Something's very wrong with Civ placement

[Yaga]

There seems to be a general civ-start placement issue since vanilla, but perhaps worse now with Warlords. Playing large/fractal/16-18 civs I typically see four or five civs placed relatively close together (within 10 squares of one another), and then the remainder (however many that may be) are scattered hither and yon. Usually the concentration is in the center of the largest continent, with the distrobution spiraling outward.

The overall pattern makes me wonder how, once it has made the map, the program determines where to place the civs. Does it place the first one then find a place for the second, continuing until all the civs have been placed? Or does it find N starting places and then assign the civs randomly to those places? Is the placement algorithm map specific, or just a method established within the exe?

I know there is a fair bit of logic to it -- Civs with fishing as a starting tech, for example, are more likely to begin on the coast -- but other times it seems completely arbitrary. I've seen map gens where one two continents, roughly the same size, one will have twice as many civs starting on it as the other.

Perhaps on a tangential topic, I would also like to see future release have some sort of drop-down menu (like with recources) governing starting placement behavior -- ie, "normal", a "balanced" where everyone's first settler starts next to fresh water, "costal" where everyone begins, well, on the coast, or "inland" etc.,

[Adagio]

Originally posted by I_pity_the_fool
I've tried to catch civs that I know start with a scout without any garrison in their capital cities. Just as I move into take their capital city, a warrior appears.

If I didn't know better, I'd think one was provided for the AI in blatant contravention of the rules!

I have seen this too, but half the times I try to attack them I succeed

[Willem]

Damn, I forgot to attach the images.

[Willem]

Let's try that again. Here's a couple of screenshots showing that somethings screwed up. The second one is on a map that's 39 X 27, with 10% less Desert, 15% less Jungle, and Tundra and Ice both pushed north/south one latitude degree. There should be absolutely no excuse for two civs starting 2 squares away from each other. I sure hope they fix this in a patch, because I'm not sure if my computer can handle a much larger map. I just keep adding a grid block to the numbers each time hoping I won't encounter this problem anymore.

[Willem]

Screenshot two:

[Proteus_MST]

Re: I always play huge/noble/marathon, and I

Originally posted by Jaybe

I always play huge/noble/marathon. I have NEVER seen another civ start nearly so close.
...

Same for me.
I generally play huge/noble/marathon, too, and have my nearest neighbors always no leas than 10-20 tiles away.
Even in my current game where 7 of the 10 AI civilizations are on the same continent as myself the capital of my nearest neighbor, Saladin is located around 10-15 tiles away from my own capital.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Yaga
There seems to be a general civ-start placement issue since vanilla, but perhaps worse now with Warlords. Playing large/fractal/16-18 civs I typically see four or five civs placed relatively close together (within 10 squares of one another), ...

Well, since it is only a LARGE (not Huge) map and you have such a large number of civs, I wonder, WHY would they be so close?

[Yaga]

"Well, since it is only a LARGE (not Huge) map and you have such a large number of civs, I wonder, WHY would they be so close?"

Oh, I'm very well aware that I over-populate the map -- what I find troublesome however is that, invariably, there will be a cluster of Civs all close together and then a few others in far-flung parts of the globe. That sort of behavior is a little unbalancing, imosho.

[Fosse]

Here's mine... Terra, 10 civs, Large map. I expected it to be crowded, but I was a bit surprised. I met Victoria in turn 2! This is one of the neatest maps I've seen in long time, and has terrain a bit more interesting than most Terras I've seen.

[rah]

We played a three man mp game this weekend using a standard size HIGHLAND map figuring it would be thousands of years before we'd even meet.

MD started in the upper left hand corner with mountains to the east so there was a only a one square wide path south for him to move, which wouldn't have been so bad except that my settler started 3 squares south of him, so we could see each others settlers on the opening screen. When he created his city, my warrior actually got moved. Needless to say, we restarted.

I've never seen another players settler on the opening, and it wasn't like it was a small crowded map.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Fosse
Here's mine... Terra, 10 civs, Large map. I expected it to be crowded, but I was a bit surprised. I met Victoria in turn 2! This is one of the neatest maps I've seen in long time, and has terrain a bit more interesting than most Terras I've seen.

If you count the actual land squares, you were actually 5 squares apart. Even still, on a Large map that shouldn't happen. In GlobalDefines.xml, the base minimum distance is 10, with 12% per map size. So those two civs should have started about 14 sqaures from each other.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Yaga

Oh, I'm very well aware that I over-populate the map -- what I find troublesome however is that, invariably, there will be a cluster of Civs all close together and then a few others in far-flung parts of the globe. That sort of behavior is a little unbalancing, imosho.

It's to be expected if you have that many civs in the game. Each civ gets placed according to the minimum distance formula, more or less, one at a time. The first several civs will be placed properly, more or less. But after a certain number, there's no more room to put them on the map, so the rest will end up being lumped together.

[Fosse]

Yikes! I wrote "large," but I meant "Standard."

The picture above is from a standard Terra, 10 civs. And I think, is not so unusual given the number of civs I chose.

Sorry for the confusion.

[Tattila the Hun]

Good spot he has, mind you.

[Willem]

So what size map was that, and how many civs?