Regarding the landmass ratio...

Hello, while playing TE 5.1, as Bactria, it occured to me that having a larger area to play on really enhanced gameplay, with less crowded regions, and more mountains and strategic points- it really made me love the campaign part of the game more than i had done.

So, even though this landmass ratio is only a ratio, how come people talk of maps not being able to be bigger because of water ratios, i mean, how would this be so, as theoretically you could make the vanilla map 10x the size and there shouldnt be an issue...

The reason for this is because i would like to know if there was the capability of making a larger scale map, mainly to enhance the strategic element to it. If the map was bigger (much bigger) then there would be more valleys, cliffs, rivers etc for gameplay.

Regards
Lentonius

I think the landmass ratio says how many continents or landmasses (separated by oceans) a map can have, not how huge it can be.

Unfortunately the description of the problem as landmass ratio is slightly misleading - it does relate to the maximum percentage of water you can have but the percentage varies with the size of the map.

these aren't actual figures but as example if you can get a vanilla or smaller map to work with 50/50 land/water, if you want to double dimensions of map you may have to redesign layout to give, say 75% land 25% water. From personal testing I also think if the water areas are divided in two / three then you can get away with larger amount of water.

I haven't yet seen anyone give exact reasons for problem or exact possible ratios / max sea sizes - I did a lot of trial and error testing drove myself completely round the bend, didn't reach any definite conclusions and gave up and settled on a compromise size / layout!

P.s. I agree - large maps rule

Lentonius, Yes less crowded regions, going off on campaign, scaling 3D mountain ranges, marching through the wilderness, extending your supply lines, taking the chance of being cut off and destroyed. Now thats an imperial empire simulation.
I'm not sure how this land/water ratio works. all I know is a map of Europe won't load if I go bigger than map_regions 510 x 337. I have had larger working maps but as soon as I add water, no work. :wall:
10x bigger, sounds good in theory, but the game would need a hot key to take you to any problem areas in your empire. Imagine having to scroll around the map for 10 mins every turn, lookin for rebs and unrest. Anyhow, you can have a slightly larger map than 510 x 337, but only an inland one.

Makanyane, Just out of curiosity may I ask what size your map is ? and is your map just Great Brtain or does it have bits of France and/or Norway ? and is it for 1.5 or 1.6 ?

-IceTorque

Ice Torque, map_regions size is 258 x 400, it's for 1.6 has little bits of france, ireland and spare landmass in north sea (currently badly drawn viking boats) land joins edges in cornwall, scotland and east anglia (partly for emergence, partly to split seas), this is compromise where I got fed up with testing:
https://img399.imageshack.us/img399/...jpeg8qa.th.jpg

I'm really curious to know on Arthurian TW, how large that is;
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...23#post1180723
and if their nice looking dragons (in radar map screen shots) are actually land and quite how they handled that.

if a map could be larger, I personally would hope to make it around twice the size of warmap, but i would want to refrain from implementing artwork into the map to increase landmass...

Also, if you can create ground types, theoretically couldnt you create a new one only boats could move on, and make the texture water? This way, you would only need 'water' around the coasts to make the waves look real...

Is there any way to change what ground types armies can march across?

Because, with enough editing, you could make the water 'land' but texture it so it looks like water, but if armies can still march across it it kinda ruins this concept.

I mean, you know mountains, and how armies cannot cross them? If you could create a ground type that armies couldnt cross, and textured it water-like, you could have that instead of water. The only problem may be that navies may not be able to cross it either, but , if you left a small perimeter of water along the coast, this could improve gameplay if navies had to stick close to the coast, meaning more battles etc.

Lentonius: I had wanted to use groundtypes to solve my err 'artwork' problem, don't know about getting boats to cross other ground types, but did try using impassable terrain. Wanted to use impassable forest ground type with swamp climate - that combination isn't used elsewhere and comes out black on strat map, thought that at least that wouldn't look like land and could possibly be ammended to look like water.

Unfortunately...... very large areas of impassable forest seemed to give similar CTD to original landmass problem - haven't tried with mountains or an 'adapted to impassable' ground type, would be interested if anyone else has - or if you're volunteering to experiment?????

