How to generate a more realistic starting world?

[Ray K]

First-time caller, long-time listener.

I want to start making some mods for a change that I have thought was needed since the original Civ. Basically, I want the starting world of Civ to be more like the real world of 5000 BC: fully populated.

In other words, I'd like the starting map to be filled with "size 1" cities, each with 1 warrior unit, in every habitable landmass. Like the real world, each starting civ would have carve out its territory by conquering its neighbors.

I know that CTP has some programming capabilities for designers, and I'm hoping that the experts here can give me some tips on where the appropriate modifications should be made.

I've never been comfortable with the "expansion" phase of Civ, as it has always seemed to "SimCity-ish" and too far from historical reality.

I appreciate your inputs.

[Ray K]

I've thought about making the other civs barbarian if that would make more sense, but it seems that the word 'barbarian' is used primarily to denote other civs.

The original Greek form of the word 'barbarian' merely meant 'not Greek'. I think that the concept of barbarians in Civ games has been used as a convenient way around the 8-civ limit in the original games.

With that limit no longer in effect for CTP, I'm not sure that there is a proper need for them anymore. The 'barbarians' are simply the militaristic civilizations that keep invading your border cities.

I think that it would be nice to have an option to start on a fully-populated world, with perhaps three size-1 cities per Civ.


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"Barbarism is the natural state of mankind... Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always triumph."

[John LeMaitre]

I'm not sure how it would be done, but I like the idea. Maybe the barbarian towns (the ones that give you gifts or whatever) could be adapted for such a use. I mean, most early civilizations didn't carve a home out of other civs -- there weren't any! It'd be out of "non-civilized" populations. I wouldn't want to lose the other effects of the barbarian towns...perhaps a simple form of diplomacy could be used with them?

[Nordicus]

RayK:
Hello.
I have been starting my games at -5000 for a long while now. As well, in my earth world map, I have it set so that each of the 30 civs (except me, usually Russia) has its captial already down...otherwise, the AI moves its 1st settler around and the capital is never (or very rarely) where it "should" be.
But I don't know how to do that with a randomly generated map (I try to avoid using these).
I also agree with what you've said about barbarians. Which is why I have changed barbarian AI behavior in Awesome Aips--nothing too extreme, but I just didn't like how stupidly they acted and reacted. But barbarians appear to have a nomadic function--this is incredibly awkward, however, when they take over a city, since one cannot move a city from place to place. So, I agree that the original Civilization's use of barbarians has outgrown its need; I'd like to see them in CTP as a semi-AI type, as something different than just "peaceful" or "warlike" with whom to deal.

At any rate, I might be of more help when Awesome Aips is finished.
Good ideas.

Later.


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"Besides, barbarians weren't stupid; they just wore pants"--me, pitching my idea of improving the barbarian AI

[Ray K]

Nordicus,
thanks for the reply.

I was mucking around through the various .txt and .slc files in the CTP directories, and it looks to me like all of the options affect the gameplay after the map is generated. I'm not sure if there is a hook to programmatically place cities and units for the various AI civs before turn 0 begins.

If anyone knows of any SLIC routines that can get terrain types from map squares and create cities and units, let me know.

Is there any Activision-supplied documentation on SLIC?

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"Barbarism is the natural state of mankind... Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always triumph."

[skorpion59]

If you use pre-made maps or map-based scenarios it is quite easy to do this. You just go in, in creation mode, as each Civ and place however many cities you want.

Getting the program to do this randomly is another story. Short of SLIC, I don't think it can be done.

I have been playing with the various map generation options for a while and there isn't a whole lot than can be done. This is the nature of the code that is used. Currently I have a pretty even distribution of tile types with no hills or mountains at all. I then go in and add 2-3 tile mountain ranges all over. I could never get the game to not make the 20-tile mountain ranges. Also, I replace tundra with other types since I haven't been able to cut tundra out entirely either. This is an on-going process so maybe I can still find the key to it.

Don