[Map Script] SmartMap

[skodkim]

Could you make an option concerning the amount of tundra/Ice. I find the amount a bit high for the temperate map, but on the other hand I don't wan't a desert/jungle (tropical) game.

\Skodkim

BTW: Great work!!

[DougM]

Originally posted by skodkim
Could you make an option concerning the amount of tundra/Ice. I find the amount a bit high for the temperate map, but on the other hand I don't wan't a desert/jungle (tropical) game.

\Skodkim

BTW: Great work!!

Try playing tropical with jungle set to light. Tropical is very wet in my generator, it has less desert than temperate, and less snow/tundra. It does have more jungle, but using the forest/jungle option you can reduce the jungle amount (and still get however much forest you want).

[battists]

I know this is a minor point, but for us n00bs, it would certainly help if the Zip had a readme that told us what to do with the .py file.

This being the first mod I've ever tried, I had to look around for a while to figure it out.

Gracias!

[battists]

Not, of course, that posting it in this thread was a bad idea!

But, for those of us who download first and ask questions later...

[DougM]

Originally posted by battists
I know this is a minor point, but for us n00bs, it would certainly help if the Zip had a readme that told us what to do with the .py file.

This being the first mod I've ever tried, I had to look around for a while to figure it out.

Gracias!

That's a good idea, now that this thread is multiple pages I'd guess it is getting more and more likely that the instructions are becoming harder to find.

[DougM]

version 7 released

This release cleans up a few bugs that showed up in testing non-standard wrap options, adds a new readme file explaining what you can do with all of the options, and adds a new option 'land style' which will allow you to generate continental fragments and oddly shaped continents.

# Version History
# 7.0
# Add new generation option: Land Style. Land style allows you to opt
# for less roundish continents, and also to allow for small independent
# land fragments separate from the main continents. When land fragments
# are generated, they may be generated anywhere, and may violate the
# sea level strategy guarantees, so use at your own risk. The less rounded
# continent options without land fragments will obey the sea level rules,
# but may be less fair.
# Based on a report of it being annoying to have your capital placed on
# the wrap-edge of the minimap, I now rotate the initial land placement
# to put the minimum number possible of land near the map wrap edge.
# While this does not guarantee this will not happen, it makes it highly
# unlikely.
# Further, made the first player always pick the center most start position
# if wrap is enabled. This should make single player games always have
# the human player start fairly well centered. This should absolutely
# guarantee that a single human player will not start with their capital
# on a map wrap edge.
# Fixed a couple of places where I did not consider y-wrapping correctly.
# But I guess no one plays y-wrap (or both wrap), or they'd have surely noticed.
# Introduce option 'SmartMap Strict' for feature generation. This will only place
# floodplains & tundra where the normal scripts would.
# Made floodplains on anything other than desert less likely, and oasis on tundra
# less likely for the non-strict feature generator.
# Enhanced the plot wetness calculator so plot wetness can be factored into more
# of the generation process.
# Improved the player placement rules to prefer not to place players initially
# on a stretch of land reaching into the ocean.
# Added ReadMeSmartMap.txt

[DougM]

readme contents

Here's the non-version history contents of the readme since it may be helpful.

ReadMeSmartMap.txt
ReadMe file describing how to use SmartMap, and its various features.

Sections:
1) How to use
2) Options
3) Thanks
4) Version History


1) How to use
Extract the SmartMap.py to your CivIv install directory's PublicMaps
folder. Start the game, and select Single Player followed by Custom Game.
On the option titled 'Map:' select SmartMap as the map. Set other options
to your liking (I suggest trying all the defaults first!), and Launch!

A common error is to extract to civdir\PublicMaps\SmartMap\SmartMap.py. You
want to just have civdir\PublicMaps\SmartMap.py

Be patient. This script is slower than many of the default scripts. A large
map takes about 30 seconds to generate on my 1.8ghz pentium-M laptop. Huge
takes close to a minute. Pangea is the slowest to generate, picking fair
start locations takes a lot longer.


2) Options
Options are the point of SmartMap. There are a bunch of them. I will
describe how to use each of them in turn to get just the map you are
looking for.

Map: SmartMap, otherwise you're not using SmartMap!