I'd test the thing about impassable forest yourself, or see if anyone else had same result - I'm 90% sure but I could have accidentally cut off bit of region and given it a pathfinding glitch (am also slightly curious if the water ratio CTD is pathfinding related - but can't see how that would help solve it - have tried the impassable deep water and that didn't help me)

Other plan could be assuming you keep FOW on, can you have spare landmass far enough away and with impassable water to stop boats so you don't actually see it, then draw radar map so spare land is not shown (I was also having problem making radar map that aligns properly for vertical map so haven't got there yet either)

Makanyane, nice work, the maps huge. :2thumbsup: with your radar maps, just resize and rename one of your map tga's, it should fit perfectly then. If you work out a way to hide the extra landmass, please let me know.

-IceTorque

Makanyane, good idea about 'hiding' extra landmass, but the only problem is that it could look a but ugly on the map, and also may affect loading times.

However, i really would appreciate any feedback by CA on the exact issues of the landmass ratio, as it is something really unknown in the community, even expert mappers like Icetorque and BDH still dont know the exact limits, and this really effects mod progress, and ultimetely, creativity.

Because I want to create a large map for strategic gameplay, the limitations of this ratio really show, and there seems no clear way to 'find a loophole' in the limitation.

Even if the 'mountains' plan worked, it would still not look right, the water flows in the map, and a blank blue texture would not look nice, also, you have to assign this 'sea' to a region, also causing problems everywhere. Anywho, i am testing this 'mountain' thing now, cya

Lentonius

hmm, the campaign goes back to the main menu, its really fustrating

I'm no modding expert, in fact I'm a complete modding noob. But I think Lentonius has a good idea.

Can't you just have, say, the coastline and nearby as 'water', creating a huge impassable area at the ocean? The impassable section will be 'land', with no settlements on it and looking like water, so the human won't land there.

Tiberius, thats the problem, how do you make it appear as water. I think Makanyane has the best idea, surround the xtra land with deep ocean so FOW will keep it covered. Though the problem of large areas of impassable terrain causing CTD's would need to be fixed, as I think the AI behaviour could be effected if the xtra land was passable.

-IceTorque

Interesting but I'm not sure how relevant finding:

Played with getting rid of boat shaped land on my map again, can get down to dividing sea with 1pixel land border i.e:
https://img244.imageshack.us/img244/...line0ov.th.jpg
1pixel width doesn't show horizontally on radar map with fow off, but unfortunately vertical or zigg-zagged diagonal does show up, point to point pixels on the diagonal brings back CTD. At least I think this proved theory on dividing seas...

Will try playing with ground types now area is smaller to try disguising land.

Tried assigning ground types to 1 pixel division, left as water works but gives default land appearance, changed to beach or swamp work, using impassable forest and high mountains gives same old CTD, so no progress there.

Ice Torque: using FOW / deep water doesn't work as I'd hoped forgotten that with FOW on you still see ground type in main strat map if you scroll over it, so appearance there still needs to be sorted. Also outlines of 'region' still show up on radar map - game seems to overlay it - having FOW not reach it only stops it lighting up on radar map with faction ownership (rebel) colour:
https://img355.imageshack.us/img355/...adar6hl.th.jpg
don't know how clear to view this is but vertical line and rebel island in corner are game generated and not on my radar map - they could possibly be slightly disguised on radar map by fading in dark area to cover them.

If 'spare' land ground type is passable terrain but rebel owned and unreachable by sea do you think that would still effect AI?

Lentonius If you're going back to menu (not desktop) then its not solely the landmass / impassable terrain issue thats causing your initial crash.

Makanyane, nice screenies, but I dont think that this would solve the problem.

According to Icetorque, the bigger the map, the less water you can have in proportion to land. For a Europe map, with the mediterranean sea, this is a big problem, as it would be hard to create a european map much bigger than in Vanilla without causing CTDs by this, frankly, silly limitation.

However, with a europe map, I dont think that this would really stop this rule, as even with a 1 pixel line, there will still be pretty much teh same amount of water, do you get what i mean?

Unfortunately, I think it will be very hard to manually configure a larger map to work, it would be very buggy, and not look very good either.

I think the map is the number one priority for CA to offer support, guidance, and hopefully, solutions to with. From the beginning it has been impossible to fully understand how the map works, and the various limitations. Even if CA could not offer a solution, knowledge of the exact limitations would prove invaluable, and would be much thanked by the community.

