Tundra and irrigation

[Ari]

Does anyone know what the game mechanic is for tundra and farms? As far as I can tell, even when you have civil service, you can only build farms on tundra if the square is adjacent to fresh water. Being adjacent to another irrigated square isn't sufficient. Moreover, irrigated tundra won't spread irrigation to other tiles. Is it supposed to be this way? There's nothing mentioned in-game about such an effect.

Even stranger, it doesn't seem that a base tundra tile can be improved at all if it's not a) forested b) hilled or c) adjacent to a river (not counting resource squares). Again, there's nothing mentioned in the game itself about this. Anyone know anything else about this?

[Jaybe]

Your observations are correct;
i.e., that's the way everyone else observes it also.

Unforested tundra can only be used (even cottaged, I recall) if it is adjacent to a river, and then does not provide irrigation to other tiles. Unless you want to put a FORT there, of course

[Ari]

Well, at least it's not just me then. Now, bug or feature?

[Kuciwalker]

Feature.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Ari
Well, at least it's not just me then. Now, bug or feature?

Feature indeed. It's supposed to represent the limited capability of Tundra in real life. It's really not useful for very much so this is the game's way of reproducing that limitation.

[demon59]

I seem to recall quite a bit of gold mining done on tundra in Alaska.

[Kuciwalker]

And if there's gold on Tundra in civ, you can mine it

[joncnunn]

About the best thing to do with a predominatly flat tundra city is make it a national park which will allow forest spreading.

[ZEE]

forests spread so incredibly slow that parks are useless IMHO, except in large cities with happiness problems.

lumbermills all the way

pieceâ„¢

[Yosho]

Well, except I usually end up building my Natioanl Park Reserve wonder in a heavy tundra-forest city, and then that becomes my main great person producer for the rest of the game. But yeah, that's the only real use I've found for parks; in theory, the happiness could be useful if for some reason you really need it, but in practice I'd almost always rather have the +2 hammers for lumbermill/railroad, even if I'm running enviormental.

[joncnunn]

Natural Preserves (and the National Park) both increase forest growth. (The also promote jungle growth as well, so you'd want to cut those first.)

So if there's open tundra left, these will fill those in.

And if you have another city with flat tundra, it would actualy be a good idea to switch one or two of those tiles into natural preserves and as it spreads switch them back to lumbermills.

[Ari]

Originally posted by Willem


Feature indeed. It's supposed to represent the limited capability of Tundra in real life. It's really not useful for very much so this is the game's way of reproducing that limitation.

But tundra is already made less useful by virtue of the fact that it only produces 1 food (ie, half as useful as a plains or grassland square). It's not like there's something about tundra that specifically affects irrigation (though to be fair "spreading" irrigation is more a gameplay concept inthe first place, without a real life counterpart). If it's a feature, it's an undocumented one, and a pretty obscure one too.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Ari
It's not like there's something about tundra that specifically affects irrigation

There is in real life. A lot of Tundra is perma-frost, frozen soil that never thaws even in the summer months. Or at least not very deeply. That is most definitely going to have an affect on irrigation.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by joncnunn
Natural Preserves (and the National Park) both increase forest growth. (The also promote jungle growth as well, so you'd want to cut those first.)

Actually, if for some reason there still happens to be a jungle in my National Park city when I build the national park, I'll keep it. It's not a great square of course, but it's still a free specilist, the health penelty is irrelevent in the national park city, and because of all the forests in my national park city, I rarely end up having enough population to work all the squares anyway.

[Blaupanzer]

Originally posted by Willem


There is in real life. A lot of Tundra is perma-frost, frozen soil that never thaws even in the summer months. Or at least not very deeply. That is most definitely going to have an affect on irrigation.

Also the locations with tundra in RL all have short growing seasons, thus less fruitful.