Oversized Map Game

[ETB]

I started a SAP game on a 125x250 tile, random map with 20 players a few weeks ago and I have been having a lot fun with it. I am currently up to the mid-21st century and I have only eliminated 1 player so far (the Russians). Here are some of the adjustments (technically, I created my own mod of the SAP – ModSwapper is such a useful tool ) I have made to the SAP try and keep the game in balance for me:

1) I doubled the pollution settings in APOL_pollution.txt. I did this because I thought global pollution would otherwise accumulate artificially fast on an oversized map. Unfortunately, the game somehow managed to turn pollution off when I started and I didn’t notice until I was well into the game. I didn’t want to start over because I was already having too much fun! I would like to hear from anyone who has a better understanding of what to do (or not do) with the values in APOL_pollution.txt. For now, I assume that they should hold a direct relationship to the number of tiles on the map (map size).

2) Naturally, I changed the values for the “Gigantic” map size in APOL_const.txt and map.txt to 125x250. I wondered what effect, if any, the change in map.txt has. I don’t think that I HAVE to change this value in order to make it work because I started a test game with changes only in APOL_const.txt but not map.txt and it appeared to work.

3) I lowered the science “tax” rate for the “Impossible” level in APOL_DiffDB.txt. I can understand making science more expensive at the hardest level, but I have more fun when I can get something like fighter planes in the 20th century instead of the 24th century! The AI always seemed to have a tougher time with the science tax anyway. Also, I substantially reduced the “MAXBEHIND” discount values (some people call these cheats) for the AI for science, production and gold. I think this has given me a much more exciting and challenging game than I have seen before because the AIs get discounts even when I am behind and these discounts increase on a linear scale as I catch up to them. Thus, the AI has been able to produce more units as I would catch up throughout the game, which prevents me from simply building a lot of tanks and running right through all of the AI’s cities. Instead, I find myself forced to plan and strategize more. Plus I have to build more than just tanks!

4) My map settings (from userprofile.txt) are: WetDry=5, WarmCold=4, OceanLand=6, IslandContinent=8, HomoDiverse=8, and GoodCount=5. This gave me two very large continents with a small Antarctic continent on the bottom. There is essentially a very wide strait (or a narrow sea) that separates the three continents.

5) I set 8 AIs on “my” continent and 8 on the other large continent. I placed the French in Antarctica. The Germans, Turks, and Mongols have all successfully crossed to “my” continent and established or taken several cities – I was impressed with that! I manually placed two cities (no settlers) for each AI at the start to give them all enough room to grow at first. I have now noticed that all of these cities that I placed have 0 population! The AIs were able to grow, but they apparently had to build settlers before they could go ahead and build “real” cities (sometimes in unusual places). I can’t figure out why the initial cities never grew. I think I’ll just stick to starting them with settlers, but next time they will get three.

6) I doubled the number of cities threshold for each government in govern.txt. The Zulus seemed to take advantage of this in the early part of my game. They spread out very rapidly taking most of the Russian and Egyptian cities – plus a few of mine! The battles often would end up with just one or two units left for the victor – it kept me interested watching the battle scenes as the units die off and wondering just who would be left standing at the end.

This game seems to be balanced for my current level of play. I thought that I was getting the upper hand in the 20th century, but after I got Globesat I realized that the AIs are fielding a lot more troops than I anticipated! I am pretty much holding my own in the mid 21st century. The game is challenging enough that I have lost many cities , but I didn’t lose all of them. I like getting through more of the science tree, but not leaving the AI behind in science while doing it. I think that decreasing the maxbehind values in APOL_diffdb.txt is a key factor – I am considering deeper discounts (and less land mass) for my next game. Any thoughts from the community on any of my adjustments are certainly welcome!

[J Bytheway]

Just curious as to your processor/memory - people (like me) with low spec machines usually have big problems with oversized maps.

[hexagonian]

1. You can turn on pollution through the editor, if you want to get it back in the game. Pollution affects happiness, so it makes for more of a challenge. The only downside is once you use the editor during the game, the computer will not keep your score, since it registers it as a cheat. But in your situation, that's not really the case...

2. I think you have to make the changes to both files.

5. When placing cities through the editor, bump up the population of the city and then drop it down to 1. This will fix this problem in the future.

Glad you are enjoying it.

[ETB]

My machine specs are 600 MHz Duron (AMD’s counterpart to the Celeron) processor, 256 MB RAM, 32 MB video RAM. It’s currently taking about 2-3 minutes to run through the 18 remaining AIs, but that’s with the “Show Enemy Movement” option set to off. It takes about 30 minutes if I watch the enemy movements (due to Globesat coverage of the entire map). Even 2-3 minutes is a little too slow for my taste but then I can’t stop either!

