What do you look for when you generate a map?

[City Builder]

I've noticed that quite a few players of the Towns alpha have stated that they will spend upwards of 30 minutes or more generating maps before finding one that they find acceptable to play on. This got me thinking, because I'm also one that will spend 5 to 20 minutes generating maps until I find one that is acceptable, that maybe by listing what it is that we are looking for in the maps that are generated, SMP can work on the map generation to try to create maps that are more appealing to their player audience and thus people won't be spending 30 minutes or more hoping to generate a map that looks appealing for them to play on.

For me...

Normal maps (which is all that I play on anymore) *These below are my preference, I will play a map if they don't have them as long as they have some of the others*
1. Surface iron (even just one cell)
2. Surface Coal
3. Map cut into sections by a river so that they are completely divided and require a bridge to get to the other side.
4. Froggies have to either be on the opposite side of the river from my Town or at the very least very far away from where I decide to start.
5. Clumps of fruit trees in an area so that fruit harvesting at the start of the game doesn't scatter my townies to the wind.
6. Must have reasonably large areas that are totally flat if I want to build an above ground town.
7. Must have clumpings of regular wood trees to a certain degree, won't play a map where trees are spread out all over the place with mostly bare spots.

I think those are about it for me, like mentioned I don't have to have all of them present, but if there is enough of them present on a generated map then I go ahead and play on it. I can forgo the surface iron and coal if the rest of the items are present, and likewise if there is surface iron and coal, then I can ignore things like fruit tree clumping and the froggies won't need to be on the other side of the river but they'd still need to be reasonable distance from where I'm going to start my town.

Perhaps by listing what we are looking for, SMP can correlate the data of what people look for and strive to make their map generator better than it already is.

[tom k.]

Grass

[Kleko]

My main concern when I start a map is having enough flatlands to make a town without spreading it out to much or lower/raise terrain until my fingers bleed.

[Solax]

1. Surface iron (even just one cell)
2. Surface Coal
3. Map cut into sections by a river so that they are completely divided and require a bridge to get to the other side.
4. Froggies have to either be on the opposite side of the river from my Town or at the very least very far away from where I decide to start.
5. Clumps of fruit trees in an area so that fruit harvesting at the start of the game doesn't scatter my townies to the wind.
6. Must have reasonably large areas that are totally flat if I want to build an above ground town.
7. Must have clumpings of regular wood trees to a certain degree, won't play a map where trees are spread out all over the place with mostly bare spots.

I agree with this almost completely though I usually don't want surface coal AND surface iron 'cause I like to have more challenge. But I won't start with a map that doesn't have either of them.

And if a map has some unique feature (like a big lake right in the middle), I'm more willing to use it than just the one regular river cutting the map. All and all, more variety for map generation would be nice.

[phoe]

My main concern when I start a map is having enough flatlands to make a town without spreading it out to much or lower/raise terrain until my fingers bleed.

This. Hopefully a better terrain manipulation solution is coming up.

[Espero]

Absolutely nothing. I just tackle whatever I get and make it work. It's part of the fun to me. Though with 4.6, man, my first map was hilarious. Surface iron all over the place.

[caprontos]

I want...

No lake
Coal and Iron somewhat close and Iron in the middleish of my side of the river.

That is my main two things. anything else that is good that I get is a side benefit.

I removed hills from my normal map since I just flatten everything anyway and there is no proper tool for it yet..

[Procne]

I modify generator to suit my needs:
1. Move iron one level up
2. Remove 1-tile ponds from the jungle
3. Remove froggies (Keeping them means only that I spend first 4 days making wood / stone armor / weapons, drive froggies out, and then start building)
4. Reduce number and size of hills - hills don't really have any impact on the game, apart from having me to click more to flatten them
5. Lower the number of stone seeds - there seems to be too many of them
6. Make lake smaller

After this I look for a map where jungle part is somewhere near the middle (banana farm!)

[Atropo]

What I look for in a generated map and it usually takes me forever to get is:

A) Surface coal and iron so I can have access to mining shafts quickly.
and B) Flat land to build on, there seems to be wayy too many hills or huge lakes taking up a lot of space on most maps.

[Torgen]

I modify generator to suit my needs:
1. Move iron one level up
2. Remove 1-tile ponds from the jungle
3. Remove froggies (Keeping them means only that I spend first 4 days making wood / stone armor / weapons, drive froggies out, and then start building)
4. Reduce number and size of hills - hills don't really have any impact on the game, apart from having me to click more to flatten them
5. Lower the number of stone seeds - there seems to be too many of them
6. Make lake smaller

After this I look for a map where jungle part is somewhere near the middle (banana farm!)

Where is the stone seeds set? I agree, far too much unusable surface land with so much stone. Perhaps stone areas are needed to place iron/coal/copper on the surface? I don't know.

EDIT: Found it, I'm testing just reducing the number of seeds for now