Map Making Questions

[Kaljamaha]

I'm making a new map, and have some questions that came up, specifically about dual terrain types.

How does dual land type, for example plains + farmland or forest + mountain affect the site frequency and population amount of a province? How about sites exclusive to a terrain type? As I recall survival allows you to move through a province if *any* terrain type matches. Also, anybody have the numbers on the population in each terrain?


K.

[Edi]

Plains and farmland typically have similar populations to each other, 8k and up, over 20k for large provinces is not uncommon. Farmlands have a slightly higher pop.

Mountains have an average of 4k - 7k, large ones can be up to 15k while small ones are 2k - 3k. Forests are in the same range, or perhaps slightly upward.

Swamps have little population even when large, tops out at around 4k or 5k, and that's being generous. Likewise with waste.

These are mainly off the cuff estimates based on memory, you can run tests on the Faerun map, there are several multiple terrain provinces (Cormyr and Shaareach being the most prominent).

Terrain dependent sites can appear as long as the required terrain is present (e.g. Rockside Spring can be found in any combo with mountains).

I've no idea about if the site frequency modifiers are all cumulative or if only the biggest modifier is taken into account.

Edi

[Endoperez]

IIRC the biggest terrain frequency is always the one looked at. There was a thread about this some time back, so you might want to search for it... If you use Shrapnel Games' own search engine, remember to put '+' in front of *every* word for it to look for them all...

[Kristoffer O]

Sites use the highest chance IIRC.

Not sure about the pops. Farm increase pop. Swamp, waste, mountain and forests lowers pop.

Might be:
farm 1.5
forest 0.75
mountan 0.5
waste 0.25
swamp 0.25

large increases pop
small lowers it

[Gandalf Parker]

There are also a couple of terrain switches that dont show up in alot of peoples docs. Here are my own programming notes on the #terrain command....
Plains 0 (default)
Small 1
Large 2
Sea 4
Fresh Water 8 (affects some events)
Mountain 16
Swamp 32
Waste 64
Forest 128
Farm 256
NoStart 512 - for islands and special provinces
ManySites 1024 - increased site frequency


mountain - good for resources and magic sites, bad for money
forest - same as mountain, but less so
farmlands - good for money, bad for resources and sites
swamp - just plain bad
waste - good for magic sites, bad for money
sea - good for atlantis
nostart - no player can start with their capital here, use to mark off places they could get trapped in with no early expansion. Saves space in file instead of using #nostart but not as easy to edit
ManySites - good for boosting sites in corners or deadends when the terrain otherwise wouldnt

[Arralen]

site frequency

Kristoffer O posted 03 April, 2004 10:46

Not sure of the exact numbers. (I'm not sure of the specifics. Waste might be 30, swamp and mountain 20. 'just a guess.)
Magic: (site freq) + 30
Waste: (site freq) + 20
Swamp: (site freq) + 20
Mountain: (site freq) + 10
Forest: (site freq) + 10
Farm: (site freq) - 20

Only the most beneficial counts.

I guess it works like this:
If site: Check what site. Random.
If site not possible: Reroll.
If site unique and already in the game: Reroll.
If site possible and rare: Reroll once.

Many nature sites are common but restricted to forests etc.

Unique sites are also rare or common. Inkpot end is unique and common. Crown of Darkness is rare.

No blood under water IIRC. Not sure about unholy.


terrain modifiers
movement
Forest, Mountain, Swamp, Waste have movement penalties. A unit that has the correspondant survival ability isn't affected. If province has two special terrains, only one ability is sufficient to allow full movement.

population, ressources, gold, supply
I'm doing the statistics for province sizes atm, but I'm too lazy to finish it.

Maybe the devs could give us the numbers?

[Edi]

Thanks for the additional info, everyone, this is going toi make the Magic Site DB project a lot easier to finish for me and Kaljamaha (who also has his hands full with his mapmaking project, and I fully expect his map to be excellent)

Edi

[Gandalf Parker]

Arralen said:
I guess it works like this:
If site: Check what site. Random.
If site not possible: Reroll.
If site unique and already in the game: Reroll.
If site possible and rare: Reroll once.




