Difference between Crafted and Generated Maps

Crafted Maps is the “easy” way to create maps for AoE IV without programming knowledge, but as I have experienced it can be a buggy and difficult challenge. Those maps does not, regenerate or much vary when you load into the match, neither it can have different map sizes, therefore you get the exact map as you created them in the Content Editor manually.
Generated Maps will generate each time a match starts, it leads to a more “random” map experience. Those maps vary and cannot be edited manually except by your code.

Feature	Crafted Maps	Generated Maps
Map Generation	Manually editable, Fixed	Regenerating by code, (Random)
Map Size	Fixed size up to Large (16 Players)	Dynamic size, depending on the lobby settings
Time consuming	Medium	Large
Difficulty	Beginner*	Advanced*

*Recommened by the Content Editor

Creating a Gererated Map project

Open the Content Editor
Under the Get Started, we select the Create A New Mod button
From all the existing Mods we choose the Generated Map option

Template

From there we can choose between 2 templates:

Basic: Includes basic instructions as an example, for beginners
Advanced: Also has example instructions but also rivers and ocean examples, for advanced mep generation

We will use the basic template for our project.

Names

The Generated Map Name has to be written without! any whitespaces or tabs. Otherwise the output log will give us an error.

The Display Name is the name, which players can see inside the game.

After pressing next you should add your mod description, set your save location and the language of your mod. When your done you can press Fininsh.

Programming Order

Note: If you haven't done any programming yet, I suggest you watch basic tutorials or check out the Programming for beginners.

As soon as your Content Editor finished loading you will be greeted by a big long code with many, many commentary! Thats good but, how do we actually use all those things they throwing at us? Let’s start step-by-step… Here it what the code looks like without the commentary and examples:

terrainLayoutResult = {}

gridHeight, gridWidth, gridSize = SetCoarseGrid()

if (gridHeight % 2 == 0) then
	gridHeight = gridHeight - 1
end

if (gridWidth % 2 == 0) then
	gridWidth = gridWidth - 1
end


gridSize = gridWidth

playerStarts = worldPlayerCount

n = tt_none
h = tt_hills
s = tt_mountains_small
m = tt_mountains
i = tt_impasse_mountains
b = tt_hills_low_rolling
mr = tt_hills_med_rolling
hr = tt_hills_high_rolling
low = tt_plateau_low
med = tt_plateau_med
high = tt_plateau_high
p = tt_plains
t = tt_impasse_trees_plains
v = tt_valley

--bounty squares are used to populate an area of the map with extra resources
bb = tt_bounty_berries_flatland
bg = tt_bounty_gold_plains

--the following are markers used to determine player and settlement spawn points
s = tt_player_start_hills
sp = tt_settlement_plains
sh = tt_settlement_hills
seb = tt_settlement_hills_high_rolling


--BASIC MAP SETUP-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
terrainLayoutResult = SetUpGrid(gridSize, p, terrainLayoutResult)

baseGridSize = 13
mapMidPoint = math.ceil(gridSize / 2)

--set a few more useful values to use in creating specific types of map features
mapHalfSize = math.ceil(gridSize/2)
mapQuarterSize = math.ceil(gridSize/4)
mapEighthSize = math.ceil(gridSize/8)

--Here's a basic loop that will iterate through all squares in your map
for row = 1, gridSize do
	for col = 1, gridSize do
	
	--do stuff with the grid here
	
	end
end

-- SETUP PLAYER STARTS-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
teamsList, playersPerTeam = SetUpTeams()

teamMappingTable = CreateTeamMappingTable()
	
minPlayerDistance = 3.5

minTeamDistance = 8.5

edgeBuffer = 1

innerExclusion = 0.4

cornerThreshold = 2

playerStartTerrain = tt_player_start_classic_plains

impasseTypes = {}
table.insert(impasseTypes, tt_impasse_mountains)
table.insert(impasseTypes, tt_mountains)
table.insert(impasseTypes, tt_plateau_med)
table.insert(impasseTypes, tt_ocean)
table.insert(impasseTypes, tt_river)

impasseDistance = 2.5

topSelectionThreshold = 0.02

startBufferTerrain = tt_plains

startBufferRadius = 2

placeStartBuffer = true

terrainLayoutResult = PlacePlayerStartsRing(teamMappingTable, minTeamDistance, minPlayerDistance, edgeBuffer, innerExclusion, cornerThreshold, impasseTypes, impasseDistance, topSelectionThreshold, playerStartTerrain, startBufferTerrain, startBufferRadius, placeStartBuffer, terrainLayoutResult)

