Map size? Population limits?

I seen the discussion addressing an option of having a world map but just curious if there has been any thought to over all map size or a population cap?

Technically speaking I suppose old age and such (like diseases) would be a natural way to control populations. Was curious if there was a hard number in mind though.

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Release city map size will depend of final optimisation. Currently we are working with maps from 1 to several square Km. Enough for a Neolithic city and surrounding farming.
But it is still too soon to talk about the strategy map.

There is a technical hard coded population limit, but you will kill your fps before reaching that limit.
Even so, good luck with trying to reach the point where your fps start to suffer under Neolithic living conditions.

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Don’t underestimate the capabilities of gamers :stuck_out_tongue:. With that said, a hard coded population limit in excess of what current hardware capabilities can handle in my opinion is not always a good thing. It tends to lead to a lot of complaints post release on as to how a game is poorly optimized.

Often, setting the default cap to lower but allowing this to be easily increased through example modding or even easier, a .ini file or something, helps reduce such complaints. As it makes it clear the game is not intended to be played with such numbers at that time with the available hardware.

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The game is being conceived as a long term platform, so the limits are high. Those are technical limits though, but if we detect performance problems we will cap them to reasonable numbers to avoid that.

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“…good luck with trying to reach the point where your fps start to suffer under Neolithic living conditions.”

Haha, true enough.

Why not simply include a hardware assessment for safe, optimal, degraded - akin to how a compiler optimizes resources to the box its being compiled for? That way if they go with the degraded values (all max 4k being the current reference) simply places a icon on the screen to resolve any issues when people exceed the expected values for the hardware they are using? Saves face for the game by showing the tester has exceeded the optimal settings for the hardware available.

Though I’d like that all features are unlimited or maxed out at reasonable numbers, I’d prefer to have it as an option. Sinds not everybody will have the latest an greatest gaming pc to play this game on.

You want to make the game accessible for all, if you want to make it a even bigger success than it’s already going to be. So creating an option for lowering the map size and setting a low population limit might actually be usefull for people playing with a basic/older pc.

(I was just searching for mapsize, so nevermind this message if you going to do so. Sinds it’s an old topic)

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I would prefer a larger map than population. Game borders are the crux for me not number of mobiles on the map.

Eventually you could include population scaling. One character represents more than one head of population as a ratio, with the population ratio discretely expressed in the GUI. Players should also be able to influence this, setting higher ratios if they need to preserve fps.

Ratios are not strict, so a settlement which has achieved 1:15 ratio from 1:14 will have less figures walking out of huts than walk in. yet some characters might have a fixed ratio, soldiers for example might be fixed at 1:10 once population ratio exceeds that, and your Ensi or Tribal Elders might always be single characters.

In any event player should have control over the ratio in game settings, with recommendations dependent on CPU and GPU detection.

This may change before release but currently there is 3 map sizes that the player can configure when the game starts. The smaller the map, the less available resources and this limit max population.

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Map size is therefore directly linked to size of game.

While logical it does limit scope, increasing size of game should automatically increase size of map, but hopefully not vice versa. Terrain is relatively cheap in terms of memory in most games, unless yours is somehow different I would like you to consider allowing players with less powerful computers to choose large maps but smaller population caps if it suits their hardware and playstyle.

Player choice is paramount, some may prefer a ‘handy’ smaller map, others such as myself want the game borders as far away as reasonably possible to better ‘air’ the game.

You are right, this one is different in that sense. Terrain size sets the quantity of entities in the terrain, like plants or fauna. Each entity is simulated, and while that doesn’t cost too much CPU because it is distributed, it takes lots of memory. In other games plants are generated on the fly while the player moves around, in AC every plant in the map is tracked and simulated, and this limits the map size.

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