[SPOILERS - NO PLAYERS] The Final Clusterfuck: The PB38 Map and Lurker Thread

[darrelljs]

Why not connect the head and tail of the snake?

Darrell

[Krill]

No land will be connected over a side wrap.

[Krill]

Hmm.

Problem: I can't keep players reasonably far apart (read, 12 tiles) without putting all the land tiles into the main continent.

I don't see a way to fix this.

[RefSteel]

Are you including Peaks in the total number of land tiles on the map? Would it work to widen existing mountainous areas (or even just add more peaks in general, or desert/tundra/ice in appropriate regions) to spread out the mainland while still leaving "real" land tiles to use for the islands? Or would that end up restricting city placement and making the dot-mapping too much of a one-answer puzzle?

[Krill]

It's too much. Distance between players, land tile limit, number of players and the stupid natural looking ideal. Peaks, lakes, they make it unnatural. Coast line? Can't fit it in. Even splitting onto continent ls doesn't work. They can't have everything.

[RefSteel]

Another possibility I like is creating a few inland seas to split the continent laterally, but it sounds like that will create its own headaches, prove insufficient, or both. And ultimately...

They can't have everything.

Exactly true. So what's going to give? Land tiles per player? If the number of possible peaceful cities per player doesn't balloon too much as a result, I feel like changing this one wouldn't hurt. If it would, then natural look? Commodore won't be happy, but he represents only 4% of the game, and as it sounds like he's already decided he won't like what you make anyway, there's no point bending over backward to change his mind. Everybody likes a natural look to some extent, and I love hand-crafting maps like that, but for a map of this size, it would take me a year and still wouldn't meet all their other requirements/requests. I feel like as long as it isn't mirrored or uniform and doesn't have random scattered mixes of jungle and tundra or whatever, the players whom it's possible to please will like it.

[Bacchus]

I would try for an Olympic-rings like arrangement of five clusters of five, with one massive peak range cutting across it, lakes making another boundary, desert another and coast the rest.

1 2 3
4 5

3 can be a peninsula, a peak range can split off 1 and 4 from 2 and 5, desert between 2 and 5, which would also be where 3 connects, and between 1 and 4 you can have a lake/jungle mix.

[Krill]

I've been thinking how to do this, and truth be told, I've also spoken with my fiancée about it.

She is not particularly pleased with the idea of me sitting at a PC and making the map, and I'm not enthralled by the idea either given the amount of work I'm thinking this is going to become, to get it to the level demanded. Nor am I happy to accept a lower caliber of work: I've done that before, don't wish to do it again.

Because of this, I'm going to ignore all of you and go tell the players that due to RL issues I'm unable to make the map. I know which way my bread is buttered.

[Mardoc]

Fair enough.  Honestly, these things are big enough that only someone who enjoys the actual process should do the work.  Especially given the typical gratitude level...

I presume the same reasoning applies to re-signing as a player again?

Go have fun with your fiancee!

the amount of work I'm thinking this is going to become, to get it to the level demanded.

Yeah, that's the reason I declined the nomination preemptively  

I'm still game to throw rocks and sticks offer constructive criticism for anyone else who steps up.  

[Cornflakes]

Let me preface this by saying I know next to nothing about Civ 4 map-making, have never made a Civ 4 map, and am not capable of making a finished map for this game.

I did dive fairly deep into the Civ 6 scripting code though, and landmass-shape matching Krill's diagram above would be fairly easy to code in the Civ 6 scripts. I'm willing to look into Civ 4 scripting further to generate a base-map according to Krill's diagram, or Bacchus's "Olympic Rings" (can you do a MS-Paint sketch? I can't visualized from the description), or any other base sketch. Someone could then use the base map generated to make the necessary balance tweaks.

I opened Civ 4 for the first time in [2 years?], and didn't see a WorldBuilder option on the main menus The extent of my experience with map-making in Civ 4 is creating sandbox games through the in-game CTRL+W. Is this how the "pro" map makers make the maps? By generating a map with a script, loading it into a game, and then making all the edits through CTRL+W? Is there a 3rd-party map editing program?

I took a brief look at the Civ 4 map scripts that shipped with the game, and at least at the most basic level it looks like the theory is the same as Civ 6 (i.e. land vs water designation first, then hills/peaks, then terrain, then features). Upon brief testing I couldn't get Civ 4 to recognize any changes that I made to any of the map scripts that shipped in the box. I went so far as to delete random chunks of the map scripts hoping to at least get an error or crash, but to no avail  I tried copy-and-pasting scripts (without making any changes) but the pasted script would not work. I did paste Torusland.py into the PublicMaps folder and was able to start a game, so at least that much was working ...  but if I changed the name of Torusland.py to something else (ToruslandASDF.py) it wouldn't work. Is something inside the map script referencing the file name? I'm stumped.

Is there a "Civ 4 map-making for dummies" or "scripting for dummies" somewhere on the web? Has anyone else had this same experience with the map scripts?