Megarandom map generation

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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What do people think of the way AoE4 does Megarandom compared to AoE2?

In AoE4 the map generation for Megarandom is more “random” overall, but this actually leads to many maps that feel relatively similiar.

There’s usually a bit of mountain terrain, a bit of water, a bit of stealth forests, and a decent balance of all the resources distributed randomly. I have only seen a couple maps that were more unique, such as one with a ridiculous amount of deer or maybe the water or mountains being in an interesting configuration.

AoE2 on the other hand has generations that are not as random overall, but feel much more different from each other. It seems to pick a random map script from a very large pool of different options. Some of those options also have more varied starting conditions.

As a result you can start with different buildings or units even, but it is always “fair”. So everyone may start with two scouts, or two TCs, or an archery range, etc… You can also have maps such as one where 95% of the wood on the map is on a hill in the middle and all the gold and stone is at players’ starting positions, or one where most of the map is shallows with shore fish, or one that just has very little of a particular resource, etc…

Personally I prefer the way AoE2 does Megarandom maps. What do you guys think?

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There’s a code, if you press ESC, that you can copy, and using same biome, map size, and this code, same map will be generated. You can copy the codes you like in a word, or something like this to play these maps again.

I mostly play megarandom, but the only thing I think has to be improved, is the resource distribution. In most of the megarandom maps, resources are all in the middle, or badly distributed in a way a team usually has more than the other.

Perhaps is the fun of megarandom, but I feel like it needs to be corrected.

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Yes that is the map seed. Most of the seeds for AoE4 Megarandom just do not feel very unique.

This is something AoE2 does, even though things are “random” it is not truly random, it distributes things fairly between teams/players.

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I tried to play some maps using the seed, and it generates the orography and number of lakes, position, etc… But doesn’t keep resource generation.

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Make sure to use the same bio.

A side note: after every patch / update, the codes you write down might become useless because of changes. (Useless as in they won’t generate the same map any longer)