Tired of unusable mountain battle maps?

**chaos** · May 11, 2008, 11:27 PM

Why are the steppes of the kievan_rus mountanous in the battle maps, but flat on on campaign maps ???

**Lusted** · May 12, 2008, 02:35 AM

It's something to do with the steppe climate I think, as the area of the Steppes is more hilly than any other flat area of the map. I will likely have a god at reducing the hills on 'flat' maps, but not sure how much that will change the steppe maps.

**lesterthenerd** · May 12, 2008, 04:23 AM

Originally Posted by Lusted

It's something to do with the steppe climate I think, as the area of the Steppes is more hilly than any other flat area of the map. I will likely have a god at reducing the hills on 'flat' maps, but not sure how much that will change the steppe maps.

awesome stuff. cant wait for flatter terrain.

**wolfslayer** · May 13, 2008, 05:45 PM

Lusted, have you ever taken at look at the vegetation.db and seen if it is possibly editable.

Would love to be able to reduce the huge numbers of frame killing rocks and lessen the amount of weeds so battlemaps can have nice grass and hires trees along with high frame rates.

I tried a little hex editing of the db a while back, the game didn't crash, but got stuck in an infinite loading loop trying to load the file.

I've also actually gotten a new vegetation_db to start compiling through the whole list of models, and then the overlay textures, but run into problems with the distibution_maps, where they go and what data they should contain; veg.txt says they must be 8 x 8 tga's.

Was wondering if the distribution_maps_1,2, etc in the db are the actual tgas that could possibly be extracted and used..

**ssari** · May 14, 2008, 12:14 AM

thank you good job..

**Lusted** · May 14, 2008, 02:22 AM

Had a go at making the Steppes flatter but to no luck, none of the values seem to ahve muc influence over it. And it's odd because other flat areas of the map appear quite flat on the battlefield. I'm guessing it's probably something to do with the specific climate code stuff later in the file but it's changed too much from Rome for me to be able to locate it. So, no flat steppes I'm afraid.

**billydilly** · May 14, 2008, 08:47 AM

Does this lovely thing work for other mods?

**Lusted** · May 14, 2008, 08:52 AM

Yes it works with all mods as I know of no other mod that edits the descr_geography_new.db file.

**chaos** · May 14, 2008, 01:38 PM

Originally Posted by Lusted

Had a go at making the Steppes flatter but to no luck, none of the values seem to ahve muc influence over it. And it's odd because other flat areas of the map appear quite flat on the battlefield. I'm guessing it's probably something to do with the specific climate code stuff later in the file but it's changed too much from Rome for me to be able to locate it. So, no flat steppes I'm afraid.

**chaos** · May 14, 2008, 01:46 PM

Thanks for trying Lusted. The steppes were referred to as the "breadbasket of europe" , very fertile soil, relatively flat farmland or grassland. On the battlemaps they look like semi-desert, extremely hilly and arid, with lots of cliffs and rocks.

Would reducing the values in the desc_terrain.txt file reduce the relief on the battle maps?

**Guinnessmonkey** · May 14, 2008, 02:10 PM

Originally Posted by chaos

Thanks for trying Lusted. The steppes were referred to as the "breadbasket of europe"

Were they called that during this period? Breadbaskets come and go... After all, the American Great Plains (now pretty much the breadbasket to much of the world) used to be called the Great American Desert... Personally I'm not sure what the steppe was like before it was parceled out into plots and irrigated, but I have a feeling it looked a lot less fertile back then...

**WRL** · May 19, 2008, 05:41 PM

I got to a map that was crazy with the mountain ranges, so I thought of this mod, and it worked great, an actually usable battle map emerged, and I had a great battle, thanks!

**Guinnessmonkey** · May 20, 2008, 08:38 AM

Originally Posted by WRL

I got to a map that was crazy with the mountain ranges, so I thought of this mod, and it worked great, an actually usable battle map emerged, and I had a great battle, thanks!

Yhea... So far in testing I haven't had to deal with the totally unusuable maps I used to get in Anatolia. Hooray!

Thanks again for making this!

**The Lionheart** · May 21, 2008, 11:09 AM

Lusted:

Thanks for this mod. There was nothing more annoying than having two armies just sitting there stuck between impassible terrain on the bettle screen. I haven't had that problem since the download.

**aduellist** · May 21, 2008, 07:50 PM

Originally Posted by The Lionheart

Lusted:

Thanks for this mod. There was nothing more annoying than having two armies just sitting there stuck between impassible terrain on the bettle screen. I haven't had that problem since the download.

Ditto for me, Lusted. Top notch as usual. +rep

**bthizle1** · June 01, 2008, 02:29 PM

Is this compatible with 6.1?

**~~Miraj~~** · June 01, 2008, 02:31 PM

It should be compatible with anything. Nobody's really touched the files that Lusted edited.

**bthizle1** · June 01, 2008, 02:36 PM

Ok, and other than the steppes flat ground being "hilly" there's nothing like that right? I mean everything on the campaign map will be fairly correctly portrayed on the battle map?

And this file isn't replacing anything is it? Because I put it in my SS data folder and I didn't have to overwrite anything.

**~~Miraj~~** · June 01, 2008, 02:56 PM

Originally Posted by bthizle1

Ok, and other than the steppes flat ground being "hilly" there's nothing like that right? I mean everything on the campaign map will be fairly correctly portrayed on the battle map?

And this file isn't replacing anything is it? Because I put it in my SS data folder and I didn't have to overwrite anything.

Yep. Aside from the steppe, it's generally a very good improvement. And yes, it replaces nothing.