Desert and Tundra from 3 tiles away from each other.

[Edèr]

It happen a lot of time to me. Is it just bad luck, or am I missing something ? I feel like the map generation is completly ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up.

[Lemurian1972]

I feel like your knowledge of geography is limited.

[Dr Duh]

The driest desert on earth is in Antarctica.

[Edèr]

Lemurian1972 a écrit :

I feel like your knowledge of geography is limited.

Im pretty sure that, Irl, sand and snow desert are not separate by one hill and a mountain.
Im pretty sure that you are not a geography expert either.
It would be nice to understand the question before bashing a guy that "dare" to ask something on the internet.
Have a nice day.

[gerald freeman]

central asia has that exact topography

[gimmethegepgun]

The problem is that people commonly conflate "desert" with "hot". Deserts are extremely arid. This often occurs in conjunction with being hot in the daytime (but sand deserts are often quite cold at night, as sand has terrible heat retention), but it doesn't need to be hot to be a desert.
As stated, Central Asia has quite a lot of desert, a lot of which is cold desert, and is often nearby tundra or similar, due to altitude or latitude.

[Edèr]

gerald freeman a écrit :

central asia has that exact topography

The subject is not clear enought aparently.

[gimmethegepgun]

Edèr a écrit :

gerald freeman a écrit :

central asia has that exact topography

The subject is not clear enought aparently.

I'm not sure what is unclear about:

Edèr a écrit :

Im pretty sure that, Irl, sand and snow desert are not separate by one hill and a mountain.

That's basically a description of Central Asia.

[Exemplar]

well, in some places on Earth, it is exactly that way. consider that "desert" does not mean "hot". although this seems conventionally the case from a distance, because most documentaries or other information sources depict non-polar deserts and they're hot and sandy, the real definition of a desert relates to the amount of precipitation in the region. the largest desert on earth is at the planet's sub-polar region, antarctica is bigger than the sahara. the karakum and kyzylkum deserts are in north-central asia, in game proportions 1-2 tiles from what would conventionally be described as tundra.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deserts_by_area

[gimmethegepgun]

Also, South America. If you look at this map[upload.wikimedia.org] you can see that in the southern end of Argentina there's a large desert (the Patagonian, which is the 7th largest in the world) and practically right next to it in Peru is area classified as tundra.

[Edèr]

Alright so, the case here is that, in Civ VI, I spawn very often between a ARID desert and a Tundra. My goal was not to discuss about geography but to find out if others had the same problem or is it just bad luck. Thats it.
And pls do not answer me for the 5 th time that its normal it exist IRL. As Greece im not suppose to play on any sort of desert.

[jbciv]

Yes. Sometimes the game starts you in between 0 yield desert, tundra, and 0 yield snow tiles.

[Lemurian1972]

Edèr a écrit :

Alright so, the case here is that, in Civ VI, I spawn very often between a ARID desert and a Tundra. My goal was not to discuss about geography but to find out if others had the same problem or is it just bad luck. Thats it.
And pls do not answer me for the 5 th time that its normal it exist IRL. As Greece im not suppose to play on any sort of desert.

I guess that's what you get for burying your point under a ranty headline and end with a complaint about map generation.

Saying 'it happen a lot to me' is vague and non specific to your starting location as a civ. I took it to mean you just saw it often in your games.

You sounded like you were complaining about map features you felt were impossible, and people went with it.

Your first reply didn't help matters, because you chose to treat it like a personal attack instead of trying to clarify your point.

Im pretty sure that, Irl, sand and snow desert are not separate by one hill and a mountain.

Again, this makes it sound like you're complaining about a feature you find to be impossible, which as many have explained to you, is not the case.

tl;dr- if your problem is with your starting spawn, stay focused on that to keep your thread from going off topic.

[Edèr]

Lemurian1972 a écrit :

Edèr a écrit :

Alright so, the case here is that, in Civ VI, I spawn very often between a ARID desert and a Tundra. My goal was not to discuss about geography but to find out if others had the same problem or is it just bad luck. Thats it.
And pls do not answer me for the 5 th time that its normal it exist IRL. As Greece im not suppose to play on any sort of desert.

