Overview
Understanding How the Map Generator Works So You Can Create Your Own Nice Looking Balanced Maps Easily.
Mastering The Random Map Generator
If you are like me, you like random maps to keep things new and fresh. Always the thrill of the unknown. But I dont want maps that look terrible or are horribly balanced, and I dont like spending hours with the random map generator to figure out a good set of parameters for consistant results. Although I have, and I am sharing what I learned with you, so you dont have to.
People have created maps themselves using photoshop and others things, but I havent found anything that appeals to me. Many of them look like they were made in preschool with colored pencils and water paint. Gotta hand it to the devs here, the map sprites they made for the game look very appealing. First, a break down of what the parameters do.
1. Height and width is obvious. Sets how big and shape of your land mass.
W – 2500
H – 1500
This is the default setting. A little too big IMO, but it matters little. The true size is really more dependant on the next paramater, plus you can the map to wrap around both ways so there are no ‘corners’ to hide in.
2. # Of Provinces. 150 is default. You can make a map appear larger or smaller by adjusting this number. 150 is a decent number to work with however, its good for adding alot of nations to play against in the singler player vs AI. I myself prefer 200 because I like to fill up all the random nation spots so I have many opponants. The smaller number you set, the smaller the map will appear with large provinces. The higher the number the bigger the map will appear with lots of little provinces. This can also affect the appearance of the different land types and how they are divided up. Having too high or too low of a number can have some ugly results.
3. Sea Area percentage, default – 45%. This mainly is a matter of personal prefereance. However, you can affect how the map really ends up looking with the other parameters. I will explain below how even with a 1% sea area you can still end up with a fully ocean map. [link]
4. Mountains. Default is 20%. Again this one is personal pref. If you like more mountains you make it higher. However, this parameter is trumped by the sea paramters, so even with a high mountain %, you could still end up with very few mountains present.
5. Caves. Default 3%. Im not 100% sure but I believe this % represents how many caves exist based on the mountains present. So for default, it would be 3% of the 20% mountains. So if you had 100 mountians on the map, there would be 3 caves. But thats not absolute. It is still affected by other parameters. So even at 3%, you could still get no caves, or several.
6. Ruggedness. Default 30%. Ruggedness has a huge impact on the end result. It affects water provinces more than anything though. The higher the number, the more centralized your water provinces will be. The smaller the number, the more scattered the water provinces will be. If you choose a 100% ruggedness and a hills/crater of 1, you could end up with a total water map, no mater the sea %. Either extreme creates very ugly maps. Dont use the extremes. If you want a map with alot of lakes instead of oceans you would use 1-5%. If you prefer bigger sea area then you would use the default setting or higher. Ruggedness also affects the appearance of water shorelines. If you have 0-1% your water shorlines will look very rounded and unatural. I dont recommend going below 2%.
7. Hills/Craters. Default 150. This one also has a big effect on the size and shapes of water provinces. It is similar to ruggedness. Think of it as a depth meter that goes hand in hand with ruggedness. The lower the number, the more shallow the water will be. If you want deep oceans and lakes, then have this at a high number. I find that middle range to low settings make the water provinces more condensed, forming big lakes and oceans, but with more shallow provinces. Its not very consistant though.
8. River Occurance – Default 50. The range for this paramter is 1-1000. This parameter has little effect on the end result if you have lakes and seas. You really only see the effects of this if you have few to no water areas.. I tend to just leave it at 100, which is what the game considers normal. But if you like a map that has no water provinces, try this at a high number. It doesnt create water provinces, but several impassable water barriers.(Rivers) Only passible by flying units(Or boats) or only when frozen by others
9. Size of Sea Provinces. Default 400. This parater also has a huge impact on the end result. Just to give you an idea of what the comparison is, land provinces tend to be around 150-200 in size. So lets say the map is 200 provinces total. You could make it have more water provinces without changing the land to water ratio just by making water provinces smaller than land provinces. if you want it to be 50/50 you would set this parameter at about 200. However.. appearance wise, the maps look more pleasing to the eye if the water provinces are bigger than the land provinces. If you set the number too much lower than the the land average you will end up with more water than you expected.
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Impassable Mountains. If you like to have valleys and bottenecks I would turn this on. Having it off makes mountains pretty useless.
The wrap around feature is personal preference. If you like to have corners to hide in leave these off. I like using just the east/west wraparound. Seems more realistic.
Antailiasing is totally unecessary. It makes little to no difference visually, but makes a big difference on load times. I would leave it off If I were you… It will increase your map generation time by 100. You wont like it.
After many hours of experimenting with the generator, I have come up with set of paramters that make very nice balanced small and big lake maps. If you dont want to spend hours with trial and error like I did then give these paramters a try.
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W – 2000
H – 1000
#Prov. – 200
Sea – 26%
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Mountains – 70%
Cave – 25%
Rugged – 3%
Hills/crater – 800
River – 100
Sea Size – 230
East West – On
It will consistently make maps that look like this:
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If you want less provinces but you like the map style, you will have to reduce the height and width in equal proportions, otherwise you will get a map that looks totally different. So like.. 100 provinces with 1000×500 pixels.
Side Note: Sometimes the random generator will create province links that dont make sense or are cut off from any other province. You can fix those by using the in game map editor. Just load up thje map you created with the generator and check an suspicious looking province to make sure all the links are good or that they have links, then save it. Make sure to save using the exact same map name so it overwrites, or it will create a new map file. Unless thats what you wanna do.