Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => Modding => Topic started by: EmpathCrawler on July 20, 2020, 12:32:57 AM

Title: Building Pangaeas with the World Builder
Post by: EmpathCrawler on July 20, 2020, 12:32:57 AM

I've been tinkering with the world builder settings to consistently create a Pangaea-style Planet on default land and erosion settings. So far these settings often but not always produce the desired effect. I started from the defaults in Thinker, which differ from the stock alphax, but I noted my changes below:

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#WORLDBUILDER
384, ; Land base        (Seeded land size of a standard world)
140, ; Land modifier    (additional land from LAND selection: x0, x1, x2)               Thinker 120
64,  ; Continent base   (Base size of a land mass seed)                                 Thinker 48
128,  ; Continent modif. (Increased size from LAND selection: x0, x1, x2)               Thinker 24
1,   ; Hills base       (Base # of extra hills)
2,   ; Hills modifier   (additional hills from TIDAL selection: x0, x1, x2)
8,   ; Plateau base     (Basic plateau size)
12,  ; Plateau modifier (Plateau modifier based on LAND selection: x0, x1, x2)
24,  ; Rivers base      (Basic # of rivers)                                             Thinker 12
16,  ; Rivers rain mod. (Additional rivers based on RAIN selection)
14,  ; Solar Energy     (Latitude DIVISOR for temperature based on HEAT) Smaller # increases effect of HEAT selection
14,  ; Thermal band     (Latitude DIVISOR for thermal banding)  Smaller # widens hot bands
8,   ; Thermal deviance (Latitude DIVISOR for thermal deviance) Smaller # increases randomness
8,   ; Global Warming   (Latitude DIVISOR for global warming)   Smaller # increases effect of warming
3,   ; Sea Level Rises  (Magnitude of sea level changes from ice cap melting/freezing)  Thinker 5
5,   ; Cloudmass peaks  (Size of cloud mass trapped by peaks)
3,   ; Cloudmass hills  (Size of cloud mass trapped by hills)
1,   ; Rainfall coeff.  (Multiplier for rainfall belts)
8,   ; Deep water       (Encourages fractal to grow deep water)
10,  ; Shelf            (Encourages fractal to grow shelf)
15,  ; Plains           (Encourages highland plains)
40,  ; Beach            (Encourages wider beaches)
10,  ; Hills            (Encourages hills x TIDAL selection)
10,  ; Peaks            (Encourages peaks)
1,   ; Fungus           (Fungus coefficient based on LIFE selection)
3,6,12,18,24 ; Ratio    (Continent size ratios)
0    ; Islands          (Higher # increases island count)                               Thinker 4


Two changes are unrelated: I increased the amount of rivers because I use 1/2/0 forests and I decreased the sea level rise because Thinker's AI will typically cause severe global warming.


I'm not quite satisfied yet with the results yet. I also don't like "noodle" continents that stretch from pole to pole or create a meandering equatorial land ring with two separate seas, but I still get those. The Freshwater Sea doesn't spawn properly, either, but I think that's a general random map problem.


Fun things I discovered:

"Beach" makes no sense to me as a name or its described effects. Low numbers produce extremely flat (geographically, not tile-wise) land, higher numbers discourage that and seem to elongate continents.


The "Fungus" setting is way too sensitive to be worth changing. On Abundant life, a 2 or above rapidly produces an unlivable Planet. On the lower levels, small increments gets you an Abundant life style Planet, anyway.


The Continent ratios didn't seem to do anything or I didn't understand what they were doing.

Title: Re: Building Pangaeas with the World Builder
Post by: bvanevery on July 20, 2020, 04:28:26 AM

You have probably found out that a lot of these factors do weird or unhelpful things.  I've never been interested in creating a Pangaea.  I can't stand archipelagos though, and I wanted something with big continents like we have on Earth.  After lots of trial and error I only ended up changing 3 settings from stock:

Code: [Select]

30,  ; Continent base   (Base size of a land mass seed)
60,  ; Continent modif. (Increased size from LAND selection: x0, x1, x2)
0 ; Islands          (Higher # increases island count)


Title: Re: Building Pangaeas with the World Builder
Post by: EmpathCrawler on July 20, 2020, 01:19:39 PM

I like pangaeas (or two continents) for sparing the AI from embarrassing naval invasions.

I might have gotten the 0 islands idea from your world builder settings, though it certainly doesn't mean zero islands. I still get what I think of as volcanic peaks over a shallow sea. Nothing a faction will spawn on, though, so that's good enough.

I'd also like to get rid of the river rings around landmarks if I can. It seems like landmarks get placed in the 0-999m band and then the land around them is generated.  That would explain when I see the Freshwater Sea terrain label but no water.

Title: Re: Building Pangaeas with the World Builder
Post by: bvanevery on July 20, 2020, 06:04:10 PM

0 islands almost completely prevents the generation of 1x1 islands, which will derail a faction that gets placed on them.  This is especially a problem on maps larger than my mod's Enormous map size.  That's the last "safe" size for the stock binary's faction placement algorithm.  My included "Giant" map size, will definitely have stillborn factions landing on those 1x1 islands, rather consistently.  I think I got rid of the 1x1 islands though.  I haven't played a Giant map game in forever though, so I'm not sure.  Nowadays I only play on Huge, which has become the expected and recommended map size.