Yeah I get that, but the seed thing is being done because the "problem" case was happening in an earlier beta.

It won't be necessary once the map script can correct the most flagrant balance issues while still allowing some.

Someone's an old school Civ gamer

Game shouldn't have been released in this condition.

It's even a bit worse than that.

The probability of not getting 10 unique maps is around 40% (37.2%).

This includes the chance of getting a map thrice, getting two maps twice each, and so on, and so on.

Thank you for your repitition and persistence. Most disagree with you, but if you post enough, your single voice may be heard in every thread.

hmm, the game technically hasn't BEEN released yet.  this is a pre release version, after the 24th then start the griping.

wow.

I guess this is why theres torrents.

So um...what the hell does that mean?  That you will pirate it? 

I'm really hoping Stardock wil soon announce that the random map generator will be implemented in the game in the not too distant future, say in a couple of weeks time. Until then there should be enough to enjoy in the campaign and the prefabricated maps with randomized resources.  But seeing the latest announcement it looks like Stardock will go down the route of making more seed maps. For now anyway.

Yeah but let's face it, there isn't a problem where someone can't find a suitable place to set up a city for 20-30 turns as someone suggests could happen with an imbalanced map from Elemental. That sort of imbalance is way out there. I've been playing TBS games since the first Civ game and never experienced anything like that. Sure in pretty much the entire Civ series you are spreading territory pretty quickly to cover the most land to get those unresearched resources later, but the use our static non-random map, and I am not about to have an argument on the definition of what a random map is here, or get some crazily drawn map where you spend an hour looking for a place to park your city is... unacceptable. That's the best word I can find to describe that.

I've played other TBS games too of course, AOW included as well so I am not just comparing Elemnetal, as the players are reporting it now, to only Civ.

Just for your information: The patch 1.01 brought 4 new large and 5 new medium maps. bringing the total to 6 and 9, respectively.

Which is better than before, but it's still nothing compared to random maps. And if that few are called "lots of new seed maps"... sorry, but unless there are hundreds or even thousands, we will still see a lot of repetition.

I noticed that there are only one tactical battle map for each terrain type (I mean one for forrest-grassland and one for hills-grassland, too, and so on). I had 3-4 battles one after the other on the same map, although on very different tiles.

I'd enjoy seeing completely random maps as an option, certainly. I don't understand the people criticizing balance in random maps. Using strategy, diplomacy, and tactics to fight your way out from an initial disadvantage can be a very satisfying experience.

Those who want perfectly balanced and symmetrical maps can build them with the map editor I'd imagine. Or download them once others start building them.

Yes it should. Its missing features but its still a playable game (for most) and the game hasnt even been officially released yet. So unless you have something new to say shush.

Someone ban this idiot

Irrelevant. If you did see the resources in Civ IV, you'd see you always have lots of special resources nearby because the map scripts make sure there are. It's also extremely easy to mod that part of map generation to ensure you always start near wheat if you want to.

Unfortunately, Elemental doesn't allow us ot mod map generation.

The problems with the current map generation scheme are:

1) Even with a hundred of seeds, you woudln't be able to provide enough variety.

2) There is no option to customise the map (big continents/Pangaea/Terra/islands/other settings).

Also note that in Civ IV, Sirian designed two kinds of maps: One for MP and one for SP. MP maps are less random and balanced, while SP maps are much less balanced. So removing some of the maps because you're unable to generate balanced maps is not really an issue. Picking from a limited set of balanced maps for MP is much less of an issue than providing a small number of maps for MP.

Do you realise how difficult or what is involved to program a random map generator that produce maps that are realistic and playable?

Just try it with only 2 terrain types - water and land. Say you want a map with one third water and two thirds land. You can not just look at each square and random generator because you will end up with chess board type maps. So you need to be random in a specific areas to create islands and bodies of water. That is just 2 terrain types.

Stardock already have a map generator but its not perfect (as people have said whe they remove the seeded maps) so they have a choice; either allow dodgy map creations or use seeded maps that produce proper maps. I think they made the right choice. They now have time to produce a random map generator that rivals Civ4

There is no way to use strategy and tactics to overcome a map where it takes 40 turns before you find a single resource, unless you've got the difficulty turned way down. An intelligent AI with a decent starting location will completely destroy you while you're walking around trying to find a spot to put a city.

Imbalanced maps are fine, but it can't be so wildly off that some people have to wander a half hour before finding *anything*.

YOU BET!

I think everyone agrees that it's almost impossible nowadays to release a product that isn't suffering from bugs or imbalances out of the box. Especially if it's designed to provide fun and gameplay for -as Froggy stated- ages. So a lot of things that pop up here already and will pop up later when people are playing for a while might be quite understandable and pose minor problems if fixed in the next patch(es) or even user mods.

But THIS is rediculous! "Oops! We realize that one of the most important features of such a game is difficult to implement and we don't have the time to create more pre-made maps coz we don't want to delay the release, so let's suggest  to have players generate them for us..."

Guess that just post-poned my purchase by yet another month or two.

Disclaimer for all the fanbois who are ready to jumpstart:

I love SD for all they have achieved in the past, and I'm sure they'll come up with a solution to this and most of the probs that have surfaced and will surface later. But this is some behaviour/mind-set I find hard to tolerate.

Kohan II has an excellent map generator. It has sliders for every terrain (excluding grassland) in the game and you can have lots or little of each. Of course the less you have of each the more grassland you willl end up with. It also has sliders for the amount of relics and npcs and goody huts you want. Quite a good map generator imho.

LDiCesare is the author of what is still my favorite map script for Civ 4.  If anyone gets it, I think he does.

Which map script is that? I see myself playing some more Civ 4 until Elemental is in a playable state (and let's be honest: Civ V probably will need a few patches as well) and am always intererested in good map scripts.

He wrote the "Tectonics" script.  It's actually included with the game at this point (since BTS or one of the Warlords patches - forget which).

To put things into perspective, this means that the probability of getting at least one repeated map (land mass layout) when playing n games on large maps is:

n:   prob

2:   16.7%

3:   44.4%

4:   72.2%

5:   90.7%

6:   98.5%

7:   100%

My map generator for Civ IV has been included by Firaxis in the latest patches. Cephalo, who also got the game, has made map scripts for Civ IV too, in particular his 'Erebus' map script which is used by FfH2 is absolutely perfect for fantasy worlds like that of Elemental. And I bet he'd provide map scripts for Elemental too if he could (like me, he asked for map script modding).

Seeded maps can't fit the bill because there won't be enough seeds for replayability.

An alternative to an in-game map script would be an external generator, but the map format is a bit obnoxious: They basically put lines of similar terrain in a single tag with a number attribute, which probably makes reading faster and the files terser, but is more of a pain for generation. I think they gain about half the size of the map on a regular map with lots of water. A lot of data seems redundant too, so I don't feel like creating an external program without an explanation of the format, or I could generate maps that won't even load.

I guess that technically speaking we are getting a "random" map - the game randomly picks one of six maps.