Steve Swaringen

@Torabi, assuming this change in map behavior is intentional (as you describe), it represents a philosophical change in the concept of maps in Minecraft. One of the beauties of Minecraft is that every individual can play the game in a different way, suited to their own interests. For those who like to explore large areas and stitch maps together, the new behavior will be regarded as a good thing. It will substantially reduce the effort required to get separate maps to line up with each other. For the rest of us for whom maps are primarily about mapping the area around where we live, it forces us to choose a location for our domicile that has a particular orientation to the invisible coordinate system. (Keep in mind that the grid coordinates are only visible if you either have a mod installed or use the "diagnostic" HUD.)

I personally don't like the new philosophy, though I think I understand it and recognize that there are those who will like it. Maps no longer work in an intuitive fashion aligned with the "primitive" character of stone picks and shovels. Instead they act more like satellite images managed by NSA computers.

Has this new philosophy of maps been vetted against the Minecraft vision?

I agree that this effect was likely the interaction of multiple rules in the Villager AI, and also that the behavior is much improved in the latest snapshot.

I have a pre-existing artificial village where I've evaluated this. It is a very large village, built under a 101 meter diameter glass dome to protect from mobs. Inside the dome are two concentric 5-story rings of apartments. Total is approximately 700 doors. (I can't begin to count the villagers, or even the iron golems with them moving in and out among the structures.)

With 1.7.4 the vast majority of villagers conglomerated, day or night, on the first floor on the northwest edge of the outer ring. With 14w07a they definitely spread out a lot more, some even venturing outside the dome. Large crowds will gather in the central park/forest, and others will gather at the north end of the dome where a natural river passes inside the dome. Some of these villagers will play in the water. (All we need now is a rubber duck. Where did I leave that chicken?? 🙂 They do still seem to be biased to the northwest (even after many day/night cycles in 14w07a), but not nearly so strongly as before.

Part of me would like to see this AI taken a step farther where villagers would socialize during the day but would tend to associate themselves with particular doors (apartments) at night, generally trying to return to the same door (making it easier at night to find a particular villager offering a particular trade), and trying harder to spread themselves uniformly among doors within the community at night. Children at night would tend to go home with their parents. But, what I see in 14w07a is a huge improvement in the AI, and makes creating large villages more interesting than they were with the old AI.