Finer control of burg generation. Suggested by GeigerCounter

[barrulus]

suggested by GeigerCounter 24/12/2023 20:53

Hmmm... things like controlling population density and having clusters of settlements, preventing automatic regeneration when doing manual edits of cultures and states, having a fixed name for a given state's capitol, manual burg placement and road routing, and clearing all burg data to allow for complete manual placement. Those are the things I remembered wanting to do and not being able.

suggestions

• Controlling population density and urbanization of burgs (without editing global population).
• Having clusters of settlements
• Preventing automatic regeneration of burgs when doing manual edits of cultures and states.
• Having a fixed name for a given state's capital city.
• Province capital and hierarchy of burgs.
• Better road routing into burgs
• Create burgs centered on a central burg causing burgs to spawn at a greater frequency near a given control node burg ( based either on population or status as a state or provincial capital ). This would create a more naturalistic settlement pattern than the random equidistant scatter.

Maintainer triage note: In scope for towns generator

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Migrated from Trello during the backlog consolidation: https://trello.com/c/ZkARnY8a

[FearNaBoinne]

It would be nice if this refactor could include influence over the placement weighing bonuses and penalties.

Right now it assumes a fixed set for every type of burg, every culture/race...

But different races would have different preferences for habitable zones. Dwarves might be far happier at high altitudes than humans. Fae and Kitsune will be more likely to live in denser forests and woods than Orcs. etc.

And some of the current assumptions, like the linear altitude penalty over 50 (50 what?), do not seem very weighted, as altitude typically has an increasing weight as you go up, more akin to quadratic or exponential.

Some races may be absolutely comfortable in more arid locations, and thus have a lower tendency to group around rivers...

[Avengium]

I think we could create "archetypes" representing more or less recognizable or predictable races and cultures—the "stock" for each location. That way, we wouldn't need to create a specific placement algorithm for every single culture. It serves as an intermediate step between that and having to do massive fine-tuning, doing an algorithm per culture or exposing the culture-creation variables to the users.

The variables involved would be the habitability and positioning parameters currently found in the FMG code and documented in the wiki—specifically height, distance, and biome. All of these have historically been hardcoded, which made it easier to predict typical values for these cultures. If, in the future, any of these values become more sensitive, or if the system gains the ability to use different sets of heights, distances, or biomes, the variables defining how the settlement placement distances are calculated would vary for each set.

[FearNaBoinne]

I understand what you are aiming for here, but what would also be nice is to be able to deviate from default population assumptions.

Right now the system assumes that the land will always contain as many people as it can support, however that apparently assumes a high level of technology and industrialization.

A simple population pressure slider from 1-100% (or higher if you want to enable overpopulation possibilities) could help maintain a more pastoral, less industrialized society or a more dense, post-scarcity society as desired.

[Avengium]

I think a "population pressure slider" is a matter of another PR, because is about general population and not burg population.
In FMG burg population is a different step and can be regulated with "urbanization rate" because is different.

I think I've also made a mistake, since I was thinking about "culture type algorithms" and I don't think we use those for Burgs.
https://github.com/Azgaar/Fantasy-Map-Generator/wiki/Culture-types

[FearNaBoinne]

Perhaps, but Burg Generation also regenerates population, so it is a very mixed bag right now.

[barrulus]

I think burg and general population are intimately entwined. You cannot talk about one without the other.

If we are to rebuild the population mechanics, I think in truth we are gonna be looking at something of a pipeline generator that runs in stages, not the nice and simple mechanism we have today.