[Map Script] SmartMap

[Commander Bello]

Could you add a possibility to allow for manual input of height and width?
I have modified my games to 55*38 and really like this, as all 18 nations have enough space to build up good empires before the fighting starts...

A value of 1000 would be a little low, I think.

Additionally, is there a chance to reduce the diversification of terrain types and features? I know that I can use the standard settings, yet I think that something in between this and your settings would fit me better...

No criticism, just some input...

[DougM]

Originally posted by Commander Bello
Could you add a possibility to allow for manual input of height and width?
I have modified my games to 55*38 and really like this, as all 18 nations have enough space to build up good empires before the fighting starts...

A value of 1000 would be a little low, I think.

Additionally, is there a chance to reduce the diversification of terrain types and features? I know that I can use the standard settings, yet I think that something in between this and your settings would fit me better...

No criticism, just some input...

Wow, 55x38 is really getting up there. I will give some thought to allowing override of the width and height. The problem is that the 'map size' controls some difficulty parameters for the game, so if you selected 'duel' size and then overrided the size to 64x64 you'd have some pretty odd gameplay. I guess I can just make it an at your own risk feature.

As to the diversification issue ... I would need a better description of what it is you are looking for exactly.

And thanks for the input, I welcome it!

[DanielZKlein]

How hard would it be to combine this mapscript with a mod, say for instance the Green Mod? I guess the bonus placement would have to be adjusted, right?

[DougM]

Originally posted by DanielZKlein
How hard would it be to combine this mapscript with a mod, say for instance the Green Mod? I guess the bonus placement would have to be adjusted, right?

I know of no reason that it can't be used with any mod immediately, unless that mod makes use of unusual features or terrain. Bonuses should be fine as long as they've encoded them properly in the xml. So as far as I know you should just be able to use it with green mod immediately, unless green mod is unusual in some way. I use this map script with my own very extensive mod every day. This map script should be just as compatible with mods as any standard civ script: certainly any mod that can make use of custom continents or great plains for example could also be used with this script.

[DanielZKlein]

That's awesome--I didn't know things connected so seamlessly! So I assume there's somewhere in the XML that defines where certain bonusses (i.e. wheat, rice, cow, etc) may appear, and your mapscript looks up that info? Come to think of it, it makes most sense that way; just that for some reason I'd expected things like "where may a certain bonus appear" to be hardcoded into the map generation.

I'll give it a try tonight and report back here. Thanks!

[DougM]

Originally posted by DanielZKlein
That's awesome--I didn't know things connected so seamlessly! So I assume there's somewhere in the XML that defines where certain bonusses (i.e. wheat, rice, cow, etc) may appear, and your mapscript looks up that info? Come to think of it, it makes most sense that way; just that for some reason I'd expected things like "where may a certain bonus appear" to be hardcoded into the map generation.

I'll give it a try tonight and report back here. Thanks!

The XML has some rules encoded in it (such as 'this is an ocean-only bonus' for clams ....), and a map script calls a method to find out if it is 'legal' to place a given bonus on a given tile. A map script may cheat, and place illegal bonuses on illegal tiles, but as long as you obey the rules you should be automatically compatible with any mod.

[Commander Bello]

With diversification I meant that the "smartmap" options seem to result in something like this:
forest-desert-plains-grass-forest-desert-forest-plains.....
I feel, it sometimes is just to different, from one tile to the other. No big forests available, and so on.

You get the picture, I hope. Currently not sitting at my gaming machine, otherwise I would try to make a screenshot.

And, while I am just typing, it was intentional that desert don't hold any flood plains anymore? (I have noticed that they now are attached to plains, grassland and hills?)

[DougM]

Originally posted by Commander Bello
With diversification I meant that the "smartmap" options seem to result in something like this:
forest-desert-plains-grass-forest-desert-forest-plains.....
I feel, it sometimes is just to different, from one tile to the other. No big forests available, and so on.

You get the picture, I hope. Currently not sitting at my gaming machine, otherwise I would try to make a screenshot.

And, while I am just typing, it was intentional that desert don't hold any flood plains anymore? (I have noticed that they now are attached to plains, grassland and hills?)

It was unintentional, and as it happens I also already noticed and fixed that issue.

The next version will also be somewhat more clumpy. Once that's out it will be useful to have you re-evaluate whether you still want something less diversified.

