[Map Script] Tectonics

[WoodenTaco]

Now, I realize this may be a bit much to ask, and I'm not a programmer at all so I dont know how hard it is, but would it be possible to do realistic generation of climate zones? for instance, the west side of mountain ranges is often lush and temperate while the east side is arid - perhaps you could reflect this by making grasslands and forests more likely east of mountains, and plains and deserts more likely to the west? As a matter of fact, deserts should exclusively appear west of mountain ranges, ideally.

I don't know if its possible, but if it is you might be surprised with how well it works at generating realistic terrain. Thanks for the great mod!

[LDiCesare]

One thing you may want to experiment with, to help improve the script, is allowing for the splitting and combining of plates during your drifting iterations (and possibly doing a longer iteration cycle). It's somewhat new in geology, but there's some evidence to back this up.

Hi alms! I could do something much more realistic, like not having land plates totally above water, something like the real north american and Eurasian plates. Then I'd move them around a bit more, since right now they are not moved a lot... But frankly, I don't want to spend time on that. I'd have to add some erosion, etc. It could become very elaborate but I still want to spend some time on Clash so I don't want to spend too much time on this.

Now, I realize this may be a bit much to ask, and I'm not a programmer at all so I dont know how hard it is, but would it be possible to do realistic generation of climate zones?

This, on the other hand, I may try to improve. I've set the climate so that the wind blows and moisture comes from the sea, and, well, the result is not really as good as I expected. I provide main wind directions in various zones, so teh wind blows from east or west, and is stopped by peaks, so you should have deserts on the other side on the mountains. That should be redone but I can't find why the current script doesn't give good enough results. I might look at the code I did for Clash and translate it into python, the results were a bit different.

[LDiCesare]

Version 3.3:
Systematic use of climate map because I had bugged it away for the main map type instead of pangaea.
I tried to prevent players from starting in the ice, but I am not really convinced that it works. I still have players starting in polare areas but at least their continents should have some resources and decent tiles in such a case
Added hotspots. This provides for small islands in the seas. It can also create isolated peaks or hills.

[LDiCesare]

Version 3.4:

I have updated the script to provide two new things:
1)Some fault lines. Well, actually, if I find a large flat plate, I'll decide it's got a fault line somewhere in it and spawn a line of hills and lakes therein. It's not noticeable on standard and below maps, has an effect on large maps (and presumably huge). This gives less big flat areas and I can pretend it's a faultline so meaningful from a geological point of view.
2)Corrected a big bug in the climate generator. Now it does what it was supposed to do. You'll have less desert and the moisture computation is finally correct.

alms, I tried to provide some moves of the plates more than once: Move the plates, erode, move again. Although I think the approach is interesting, I'd probably have to rewrite a lot of stuff to make it work. The results were ugly. I said I wouldn't be doing it, after all. I tried anyway. I may still try again later, but I'll have to change the way I handle altitude: Older mountain ranges (Appalaches, Massif central, Vosges and Black Forest...) should only be hills in the game, so all peaks from the first moves should get eroded down. The problem with my script is it increases the number of land plots as plates move. I could either change the way I compute the altitude or fill the oceans with a volume of water (and thus make use of the sea level settings) to correct that.

[C.O.G.]

Hi.
I'm tinkering with the code for 3.4.
It is the best I believe.
Rather than have the top and bottom of the map be 90 I want them 70 degrees.
Very little history has occured beyond 70.
Over the pole movement isn't possible from I can see.
Anyway using 70 means that I factor by 9/7 your latitudes for the climate generation.
Anything above 70 I compressed into bands of 2 degrees, which should show up as a single row of plots(?) for the huge map.
Now I'm looking to make the desert bands wider.
Where you have them placed is not really accurate compared to the Sahara.
But, Your system creates three bands of habitable land of roughly equal width.
i assume that this would make for better game play as Civs in any band should have roughly the same usable area resources etc.

There is more I want to do.
When I have something that strikes me as most Earth like I will send it to you, if you like.
I'm loving it!

[LDiCesare]

C.O.G. any change to make it better is welcome. I know that it would be possible to make the latitude restricted to something less than 90° but never felt it was needed. Restricting to 70° could indeed make more room for deserts. I actually worked a bit to reduce the deserts since they looked too big in terms of unusable space. I could probably add another dialog to allow for climate options such as those you propose if you get it done.

[C.O.G.]

I guess the only reason to have wider deserts is that they would be more effective barriers.
I could just double the movement cost but that wouldn't slow down the foot units.

I'm impressed that tectonics seems to run faster and use less resources. I have been making huge maps to see what I'd get.

I'm new to python so I could experiment at length, but to be sure:

Does Tectonics use Climateinfo.XML and Worldinfo.XML ?

Specifically are there some values that are not used.

Some times I get some distant offshore islands. Sometimes not.
Are hotspots small islands?

Thanx!

[LDiCesare]

Does Tectonics use Climateinfo.XML and Worldinfo.XML ?

ClimateInfo is not used. The code for climate is in the class ClimateGenerator, in the getTerrain method. You can adjust the latitudes of the various bands and terrain generated based on moisture.
WorldInfo is used in the sense it has much more to do than the simple map:
iTerrainGrainChange is probably not useful, I don't know what it's for. Apart from that everything is used (map sizes, number of players, etc.)

