Island Map

[Nish]

Hi, just downloaded freeciv 2.5.1, and its still installing, so this might already have been taken care of. It's been a while since I played freeciv.



So what I was wondering was if the map generator could have an option to create a map entirely of small islands. Say, large enough for 4 cities max. This way the players are forced to go along a path of maritime expansion.

[dunnoob]

So what I was wondering was if the map generator could have an option to create a map entirely of small islands. Say, large enough for 4 cities max. This way the players are forced to go along a path of maritime expansion.

Good idea. When I can get away with it I populate "my" island, and do not really leave it until I have a carrier with stealth bombers. The games where I really must leave "my" rather small island earlier tend to be more interesting.

It would be also nice to save a nice map cooked up by the map generator as scenario, to play on the same map again with a new start position (etc., new resources, new huts, and of course not while I still recall any details.)

[JTN]

So what I was wondering was if the map generator could have an option to create a map entirely of small islands. Say, large enough for 4 cities max. This way the players are forced to go along a path of maritime expansion.

There is such an option. See "Method used to generate map" on the "Geological" tab (called 'generator' if you're using the server command interface).

From the help:

• "Island-based" (ISLAND): generates 'fair' maps with a number of similarly-sized and -shaped islands, each with approximately the same ratios of terrain types. By default, each player gets their own island.
• "Fair islands" (FAIR): generates the exact copy of the same island for every player or every team.

It would be also nice to save a nice map cooked up by the map generator as scenario, to play on the same map again with a new start position (etc., new resources, new huts, and of course not while I still recall any details.)

This is more or less possible. Having generated a map, in the Gtk client:

1. go into Editing Mode (on the Edit menu)
2. then Game/Scenario Properties (same menu), check the "Scenario" box and uncheck "Save Players" box (it's also a good idea to give the scenario a name and description)
3. then delete start positions: find every start position on the map (yellow box/arrows in most tilesets), middle-click, go to Start Position, click Destroy button (I don't think there's a shortcut for this)
4. then Save Scenario on the Edit menu.

This does have a flaw in that it saves the random seeds and state, so you'll get the same starting position allocation and nations each time you play. I think the only way around this is to hand-edit the scenario file after you save it to remove the lines mentioning 'gameseed' and 'mapseed', and the whole section '[random]'. (You might want to have saved it having set 'compresstype' to 'plain', to avoid having to uncompress it yourself for editing.) (bug #23793, bug #24319)

[Arbogast]

In case you haven't checked it out, there's a lot of examples in http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Generator_and_startpos