Mechanics
Map types
On the setup screen, in the Map type section that follows the match length, you choose the shape of the map. There are four types: Standard, Mountainous, Forested and Lakeland. A type does not bring a new terrain or a different board: the board is always the same (Map and terrain), and the terrain is the same four kinds. What changes is how much mountain, forest and water the generator paints and in what kind of clusters.
The setup screen opens with Standard selected the first time; on the web, opening it with Change setup after a match brings up the type of the match you played. Someone who never picks a type always plays the Standard map; it is also the only map there was before type selection was added.
The four types
- Standard — a balanced map: plains, forest and mountains together; water stays on the coast as small lakes.
- Mountainous — mountains multiply and form large ranges: walls and corridors take shape, passes grow scarce and armies march through narrow roads. Forest thins out. Mountain is impassable; the road is the tiles left between the mountains.
- Forested — wide belts of forest: moving through a Forest tile is slow and forest favours the defender. Because forest is painted over plain, the share of plain shrinks; land you can found cities on does not, since forest is a foundable tile too.
- Lakeland — a region of lakes gathered in the middle of the map, land around it: armies move over the land around the lakes. In this type water is seeded not from the coast but from a disc in the middle of the board, and painted with larger clusters.
What it changes
Each type can change four things: a terrain's target tile count, the size of a single cluster, where a cluster's seed is picked from, and the band the fairness audit allows that terrain. The tables below are the ranges the generator uses, as they are; for each terrain the generator picks a target from the range and paints clusters until it reaches that target (generation stops when no base tiles are left).
Target tile count:
| Type | Mountain | Forest | Water |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | 24–52 | 76–152 | 0–36 |
| Mountainous | 64–104 | 40–88 | 0–36 |
| Forested | 24–52 | 176–240 | 0–36 |
| Lakeland | 24–52 | 76–152 | 64–104 |
Size of a single cluster (tiles):
| Type | Mountain | Forest | Water |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | 2–4 | 2–4 | 2–4 |
| Mountainous | 4–8 | 2–4 | 2–4 |
| Forested | 2–4 | 4–8 | 2–4 |
| Lakeland | 2–4 | 2–4 | 3–6 |
Cells that stay the same mean the type does not touch that terrain: a cell that shows the same number as Standard is using Standard's rule. The move cost and defense multiplier of a terrain do not change in any type (Map and terrain).
Fairness applies to every type
Whatever the type, a map goes through the same fairness audit, and a map that fails it is thrown away and regenerated from another branch of the same seed. The only check the type changes is the terrain-mix band: on a forest-heavy map, if the plain share stayed inside Standard's band, the audit would have rejected the generated maps, so the band shifts with the type. The remaining rules — distance between starts, node and ruin shares, the main landmass requirement — are the same.
It is this last rule that keeps Lakeland's roads open: all starts have to stand on the same landmass, so no player is left across the water and the lakes cannot separate the starts from each other.
The daily seed and the result code
The daily seed is always played on the Standard map. The point is that everyone who plays on the same day sees the same map; if players picked the type, results from the same day could not be compared. That is why picking today's seed on the setup screen locks the type selector with Standard shown as selected. Your own choice is not lost: it comes back as soon as you switch to another seed.
The type is part of a match's identity. The same seed on another type gives another map; "the same map" means the same seed and the same type. The result code carries the type: when you paste a code into the seed field, the type comes from the code — even if the code carries the daily seed, because the code promises the same match and the Standard lock does not turn it into another one. If you touch the type yourself after loading a code, the match is no longer the code's match and the daily seed locks to Standard again. Older codes that carry no type (R1, R2) and older saves with no type are read as Standard; that is, they always open on the Standard map (Getting started).
A match you left unfinished continues with the type it started with.
The numbers on this page are read from the game’s balance tables.