top wish: better landmass generation

[metalhead]

Originally posted by star mouse


Aww ... where's the challenge of a 5 billion year old map where all the terrain is good city sites?

If you want a *real* challenge, try 3 billion, arid, cold. You'll get all the size-2 tundra cities, and the size-2 desert cities that don't grow until steam power. Finding uses for small cities is one of the greater challenges of CIV3, but you never learn these challenges if all your cities are size 25 and surrounded by grassland.

I beg to differ. The AI has a better chance of competing on good terrain. If you place the AI on bad starting terrain, they're never going to catch up - they just aren't equipped to handle it. The strategic superiority that a human has (or should have) over a computer player becomes more pronounced the worse conditions both sides are forced to endure. The AI seems to be best equipped to handle a world made entirely of shielded grasslands, with rivers everywhere. It is my experience that, the more the given terrain differs from this "ideal, " the more the AI gameplay suffers. A human can overcome a bad start, even while the AI enjoys an excellent start, and on Deity level at that.

[brianshapiro]

civ3 maps are usually large clumps or separated clumps with no interesting unique features. in the shape of continents this is what im pointing out its mostly boring.

but even at a deeper level take a civ3 map generated and put it next to a map of the earth and see how different it is , the civ3 generation system could never generate something to look like it could have been earth.

i was recently playing around with simearth and its a bit better , because many of the land formations are based on models of plate techtonics , craters, etc, but its still not too realistic

[georges bonbon]

Originally posted by ADG


Are you afraid of a little challenge..?

I always play random map, that way I have no clue what the map looks like... I like suprises

What are your statistics of ending (not winning) the game with a starting position in jungle?

[Adagio]

Unfortunaly I haven't had such a starting position yet, but the game is not about winning/losing... it's about having fun... and I have most fun, when being suprised...

[Be Quicker]

Originally posted by Vlad Antlerkov
IMHO, the Civ3 map generator works far better than Civ2's.

One oddity though: generating an archipelago with 60% water usually results in a big (but thin) landmass. Ah well.

Agree.

And also the Pangea setting results too often in a non pangean map. I once started games at large, 60% water, pangea, untill it really was a pangea (checking by retiring) and it took me 10 tries till the map was pangea (i.e. no continent like islands). Then again this kind of sloppiness is very charecteristic of CivIII.

[Alex]

Originally posted by metalhead


The AI has a better chance of competing on good terrain. If you place the AI on bad starting terrain, they're never going to catch up - they just aren't equipped to handle it.

You certainly have a point here. Bad starting positions may be a challenge for us, but are utterly disastrous for the AI.