I will probably drop to about 16 players and keep the same map size for my next try. That should save a little time during the AI’s turn and help reduce the player congestion if I go with more ocean and less land.

[ETB]

Originally posted by hexagonian
1. You can turn on pollution through the editor, if you want to get it back in the game. Pollution affects happiness, so it makes for more of a challenge. The only downside is once you use the editor during the game, the computer will not keep your score, since it registers it as a cheat. But in your situation, that's not really the case...

Yes, I didn’t think of it earlier but I could have turned pollution back on. It simplifies the game not having it on and I have been enjoying the game with it off, but I probably won’t want to play another game without pollution. I think the AI has more trouble than I do dealing with pollution though.

Originally posted by hexagonian
2. I think you have to make the changes to both files.

That’s what I have always done in the past. But I did (accidentally) start a game after I had changed only const.txt (and not map.txt) and it appeared to give me the oversized map! I was still making adjustments game files so I didn’t try to play it. But I was surprised that it even started my game because I thought both files had to match or it would error (or something). I guess it doesn’t really matter – I’ll keep both files set to the oversized map setting.

Originally posted by hexagonian
5. When placing cities through the editor, bump up the population of the city and then drop it down to 1. This will fix this problem in the future.

Thanks hexagonian! That makes sense!!! But I doubt that I’ll be placing starting cities in future games. I had to open the map to place the cities, which spoils the fun of exploring the map. I had intended to give the AI better starting city placements than it normally does on its own but I don’t think that makes much difference during gameplay. It is strange to come across a city with no population though.

Originally posted by hexagonian
Glad you are enjoying it.

Yes, it’s driving my wife nuts! She’ll ask me “are you still playing that…?” Of course I just want one more turn…

[Locutus]

1) Everytime you open the scenarios, the pollution is turned off. Quite annoying, but something you may want to remember for next time...

BTW, pollution does not depend directly on the number of tiles on the map. It does indirectly though: disaster occurs when X pollution points have been collected (X is specified in pollution.txt) and pollution points are created by cities. So with many players on a large map disaster will strike early, while with only a handful of players (and relatively low city limits) on a much larger map pollution would strike much later. So it directly depends on the total number of cities on the map, meaning that it'll take some balancing to find the right values for pollution.txt if you're messing with mapsizes and player numbers.

2) Map.txt controls the properties of the terrain: number and size of continents, number and size of mountains, etc, it doesn't control map size (the MAP_SIZE 48 96 is basically just a name - an unusual name (with spaces and all) but a name).

3) I like the lowered MAX_BEHIND settings, good idea

Sounds like a fun game, keep us posted!

[hexagonian]

Post your settings for the MAX_BEHIND adjustments you made - I'd like to make a comparison to what I got...

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by ETB
That?s what I have always done in the past. But I did (accidentally) start a game after I had changed only const.txt (and not map.txt) and it appeared to give me the oversized map! I was still making adjustments game files so I didn?t try to play it. But I was surprised that it even started my game because I thought both files had to match or it would error (or something). I guess it doesn?t really matter ? I?ll keep both files set to the oversized map setting.

You could increase the map size more and then you see the problems. I used map settings that caused a 16 times bigger map (actual it wasn't playable at least on my old K6 233Mhz with 27 opponents, the second turn took half an hour just for the AIs). If you used just few lands in the settings an unmodified map.txt will give you some huge continents and tousands of tiny one/two tile islands, that isn't a good map. The map.txt for the ultra gigantic map setrups is a modified one but unfortunatly for certain settings for land/water island/continent and so on it will produce a map without hills. Unfortunatly I wasn't able to understand this map.txt.

Originally posted by Locutus
1) Everytime you open the scenarios, the pollution is turned off. Quite annoying, but something you may want to remember for next time...

And in the end I enabled the write protection of my userprofile.txt to avoid starting by accident a game without pollution.

-Martin

[ETB]

Originally posted by Locutus
1) Everytime you open the scenarios, the pollution is turned off. Quite annoying, but something you may want to remember for next time...

I’ll keep that in mind. The next time I may still want to choose my opponents, which will require using the editor at the start of the game. All multiplayer games can only handle up to 8 opponents, so I can’t use those methods to pick my opponents. But I may just use the opponents that the computer selects – if I don’t like them then I’ll restart a game to get a new set of opponents. I think I selected a few too many warlike/aggressive opponents in my current game!

Originally posted by Locutus
BTW, pollution does not depend directly on the number of tiles on the map. It does indirectly though: disaster occurs when X pollution points have been collected (X is specified in pollution.txt) and pollution points are created by cities. So with many players on a large map disaster will strike early, while with only a handful of players (and relatively low city limits) on a much larger map pollution would strike much later. So it directly depends on the total number of cities on the map, meaning that it'll take some balancing to find the right values for pollution.txt if you're messing with mapsizes and player numbers.

