This is NOT Pangaea

[Solver]

Yes, xxFlukexx definitely drew one of the unluckiest possibilities anyway, regardless of how common the bug is - the second continent on his screenshot is nearly as big as the main one.

[Enigma_Nova]

I have not thus far been able to generate a pangaea map where at least one civ wasn't on the main landmass.

[xxFlukexx]

Yeah I think I hit Solid Shoreline, not pressed. I sometimes get confused because pressed and solid, isn't that kinda like the same thing and there's no ingame or manual help on what they do.

As for extremely unlucky, yes that's me, right here. I don't think its rare to get another island, but one that big is really rare.

I was under the impression that Pangaea was just one landmass and should not have any extra islands(been paying lots of Rise of Nations so I forget about weird Civ3 maps) Oh well, guess I won't play Solid Pangaea anymore. I guess I could go pressed or natural, but those 1 tile islands and those jagged shapes on the ends sometimes screw over an entire AI and I don't like that.

I think I'll play balanced maps now as they seem to be one big squarish continent that I like. Balanced normal is usually a little bit too big and gives too much advantage to the super expanding AI so I guess I'll have to lower the map size and/or add in another AI or two to make it fair. But it does pain me a little that I have to use custom game now, I like to play with as many defaults on as possible and with as fair a map as possible(I don't think continents is fair or very fun)

Haha, and I think I'll chance my name to "Insignificant Error" that sounds funny to me

[Sirian]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
Take that. 6th map I generated.
Pangaea / Standard / Noble / Solid / Temperate / Medium sea

I wouldn't rate that one as a problem, although it's getting close. Looks like about 20% of the land. It's a continent big enough for one civ, but... not broken in the way the original poster's anomaly is.

On the other hand, in my testing, I never saw anything unattached to the main landmass that was big enough to support a civ.

Since the incident rate is definitely fairly low, I can fix it by having it throw out results where less than X% of the land plots are included in the largest land mass. (That was tried with the Civ3 pangaeas but didn't work because the failure rate was too high, and-- well, it gets more complicated trying to explain the whole thing.)


If I were to add error control, what sort of percentage would you guys like to see? That is, if secondary landmasses contain more than X% of the land, reroll the map. What should I use for X? 10% 15? 8? 5? Or should it scale to number of civs in the game (smaller X if more civs)?


- Sirian

[Arrian]

Given the name of the script (Pangea, which = one giant landmass), I'd say one would want to reroll if secondary landmasses add up to more than 10% of the total. Then again, I play continents maps, so what do I know?

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

-Arrian

[pauli]

10% seems like a good upper limit. personally, i don't really think of a map as a 'proper' civ pangaea unless there's one (and only one) small, but not completely insignificant, island, very close to the main landmass. just enough have the potential for an amphibious invasion, but without really affecting the strategic balance.

[Enigma_Nova]

I'd say have two ceilings, and allow the player to select between them.
First setting: If there's more than 15% of the land off the main landmass, reroll.
Second setting: If any land is off the main landmass, reroll.
Give us an option for true pangaea!

[star mouse]

Originally posted by Sirian
If I were to add error control, what sort of percentage would you guys like to see? That is, if secondary landmasses contain more than X% of the land, reroll the map. What should I use for X? 10% 15? 8? 5? Or should it scale to number of civs in the game (smaller X if more civs)?

- Sirian

I think a good figure to use here would be MAX(1/(N+5), 5%) where N = the number of civs in the game. If a civ explored the island first and got it to themselves, they would not have a big advantage.

2 civs: 1/7 14.3%
3 civs: 1/8 12.5%
4 civs: 1/9 11.1%
5 civs: 1/10 10.0%
6 civs: 1/11 9.1%
7 civs: 1/12 8.3%
8 civs: 1/13 7.7%
9 civs: 1/14 7.1%
10 civs: 1/15 6.7%
11 civs: 1/16 6.3%
12 civs: 1/17 5.9%
13 civs: 1/18 5.6%
14 civs: 1/19 5.3%
15 or more civs: 1/20 5.0%

There is one other check that is needed. If a civ does not start on the mainland, regenerate the map.

[star mouse]

Here's a link that presents a counterargument:

Earth map 250 million years from now.

http://www.scotese.com/future2.htm

[LDiCesare]

I can quite easily alter my own tectonics script to create pangaeas for sure (I'd just use one sea plate, and seed it so it surrounds the map). If someone's interested, I can spend some time on it.

[Enigma_Nova]

Uhh ... can you be sure your Sea Plate doesn't have any holes big enough to fit an island?

[LDiCesare]

If I use a single sea plate, there can't be any island: There aren't holes in plates. If I use two sea plates, they can collide and cause some islands. The only way to get islands with only one sea plate would be a weird behaviour with subduction but I don't think it's possible.

[Sirian]

Soren said that if I want to fix it, they'll include the fix. So here we go.

I've added the error catching at 10%. I've run it through about a dozen tests, no crashes, no anomalies. If some of you would be so kind as to grab the attached "beta" version, with the fix, and run it through the grinder to make sure it won't crash and works as advertised, then I'll send it on to Soren and it will be in the next patch.

What you need to do:
1. Download the fixed map script.
2. Put it in your /PublicMaps/ folder under your root Civ4 folder.
3. Run games on the beta script using Solid or Random shorelines.
4. You can play the games, or you can use Alt-W to open the worldbuilder for a quick scan of the lands.
5. If you crash or find any anomalies in excess of 10% of the land not attached to the pangaea (during Solid shoreline games only, of course -- the tolerance level is 20% for the other types, which commonly have some small islands offshore) then report that here.
6. When you have reached a conclusion about this fix, please post your overall impression. Thanks.


- Sirian

[xxFlukexx]

Cool, will do.

Had fun on my first balanced map with lots of AIs. So what's exacly the difference between say solid Pangaea and Balanced. I know Balanced is a bit bigger and seems to have lots of good terrain everywhere, but what exactly is Balanced?

[Bill3000]

The Balanced map guarentees there to be all stragetic resources for all players within a certain distance of their starting location. It's meant to be for multiplayer games.