Idea for geographical maps: realistic player placement

[serveurix]

So, here is my idea about geographical random maps, such as Mediterranean or Red Sea.

I've wrote this quickly so if it's not understandable, please tell me, I will rephrase and perhaps add some mockups.

The idea is to add a feature that allows to choose the user starting position on geographical random maps.

Here is the situation : Let's say that five players want to play a match on Mediterranean, Normal size. They start by choosing their factions : Player 1 chooses Gauls, Player 2 chooses Athenians, Player 3 chooses Persians, Player 4 chooses Egyptians, Player 5 chooses Carthaginians. Player 4 (ptol) starts in Gaul/France, player 3 (pers) starts in Illyria/Yugoslavia, player 2 (athe) startss in Syria, player 5 (cart) starts in Egypt, player 1 (gaul) starts in Maghreb.

The players CC placements are determined randomly (it's not a fixed placement) and the starting posisitons are attributed randomly to the players.

Case 1: choosing a faction and choosing a starting point

But let's say that those 4 players want to play a "realistic" match, where player 1 (gaul) gets the Gaul starting position, player 2 (athe) gets the Illyrian one, player 3 (pers) gets the Syrian one, player 4 (ptol) gets the Egyptian one, player 5 get Maghrebian starting position. They would like to define those starting positions in the match setup screen, when they choose their civ.

In order to do that I think we should be able to divide a random map of a certain size into zones, each of them containing one or several potential player CC placements. For example, on Mediterranean, normal size, we would have one "Gaul" zone, one "Germany/Poland" zone, one "Eastern Europe/Russia" zone, one "Yugoslavia" zone, one "Turkey/Near-East" zone, one "Egypt" zone, one "Lybia" zone and one "Maghreb" zone. The players would be able to choose a starting zone in the match setup screen in a list, or to set it on random to get the current default behavior. In our case, player 1 would choose the zone "Gaul", player 2 would choose "Yugoslavia", player 3 would choose "Turkey/Near-East", player 4 would choose "Egypt", player 5 would choose "Maghreb".

Now what about Britain ? Iberia ? Greece ? Well those places are too small for a CC placement in Mediterranean Normal, no player can start here. But I guess it's possible on Mediterranean Large, Very Large or Giant. This is why the zones should be defined differently depending on the size of the map. On "Very Large" there should be one or several "Britain" zones, one or several "Iberia" zones and one or several "Greece" zone (perhaps even a "Macedon" zone and a "Laconia" zone, I don't know how big this map is).

Of course in the case of users choosing both their faction and their starting position, the GUI shouldn't assume that the player choosing Britain will play the britons, or that the user choosing the britons will start in Britain. The point is to allow the users to choose a starting position, for example to have realistic positioning, but not to force them to choose a realistic positioning. The player choosing to start in Britain should still be able to choose the egyptians in the list.

Case 2: choosing a starting point but no faction

Now let's assume that all players want to play with realistic positioning, but would like their civ to be chosen in a semi-random way. Let's say that we're playing Mediterranean on a size that is big enough for "Greece" to be a zone with one CC placement. A player should be able to choose "Greece", check a "realistic civ placement" checkbox and set the faction on "random", and have the game choose between athenians, macedonians and spartans. That would mean that each zone would be associated with a list of possible factions you get when you set the faction on "random" and check the "realistic civ placement" checkbox.

An other possibility would be to implement the "semi-random faction choice" in the GUI. Instead of having one choice in a list of factions we would have several boxes to check, and let the game choose randomly into that sublist. For example if I want to play any civ but the celts, the greek and the successors, I would check "romans", "iberians", "carthaginians", "persians" and "maurya" and the game would choose randomly between those five.

I am in favor of the second option since it does not depend on the particular case I'm talking about here, and could be applied to any map. But I also think that each zone should have a list of realistic factions to play on, for the next case below.

Case 3: no starting point choice, no faction choice

Now let's assume that all players still want to play with realistic positioning, but don't want to know their faction or starting position, like in a classic random map match. The players all choose "random" for the civ and the starting zone, and check the "realistic positioning" checkbox. Then we would have, for example, the Player 4 starting in Gaul with the gauls, player 3 starting in Illyria with the athenians, player 2 starting in Syria with the persians, player 5 starting in Egypt with the ptolemies, player 1 starting in Maghreb with the carthaginians.

What do you think ?

[Sundiata]

I was also thinking that playing in realistic, civ-specific biomes/climate types would be a really cool game-option. Having different biomes in the same map, arranged north to south in the logical order of course, for a nice transition/overlap, would be pretty awesome: polar → temperate → Mediterranean → arid/desert/sub-tropical → tropical, and the civ you choose automatically places you in the correct "region" of the map.

Being able to choose which biome/or biomes to play specifically in a random map would be a nice option too, along with options like, hilly or flat terrain, or both. Rivers or no rivers (navigable or not?). coastline with sea, or not.

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

@elexis

[Servo]

Wow if these suggestions could be done and could expand the number of players to accommodate all civs/factions mini factions, mercenaries etc it will become the greatest game ever. 

Isnt it doable in a campaign or scenario type of game?!

Adding meta to capture and transport wild animals would be a plus. 

[Imarok]

On 20.9.2017 at 10:53 AM, Sundiata said:

Being able to choose which biome/or biomes to play specifically in a random map would be a nice option too

This will be done for A23 afaik