where the land recieves less rain and more Sun during the year, which doesn't fit so well to the north as it would fit to areas closer to the subtropics. Of course it could be unbalancing if a civilization would finds it's starting position near a huge desert rather than being in a very fertile area somewhere else, but that's just tough luck. As it is now a civilization's starting position can be in the most northest north where conveniently it has grasslands surrounding it I can't remember how the deserts formed in the previous Civ games that I have played (Civ III & Civ II,) but I'm pretty sure they made more sense or perhaps I didn't concentrate so much in this matter, and of course I was significantly younger back then, so my memory is a bit blurry.

Does anyone agree with me that the way the deserts currently form is weird? Or am I just whining about an insignificant matter? I've tried a couple of Map Scripts - they give a lot of nice options to change things which is good, don't get me wrong - but none of them seem to "fix" this problem I have. Tectonics, with which I usually play with, did a really good job on this, but it doesn't create many vertical continents usually just horizontal continents and sometimes creates areas where ice is followed by there is no Terra -kind of option where all the civs start in the Old World. So anyway, what do you think?

(Is there like a guide how to create a Map Script somewhere? I haven't seen one. If there is please do guide me to one)

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

I agree I think its annoying to see irregular desert formations. There is a tag, though in the climateinfos xml that controls desert appearance but not desert formation.

 

[Peuri]

I can't seem to find climateinfos.xml, what does does that tag do? Does it edit the minimum or the maximum number of desert squares in a map or something like that?

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

That's becuase from civ vanilla to warlords, the climateinfos xml didn't change, so if you want a custom one, copy paste from the civ vanilla/assets/xml/game info/ and put climateinfos into that same directory with warlords, and edit it from there.

The tags control the latitude of where desert shows up, and the appearance percentage.

 

[Peuri]

Thanks a lot, I'll try to test this thing out immediately.

 

[mjs0]

The placing of deserts in the game does sometimes appear a little strange when related to the surrounding terrain, but latitude is certainly not an issue.
Deserts are simply arid, (sun is not an issue) and are classified as Subtropical (the one most people think of), Cool Coastal (rare, small and oddly placed), Cold Winter (e.g. the Gobi or Patagonian), and Polar (Antarctica is the largest desert in the world!)
Realism in this case would be a bad thing for Civ maps as around 1/3 of the Earth's land surface is desert!

 

[Peuri]

What I know about Antarctica is that there is only snow and ice, and there is the ice square to represent that. But the other things you said, I'm sure you are right. For an example the Gobi desert of which you talked about is actually in the same latitude as Central Europe. I'm not a geography expert, but to me it seems that the deserts are a bit too high north/south. But the latitude where the deserts appear doesn't really matter that much me, as long as they are coherent.

 

[Julian Delphiki]

I've tried a couple of Map Scripts - they give a lot of nice options to change things which is good, don't get me wrong - but none of them seem to "fix" this problem I have.

(Is there like a guide how to create a Map Script somewhere? I haven't seen one. If there is please do guide me to one)

Did you try smartmap? It has quite nice options for configuring terrain types. Might not help you to put deserts where you want them if that is what you are after, though.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

What I know about Antarctica is that there is only snow and ice, and there is the ice square to represent that. But the other things you said, I'm sure you are right. For an example the Gobi desert of which you talked about is actually in the same latitude as Central Europe. I'm not a geography expert, but to me it seems that the deserts are a bit too high north/south. But the latitude where the deserts appear doesn't really matter that much me, as long as they are coherent.

They bugged me too, so ages ago,I edited the climateinfo.xml (its in CIV IV / assets / xml/ game info).

The standard percentage is set to 35% of the world, I changed this for temperate maps to 28%, and "moved the deserts" away from the temperate zones by altering the top and bottom desert latitudes..here's how to do it for temperate climate maps...