Size: Duel, Tiny, Small, Standard, Large, Huge. SmartMap will use this
setting to determine the overall area of the map, unless you choose to override
the width and height manually, as explained later. SmartMap picks a random
width and height that produce the required area, so not all maps will be the
same shape (if you want to force a specific shape, use the overrides
described later).

Climate: Temperate, Tropical, Arid, Rocky, Cold. These mean approximately
what they do in the normal map scripts. Tropical has less desert and jungle than
you would get in the normal generator. If you feel like you get too much tundra
and snow in temperate, try tropical. Arid produces a lot of desert. Rocky means
an extra boost to hills and mountains. Cold means more snow and tundra.

Sealevel: low, medium, high. This option is used by SmartMap in a unique way.
Since SmartMap offers a direct ocean control, sealevel is used to control inter
continental strategy. In particular:
Low = all land on the map MIGHT be reachable by galley
Medium = it is very unlikely you will be able to reach another continent by galley,
but contact between civs on different continents may happen early due to
influence borders touching (it is only possible to reach another continent
occasionally by galley due to a bug in civiv that will rarely allow a galley
to enter an ocean tile).
High = guaranteed that you cannot reach another continent by galley, and civ contact
between different continents will not happen until two near as possible cities
both reach level 3 culture, or caravel (almost always caravel happens first).
This option is not guaranteed to be enforced if you select a non-default land style, as
explained later.

Era / Speed: These options are not affect by and do not affect SmartMap

Continents: Controls the number of continents generated by the script. Each option is fairly
self explanatory. On low sea level, continents are permitted to merge, so you may receive less
than the expected number of continents. You may also receive less than the expected number if
the script cannot find enough room (as might happen if you select duel size with 36 continents).
You may receive more than the expected number if you select a non-default land style, as explained
later.

Ocean: determines the percentage of ocean to be used on the map. Note that selecting low ocean
levels may result in a map with significantly more useful land area than is typically expected for
a given size of map, and may cause a gameplay imbalance.

Hills: allows you to specify what percentage of the land area should be coverd in hills.

Peaks: allows you to specify what percentage of the land area should be coverd in peaks.

Wrap: allows you to specify whether the map wraps around the border in x and/or y. X wrapping is
the standard circumnavigatable globe you probably expect, but the other options may provide for
an entertainingly different gameplay experience.

Terrain: selects a terrain generator. The terrain generator decides if a given land or hill plot is
a desert, plains, grass, tundra, or snow. The oasis and great plains generators are taken from those
scripts, while standard is just what you normally get on default scripts. SmartMap is a custom terrain
generator that knows how to generate terrain for all kinds of map setups. I recommend SmartMap.

Forest/Jungle: allows you to specify if you'd like more or less than the standard amount of forest and
jungle. Note that this option only affects the results of the SmartMap feature generator.

Features: selects a feature generator. Features are things like oasis, flood plains, forest, and jungle.
They go on top of the base terrain to enhance it in some way. Again, the oasis and great plains options
are just what you'd expect from those scripts. Note that you do NOT have to match terrain and feature
generators. Oasis terrain with Great Plains features works just fine, as do all other combinations.
The default SmartMap feature generator generates a few combinations that do not occur in the standard
scripts, in particular things like floodplains on grass are possible, and oasis will occassionally be seen
on tundra. These are things that happen on earth, and so are 'realistic' but some may find undesireable
because they aren't normal in the sense of the default scripts. If you are one of these people, there is
the SmartMap Strict option, which to the best of my knowledge will not generate any combinations not found
in the default scripts. I recommend either SmartMap or SmartMap strict.

Bonuses: selects how bonuses are placed. You can choose from the standard placement or SmartMap placement.
SmartMap attempts to be fairer about how resources are placed strategically. I recommend SmartMap. This
option also controls the placement of goody huts. SmartMap goody huts aren't much different from standard.

Start Placement: selects how player start positions are determined. The SmartMap option attempts to do a
fairer job of placing players based on an analysis of the positions of strategic resources, and is also
more likely to place your initial settler on a tile with one tile of ocean access so that your capital can
build ocean buildings.