Also, if CA are making a 1.7 and 1.8 patch, removal of the landmass issue would be a top priority in my opinion.

Regards
Lentonius

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If 'spare' land ground type is passable terrain but rebel owned and unreachable by sea do you think that would still effect AI?

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That will be ok, it's only if the spare land has no region of it's own, then the nearest region to it will aquire the spare land ( as you would already know ). Then the AI will try and send an army to guard it's border. if it can't reach it, then it will just stand on the nearest point.

Lentonius, you really do want a giant map. Lets hope with MTW II we can stretch it a bit more than my tiny WarMap. I'm testing Makanyane's theory on dividing seas, so maybe we'll break the barrier yet. If not, would you like an all land map to play with ?

-IceTorque

What is the point in this stupid ratio? It does nothing at all useful for the game, whichever way you look at it, but simply stays as a nuisance for modders.

What I don't understand is how the Crusaders mod (with its huge and frankly superb campaign map) manages to survive under the limitations of this ratio. Here is a thread if you want to see what I mean:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=61093

Look at the first post, then at the screenshots.

EDIT: Now hang on a minute! Maybe the ratio is affected by patches/BI?

well, ideally I would have liked a giant version of the vanilla map, to make a strategic version with,but depending on the circumstances, this could be impossible.

Even so, i still dont think an all-land map would be as rewarding as a bigger vanilla one, because it would bear no resemblance to the original game map.

However, with this landmass ratio, I dont quite understand. Is it the amounts of sea in one 'block' or is it simply the ratio of total land area to total sea area?

Regards
Lentonius

Quote:

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However, with this landmass ratio, I dont quite understand. Is it the amounts of sea in one 'block' or is it simply the ratio of total land area to total sea area?

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Thats what I was trying to figure out with the 1 pixel division thing - have now reached throwing computer out of window stage again!!!! This morning I've been able to make break in one pixel line so sea is not totally divided and it still loads (aaargghhh). However cutting out 1 pixel line, measuring number of pixels with histogram, and replacing with 4 x larger (in pixels) solid island of land (in map_heights) and I get CTD again.

So its seems not exactly ratio and not strictly about size of completely divided blocks of sea, ??? back to pathfinding issue???????:wall:

Anyway I agree, it would be very, very nice if CA could either explain or preferably fix.. and unfortunately I don't think any of this is likely to get you europe map to the size you want...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Makanyane

I'm really curious to know on Arthurian TW, how large that is;
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...23#post1180723
and if their nice looking dragons (in radar map screen shots) are actually land and quite how they handled that.

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This is the map_heights:
https://img74.imageshack.us/my.php?i...heights7wm.png
as you can notice it's 451x427 ~:)

Ok, map_Heights 1021 x 1021 seems to be the limit. I did this by extending WarMap South, 1021 x 675 to 1021 x 1021. Unable to simply scale it up, too much water that way. So now 1/3 of the map is made up of the Saharan and Arabian desert, which is a bit too much sand for my taste....Perhaps the Zulu total war mod team will lend me some Zulu's to put down there !!!

-IceTorque

Unfortunately, i think we cannot work out this ratio simply. There is one time consuming way to do it, although still there will not be an easy answer, and will feel more like a stupid math investigation. I would appreciate that CA probably wont be able to offer a solution, but any information would be appreciated.

Ok, here is what we would have to do.

Create a map with map heights of 100x100. Test it with 100% land, then 90%, then 80% and so on, until you find a CTD or an error. Then a map of 200x200, we do the same proportion of land until we find a crash. We keep on doing this until say 1000x1000 map is used.

Then, we make a table of the minimum percentage of land required to make it work, and basically try to find the rule. Then we test it, and if it works, hurarh, we have a fairly rough idea of this ratio.

However, if anybody would be willing to help on this task i would be more than happy to contribute.

Regards
Lentonius

Uranos: thanks for the link, that answers my question - and its looking great!

Lentonius: started having a more concerted experiment along the lines you suggested and also changing layout. Quickly found out it does seem to have a lot more to do with layout of sea rather than percentage.