That’s a real good point Locutus. I simply assumed that I would have too many cities for the values in pollution.txt. My next game will probably have about as much ocean as land and fewer players. I may simply use the values in APOL_pollution.txt and see what happens. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to deal with a natural disaster in my games. I miss all the players telling me to reduce my pollution when a disaster is about to strike, and most of them are generating more pollution than I Of course, lossing my cities to a disaster isn’t much fun

Originally posted by Locutus
2) Map.txt controls the properties of the terrain: number and size of continents, number and size of mountains, etc, it doesn't control map size (the MAP_SIZE 48 96 is basically just a name - an unusual name (with spaces and all) but a name).

Thanks – that makes sense to me! And it explains how I could start a game without changing it because it's just a name. A rose is a rose.…..

Originally posted by Locutus
3) I like the lowered MAX_BEHIND settings, good idea

Here’s the four changes I made in my ETB_DiffDB.txt file:

AI_MAX_BEHIND_PERCENT 1.0 # 0.8 ETB 07-21-02
AI_MAX_BEHIND_TECHNOLOGY_COST 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 # ETB 07-21-02
AI_MAX_BEHIND_PRODUCTION_COST_ADJUSTMENT 0.2 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 # ETB 07-21-02
AI_MAX_BEHIND_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 1.5 1.5 2.0 3.0 4.0 # ETB 07-21-02

The first change kicks in the full max_behind values whenever a computer player is at or behind me in a game (instead of waiting until the AI is 20 percent behind me). The technology and production discounts are now simply the same throughout the whole game. I spend most of the game behind them, but they get increasing discounts until I catch up to them. I am considering a setting of 0.1 for my next game. I may try setting the gold numbers all to 10 for my next game as well.

[ETB]

Here’s a summary of the game so far.

I spent the first part of the game just trying to survive. I was able to establish 7 cities and space them about 8-10 tiles apart. I tried to be nice to everyone that I met, but the Zulus, Russians, Canadians, and Thai declared war on me rather quickly! Unfortunately, every city was vulnerable to attack, so I had 12 units garrisoned in each city with an extra garrison stationed adjacent to the cities. My western cities (Kaupang and Aarhus) fell to the Zulus and Russians, but it cost them most of their attack force and I retook them. The Canadians took Odense to the South but I was able to immediately retake it because the Canadians literally fought to the last man! The eastern cities were able to defend the relatively weak Thai attacks and I negotiated a peace with the Thai as they were losing their war against the Canadians. Meanwhile, I met the Egyptians (weak), the Aztecs (strong because they were whomping the Egyptians), the Australians (stronger still), and the Dutch (strongest, but on the south end of the continent).

The Aussies easily took Aarhus, but I was able to retake it when they vacated the city. The Dutch helped by eliminating the Aussie forces. Then the Dutch agreed to leave my territory, but those devious Dutch took Aarhus in the very next turn! The Zulus retook Kaupang and Odense so I retreated to my four remaining cities to rebuild my devastated armies. At this point, the Zulus were winning and the Dutch had the strongest military. I finally discovered cannons build enough troops to recapture my three cities and I was finally able to hold them against the attacking forces. The Aztecs had declared war on me by this time as well. Fortunately, they were also fighting amongst them selves so I had time to discover jet propulsion and tanks in the mid 20th Century. I built bombers and tanks as fast as I could because I wanted to finally go on the offensive against those Zulus! I sent out a stack of tanks only to be met by 5 stacks of Zulu tanks, machine gunners and more! After much bombardment and fighting I had to retreat and rethink my attack strategy. I used spies for recon, isolated some stacks of Zulus, bombed the stacks and moved in with tanks. But the Canadians and Aztecs were threatening Aarhus and Odense so I retreated to defend my cities and rebuild.

The last half of the 20th Century and most of the 21st were the scenes of great battles. I had to judiciously use my air and ground forces in close coordination against vastly superior forces. I eliminated the Russians, Egyptians and Chinese, while the Aztecs, Canadians, Australians, and Zulus are down to their last few cities. I have conquered about 75 percent of the main continent and I have a foothold in the German portion of the second continent. I still want to win via science and I have only fought with those who attacked me first. The AIs have been more aggressive than I planned on.

The players on the second continent appear to be quite a bit further behind in science than those of use on the main continent. The Germans tried to retake Leipzig after I had a chance to get three leviathans fortified in it. They sent in 6 stacks of units, about half of which were infantry and below. The rest were machine gunners, a few tanks and interceptors. It was fascinating to watch a series of battle screens listing to all those archers, hoplites, catapults, etc, futily battling the leviathans. One of the leviathan’s strength got down to red but the other two stayed green. My kill ratio must be extremely high on the German front!

I am not at war with anyone else on the second continent. I hope to finally make some friends – these AIs have been sooo aggressive!