No cottage in the desert?

[padillah]

I was just playing a pangea game and had to settle a city with a couple of desert squares. I figured I'd make the most of it and drop a cottage for the time being (there might be oil later but right now it just sits there and stinks).

The button bar didn't show an option for building cottages. Is this because it's desert? The 'pedia doesn't say anything about no desert builds.

Heck, that's the only thing that makes deserts not a complete waste ntil oil, money.

Tom P.

[Solver]

Desert's useless. Unless you get Oil there - sad stuff. Well, desert on borders is marginally useful for forts.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Solver
Desert's useless. Unless you get Oil there - sad stuff. Well, desert on borders is marginally useful for forts.

There are actually several resources that can show up on deserts - incense, stone, and iron for example. But desert is completely useless unless it has a resource in it.

[skodkim]

Originally posted by Solver
Desert's useless. Unless you get Oil there - sad stuff. Well, desert on borders is marginally useful for forts.

Which is excactly why I modded cottages on deserts in. It's quite easy. Just look for the cottage improvement in the xml-file called something like civ4improvements.xml (it's in the assets/xml/terrain folder) and look for the preresquites. It's stated in three lines that state the minimum number of food, shields and gold of the tile before cottages can be built. All must be 0 to make cottages buildable on desert.

Sorry for the somewhat vague description but I'm at work right now, so naturally I don't have access to the files.

\Skodkim

[Zoid]

Re: No cottage in the desert?

Originally posted by padillah
I was just playing a pegea game and had to settle a city with a couple of desert squares. I figured I'd make the most of it and drop a cottage for the time being (there might be oil later but right now it just sits there and stinks).

The button bar didn't show an option for building cottages. Is this because it's desert? The 'pedia doesn't say anything about no desert builds.

Heck, that's the only thing that makes deserts not a complete waste ntil oil, money.

Tom P.

That makes sense, really. What are you going to farm in the desert? Cacti and camels?

[LordShiva]

Re: Re: No cottage in the desert?

Originally posted by Zoid
That makes sense, really. What are you going to farm in the desert? Cacti and camels?

He wasn't trying to build a farm, he was trying to build a cottage

[GeoModder]

Perhaps Zoid was refering to his cottage's rosegarden.

[johnmcd]

Cottage on desert should be OK, but I do think it should grow at half normal speed or something, maybe desert tiles next to resources should allow cottages?

Any of the above would add random complications that would just leave the non hardcore confused though.

[Zoid]

Re: Re: Re: No cottage in the desert?

Originally posted by LordShiva


He wasn't trying to build a farm, he was trying to build a cottage

And what´s generating money from the cottage? Homemade pr0n?

[Paddy]

would be good if they allowed a way of reclaiming the desert even if it took a long long time

[Xorbon]

It's too bad you can't build a "Las Vegas" in the game. But to simulate that you'd have to do more than allow cottages in the desert. Some sort of food redistribution system would have to be implemented.

[Silver14]

They should change it so that you may build improvements on desert squares once you discover a certain technology. Perhaps Refrigeration as having Electricity and the ability to keep people cool and food frozen would allow for larger amounts of people to settle in the desert. Cottages and Windmills at the very least should be allowed on desert squares and perhaps even farming with irrigation.

IMO the reason they left desert useless is to deter the use of nuclear weapons as once the world starts changing into desert you are left with useless squares.

As it is now the only thing you can build on a desert square is if it happens to next to a river. Usually those squares are flood plains but on occasion I have seen them just be desert and next to a river, or change to desert via global warming. In that case you can build a water mill and that’s usually the only time I ever build that improvement.

[Dauphin]

I have a desert tile bordered by a river in one of my MP games. It produces one commerce and that is it. I thought that it was supposed to be floodplain, but no!

Is that a bug? Or a sign that there be an as yet unknown resource?

[Silver14]

I've seen them in several games. I'm unsure if it is a bug or just very rare, but my guess is the latter. Also I think that if a city is built on a flood plain and then the city is razed the square will be come desert. I'm not 100% sure on this but I vaguely recall seeing this.

In all truth a desert square with a watermill on it is just as useless as without as you get so little benefit from it. You are better off just makeing a city specialist then working the tile.

[OssomTossom]

Originally posted by Xorbon
It's too bad you can't build a "Las Vegas" in the game. But to simulate that you'd have to do more than allow cottages in the desert. Some sort of food redistribution system would have to be implemented.

Food redistribution as in Colonization, perhaps?