Additional planetary climate settings

[:) Smiley]

Recalling how somone once hacked game.txt to get things such as Deity+1 and Deity+2 difficulty levels and an additional barbarian level, I went in and fiddled with the planet climate settings.

Seems like you can make a planet a whole lot warmer or wetter, though not drier or colder.

I now have in addition to the normal Arid, Normal, and Dry, added on Soaked, Downpour, Flooded, Monsoon, and Waterworld.

Temperature added on top of Cool, Normal, Warm: Hot, Sun Baked, Furnace, Nuclear Furnace, and Fireball.

Studies show there does not seem to be any limit to how many additional levels can be made, though difference above +5 isn't noticeable.

Setting it on the Waterworld and Fireball will get you continents covered with Grasslands, yet surprisingly few swamps and jungles. There are no deserts and few plains.

Setting it on Waterworld and Cool will get you a map that is again mostly grassland, with vast forests covering 30% or more of the land. There are no deserts and few plains. Not too many tundras or glaciers either. In fact, fewer than at Arid/Cool.

Arid Fireball will get you about 30% plains, 30% desert, and a good number of hills and a sprinkling of grassland and forest near the poles.

For reference, Arid Cool gets a map with lots of plains and a mix of the other types.


Practical applications:

Arid Fireball certainly makes for a more challenging game.

Increasing wetness increases Grassland, which makes cities build faster and the game go faster. May be good for multiplayer.

[:) Smiley]

Land mass settings also increasable in similar fashion. Looks like the more land you have the greater % of the land is hills or mountains.

[:) Smiley]

Land settings above +10 yields a map with a single, um, ocean, running up and down the map, and a polar sea on one of the poles. Highest tested setting +30. Higher settings seem to get more mountains at expense of other land tiles, and also causes contraction of single ocean.

The number of 1-3 tile lakes increases as the oceans shrivel up, but above land+15 or so, no further increases in landcean ratio.

[:) Smiley]

Using advanced land settings at Archipelago mode tends to produce game crash. OK to use it at Varied mode, but you might as well use Continent as that is what you're gonna get anyway.

While we're on that topic, the Land Type setting can also be upped a few notches. Landtype+3 (3 steps above continent) will yield almost all land on one big continent, save a couple of islands.

Finally, Age can also be increased at least 5 notches, to which point oddities such as jungles surrounded by desert appear.

[:) Smiley]

File to DL now!

Also possible to tamper with Accelerated Startup settings, though even when notched to +4, with game starting at 800AD, neither your civ nor the other civs are any more advanced than the original 2000BC accel start.

Further monkeying around somehow got me a 5000BC accelerated start when I selected normal startup. This was not reproducible. Also was able to add an "other" category to the male/female selection, with the result of the game reading one line over. (so when I'm in despotism, it displays my country as a "kingdom".) Since took it out.

Finally, also added two new levels of competition. 2 and 1 civilizations. 2 gives a one-on-one duel, 1 works but aint much fun, 0 causes a crash, no surprise here.

For those who don't remember the original deity+ levels and barbarians+ levels, those are also included in the file.
You can have up to five notches above Deity, any higher and for some reason you automatically conquer the world at 4000BC.

Barbarians can only go up one more notch before you get a "Divide by 0" game crash due to the way the barbarian factor is calculated. Set it up two notches, and you get a even bigger bonus... and there are never any barbarians except for those that come out of huts. Further notching up of barbarian modifier likely to have similar effect.

[Dr. Nick]

This should be amusing.

[techumseh]

Interesting... Thanks for the research. Keep it up!

[ravagon]

Very interesting indeed. You might want to think about cross-posting some of this in the MP forum too as they tend to use a lot of on-the-fly random maps.

[yaroslav]

Re: File to DL now!

First of all, a big for your work...

Originally posted by Smiley
Further monkeying around somehow got me a 5000BC accelerated start when I selected normal startup. This was not reproducible. Also was able to add an "other" category to the male/female selection, with the result of the game reading one line over. (so when I'm in despotism, it displays my country as a "kingdom".)

I've noticed something similar. When you put a technology over 99 to be researched, the name of the technology could be read from LABELS.TXT. I've tried to add techs to LABELS.TXT, but I've been not able.

Again, a big for your work.

[N35t0r]

wow... i'll definitely give them a try....

[DarthVeda]

Don't make it too dry and hot or these things will show up...

[:) Smiley]

haha, now there's got to be a Dune scenario somewhere.

[yaroslav]

Interesting topic to do a scen about. Dune! Any of you remember those RTS called Dune?

Anyway, a big again

[N35t0r]

i can't seem to save my game when using any of the extraordinary options... i get an error message and the game shuts down...

the regular saves work perfectly, as do scens....

[:) Smiley]

Hmmm... Try this version without the game change settings (terrain changes only).