Some times I get some distant offshore islands. Sometimes not.
Are hotspots small islands?

Mostly yes. Hotspots are geological spots where volcanoes are spawned, leading to islands like Hawaii for instance. In the scripts, you can also have a hotspot inside a continent, which may not be geologically accurate, but I'm not sure.

[C.O.G.]

I conclude that I can get more off shore islands by increasing the frequency of th hot spots.

I'm an engineer not a geologist, but I infer that hot spots are caused by the radioactive decay of I don't know what in the core or outer core that produces lighter compunds that "bubble up" through the mantel. The thermo induced circulation of the mantel is too slow to dilute this production and just carry it downstream.

Because the hot spots are probably / possibly stationary with respect to the core they seem to move relative to the mantel and the ocean floor that sits on it. It stands to reason that a continent may have drifted over a hot spot.

If the compunds produced by the hotspot were no lighter than the continental material perhaps a ridge would be formed parallel to the direction of continental drift. If they were lighter a volcanic ridge would be formed. In either case the ridge formed should be on the oder of a thousand miles long. On a slower drifting continent it would be shorter but more pronounced.

I can't think of an example, but the next time I'm near a physical map I'll look for something.

I'm guessing that the geology of every montain range on Earth has been studied to the extent that if a hot spot ridge existed we would have heard about it.

THis may be intolerably windy but you asked the question I was asking myself.

[alms66]

IIRC, the only hotspot under land currently is under Yellowstone...? Don't take that as fact, I could be completely off there.

[unamablebuiler]

there was one under australia until bout 5000 years ago in MT gambier there has been a string of extinct volcaones running the lenght of the great divding range it isnt a range of mountains more a range of hills there is also a spot that is hotter than the mantle aorund it somewhere uinder southern quensland/northern New South Wales they are tring to determine if it can be used for geothermal power.

you also have the rift valley in africa mt st hellens in US vessuvius in italy just to name a few more

[C.O.G.]

Because the Dividing range parallels the East coast of Australia at no great distance from the coast I assume that it was formed by collision with the Pacific ocean plate in the distant past, simalar to the Appalacians I think.

As I understand it a hot spot is a remarkable occurance completely separate from continental drift. It provides evedence of continental drift because it is motionless or so we think to the tectonic plates drifting over it.
So it "draws a line" of volcanism on the underside of the plate.

The Hawian Islands are the best know example. If the older islands had not eroded away so that nothing now appears above sea level, we could observe a chain of islands a couple thousand miles long. This chain stretches to the NW the oldest islands would be at the NW end. the newest is the "Big" island of Hawii which is well known for its recent volcanic activity.

If the hot spots produces material light enough to "float" up through the continental crust we would expect to see a couple instances of a line of volcanoes, the oldest being eroded and extinct, the newest still active.

It occurs to me that the oldest would be eroded down to nothing.

The Pacific NW volcanoes are I think associated with the collision of teh North American plate with a now small plate that lies off the coast, whose name I can't remember. I think Yellowstone has the same origins. Vesuvious is caused by the African plate colliding with the Eurasian plate, but this is a simplification.

I should look a a good map of the NW US and consider.

[unamablebuiler]

the rift valley is more like the mid ablantic ridge

if you look at oceanic topograpy of the pacific to will see the chain of seamounts running from hawaii to midway and on to wake island i think.

looking at austalian geology yes the greatdividing range is ancient and one of the oldest ranges. it was probably formmed seveal hudred million years ago from the collision that reuslted in pangea.
i think the oldest isn't even considered to be mountains anymore in the kimberly in the NW of the continent. Any ways eastern Australia does have a line of extinct volcanoes on the mainland running from northern queensland to the border between victoria and SA. Some of these volcanoes were several times larger than kakatoa


the pacific coast resemles what eastern australia would of looked like about the cambrian period. apart from the climate and then who can tell

most volcanoes are on or near plate bounaries

continets can even be "sucked" down by covection in the mantle this occuerd with australia about 40 to 50 million years ago by cold spots and subduction drag leaving just the mounations it is part of the reason for the extensive sedimentiary deposts all over the continent most of australia was a shallow sea at one time or annother resulting in extensive salt limestione sandstone coal, oil, gas deposits. Mostly the minerals are found at volcanic outcrops or in eroded ranges. we din't have much oil but we have the largest or the second largest coal deposits

[LDiCesare]

Upon further reading, there are indeed hotspots like Yellowstone in continents. But Yellowstone isn't a mountain range. In fact, in Yellowstone, the lava tends to spill and form vast calderas rather than volcanic mountains. Thus hotspots on continents may not produce visible features contrary to oceanic ones like Galapagos, Hawaii and Reunion.

[Jvstin]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
Upon further reading, there are indeed hotspots like Yellowstone in continents. But Yellowstone isn't a mountain range. In fact, in Yellowstone, the lava tends to spill and form vast calderas rather than volcanic mountains. Thus hotspots on continents may not produce visible features contrary to oceanic ones like Galapagos, Hawaii and Reunion.

Yellowstone is complicated by the fact that on top of having a hot spot there, there has been mountain building, and glaciation on top of it.

It really is an amazing place, if you ever get a chance to go visit. But hotspot plumes under continents are uncommon in geologic history, compared to the oceanic ones (eg. Hawaii, Iceland). The earth is 70% water after all. Odds are, a hotspot will form over water.