<!-- Climate Infos -->
<Civ4ClimateInfo xmlns="x-schema:CIV4GameInfoSchema.xml">
<ClimateInfos>
<ClimateInfo>
<Type>CLIMATE_TEMPERATE</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_CLIMATE_TEMPERATE</Description>
<iDesertPercentChange>-7</iDesertPercentChange>
<iJungleLatitude>5</iJungleLatitude>
<iHillRange>5</iHillRange>
<iPeakPercent>25</iPeakPercent>
<fSnowLatitudeChange>0.0</fSnowLatitudeChange>
<fTundraLatitudeChange>0.0</fTundraLatitudeChange>
<fGrassLatitudeChange>0.0</fGrassLatitudeChange>
<fDesertBottomLatitudeChange>-0.03</fDesertBottomLatitudeChange>
<fDesertTopLatitudeChange>-0.08</fDesertTopLatitudeChange>
<fIceLatitude>0.95</fIceLatitude>
<fRandIceLatitude>0.25</fRandIceLatitude>
</ClimateInfo>
<ClimateInfo>


This gives roughly:-

Desert percentage =28
top latitude 38 degrees (N & S)
bottom latitude 15 degrees (N & s)

Hope this helps.

 

[Instant_Cereal]

Yeah, I kinda hate them too. Used to be you could at least do things with them like build farms and schtuff on them. Now, they're just totally useless. Nothing annoys me more than having a glorious start, then scout the area a bit, and finding the friggin' Sahara Desert taking up half my screen right next to me.

 

[Willowmound]

I completely agree.

I'm going to try DrewBledsoe's recipe. Thanks for that!

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

I'd like Firaxis to come out with better maps that have realistic desert formations or anything else for that mother. I'd prefer to see Sahara deserts than a checkerboard of jungles and deserts.

 

[Minmaster]

yea i hate the deserts too, but always been afraid of modding the original game. i may have to now though. if they were workable, that'd be one thing, but deserts are horrible tiles. even tundra beats desert.

in RL, its possible to build large cities in the desert!! Las Vegas, and even to some degree Los Angeles are cities in the desert.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

OK facts on Deserts...
1. it does NOT mean hot it only means dry (Antarctica is a Desert)

2. Deserts on Earth are most common/prevalent at 30 N and 30 South, NOT in the tropics, but outside the tropics.

3. the reason that the World builder doesn't have Saharas, is because they don't want large blocks of useless territory, so it was randomized a bit.

4. in the game you can build laerge cities in the desert. Even with 6 Desert tiles clustered to gether you can still get a size 14 city (that is located ON a desert tile)

 

[Antilogic]

I appreciate some of the more educated posters here correcting some misconceptions about deserts (Krikkitone, mjs0 in particular).

The fact is, there are small deserts scattered throughout the world. Look at the Western United States...a smattering of deserts with plains in areas like Nevada and Arizona, and in California, plain temperate climates. There are small regions of near-useless land just about everywhere. The actual definition of a desert is a region of land that receives less than 25 cm/10 in of rain annually, or something like that.

@Minmaster: I've been fooling around with the XML in my free time, and I assure you that although it appears to be a daunting task, it really isn't all that hard. Just copy whatever you want to change into your own MOD folder, and then go to town! Most of the code is self-explanatory, so once you get the hang of reading the XML files, it is pretty easy to edit. I use Altova XML Spy Home edition (it's free) because it colors text and has some other cool features--better than notepad.

 

[Minmaster]

could you totally take out deserts from the game? except floodplains that is.

 

[Antilogic]

Probably...if you just make them illegal at any latitude, then they won't appear but along the equator.

Unfortunately, that provides a challenge with floodplains...as far as I know, the deserts are placed "first" when Civ4 is creating a map, and then the rivers are laid on top. Therefore, the game doesn't quite know if that particular desert square will be a floodplain when it is placed on the map. So, unless you are adept at programming and can create a new map script that causes every desert to be a floodplain automatically by running a river on along the bordering squares, I don't think that's possible with a simple XML change.

 

[onedreamer]

mountain ranges block the rain from entering the plains beyond them

Well, funny. I've seen more than one flooding here and I always thought that mountains collect rain and direct it to the plains beyond them, rather than blocking it ?

 

[Chipacabra]

Well, funny. I've seen more than one flooding here and I always thought that mountains collect rain and direct it to the plains beyond them, rather than blocking it ?

Depends on the mountain range, and it's also possible for rivers to flow into desert regions, they're still deserts.
As any SMAC player should remember, mountains cause rain to build up on the windward-side, and the lee side is dry.

 

[Antilogic]

That is correct, although it doesn't preclude rain from falling on either side of the mountain. But mountains affect the wind patterns...it gets complicated. Far beyond the scope of this thread.