Override width/height options: these options allow you to force SmartMap to generate a specific size of map
to your liking. This can allow you to generate absolutely huge maps beyond the size that your computer
memory can hold, so be careful with this. The sizes are multiplied by 4 in each direction to determine
the final number of plots, so a 64x32 map is really 256 tiles wide and 128 tiles tall. A SmartMap 'huge'
map is 16,000 tiles total area, so the 64x32 map described = 256x128 tiles = 32,768 tiles would be more
than twice the size of SmartMap's huge, which is in turn nearly twice as big as a default map's huge. Note
that this allows you to play a very big map on duel, which would be a wierd experience, as many of the pacing
elements of the game assume that you only have a certain amount of landmass to work with.

Land Style: this option controls a couple of special features that are more dangerous to use than the others,
and so are reserved for last. First, you can control how round your continents will turn out. Rounder
continents have a tendency to be more fair, so very round is the default. As you transition to somewhat or
least round, you will get odder continent shapes which various people have requested, or find to be
'more realistic'. Independently, you may also choose a level of fragments. Fragments are little pieces
of land added randomly to the map which will appear as archipelagos or odd continent outgrowths, or tiny
islands. You can get all sorts of interesting growth patterns with these. However, since they may be
placed anywhere, they may violate the sea level guarantees of separation. They may completely join
continents, or make them reachable by galley. Nevertheless, some people wanted this as another way to
have more varied or realistic maps. The default for this option is very round, no fragments, which provides
the most guarantees of fair gameplay, particularly for multiplayer games. For single player games, you
may have fun seeing what interesting other types of maps you can get with this option.


3) Thanks
I'd like to thank the following people for their contributions:
Sirian : for answering a number of questions about how map scripts work
A Silly Goose @ CivFanatics : for early feedback
lordroy @ CivFanatics : for lots of feedback and screenshots
Victorvanwavere : suggestion to have a forest/jungle setting & what became land style
Randle @ CivFanatics : report of getting capital on wrap border
Silver14 @ Apolyton : report of too many very tall maps when x-wrapping and other early feedback
alms66 @ Apolyton : also suggested the forest/jungle setting, and other early feedback
Commander Bello @ Apolyton : manual width/height override and other feedback
skodkim @ Apolyton : assorted feedback
battists @ Apolyton : idea for this readme!

[DougM]

some v7 samples

Here are some samples of the variety you can now get with this script. The top row are high sea level, second is medium, third is low. The other settings are an assortment designed to show a variety of interesting results.

[DougM]

updated main post

Now has some sample shots from v7 so new visitors to the thread can see what is possible these days right away.

[DougM]

version 7.2 released

This small update adds a river/lake frequency control, and a new '0 continents' continent option which makes for a very arhcipelago style of game. Also an assortment of other tweaks.

# 7.2
# Separate GoodyHut option from Bonuses, and add support for
# no/low/normal/high rates of goody huts.
# Add support for low/normal/high levels of resources (with low = 2/3rds
# and high = 4/3rds normal, same for goody huts).
# Rearrange all of the options to put the less commonly used ones at the end.
# Tweak up the default hills % slightly.
# Tweak up the river rate slightly.
# Make broad empty plains a little less likely by distributing hills better.
# Add some extra continent options, 1 per 2 players, 1 per 3, 1 per 4
# these may be easier for some to think about than picking an exact number.
# Added continent options 2 per player, 3 per, 4 per. These are good to use
# if you're using low sea levels to allow land blobs to merge.
# Improve the likelyhood that small numbers of continents are well separated.
# Improve the chance that player start plots will neighbor at least one hill.
# Added option to adjust the river and lake frequencies.
# Tweaked the width/height calculation so that super wide maps aren't as likely.
# Tweaked hills placement to make big empty plains less likely.
# Improved the resource distribution to get better strategic resource separation.
# Added no-continents option, which will result in all land being placed in
# fragments instead (looks suspiciously like 'archipelago').
# Fixed a bug in the counting of land resulting in fewer peaks than expected.
#
# 7.1
# After reading that Atlas can generate 1600x1600 maps (not that civiv can
# load them) decided to bump up the maximum width/height overrides so
# that if, in the future, civiv can handle such maps, SmartMap will be
# ready. Can now, hypothetically, generate 5000x5000 maps.
# Also, converted the units to map tiles, since that is probably less confusing
# for non map-scripters.
# Bump up the size of duel, tiny, small due to our allowance for more ocean
# and also because the actual chosen dimensions tend to result in a map with
# slightly smaller than the expected area.
# Areas Duel Tiny Small Standard Large Huge
# SmartMap: 80 140 220 360 560 860
# Standard: 60 104 160 273 416 640
# Make SmartMap strict default for feature generation.
# Tweak up the default ocean size due to the larger map size.