This looks like it answers something I have wondered. If a province has a chance for 4 sites, and you are especially eager to find a castle or a blood summoning site, then you increase your chances if you do an earth site-search spell, then next round a blood site-search spell, and THEN let your rainbow mage check it. Checking with an air/water/nature mage first might "use up" your chances for a site there.

[Endoperez]

I thought sites are created at the beginning of the game... How else could Well of Pestilence provinces have Death scale even if you have Growth?

[Kristoffer O]

correct

[Gandalf Parker]

Ahhh so it runs thru that routine when it creates the game? Good.

[Kaljamaha]

Thanks for the responses everybody. However, I still am not clear on the pop thing. So, lets say a that a province has x population if it is plains, 1.5x if it is farm lands. How much does it have if it is both? 1, 1,5 or something in between?


K.

[Arralen]

"farm" means (IIRC) 1,5x pop, 0,5x ressources. "Plains" is just that - plain - it's the base for everything else, you can't have "Plains & Farmland".

All terrain modifiers add up, though. (Or mayb they even multiply. I'll have to do all the number checking some day, unless the devs tell us). That means, creating a province that is both farm land and mountain does not make any sense, as the boni cancel each other out (mostly. In fact, I found this combo to suck most - no pop, but no ressources either.)

So I recommend for mapmakers is to use special terrain and "small" provinces sparingly. Going overboard with these will result in a map that lets everyone move only 1 prov/turn everywhere - with 'armies' not bigger than 50 Inf because there isn't either sufficient money nor supplies for more units.

Do not draw provinces first, and then check what terrain they have ("ok - it's mountains to the left, tick it, grass in the north, tick it, it's small, ok, oh, and here's a swamp, just another tick in the editor .."). Draw your map, then place the borders at the edges of terrain features (as it's done with the original Illwinter maps).

[Kaljamaha]

Arralen said:
"farm" means (IIRC) 1,5x pop, 0,5x ressources. "Plains" is just that - plain - it's the base for everything else, you can't have "Plains & Farmland".



Right, poor example, however the other terrain types are stackable. You can have a "mountain forest waste swamp with fresh water" province.



All terrain modifiers add up, though. (Or mayb they even multiply. I'll have to do all the number checking some day, unless the devs tell us). That means, creating a province that is both farm land and mountain does not make any sense, as the boni cancel each other out (mostly. In fact, I found this combo to suck most - no pop, but no ressources either.)



This is what I was asking. If the site frequency is always the best of the terrain types, I was wondering how population is determined.



So I recommend for mapmakers is to use special terrain and "small" provinces sparingly. Going overboard with these will result in a map that lets everyone move only 1 prov/turn everywhere - with 'armies' not bigger than 50 Inf because there isn't either sufficient money nor supplies for more units.

Do not draw provinces first, and then check what terrain they have ("ok - it's mountains to the left, tick it, grass in the north, tick it, it's small, ok, oh, and here's a swamp, just another tick in the editor .."). Draw your map, then place the borders at the edges of terrain features (as it's done with the original Illwinter maps).



Well what I did was first draw the general contours of the terrain an terrain types and then lay the borders on it. But not to worry, the map won't have more than a handful, I'd estimate some five to ten provinces with dual terrain type. I was just wondering how it affected everything.


K.

[Gandalf Parker]

I think DomMap does a good job of such things. I have taken to having it set so that there is more breakup of the terrains so that I dont get a huge home territory of only mountains, or only forest, where the player cant possibly gain any other terrain for quite awhile. The program also does a great job (now, thanks to Lintman) of tracing the edges of terrains when it decides provinces.

It does have a dual terrain of mountain-waste which the original programmer put in and called "Tundra". Im not thrilled with it. But rather than pull it Im wondering if it wouldnt be best watered-down abit with other duals.

What stacked terrains do you feel would be good adds?

[Edi]

Forest/mountain and Forest/Plains (represents lightly forested areas instead of dense forests.

Edi