I guess that's what you get for burying your point under a ranty headline and end with a complaint about map generation.

Saying 'it happen a lot to me' is vague and non specific to your starting location as a civ. I took it to mean you just saw it often in your games.

You sounded like you were complaining about map features you felt were impossible, and people went with it.

Your first reply didn't help matters, because you chose to treat it like a personal attack instead of trying to clarify your point.

Im pretty sure that, Irl, sand and snow desert are not separate by one hill and a mountain.

Again, this makes it sound like you're complaining about a feature you find to be impossible, which as many have explained to you, is not the case.

tl;dr- if your problem is with your starting spawn, stay focused on that to keep your thread from going off topic.

k

[Sword_of_Light]

Edèr a écrit :

Lemurian1972 a écrit :

I feel like your knowledge of geography is limited.

Im pretty sure that, Irl, sand and snow desert are not separate by one hill and a mountain.
Im pretty sure that you are not a geography expert either. .

I am. I have a BA in Geography and an MA in GIS.

Shifts in climate, biome, and terrain can be very abrupt. Desert is not necessarily a product of heat; the high desert of Atamalca has an average temperature of only 18C (63F), and is also a fog desert.

It also depends on how you define a desert. The World Wildlife Fund defines a tundra as a kind of desert - so having a desert hex near a tundra hex isnt odd at all. Its just two kinds of desert.

Civ also has several failings in its basic map structure, most notably the lack of altitude. While there are hills and mountains, there is no overall mechanism for simulating altitude above sea level. You have hills, you have mountains, but you do not have high plateaus - for instance Wheeler Peak in Nevada is about 3km (10k ft) above sea level, but its base, Baker, NV - a flat open range - is still about 1.8km (6k ft.) above sea level. Compare this to Mt. Washington, NH, 1.8km above sea level, but Stow, ME - which is where you could say is where the terrain changes from mountain to hill - is at about 180m (600ft) above sea level.

A civ map would display both these as the same.

There's also a question of resolution. If you look at an image on Google Earth, you're probably going to get a pretty decent per pixel image - say 10m to a pixel. Panchromatic images will get you submeter resolution while older imaging systems might give you 30m resolutions. The old SPOT 1 had a 1.09km/pixel resolution for its IR imaging. That means that everything in a 1.09km x 1.09km square is displayed as the same value. Now pull that back even farther - on a Huge civ map, the resolution per hex is what? 100km? 200km? I'm just tossing that number out there, but it seems like a reasonable number. So, the state of Massachusetts in Civ would look like: Mountain, Hill, Plain, Urban. Cape Cod would either be a swamp hex or a sea hex, neither of which actually describe Cape Cod.

Now, the generation of reality-based maps in Civ has been addressed in mods like Perfect World 6, which produce maps closer to real world geography; rivers more closely adhere to hydrology rules, I believe it even accounts for rain shadows created by mountain ranges. But overall, the base generator does a reasonably good job of simulating real world terrain.

[Exemplar]

Edèr a écrit :

As Greece ...

well, this won't explain all of it away, because some is attributed to some luck (or bad luck) of the random generation of terrain and nature of start position but...

greece has a tier 3 bias toward hills. granted it would be nice if those hills were green, and you're right when you say there's not a desert or tundra bias, but the game is looking to put you in a hilly area. so if you have other leaders with a river, coast, rainforest, grassland bias as competitors, i can see 4 or 5 times out of 10 starting in "what's left over that has hills", and that being some tundra.

if you want to experiment, you could try playing on a "younger" planet (or "new" in civ 6 context, previous iterations were 3, 4 5 billion years), wherein hills and mountains are more plentiful. perhaps that would land you in a "greener" spot, but everyone will have lesser flat terrain.

or, if you've already been tinkering with settings, high sea level will always net less-great starting positions for most participants, as will fractal map.