Tell me more ×
Arqade is a question and answer site for passionate videogamers on all platforms. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 4 down vote favorite

For the last few weeks Civilisation V always generates the same kind of boring map: flat land, very few mountains, most of the land desert or tundra. Is there anything that could have caused this? I have not installed any mods or modified the game in any way.

share|improve this question

1 Answer

up vote 8 down vote accepted

Did you configure it to be arid and old; or random for everything and just have a run of similar worlds?

You could explicitly set the World Age and Rainfall (from your description, the temperature could have varied a bit) to mix it up.

  • World Age: Adjusts the map "smoothness", as a longer world has eroded more.
    • 3 billion years: highly mountainous
    • 4 billion years
    • 5 billion years: flat
  • Temperature:
    • Cool: more ice, more tundra at lower latitudes
    • Temperate
    • Hot: more jungles, less tundra
  • Rainfall:
    • Wet: more forests and jungles
    • Normal
    • Arid: more deserts

Configure the settings to a younger earth (3 or 4 Gyr) and temperate or wet rainfall if you want to get away from what you're describing. You can do so on the "Advanced Setup" panel when you configure a game.

enter image description here

share|improve this answer
I left all the default settings as they were. I still keep running into very boring flat worlds with random desert patches all over the place. – Andrew J. Brehm Apr 2 '11 at 21:10
@Andrew, is that what you see after you've fully explored the world? If you pick a Civ from a desert region (e.g. Egypt or whatever), the game will try to place you in an appropriately themed area, so when you do your initial exploring you may be running into a lot of said deserts. – Nick T Apr 3 '11 at 1:34
I always play the same civ (Persia). And the desert patches without mountains go on for a bit. I only play for a few moves before I give up (out of boredom). I finally managed to start a game and get a decent map (although heavily forested). Your explanation above is good, but I think the map generator is date-based and I just start games at the wrong hour. (Same happened with Alpha Centauri...) – Andrew J. Brehm Apr 3 '11 at 3:31
Random number generators are almost never 'date based' since it's as easy for the developer to access the number of seconds (since some fixed time) as the date. – DJClayworth Apr 5 '11 at 15:57

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.