I’m sure many players like myself want to build a city that they planned themselves or copy one of the many layouts found online. The problem is it’s hard to know whether the map will have a large enough area to build that city. At the start you can only see a small area, and that’s fine, but it’s very annoying when you’ve worked on a town several hours only to find you can’t continue because of a lake or mountain blocking where you want to build. I’d love to try all the terrain types but after generating 5-6 unsuitable maps I give up and go back to Plains, which gives me a good build area almost every time.
My idea is on the “Select Map Type” panel Advanced Settings. Provide an option to specify a “Build Area” with 2 inputs, the number of grid squares on the 2 dimensions of a rectangle. The generated map will be guaranteed to have that size area at the starting point that is clear of lakes or ground too steep to build. Also, there would be no raider camps or animals within another 50 or so from the borders of this area. Of course, there should be a maximum size you can specify. Maybe I’m asking a lot here, but this would surely make it so much easier to get started on a city.
You can always terra form mountains away with the sculpting tool and a lot of patience. Water can’t get rid of so easily, but outside of IV and Lakes, there’s very rarely so much as to be a problem. You can always manually tweak the seed to lower the water table and so the amount of water on the map (this has consequences for soil fertility and resource distribution).
Finally, as a sort of hack, there are mods that let you reveal the whole map, so at least the “reroll seed until you get what you want” can be made much faster.
Thanks but to start with a specific seed and play the same map over and over, not fun to me. I like the random maps, just want it to give me an area I can build my planned city on without having to reroll … and wait 60-90 seconds for the map to come up … and try again … and wait…
outside of IV and Lakes, there’s very rarely so much as to be a problem
That totally depends on what style of town you like to build. Mine requires a fairly clear area roughly 100 by 150 on the grid. For all map types other than Plains, lakes or hills are a problem on at least 75% of the maps I generate.
Isn’t the idea though to see what map you roll and then build your town from that rather than planning a town first?
Would be nice if the mini-map appeared before you put down the TC though so that would give you an indication of where on the map the starting point is. A few times I’ve started a town heading north only to find that I’m close to the top of the map so can’t expand in that direction any more. Having the mini-map up straight off would help in that respect.
Another option which I think is still around on one of the mod sites is the Fog of War mod which shows you the whole map right from the beginning.
Isn’t the idea though to see what map you roll and then build your town from that rather than planning a town first?
Perhaps it is for you. If that’s what you like, that’s good, and this option won’t do anything for you. I appreciate this idea isn’t for everyone. My fun IS building a town to a plan, finding where the plan doesn’t work, and tweaking it so the next town is better.
I started out doing what you do, and honestly it drove me totally crazy. Industrial buildings got stuck wherever as I needed them and I couldn’t find them. Desirability sucked because after I built houses here and there, there wasn’t enough room for decorations. Coverage for amenities like markets, wells, rat catchers, etc, was spotty and when I tried to fix it there was already something else in the way. It was frustrating and absolutely no fun so I decided the only way I could play this was to have a plan and build to it.
There is a middle ground. You have a plan, but adapt it to the situation rather than sticking rigidly to it. Moving buildings is (almost) always free too, so you can re-plan mid settlement. After all, a good plan isn’t just the finished city of 2k villagers and every building upgraded, but the path you take to get there from a tiny T1 hamlet of 15 villagers.
I thought about your suggestion and you are right, there is a middle ground. Instead of a planned town that requires a large contiguous area, I’m taking it apart. I’m designing a self-contained village of 32 houses and all the other required amenities, small enough to be placed wherever there’s a patch of flat terrain. It’s planned yet flexible enough to adapt to the terrain. I’ll see if this idea flies.
I am a relative newbie, still in learning curve mode. Have started over 3 or 4 times and get a bit farther / learn a bit more each time. But I definitely agree with Medea that would be very helpful to have an idea of WHERE you are on the map when you start.
Maybe there would be something between seeing nothing outside your initial area and seeing everything ( like Medea’s fog of war idea). Maybe the mini-map is just “foggy” before you lock in a town center location. the mini-map could be mostly grayed out, but the player could see tips of mountains and the reflections off of lakes on the mini-map. Once they choose a site for the town center, THEN their choice on fog of war would kick in ?
Initial explorations has always been one of my favorite parts of any game whether it was Civilizations, Empire Earth ( old school, not Age of Empires ) or Farthest Frontier. So I don’t really want to see everything right away. But having to start over because the ONLY lake on the whole map turned out to be on the polar opposite corner from my starting position … a sneak peek preview of general terrain would have been really nice.
I’ve only done 10-12 towns but so far my experience has been the starting position is fairly close to the center of the map. Maybe a “sneak peek” of the terrain could be a choice you get before you place your town center? That way the player can choose on how much they want to see. I do like the greyed out minimap idea.
TBH, partly to avoid overthinking it, the sum total of my thought process is “here’s the TC,” (I like to put it on top of a hill for, essentially, RP reasons) followed by “this side will have houses and the opposite side will have industry.” You can milk a little extra desirability out of the TC by fitting houses around two sides, but I often don’t bother.
I often struggle to place the TC on top of a hill, because you can’t flatten land at the very start, and I’m too lazy to move it later.
But my default build is houses to one side of the TC, heavy (aka negative desirability) industry on the opposite side, and neutral desirability + storage as a buffer in the middle. Makes it easy to have all the really valuable stuff in range of the TC’s defences too.
I don’t care if my TC is on a hill. In fact, I prefer a flat area so I don’t have to flatten it (which can be a frustrating and time consuming process). I figure if you have to defend your TC your outer defenses have totally failed and it could be too late to save it.
I used to build a citadel around the TC (which actually hits pretty hard as static defenses go) and a few other unique buildings, particularly the TP and gold storage, but lately I’ve stopped bothering because I don’t build any static defenses at all.
I still like putting it on a hill if I can get away with it, though.