The start

Our map generates based on a grid layout, so at the beginning we:

Get the Grid Height, Width and Size.
Making sure the Grid Width and Height is always an odd number like (13).
Setting the Size, same as the Width to gurantee a Square Map.
(Optional) we get the count of players, our match starts with.

-- Init Layout
terrainLayoutResult = {}

-- Get Height, Width, Size
gridHeight, gridWidth, gridSize = SetCoarseGrid()

-- If they can be divided 2 without decimal places -> subtract 1 from the value
if (gridHeight % 2 == 0) then
	gridHeight = gridHeight - 1
end

if (gridWidth % 2 == 0) then
	gridWidth = gridWidth - 1
end

-- Make it equal Size for a square map
gridSize = gridWidth

-- (Optional) getting the player count
playerStarts = worldPlayerCount

Tile definitions (Terrain-Types)

After the start section you can find also some (optional) declarations of terrain information per tile:

n = tt_none
h = tt_hills
s = tt_mountains_small
m = tt_mountains
i = tt_impasse_mountains
b = tt_hills_low_rolling
mr = tt_hills_med_rolling
hr = tt_hills_high_rolling
low = tt_plateau_low
med = tt_plateau_med
high = tt_plateau_high
p = tt_plains
t = tt_impasse_trees_plains
v = tt_valley

--bounty squares are used to populate an area of the map with extra resources
bb = tt_bounty_berries_flatland
bg = tt_bounty_gold_plains

--the following are markers used to determine player and settlement spawn points
s = tt_player_start_hills
sp = tt_settlement_plains
sh = tt_settlement_hills
seb = tt_settlement_hills_high_rolling

These values like “tt_plains” describes a terrain information and we will use these for each single tile, to create our map! They also define their terrain heights, that means: tt_plateau_med is lower than tt_plateau_high inside the game. Defining them as “m = tt_mountains” makes the code looks smaller, but I prefer to write them down -> Makes it clear what it really is!

Here I list my personally favorites to use:

Note: If you want to see ALL available terrain-types(tt) I listed them here: ALL Terrain Types.

Synonym	Meaning
Low	Low raised terrain
Med	Medium raised terrain
High	High raised terrain
Impasse	No passable by units, like mountains
Settlement	Sometimes called markets
Market	Sometimes called settlements

Note: It is not necessary to place tiles that provides extra resources, except you want too. Resources will be equality placed for each player after the map was created by the game itself. Same for the players start location.

Map setup: Tiles

This is where we will spend our most time(appart from the game). Here we tell each tile of our map, what kind of terrain it will use. The most simple way is to use For loops -> Iterates each column and row of our grid(iterating). That means instead of writing 20+ lines of code, we have it all central in 1 place(but its your choice). It also wont matter how big the grid size will be, since the loop always iterate through all tiles.

--BASIC MAP SETUP-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
terrainLayoutResult = SetUpGrid(gridSize, p, terrainLayoutResult)

baseGridSize = 13
mapMidPoint = math.ceil(gridSize / 2)

--set a few more useful values to use in creating specific types of map features
mapHalfSize = math.ceil(gridSize/2)
mapQuarterSize = math.ceil(gridSize/4)
mapEighthSize = math.ceil(gridSize/8)

--Here's a basic loop that will iterate through all tiles in your map
for row = 1, gridSize do
	for col = 1, gridSize do
	
	--do stuff with the grid here
	
	end
end

You can also add more loops and lines to set your map up, but it needs to be in between:

terrainLayoutResult = SetUpGrid(gridSize, p, terrainLayoutResult)

and:

teamsList, playersPerTeam = SetUpTeams()

Player start location

Finally we setting up the players start location, there are many values where we can change spawning locations for players. We will go through each of them:

Note: Except we already set a player start location on the tile setup before, the game will automatically create a spawnpoint based on the setting from the lobby and the spawn method we will choose here.

