Additional planetary climate settings

:) Smiley · August 6, 2003, 16:07

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 · August 6, 2003, 16:12

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 · August 6, 2003, 16:20

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 land

cean ratio.

:) Smiley · August 6, 2003, 16:31

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 · August 6, 2003, 22:47

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 · August 6, 2003, 23:08

This should be amusing.

techumseh · August 6, 2003, 23:44

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

ravagon · August 7, 2003, 01:38

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 · August 7, 2003, 18:27

First of all, a big

for your work...

Quote:

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 · August 9, 2003, 01:42

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

DarthVeda · August 9, 2003, 02:03

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

:) Smiley · August 9, 2003, 09:58

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

yaroslav · August 9, 2003, 16:26

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

Anyway, a big

again

N35t0r · August 13, 2003, 13:46

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 · August 13, 2003, 15:10

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

N35t0r · August 15, 2003, 15:34

i'll download it as soon as i get home

thanks!

N35t0r · August 15, 2003, 23:34

hmm... i managed to work around the problem by using the map editor to create the map (i have the editor, plus essential files, in a separate folder just for maps) and reverted to the old game.txt for \civ2mge and it worked... i'll try with the new one though....

curtsibling · August 17, 2003, 08:34

Smiley, an excellent find!

twoflower · August 19, 2003, 11:45

watch out for Shai-Halud on the arid fireball setting

:) Smiley · August 19, 2003, 12:33

That would make a cool barbarian unit like the aliens in Alpha Centauri. Frankly it's much, much cooler than what AC has.

twoflower · August 21, 2003, 14:46

to be serious this allows for many new strategic possibilities some of these are

1 an all kand campaign
2 an all naval campaign

it changes your tech focus for example on an arid/fireball/hugeland/pangea/3 billion years old map you don't exactly worry about naval tech as much and the great wall becomes *VERY* important

Straybow · September 4, 2003, 02:16

Lots of small maps have one large continent with only a few outliers, and often limited water access to the primary ocean. Still, most experienced players never bother to build GW against the AI. In the MP forum I recall they don't emphasize GW much at all, and they play 49x79 single continent maps all the time.

But, yes, the megacontinent large map would make an interesting change, as would a waterworld.

Straybow · September 4, 2003, 02:29

CivMapGen mentions the 64 (or actually, 63) continent limit. I wonder if anyone has looked into the code to alleviate the problem? It has occured to me that since Civ2 assigns the 63 designation to every body of water smaller than a certain size (12 tiles, IIRC) may the same code could be haXXored in the continent number algorithm by some l33t d()()d with the sk1|_|_z.