[DougM]

version 5 released

# 5.0
# Work on refining the continent boundaries so water straights are not so
# obvious when you see the resulting map.
# Rewrite river generation, move it before terrain generation so terrains
# can consider rivers (allow grasslands and other 'wetter' terrain to be
# more common around rivers, as well as forests/jungle)
# Replace the standard river altitude function with one that seems to yeild
# better river paths
# Assorted terrain and feature improvements. Restored possibility of flood
# plains in desert, and made terrain tend to blob together more rather
# than appearing so completely random. Allowed hills to have terrain rather
# than always defaulting to grass (so desert/hills are now possible). I can't
# believe no one complained about that one.
# Found a major logic error in the player placement algorithm that was unfairly
# favoring near-lake placements (I has assumed CyPlot.isCoastalLand() was equivalent
# to asking: can I build a lighthouse?, this turned out not to be true).
# As a result, initial placement is much more likely to be coastal now, and
# this has a nice side effect of improving the average separation of players.
# Tweaked resource rates a little more based on various feedback.
# Replace standard lake addition function so we don't get lakes in odd places
# Futher performance optimization. The low and medium sea level options are
# now more than twice as fast, and the high sea level option is about 50%
# faster. I can now generate a huge map with low sea level in under a minute.
# After discovering that the map sizes in great plains are way off, resized my
# maps to the following settings:
# Duel Tiny Small Standard Large Huge
# SmartMap: 60 100 180 320 560 1000
# Standard: 60 104 160 273 416 640
# This is a bump up for everything except huge, which becomes slightly smaller,
# and thus hopefully usable by more people.
# Added related option to override the map width and height. You can now select
# your map size fairly precisely, including the ability to pick map sizes that
# are so large they may cause civiv to have problems. Up to 256x256 map positions,
# which would be a 1024x1024 map, with an area of over 1 million (compare to huge at
# an area of 16 thousand!) If you are able to generate a map of even 128x128 I'll be
# shocked. Nevertheless, the option is there. So no complaining that I made huge
# smaller! Just set your game to huge, then override the size to whatever you want.
# Or for a bizarre experience, set your map to duel, and override the size to whatever
# you'd like. For kicks I generated a 256x8 map, and that was just barely startable
# with my 1 Gig of memory. Minimap looks ridiculous.
# 4.2
# Increase goody hut count slightly, particularly on maps with lots of land
# 4.1
# Slightly refined smartmap resource placement to make distribution
# fairer between continents, and not to allow so many duped resources
# within one city radius
# Small upward tweak to resource rates

[Addled Platypus]

Working with the new version


except for the following:

the two bands that are seen, blink rapidly

[DougM]

i believe that's a general civiv bug

Originally posted by Platypus Rex
Working with the new version


except for the following:

the two bands that are seen, blink rapidly

I'm fairly sure this is a general civiv bug, not specific to my script. I've seen that in the normal game as well (without using my map script). It happens when you get a map from a goody hut, and it looks like in your screenshot you've been given a map. This may be somewhat more likely with my script, since I believe my script gives a few more goody huts.

[DougM]

minor update v5.1

edit: pulled zip, v6 has all these improvements and more
This fixes a rare python scripting error.

[GeoModder]

If I may ask, what error?

Just downloaded the mod for the first time. From the read of it, it covers about the issues that could come up. Will give it a try later on.

Btw, do you think this mapmod is going over the patches without compatibility issues? (provided that no substantial changes are made to mapscripts)

[DougM]

Originally posted by GeoModder
If I may ask, what error?

Just downloaded the mod for the first time. From the read of it, it covers about the issues that could come up. Will give it a try later on.

Btw, do you think this mapmod is going over the patches without compatibility issues? (provided that no substantial changes are made to mapscripts)

I had a typo, it would result in an error reading something like 'undefined edgeprob'. I had replaced the variable edgeprob with something named more effectively, but it was a relatively rare case (in fact it only showed up for me in one of 30 trials, which is why it snuck through in the first place).

This script should be fully compatible with future patches and with other mods (map scripts are not really mods, they are pretty much fully separate entities from mods, and you should in general be able to use any mod with any map script). Many people have reported using this script successfully with a variety of mods, and perhaps more importantly, no one has reported a failure to do so.

As long as firaxis doesn't make any change that would require fixing, for example, 'great plains', then my map script should not require any changes either.

[DougM]

version 6 released

Edit: remove out of date zip

# Version History
# 6.0
# Improved lake generation system, grows more lakes beyond one plot
# Numerous terrain relevance improvements. More desert&snow at high altitudes,
# less desert near water, etc.
# Changed continent computation to more accurately determine the large
# continents, which should as a side effect improve the fair resource
# distribution. Removed tiny continents which will never be player
# starts from the fair resource distribution.
# Improved tile wetness calculator to consider number of rivers and lakes
# touched by tile (a tile touched by fresh water on multiple sides is
# now more likely to shift from desert->plains->grass).
# Added a river originating at the highest point of each continent, which
# greatly improves the fairness of river distribution overall
# Changed forest/jungle options to allow independent choice of forest and
# jungle coverage (light,normal,heavy independently selectable for each)
# General code cleanup, reorganization, commenting
# Ran code through pychecker and cleaned all warnings, pychecker found a
# couple of legitimate bugs that may have improved the resulting maps.