[Map Script] Tectonics

[whitulf]

Floodlands

1st, I really like tectonics, because it creates more naturally-looking maps with more strategic possibilities and needs, especially when there is a just-1-square-way through mountains or between mountains and the sea.

Well, I noticed one thing that seems to be not as good as in the standard-maps and maybe ought to be changed:


The lack of "floodlands" attached to rivers, especially when a river crosses a desert.


I think that floodlands are of a high value for city-founding, especially if placed in a region with deserts - its food-bonus but as well its health-malus are a main part in the game.

Would be nice if there was a new version with this point fixed!

[LDiCesare]

That lack of floodlands in desert is actually a feature of all the core maps, not of tectonics, it just doesn't happen all the time.
In fact, it only happens when the code decides to "beautify" the starting location of a player by putting a river there. Since the code used in that case isn't mine, it lacks floodplains the same way the core game does. I don't know where floodplains get added. I'll try to check this.

[whitulf]

Thanks

I have almost only played standard-(non-custom-)maps before now nearly only playing tectonics (and making friends doings so in MP-Games as well ) - and in most cases it is not that obvious so that one does not miss the floodplains that badly.

However, now that I noticed it, I think, that there must be a kind of randomizer deciding whether to be transformed into floodplains for each square attached to a river which is neither hill nor mountain (nor has forest on it?) (and maybe which has no (hidden) resources on it?).

There might even be an extra-procedure increasing the probability of floodplains next to a square of floodplains, causing those often-noticed regions where there is floodplains only attached to river.

And - great you answered that fast, LDiCesare!

I hope You will be able to find the code dealing about the distribution of floodplains/floodland and to implement it - proving once more Your mapscript "tectonics" to be the best to play with!

[LDiCesare]

What happens is the floodplains is a feature like forest, except its probability to happen is huge iAppearance 10000 vs 500 for forest if I'm correct). So it normally gets generated along with forests. But when the code picks starting locations, features are already generated, and it often decides to add a river. No more feature generation is done after that. I could disable the additional river generation, but this would put some civs at a strong disadvantage. So I need to run a feature generation pass on the plots which have been modified, which I don't know, and I don't know which features actually need to be tried again (though isRequiresRiverSide could help). I will try to check if this can be done in python.

[LDiCesare]

v3.10 uploaded.
Fixes the rivers in desert without flood plains.
Also makes the shapes of continents slightly less linear/rectangular.

[LDiCesare]

v3.11 uploaded.
Changed climate generation: Less ice, more tundra between ice and plains or grass.
Rivers less likely to spawn in desert, more likely to spawn from hills.

[LzPrst]

love your map. but I would like to see more stretches of unfertile lands. i often see deserts bordered by jungle. in my humble opinion i feel desert should tend to be bordered by plains rather than grasslands. is it possible to nudge the map creator in this direction? there shouldnt be cities absolutely everywhere. (try telling the AI that though )

[LDiCesare]

I must do something about the edges of the desert. They are too regular and mix too easily with grassland indeed. Transitions are too sharp. The arid option should suit you well, but the last update actually added some water thus less plains than you'd like.

[LDiCesare]

Uploaded V3.12.
Smoothes desert-grass transitions and breaks a bit the too linear limits between climate zones.

[Kilim]

Kinda confused.
This just changes how the maps are made in-game?
I love playing Huge Map -18 Civ games and this looked interesting.

Does this work with BtS Xpack? and do I just put it in the PublicMap folder of BtS?

[LDiCesare]

It's another option like Continents, Fractal, etc. or the new Big and Small scripts which you pick at the start of the game.
It's BtS compliant. Just put it in Publicmaps folder.

[Kilim]

Cool.

Does it matter if I place it in
C:\Program Files\2K Games\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4 Gold\Beyond the Sword\PublicMaps
or
C:\Documents and Settings\AccountName\My Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\PublicMaps

[LDiCesare]

Either will work, but it's better to put it in Program Files because you make sure everyone using the computer can use it.

[LzPrst]

you're a genious LDiCesare

[jam3]

Really liking this so far, was looking for an organic map creator since I started playing again a month ago. Only problems I see are

1) Sometimes Hill generation gets outta control, I have seen hills in a 15 x 15 grid (and it can look very rectangular).

2) Tundra and ice generation seems almost non-present. I don't like the overabundance of tundra and ice in vanilla but a little more would be nice in tectonics. Personally would like to see deer and furs in grassland, plains, forest within a certain range of north south border (not always tundra).

3) Alot of huge continents connect to the south or north border, sometimes in massive ways. Again not wholly bad but it should be toned down slightly to be more earthlike.

Great work, read through the code and am really impressed since I cant find a resource explaining all the internal library methods/classes. Kudos for figuring it all out.