Thread of many map making questions Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

Hello,

Quite simple question to start:
- Should "Cave provinces" be associated to others provinces attributes too or should I avoid it? (like forest-cave, moutain-cave, waste-cave or swamp-cave?)

Thank you,
Pym

Cave-swamp, cave-waste and cave-farm aren't valid combinations, IIRC, but you can use caves with forest, mountain and border mountain. Not sure how well they work with sea terrains, but the default assumption should be that it is an invalid combo. I should probably add a mapmaking manual section that lists valid terrain combinations.

Edited by: Edirr

From 4.03 changelog:
New terrains: Cave forests and cave seas with proper looks

So cave sea should work correctly.
iirc, Valanis already used cave sea.

Cave seas (like seas + some other land terrains like forests) triggered some really buggy behavior at least in dom 3 (things like non aquatic poptypes or event troops sometimes appearing only to drown, that forced me to remove all cave seas from my dom3 maps), but it seems it's now fixed.
Cave and any land terrain have no such serious problem (I used caves + varied land terrains... in Oeridia and World of Geometry since 2007, never encountered problems with them or got reports about strange things happening there ; icons appear, terrains effects on both movement and province income apply normally, etc...). Their battlefield usually look like normal caves (perhaps there's a risk with some multi-terrain combos to end with an outdoor battlefield, but never encountered the situation personnally).
Since last patch it seems cave seas are fixed, and cave forest, which always worked, now get their own battlefield image.
Except if they recently introduced new bugs, I don't see what would make cave swamp or cave farm "invalid" (they work but just don't have a special battlefield).

Thank you for all these information,
It looks like Cave-waste is working well too (at least no bug) like Letwan said (added to Biddyn map)
Thank you again

Another question:
- What does "Fresh water' attribute do? Does it set up coastal provinces? (Actually I don't add this attribute near "oceans", only near rivers or lacs)

Thank you

As far as I know, fresh water increases income from the province. IIRC it also makes some events possible (flood etc) and it is intended to be used for land provinces with rivers, lakes etc.

Ok thank you
Another question:
- If I install a new map version (only small changes:removed/added provinces connections), will this update break a savegame or can I safely update?

Edited by: Pymous

if all players get a copy of the image then I think that will work.
But the .map file seems to be built into the game at the first hosting. Changes dont seem to show up

Pymous wrote: Ok thank you
Another question:
- If I install a new map version (only small changes:removed/added provinces connections), will this update break a savegame or can I safely update?

If you update a map, it has no effect on ongoing games created with an earlier version, because the neighbor information etc is stored in the fthrland file for that game. For any new games, all players must have the updated version of the map (if the image was changed) and should have the updated version of the map file too in any case just to be sure.

What do "ruggedness" and "hill/crator" setting do in the random map generator?

Hill/crater setting affects the number of lakes or other similar formations on a map. Ruggedness is related in some ways to how the continents form and possibly also to amount of forest/waste/swamp on the map.

I do know that low ruggedness and higher number of craters is more likely to produce interesting map shapes with a higher number of lakes and less blocky seas.

How does one

Edirr wrote: Hill/crater setting affects the number of lakes or other similar formations on a map. Ruggedness is related in some ways to how the continents form and possibly also to amount of forest/waste/swamp on the map.

I do know that low ruggedness and higher number of craters is more likely to produce interesting map shapes with a higher number of lakes and less blocky seas.

Its the 1-1000 variable that throws me...1000what ? I assume ruggedness is percent of the map..

Anything in the 1-100 range is a percentage of the map. Everything else is an integer value. Try it and see. The documentation I have written is more or less everything there is and you're just going to have to experiment to find out what kind of maps different settings get you.

NEW QUESTION:

What is important for every map to have? i.e. What would make you say, this is a good map for an 8 person FFA?

Edited by: HottiePippen

Some degree of balance, so that there are no obvious regions in the map that automatically mean a disadvantaged start (all swamps, wastes or only small provinces). All maps of that size should also never have provinces with less than 4 land neighbors or less than 3 sea neighbors as eligible start locations. This lessens the possibility of being boxed in with no expansion options due to too tough indies. Such as throne next door, then Onyx or Jade amazons and a province of heavy cavalry and that's pretty much it if you only had three neighbors you could move into.

For sea, I advice about 15% sea. Don't forget a bit of deep sea and cavern, and don't forget to clump at least half the sea together, instead of 1-province lacks.

In the maps created by Pymouth, all these border lines are dark grey, does dom4 recognize these borders too or do I need to do something else to set the borderdistance etc.?

The Dom 4 border recognition is pretty iffy... I'd recommend setting neighbors manually. Theoretically it will recognize red borders, but what really matters is the white pixel in the middle of each province.

Dom4 uses the color white (255,255,255,255) to mark a province. Use single pixels only. It numbers from bottom to top so if you are careful about the raster lines you can insure that your map numbers itself logically for new players.

Dom uses RED to better see borders. The results of auto-neighboring can depend greatly on how much red is in your border color. I find it works best to use pure red to get the neighbor assignments and then change the borders to anything you want (or even remove them completely)

I see, thank you for these hints!

Edited by: Hrothgaar

Not sure of this is the right spot but where can I find more Scenario Maps? There is only one in the game "Dawn of Dominions" and I loved it!

Somebody would have to make them first, I'm afraid.

I made a number of them for Dom2.
But in Dom3 it got kindof broken. Most of what would be "scenario" are now just maps with premade provinces.
Only a server can try to run a scenario.

Im still hoping they will fix it. But as a temp I would een be happy if they made it so the #scenario command just put the golden star by it on the view, and nothing else.

Are there any map making guides or tutorials?
I'm aware of the map making manual but that's the only one I've found. I'm sure that's enough for me to start doodling around but I wouldn't turn down anything more comprehensive.

Cheers

Do you mean the graphics side? or the settings side of it?
I can offer some on the settings stuff.

Here is a quick reference list of map commands.
Dom4minions.com
Here is an example of just ONE special province that can be added to the .map file
Oddthotz.com