-- SETUP PLAYER STARTS-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
teamsList, playersPerTeam = SetUpTeams()

teamMappingTable = CreateTeamMappingTable()
	
minPlayerDistance = 3.5

minTeamDistance = 8.5

edgeBuffer = 1

innerExclusion = 0.4

cornerThreshold = 2

playerStartTerrain = tt_player_start_classic_plains

impasseTypes = {}
table.insert(impasseTypes, tt_impasse_mountains)
table.insert(impasseTypes, tt_mountains)
table.insert(impasseTypes, tt_plateau_med)
table.insert(impasseTypes, tt_ocean)
table.insert(impasseTypes, tt_river)

impasseDistance = 2.5

topSelectionThreshold = 0.02

startBufferTerrain = tt_plains

startBufferRadius = 2

placeStartBuffer = true

terrainLayoutResult = PlacePlayerStartsRing(teamMappingTable, minTeamDistance, minPlayerDistance, edgeBuffer, innerExclusion, cornerThreshold, impasseTypes, impasseDistance, topSelectionThreshold, playerStartTerrain, startBufferTerrain, startBufferRadius, placeStartBuffer, terrainLayoutResult)

In the first part we get players information from the lobby settings like: Team Lists and Players per Team. After this we create a detailed list of the teams for this lobby with players information.

teamsList, playersPerTeam = SetUpTeams()

teamMappingTable = CreateTeamMappingTable()

The minimum space between players:

minPlayerDistance = 3.5

Minimum space between teams:

minTeamDistance = 8.5

Tiles between the Edge of the Map and the player:

edgeBuffer = 1

(In Percentage!) Defining in what area the players can not spawn away from the center tile -> 0.4 means 40% from from center of the map -> this results in a 20% in left, right, up. down direction where no players are allowed to spawn.

innerExclusion = 0.4

Tiles between the Corner of the Map and the player:

cornerThreshold = 2

Tiles on where players spawn and information about their starting resources:

playerStartTerrain = tt_player_start_classic_plains

Impasse types are tiles where players cannot spawn on, additional to the previous settings. All tiles we insert prevent the generator from spawning a player on this terrain type. Like for example oceans or rivers:

impasseTypes = {}
table.insert(impasseTypes, tt_impasse_mountains)
table.insert(impasseTypes, tt_mountains)
table.insert(impasseTypes, tt_plateau_med)
table.insert(impasseTypes, tt_ocean)
table.insert(impasseTypes, tt_river)

The distance from the player to the defined Impasse Types is set here:

impasseDistance = 2.5

topSelectionThreshold controls how small the “best spawn area” should be. The system sorts all spawn locations by distance to the allies, then it only keeps a small percentage of the closest ones.

Example: A value of 0.02 means only the closest 2% of all spawn points are allowed. If the map has 500 possible spawn locations, 2% of 500 = 10. So only the 10 closest positions will be used for spawning.

Smaller value = allies spawn very close together. Larger value = more spawn options, allies can be farther apart.

topSelectionThreshold = 0.02

Start Buffer Terrain:

This buffer terrain, ensure that around the players start location is enough space or building… Its optional but recommended. The startBufferTerrain tells the type of terrain(Make sure it fits your created map tiles, otherwise you may encounter Evalutaion differencies). The startBufferRadius it the tile radius around the player spawn, on which the startBufferTerrain will be override your set up terrain. placeStartBuffer and here we can choose if we want to use the Buffer Terrain true or if we do not want false.

startBufferTerrain = tt_plains

startBufferRadius = 2

placeStartBuffer = true

Finally: How should the game spawn our players? In a ring? In a line? We will do that here:

-- Places players in a ring formation
terrainLayoutResult = PlacePlayerStartsRing(teamMappingTable, minTeamDistance, minPlayerDistance, edgeBuffer, innerExclusion, cornerThreshold, impasseTypes, impasseDistance, topSelectionThreshold, playerStartTerrain, startBufferTerrain, startBufferRadius, placeStartBuffer, terrainLayoutResult)

Note:The other spawn formations can be found here: NaN

Next steps:

Create a Basic Mountain pass

Browse the API reference
Debug your Mod