Costal terraforming - request for advice

[TheMurderousCricket 5,042]

Hi Guys,

I have a question regarding the workflow and "how to" of performing terraforming tweaks to a region with multiple already existing cities and, like, really big number of city tiles...

My specific goal is to change the coastline of my entire region to make it look more organic because I find it too smooth. I tested two methods which I am familiar with.

First, I used in-game erosion tool but it has several downsides. First of all, I would need to open all coastal city tiles (which go into a hundred pieces I believe...) to even apply the tool. Second, the effect itself is less than satysfying... The erosion works in a simplistic combing pattern leaving marks which look as if the shore was raked with giant gardening tools... Also, the coast line is not even altered at all...

The second way, involves using SC4T and applying "Erosion" global tool twice. I generally like the result it produces, as it creates more rugged coastline and random displacements all over the shore. It also leaves some of the coast intact which allows for some gentle beaches still.

The problem I have with this method is that it is... well, global. This means that everything unprotected will be affected as well, which I am not entirely fond of. I am inclined to use this method but this would mean that I'd still have to manually check all tiles I do not wish to edit and only then run the global erosion tool.

My question is if there is any other method which could produce the same global "randomization" effect that SC4T offers. Just faster - that would allow surgical terraforming along the region's coast without me having to first pick all tiles I do not wish to terraform?

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

So you do want to terraform a large number of city tiles using the global tools. None of these need to preserve any city development?

Maybe this way?

1. Name each of the tiles that you will erode/alter
2. Now work on a copy of your region
3. Do all the terraforming you want (don't worry about blocking other tiles)
4. Load your live version of the region in SC4
5. Import each terraformed city tile into the same location (the names will help you)
6. Delete the copied region which'll look like swiss cheese after the imports

And make a .zip of your region before you start any of this just for safe keeping.  

[TheMurderousCricket 5,042]

Thanks Rina, it seems like a good way to go. I can't think of anything else except perhaps, somehow, exporting entire region as a bitmap and working on that. However, differences between the shades of gray will be minuscule, making the bitmap hard to work with... Not to mention that I won't be able to see the final result until the work is finished.

The trouble with SC4 tools is that they all use round brushes that make it difficult to create jagged landmasses, sharp, angular turns etc. This is the trap I often fall into. Unless of course you are ready to work with tiny brush sizes to sculpt the entire map for many, many hours. 

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

25 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

The trouble with SC4 tools is that they all use round brushes that make it difficult to create jagged landmasses, sharp, angular turns etc.

@Raymond7cn discovered how to change the brush shapes. It was never made into a published mod, but we could prolly find the info he posted if you felt like digging into it.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,042]

You can direct me there if you have time, though I think I'm not looking for this since any brush-based erosion effect is bugged or flawed anyway, regarless of the brush shape.

The best way would be to create a belt, 0,5 - 1 km thick into the shoreline and perform some procedural changes that would affect this area only, much like a mask in an image. I already exported some trial pngs and bmps but I can't make out sea level out of these LSD-like pictures. 

EDIT: I actually tried it nonetheless and made some so-so changes with a smudge tool. The fact that the colors are so little apart makes this a bit of a hit-and-miss effort but it can alter the coastline in a surgical way that I'd expect... Both of those methods come with pros and cons! I can't make up my mind yet which one should be used!

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

1 hour ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

I can't make out sea level out of these LSD-like pictures. 

This kind?

I believe that'll be difficult to do much precision editing in your image program. Unlike the 16-bit Grayscale, the RGB is not linearly progressive. Each color channel is bumped up in increments.

See this topic for a lot more details. @Han Solo did an in depth investigation and in post #5 I listed the increment progressions as stated in the Mapper and/or Terraformer docs.

Here's the relevant part of my post:

On 5/24/2025 at 6:31 PM, CorinaMarie said:

• Each blue represents 0.1 m for each blue and rolls over every 25.6 m
• Each green state is 16 Greens higher and 25.6m than the previous one and rolls over every 409.6 m.
• Each Red State is 16 Reds and 409.6m than the previous one.

 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,042]

Yes. That's what I meant but I don't use this one.

I had some good results with grayscale png. but these files are very dim... Which is why I say it's a bit of a hit-and-miss when it comes to determining the exact waterline which I want to alter.