[DougM]

version 8 released

Download from the front page:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=4249324#post4249324

# 8.0
# Use pickle to store last preferences.
# Tweaked the adjustment to rivers and lakes so that many rivers will be more
# noticeable, and few lakes will really cut down the amount of lakes.
# Fix resource rates for smaller maps.
# Allow start placement to place settlers on hills as well as flatlands.
# Weight hills for start placement appropriately to the defensive bonus.
# Add spiral search feature, this may be of use to other mapmakers, used in
# my script to assign fragments as belonging to the nearest continent. Spiral
# search is the most efficient method of doing a 'find nearest X' on any grid
# based map, assuming you don't have a list of all X available.
# On higher river levels, make hills more likely to start rivers.
# Make rivers a little more common in general. Make the automatic river for each
# sufficiently large continent always start from a hill or peak if one is
# available, or a random tile if no hill or peak is found.
# Improve river paths by using spiral search to measure distance to nearest ocean
# Don't flatten peaks on coast, as this can create interesting strategic issues,
# and also tended to leave far fewer than the expected number of peaks.
# Fix a bug in the start placement picker that was giving extra scores for the
# start plot when it was supposed to be scoring nearby plots.
# Adjust how fragments are generated, and the number of fragments for few/many,
# to make maps using smaller numbers of fragments look less chaotic. Fragments
# also now sort-of obey the sealevel rules: they are allowed to start anywhere,
# but can only grow into one neighboring continent, so they are more likely to
# create an archipelago type of continental extension, rather than so frequently
# causing continents to merge.
# New SmartMap Clump Happy resources option which distributes all happiness
# resources like the standard generator (in clumps so trade is more likely to be
# necessary, hence 'clump happy'), but other resources in the smartmap style so
# that the distribution is fairer.
# Corrected a small land counting problem that sometimes gave too much land for
# a given ocean percentage.
# Added a few new options to the override width and height to allow for generating
# random ranges of sizes, as a couple of people had requested that.

[DanielZKlein]

Hi,

the download link doesn't seem to work. It times out for me. (ptth.net itself seems to be doing relatively fine tho; just played a game of squish without bothering to read the rules. I think I kinda figured them out ;P)

[DougM]

Originally posted by DanielZKlein
Hi,

the download link doesn't seem to work. It times out for me. (ptth.net itself seems to be doing relatively fine tho; just played a game of squish without bothering to read the rules. I think I kinda figured them out ;P)

If ptth times out, try downloading from the link at the bottom of the main post, it's stored on apolyton.

And yeah, squish isn't terribly complicated to understand (and it is meant to be very very simple). The rules and stuff are just there for anyone who has a hard time figuring it out.

Side note: for me zips download automatically in firefox, and this zip is so small the 'download progress' window doesn't even have time to pop up. So at first it appears that the download hasn't worked, until I remember to go look in my downloads folder, and what do you know, there it is.

[The Rusty Gamer]

I'd wondered what had happened to the Smartmap thread. It disappeared off both here and the Civfanatics forum. Good to see see it hasn't been abandoned.

[DougM]

Originally posted by The Rusty Gamer
I'd wondered what had happened to the Smartmap thread. It disappeared off both here and the Civfanatics forum. Good to see see it hasn't been abandoned.

Here, unfortunately, it drops off the creation and files page pretty quickly because that forum gets a lot of posts. At civfanatics, they have a category for map scripts, there are only about 10 or so threads there, so it is always on the front page.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=182

I haven't had many new suggestions since v7, so it may be close to settling into a 'done' state. v8 was almost all minor tweaks (the exceptions being saving preferences and adding the clumping resource distribution option). I'll do a version 8.1 for sure since someone pointed out it would be nice to be able to clump health resources as well as happy ones.

Beyond that, I'll have to see if people come up with more good ideas for it.