Terraforming

[Kuciwalker]

On irrigating deserts: How about with Civil Service (which is required to let you irrigate away from rivers anyway), Deserts give +2 food when irrigated instead of +1?

They'd still be completely useless...

[Xorbon]

I was picturing a later tech than Civil Service. Something in the industrial or even modern age.

But whatever the case is, there should be some pain involved to keep the "strategic decision" that Kuciwalker mentioned. Maybe during the time that you have to wait for the forest to mature (which could be 5, 10, or more turns), you can't use the tile at all, or build improvements on it. Newly planted forests are somewhat fragile after all.

[joncnunn]

Flood Plains are very habitable in the game. They start with 3 food and can have a cottage added early on which will grow into towns. Alternatively they can have a farm added early to feed a specalist.

Desert on hills are also useful, they are in fact just like Plains + Hills with one less hammer.

Originally posted by mkorin
No, what is silly is that according to the game at no time in human history can mankind irrigate a desert or change a flood plan to habitable or at least make trails through mountions, let alone using explosives to reduce them to farmland. Mankind has done all of these things. Why does Firaxis force us to live with bad terrain. Sure, make it take longer, to balance the game. However, don't give me that sad excuse of the AIs not being able to make use of terraforming. They already upgrade their areas foolishly, it couldn't be much worse with limited terraforming.

Mike

[Brutus66]

I would like to see them have the ability to dig a canal like Suez or Panama, but how do you simulate in-game the cost and work that goes into a project like that?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Xorbon
But whatever the case is, there should be some pain involved to keep the "strategic decision" that Kuciwalker mentioned.

Whatever you do, it really kills so much of the early-game strategy. By late game you already have a ton of free workers, so you can then get the nice health bonus that would else be forever denied to you.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Xorbon
Besides, it's annoying when I capture AI cities and they've clearcut everything.

Which is why there shouldn't be any tree planting in the game. The AI only knows how to chop, it would never be smart enough to actually plant a forest. It would just become another exploit for the human player.

[Brutus66]

In real life, forest planting occurs all the time, there's nothing absurd or unrealistic about the idea.
I would rather see the AI be fixed to use the concept of planting than see the idea be scrapped. That's a cop-out.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by Brutus66
In real life, forest planting occurs all the time, there's nothing absurd or unrealistic about the idea.
I would rather see the AI be fixed to use the concept of planting than see the idea be scrapped. That's a cop-out.

In real life, forest planting does happen all the time, but it barely happened at all as recently as 50 years ago.

I can see allowing replanting with Ecology (which basically would eliminate the desirability of replanting for the health bonus) or some other modern tech. Chopping would be made obsolete/unavailable with the same tech.

And I still like the idea of a long, drawn out terraform of limited utility for (generic) desert tiles... say a +1 food or +1 hammer. So that they aren't completely valueless.

[Kuciwalker]

A desert tile at +1 food would be completely valueless

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Almost completely useless, yes. But nice to have the option, especially when you put a city down in a desert to exploit that isolated iron tile, and there's nothing to eat

[Kuciwalker]

A tile that, after farms, produces 2f0h0g is pointless. It only feeds the citizen working it.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
A tile that, after farms, produces 2f0h0g is pointless. It only feeds the citizen working it.

Usually pointless, yes. But there are situations where you might want to be able to run a food shortage. If you have a city with only 4 food available - 2 from the city square and 2 from a farmed plains tile, for example - it can only grow to size 2. But with a desert tile worth 1 food, you can grow the city up towards size 3, and with food in the bank, run a food deficit, alternate between the plains tile and any 0-food mines, and/or create a specialist. Having the leeway to run a food deficit is also useful when tiles are shared between cities, or an AI is culturally encroaching on one of my cities.

I understand that you've already made up your mind here, but I don't see how having desert tiles improvable to yield 1 or 2 food would "break" the game.

[Xorbon]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Whatever you do, it really kills so much of the early-game strategy. By late game you already have a ton of free workers, so you can then get the nice health bonus that would else be forever denied to you.

We both agree that the strategy of whether to chop or save a forest would be affected by tree planting. Where we seem to disagree is how important this strategy is for the overall game. To me, it's not a big deal if the loss of a forest isn't permanent. As long as tree planting is only in the latter part of the game, you still have to go through a large part of the game without the forest.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man
I understand that you've already made up your mind here, but I don't see how having desert tiles improvable to yield 1 or 2 food would "break" the game.

It wouldn't. That was about replanting forests.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Brutus66
In real life, forest planting occurs all the time, there's nothing absurd or unrealistic about the idea.
I would rather see the AI be fixed to use the concept of planting than see the idea be scrapped. That's a cop-out.

It has nothing to do with the AI being fixed. Those kinds of decisions are just beyond the ability of today's computers to perform well. At least if you expect it to be on an even field with a human. Deciding to forgo a farm or cottage in order to plant a forest is a judgement call and no AI right now is very good at those sorts of choices. Maybe when our personal computers have the same processing power as Big Blue, but certainly not right now.