This is NOT Pangaea

[LDiCesare]

I provided a Pangaea option on my script. It guarantees a single landmass but no island.

[Sirian]

Only three players are checking out the script?

Well, anyway... To the three of you: How's it looking so far?


- Sirian

[Krill]

So, there is going to be another patch Sirian? What is it going to be this time? v1.99?

[Enigma_Nova]

Sirian: Maps can take a bloody long time to generate and I occasionally get an island that has 10% of the total landmass conveniently anchoring itself so that the only coast-path to it is next to some civ's capital.

In short, it's be best damn thing I've seen in the game thus far.

[smitty1]

I have generated a half dozen maps and none of them have had any islands whatsoever. A prominent feature on two-thirds of them seems to be a huge inland lake. I'm not sure if this is normal for pangaeas because I haven't played on many. In terms of only a single continent, all have been true pangaeas.

[Enigma_Nova]

Yeah, I get huge inland lake sometimes. It's great for uber Sea Commerce Slave cities.

[Sirian]

Originally posted by Krill
So, there is going to be another patch Sirian? What is it going to be this time? v1.99?

Does the number matter?

I just want the game to get better. Fixes, positive tweaks, more AI.


Enigma_Nova: How long is "long"? I just upgraded to a blazing new computer, and I was busy marvelling at how LITTLE time it was taking on my new system (compared to the hundreds and hundreds of maps I generated during development, on my old dinosaur.)


- Sirian

[Enigma_Nova]

"How long is long"
Up to three times longer than it takes to generate an Archipelago map of similar size.
This is probably just because you have to discard 2 maps that fall outside paramaters, though.

[Saurus]

Originally posted by smitty1
I have generated a half dozen maps and none of them have had any islands whatsoever. A prominent feature on two-thirds of them seems to be a huge inland lake. I'm not sure if this is normal for pangaeas because I haven't played on many. In terms of only a single continent, all have been true pangaeas.

This inland lake is something that pops up annoyingly often for me as well and frankly,
feature or not, I plainly don't like it as the effect of this is that the continent becomes very, very narrow and isolates players from each other ... the intense diplomatic setting that pangea (at least for me) is all about dimmishes somewhat as you probably end up having nothing to do with the guys on the other side of the continent.

[Sirian]

Originally posted by Saurus

This inland lake is something that pops up annoyingly often for me as well and frankly,
feature or not, I plainly don't like it...

You can play with the Pressed or Natural shoreline options. You won't see this issue there. I don't think you will see it with the Balanced script, either.


- Sirian

[Aro]

Well... For some players, it could be annoying. But for others, it's exactly what they want...
This kind of thing must be optional, in the setup menu. Is it too hard? I know nothing about scripts and stuff.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Arrian
The original poster's map looks more like a Terran map (complete w/solid barb cities in the New World) than anything else.

-Arrian

I was prepared to respond "dude, you hit Terran, not Pangea" before I read further on.

[sabrewolf]

sirian, can i also bring up a map feature request?

but first of all: great work! i find it much more balancing than in civ3, although to certain extents it's not possible to fix something (for example the guy in the middle has to defend more than a player on the "side".

to fix that (which is especially important for "fair", but still random MP maps), i'd love to see the following:
* X- AND Y-axis rolling: this makes EVERYBODY the same much central as outside. of course there is no real change for pangea, but for full-area maps such as highlands & plains, as well as for islandy/archipelago maps it would make a change.
* in the mean time maybe also remove the geographical "realisms" for this. in an MP game it is pretty nasty if you start on a tundraic or deserty area. by either removing the extremes or spreading equally, there is no major advantage/disadvantage for anybody.
of course both things should be only an option, either combineable or seperate.

is there any possibilty that you'll consider this and maybe even add it or are your programming resources fully allocated to other areas?

[Sirian]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
is there any possibilty that you'll consider this and maybe even add it or are your programming resources fully allocated to other areas?

I'm a contractor, so it's up to Firaxis to agree to pay for X or Y activities. 20 scripts was a lot more than they planned for, so they happy with with where things stand in that area and aren't feeling any pinch on needing to produce a bunch more scripts. (I wouldn't look for any new scripts from me for a while, at least. Maybe things will shift at some point.)

to fix that (which is especially important for "fair", but still random MP maps), i'd love to see the following

To be perfectly blunt, Highlands is an SP map first. That was its purpose!

Lakes, Inland Sea and Team Battleground are the "fair" maps for land-heavy gaming. You can do Highlands, of course, and have a great time, but some more disparity between start locations is part of the design. (You can overcome that in Team play, I think.)

A version of Highlands with balanced climates would have been good, but believe it or not, Soren didn't want me to go "too far" with map options, to where the number of options would confuse or intimidate many users. So I had to set some priorities and pick my battles carefully.

There are several scripts that will produce relatively fair starts for MP. MP was not neglected, but neither was SP, as several scripts gave their priority attention to SP gaming.


- Sirian

[sabrewolf]

ok, highlands was just an example for the type i meant (land heavy). whatever i wished for should apply for lakes and similar. the double axis wrapping just makes nobody safe from any direction


another balancing thing for instance would be if the archipelago islands would either ALL be a least one ocean tile apart (to prevent early contact) or ALL be coastally connected. in a test PBEM i did with myself, one of my players was locked on an archipelago connected to another one, while the other player had contact with 3 AIs. needless to say, the tech race was won by the group of 4


pity that firaxis hasn't got you for more than just the initial maps. sure, 20 types with countless variances is a lot! but more stuff (such as from this thread's OP) always comes up

thanks anyhow for all. a job well done!
(only criticism: stop placing me next to tokugawa, genghis and montezuma )