For an 801 x 801 map_heights with one continuous sea it CTD's at about 10.5%, ie. this arrangement crashed:
https://img182.imageshack.us/img182/...heights9el.jpg but cutting chunk out of middle of sea and pasting elsewhere (so obviously the same ratio) did work - in fact I've so far pasted that sea in another 3 times as well:
https://img182.imageshack.us/img182/...heights1dj.jpg and that is working with approx 26% sea.

Not sure if this is getting us any closer to a bigger europe map but if we can pin down more exactly what does / does not cause CTD, maybe we can get a bit further. (And at least it looks like if you want a large map with a lot of lakes you're OK!)

Made a simplified campaign to experiment on, in case anyone else wants something to experiment on I've posted it here:
http://www.filehosting.cc/download.php?id=F3ACBBC5
its for BI 1.6

I wonder if the crash is caused by too large areas of continuous areas of sea. Maybe putting in some islands might work?

Probably not but it's just an idea.

wow, this is very interesting, I think i will have a fiddle myself when i get an hour or two.

This is an important discovery IMO, that its the size of seas, not the mass of land that is most important.

Now, it seems that the main issue now is dividing the seas in a Europe map to such an extent that there will be no CTD's with a larger map.

This seems like there are still few options available to make this work, but I have thought of one.

Okay, it works like this;

We put a 'grid' on the map, say, a latitude longtitude one. This would split seas up comforably. You could have a basic one for the land 'grid', say, a line of high fertility, or something like this.

As for the sea, I dont know how the hardodes would affect this, but if you had small 1 pixel grid lines, would armies be able to traverse the grid texture?

If so, is there any way navies could traverse this grid also?

This poses some tough questions, and I would be grateful for some info if anybody knows any easier solutions to this...

Regards
Lentonius

Myrddraal- I dont know that your theory would work, as otherwise enlarging a Europe map would work in this way, as islands like Crete would 'block' the continuous sea.

Regards
Lentonius

Have just switched to testing on 1021 x 675 map_heights, as I've realised thats a similar area to the 800 x 800 area I was using and WarMap has larger area of continuous sea than I was achieving.

WarMap (at least I think that was what I was looking at - apologies IceTorque if not - versions/mods a little mixed up) has a continuous sea area of 165803 pixels. I added 151875 plain rectangular sea area to an otherwise land 1021 x 675 map_heights and it CTD's.

I'm starting to think really relevant bit could be the 'almost' divisions as I found on my british map (or something else related to shape of sea):

Quote:

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This morning I've been able to make break in one pixel line so sea is not totally divided and it still loads (aaargghhh). However cutting out 1 pixel line, measuring number of pixels with histogram, and replacing with 4 x larger (in pixels) solid island of land (in map_heights) and I get CTD again.

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European map has 'almost' divisions already at various points, black sea, africa /spain etc. Unfortunately when I tried other configurations of almost dividing my british map north sea they didn't work - so there's something quite subtle about arrangement.

Lentonius: Unfortunately I suspect grid system could mess up both land and sea movement, but don't understand enough about that to say for sure.

IceTorque: Out of interest, I'm not really going for bigger map, just wetter - but do you know if 1021 is hardcoded limit for dimension of heights, or was that just where you stopped due to water problem?

Makanyane, The 1021 x 1021 limit was tested useing an all land map, and I was unable to go even one pixel more. :wall: The largest scale map of Europe with just the North coast of Africa that I have working now is 1021 x 721 up from 1021 x 675 This is a scaled up and not extended version of BI-WarMap II running on the RTW exe.

As this map only extends as far East as vanilla, and is already at max width, to scale the height to it's max and keep things in perspective on this square configuration, vast areas of wasteland would need to be included on the map.
Which I think is good for bragging rights only, and would not be so good for gameplay. After all who wants the AI wandering around the Saharan desert chasing rebels, instead of guarding it's coastal cities and focusing it's attention towards the centre of the map. Also the square map of 1021 x 1021 looks odd and squishy on the radar map.

Anyways, I'm play testing WarMap III now ( 1021 x 721 ) and with only a few more settlements/regions than vanilla, I really do think that any larger would be too large and/or too square. For those that may be interested, I will be releaseing this version in a week or two.

-IceTorque

Sorry, double post.