Enemy Nations

Enemy Nations map resource generation on large worlds is a bit too random, and often generates substandard resource levels.

Asked by Geoffrey Hyde

I have noticed on all too many an occasion, that Enemy Nations will quite often on moderate difficulty worlds generate map resources that are far below par for what you'd expect to fight with. These problems relate to the Enemy Nations game I have installed on my PC, and I do not know if rebuilding the source code alone would eliminate these problems, although examining it would indicate that some problems got 'designed' in. I have no idea why Windward would design map problems in, and if there isn't really sufficient incentive to keep them in, they should be eliminated for an improved overall gameplay aspect.

Examples include the following:

1. Too little of oil, coal, or iron, or lumber.

From what I have seen, it would appear that the map generator sometimes will give you a starting square which has very little usable resources generated in it. I play Trisekan a lot, but even I don't expect them to get sustainable lumber out of just 7 tiles of lumber clumped in one spot.

2. Large world maps not reaching a proper definition of 'large'.

I understand that large world maps reach a certain amount of tiles in size, however, what I do not understand is when your landing area extends to over 3/4 of the blacked-out area not visible on a large world map. I like my large worlds to be spread out a bit so that the computer AI has enough distance that I can do a buildup that takes time on many problem maps. (More detail on this in point 3 below.) I like my large worlds to be having an aspect that looks visually to be about 1/4 to 1/3 of the blacked-out area.

3. Problem maps which have problems (subcategorized below) relating to the slope of the terrain, terrain spikes, unbuildable resources, too many mountains etc.

Enemy Nations has a very capable map generator, a lot of the time it seems to generate incorrect maps. Such examples include:

(A) Very good looking iron deposits located next to the water slope - or on mountainous terrain - and on steep terrain which does not allow for a lot of mines to be placed unless you're willing to destroy half the site by demolishing building foundations for what little return can be accomplished.

(B) Terrain spikes in particular can be horribly difficult to remove. Even if it costs up to 3/4 additional build time, I would prefer to see the ability to remove terrain spikes IF a particular deposit or location is needed for production rather than have a terrain spike make it totally unbuildable. This seems to have been designed into the map generator Enemy Nations currently uses. Why? All it does is frustrate and inconvenience my single-player games, and I'd like to see terrain spikes disappear, especially since in the real world they'd just bulldoze something that small flat within a day or two.

(C) Mountainous terrain falls into two categories: (i) too many mountain tiles on relatively flat map areas usually with resources on them and (ii) mountainous regions of the map which end up with an otherwise very good and wanted resource allocation on them.

(D) Terrain which undulates a bit too steeply. Often I have found myself wondering why the swamp area on a large world needs a lot of time to place good oil mines on which I am after a lot just to speed up the end-game itself. I have noticed a lot of the time that this is due to rather steep mountainous terrain which allows for very little or no mine placement unless it gets hammered flat with a lot of building demolitions.

That concludes this question for now, hopefully Andy will have some ideas here. What I really want to know is which source files in Enemy Nations would be needed to load and decompress .en game files so I can see if I can make a map editor myself for them.

Cheers ...

Geoffrey Hyde

Question information

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English Edit question
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Enemy Nations Edit question
Assignee:
Andy Nichols Edit question
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Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#1

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.

Revision history for this message
Andy Nichols (nezticle) said : 		#2

This brings up valid points, and from what I've seen in the map generation code this should be fixable. I will spin off individual bug tasks where needed.

Revision history for this message
Adam K (kaboooom2000uk) said : 		#3

After playing this game for many years, I have several peeves. Simmilar to Geoffrey....

Firstly the Multiplayer support sometimes works and somtimes doesnt, I get into the middle of a heated LAN game and then it crashes leaving me to then suddenly fight a computer AI which suddenly takes over my friends buildings. The crash is sparodic as well, everything will be running smoothly, and suddenly, Error, on one PC or the other, it happens to mine, or his, at random times. Its very frustrating as by this time, we may have been playing for over 2 hours without fault. Maybe this can be investigated too.

Issue 1: Yes, I agree, the map generation is a bit one sided at times! but I find it part of the challenge. Once I recall it started me off in an area which was in the middle of a barren island, with barely any resourses. This needs to be avoided. I dont mind treking around for oil etc, I can survive with slow cars for a while untill the refinery starts chugging along, but theres gotta be some resourses to go round, at least a bare minimum. I like how it does it, but maybe a map preview option would help, or other options to set world parameters? like mineral content etc, %water %landmass %forest/desert etc.

Issue 2: Land size, Yes, while the worlds are physically large, I think with modern computers, the world can be much bigger, since the days of 32MB of ram we should be able to make Ginourmous ones with todays average 4GB ram, my current system has the capacity for upto 32GB of FBddr2, and supports 8 cores. This is what we have to work with today. I also think we shold keep the "endless" map the way it has no sides, makes it more like a planet...

I agree also, somtimes on maps I notice the enemy camp! and this is a stones throw from my starting "zone", if i cross the border I end up in the other players camp. Somtimes I can even see their crane and trucks running about. anyone else see this before?

THis is my personal request, we really need some FOW, (fog of war) although the units have "vision" the terrain is already exposed. Anything outside your landing zone should be clouded while you can see it from the air, (landing) but may go hidden again, over time if you units are not there. This is also another point, you can more or less tell where the enemy base is, (due to tile flattening on resourse patches) also if you look in a dence forest, you may see "holes" where the builidngs were placed by the enemy. The fog would cure this issue and make the game more tactical, since you really need to send a scout to see whats there...

Regarding the other land points, I have seen those occour as well, maybe they can be fixed.

Issue 3: Regarding the tiles, yes, especialy on hilly areas, the buildings will "flatten" the surrounding ground, and make adjacent tiles "bend" to the new height and this makes things look awkward, espacialy if you are looking for a place for a coal mine or ore mine, and you then have to rotate the map, uurgh, annoying.

Revision history for this message
Geoffrey Hyde (hydegeoff) said : 		#4

@Adam K: If map generation would at least provide decent and balanced resources with which to fight, I wouldn't mind. The problem here is that the AI has plenty of material to do a rush with, and you are too busy trying to gather together what scraps you can for 1/20th the army size and effectiveness that the AI mows over you with.

What I want is a high resoource, high intensity buildup fighting style of map, not this random nonsense that means I'm spending far too much time how to make my colony viable. I toss out 90% of the generated maps for one reason or another, and worse, Enemy Nations as it currently stands will suffer from bad maps for no other reason than your PC has a bad memory stick! I found this out once the technician told me what the problem was, after the PC stopped booting one morning, and Enemy Nations map generation improved vastly!

Something I also want is to be able to do is to build a customized map editor for Enemy Nations, however, I have found that one part of the problem is identifying what parts of the source code tree are needed for map generation, and what parts are not.

I think one major task in the Enemy Nations source code tree should be that it is rebuilt in such a way that it is a lot easier to trace out where frequently used functions and variables are going. A lot of Enemy Nations source seems to have parts of the program specific to that part of the program spread out through the whole program like a huge insect a team of ants has killed and is cutting up to take back to their hive.

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