Map: Dom3Minions RandomMaps (again)

[Gandalf Parker]

Thanks for the feedback.

I have some of those in mind also.
But I needed to get this in the works first. Its a "base" arrangment for processing and making it available so that the ones that take abit more experimentation to get working will not need work in the presenting part.

Maybe I should start a poll on which people would want next.
A) wraparound
B) recolored temperature zones
C) SemiRand
D) blank templates (borders on a two color map for only see and land)
E) fully annotated (the .map file has comments for terrains, counts for terrains and start positions, designations for islands and lakes)
F) compressed (smaller files for the larger maps)
G) Sepia (old parchment looking maps)

hmmm there are more but I dont remember them all. Maybe I will edit it later and add some

[whiplashomega]

Of those listed I would think the wraparound would be most useful, as wraparound maps always add an extra dimension of difficulty, as well as making a map seem larger than it is, and I'm always a fan of epic scenarios.

[Gandalf Parker]

Water nations and game maps are a big pain to try and get right. As a person who makes and selects maps continually Im up against this all the time. The games logic does actually try to consider the following:
A) Nations should not be too close to each other.
B) Nations should not start out with too few neighbor provinces.
C) Land nations should not have water neighbor provinces.
D) Water nations should not have land neighbor provinces.
E) Many nations have special terrain or theme requirements (water, land, mountains, swamp, wasteland, coastal).
F) No land nation should be placed in the center of a large area of one particular terrain so that it doesnt have quick access to multiple terrain benefits in the capital.
G) And absolutely DO NOT take too much time trying to achieve A thru F

It might seem as though you have never seen that happen. And unless you play on large maps thats understandable. Some maps make it hard, some make it impossible. A map with enough provinces to allow the game to get completely thru its choice selection process without it giving up tends to be a map too large for most peoples idea of a good game. There is definitely an advantage to maps where a human has done some work on setting provinces as start, no-start, or spec-start.

And how much water is enough? If I want 10 players at 10 provs each before mandatory war, then 100 prov map MIGHT be able to place everyone well. But what if 3 water nations join? 30 water? If there is one small ocean then the D rules pushes them to the middle and too close to each other. And what if only 1 water nation joins? 1 nation with 30 provs to the land nations 10? Cries of unfair!

My favorite maps, which rarely cause me problems, are like these.
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMap...rs/keepers.htm
But few people want to play games that big. Maybe some of these..
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/Keepers/index.htm
but again the smaller you get, or smaller provs-to-player ratio, the less likely that everyone will be happy with the games placement of capitals unless someone hand-massages the map.

Interesting point (which I just realized myself):
When playing a solo game, Dom3 has you select the map first then the nations. But in server mode, it waits for the people to select their nations and then has you select the map. Maybe Johan was hinting.

[Gandalf Parker]

Another interesting note for those who are curious. Altho it might not seem that way, the game DOES try to avoid duplicate province names when selecting them for a map. On each province, it tries 25 times to find a non-dupe name before giving up. On a really large map its rather surprising how fast its able to do that. But obviously when the games map limits were increased, the file for prov names was not. This is again another place where the best results involve hand massaging it, or using a 3rd party program to put names on every province.

[Theonlystd]

Dont know if you are still taking opinions

Id love some maps that use RanDom or whatever .


I've never been smart enough to get that to work correctly =o

[Gandalf Parker]

Thats a thought. But those do get old after a while and need to be rerun.
Until then I have two option for you. I daily re-randomize both a SemiRandom and a Chaos map.
The Chaos is called "Poke in the Eye" using the original Eye.map that comes with the game.
And the SemiRandom is called Aran_Dom which uses the original Aran map that came with the game.
Both can be found on my maps page.
http://www.dom3minions.com/maps.htm
The advantage of these is that if playing it gets old because you know where everything is, you can download a new version.

The other option is that I have both SemiRandomized and Chaos games always open on my server.
http://www.dom3minions.com/HostedGames.htm
They can be played solo since both include AIs in the game.
(Chaos maps are not recommended for newbies)

[Theonlystd]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Thats a thought. But those do get old after a while and need to be rerun.
Until then I have two option for you. I daily re-randomize both a SemiRandom and a Chaos map.
The Chaos is called "Poke in the Eye" using the original Eye.map that comes with the game.
And the SemiRandom is called Aran_Dom which uses the original Aran map that came with the game.
Both can be found on my maps page.
http://www.dom3minions.com/maps.htm
The advantage of these is that if playing it gets old because you know where everything is, you can download a new version.

The other option is that I have both SemiRandomized and Chaos games always open on my server.
http://www.dom3minions.com/HostedGames.htm
They can be played solo since both include AIs in the game.
(Chaos maps are not recommended for newbies)

I've actually played those. Tho not alot i prefer 600provincish maps...


And then i have your max size Map around here somewhere where you did that to it. But i've played that few times at this point and well 1500 provinces makes for a pretty long game =p

[Gandalf Parker]

Ive frequently considered creating a SemiRand group of maps for daily generation. In fact it was one of the reasons I started the SemiRand project (major Kudos to Ballbarian for taking it over and finishing it).

But every time I considered it, the province count was too low to be used that often or on maps of a decent size. So each time I ended up posting another request to the SemiRand threads for EVERYONE to design ONE province to add to the files.

Now (checking my present count) with every collection I can find for it my count is up to 390 provinces. Possibly enough so that a 10 or 20 percent scattering would be fairly different each time on fairly large maps. But I wish there was more variety. More cute or thematic "interesting" without being "look what I can make that can kick your SC" provinces.

ALSO since the subject has come up... SemiRand now includes pretender builds for the AI. Design god/magic/scales so that the random selections of the AI doesnt kill it in the first 3 turns before anyone even attacks it. And THAT part of SemiRand is now in need of more variety. We dont even have all the nations covered even once, much less enough variety to make it as useful as it should be.

[Gandalf Parker]

Sometimes I slap myself for finding new things so many years into this game. I get flak sometimes for not knowing things about mods, or balance, or mp, as being one of the beta testers. But I consider those to be areas well covered by other people (better covered by other people). BUT something new and useful in the areas of hosting, or map generating, or the games maximums; that hurts. Those are areas I kinda took onto myself. Especially if it seems simple and obvious.

ANYWAY......
Something we have lacked since Dom2 days when Targa used the old DomMap to make blank templates for people wanting to make maps.
http://www.dom3minions.com/~targa/blanks/20Sep732.jpg

Now I find that setting the generator to 100% water does the same. Eventually I will add this as a section (like maps 30-40) in each map-size run on my site.
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomizedMaps.htm

For now, here are the test shots. 2 solid colors which are easy to fill in, red borders so the game editor can "see" it better, and a white pixel in each province.
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/Blanks/

[Gandalf Parker]

OK first view is up....
The DUELING size maps
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomizedMaps.htm
reflect a new layout that I will gradually get around to doing with all the map sizes.
1-9 is standard Dom3 to give some of the tan and snow maps
10-30 is my favorite color setting (hey its mine, I can do that)
31-40 is an experiment in randomizing colors within a fairly acceptable range
41-50 are blank templates

the 31-40 maps write the ground color and sea color that were randomly selected to the end of the .map file in case you just really like the colors. That way you can change the defaults in your Dom3 to use those when it randomly generates maps for you.