There are several Impact Data Layers (strategic, natural wonder, city state, luxury resource and so forth), for each of which the ripple value of each feature is recorded. Why city states appear close to natural wondersĬivilization 5 uses so-called “impact and ripple” system to determine the minimum distances between certain type of objects. Then another function attempts to place natural wonder at random location from the specific list for each wonder, checks for collisions with other wonders, and records its placement. Should be inland.Īfter that the candidate plot list is generated, and for each plot level of OccurrenceFrequency parameter (from XML file) is recorded. Check for rare mystical wonder eligibility.“Check the center plot, which must be ocean surrounded on all sides by more ocean.” Check for Krakatoa the volcano eligibility.“This is also the only natural wonder type with a footprint larger than seven tiles.” It needs to be surrounded by salt water with no ice, and at least 4 coastal tiles. Check for the Great Barrier Reef eligibility.“This site is inland with no grass around, and has a moderate amount of hills and mountains.” Centre plot should be on proper land mass (not the biggest (unless there are no oceans), not on too small of an island), and surrounded by grassland and plains with no more than two hills nearby. Centre tile should be in the water or on the coast, surrounding tiles should have at least 3 coastal tiles, jungle and hills, but should not have desert, too many mountains or plains. Check for the Rock of Gibraltar eligibility.“This site is inland, in desert or tundra with no grass around, and does not have too many hills and mountains, so it's good.” “This site is inland, has hills or mountains, not too many tundra or desert, and not too many mountains, so it's good.” “If a candidate plot passes all such checks, we will move on to checking it against specific needs for each particular NW.”
Check for collision with civ start location, rivers and lakes, snow and ice.There are several functions which the script goes through to determine if plot is eligible to be a natural wonder, and if so, what wonder it then would be (quoted are comments from the script itself): It is handled via StartPlotSystem() function:ĭivide the map in to Regions, choose starting locations, place civs, place city states, Normalize locations, and place Resources.įrom the steps that follow it is clear that natural wonders are placed before city-states. One of the final steps is to determine civilizations’ placements, place wonders and resources. Resources are dependent on start locations, Natural Wonders, as well as plots, terrain, rivers, lakes and features. Natural Wonders are dependent on civ starts being in place, to keep them far enough away. Starting plots are wholly dependent on all the previous elements being in place. There one can see what steps the map generation goes through when determining locations of terrain, map features and assets (capitalization and grammar in this and following quotations is sic):Īssign Starting Plots, Place Natural Wonders, and Distribute Resources. The core function in the script a is GenerateMap(). Order of map features placementĪfter scouring through Civilization 5 XML files and game scripts, here is what I had found as to how the game generates maps and places resources and starting locations. Note, that I am not intimately familiar with the inner workings of map generation as I am not a developer or a modder, thus I may be unaware of any other possible factors at work here.
Below is the homework done in arrival to that conclusion.
They may spawn closer but only by a virtue of both being pushed away from the civilization starts and because are allowed to be close to each other.