City square irrigation food bonus

[Mercator]

I was just looking through a silly thread on CFC, and noticed this:

[Q=The Person]28 - You found all your cities on mountains because you want the best defence bonus...

29 - ...but still lose because your citizens starve to death...[/Q]

And I suddenly thought of something. I'm quite sure that it has been known before. I'm not sure if it's ever been used though. I don't know if that's because people didn't quite know the details, because it turned out to be not that useful, or simply because I missed all the scenarios already using it.

When you build a city, the city square is automatically irrigated, giving you a food bonus. The interesting thing is, though, that you get the irrigation bonus regardless of whether you can actually irrigate the terrain.

So, you can change the Glacier irrigation food bonus to 10, but still keep irrigation disabled. This will mean that Glacier is still as ****ty as ever, and you can only mine it, but when you build a city on it, you suddenly get 10 food, making the terrain perfectly viable for a city.

Haven't scenarios used special terrain for cities sometimes? A special extra fertile city terrain in case of extra full maps with lots of cities together, to make sure they have enough food, or when the rest of the map should be particularly barren...

Now, instead of making the terrain so fertile, you could put all the food in the irrigation bonus. That way, for instance, if a city is destroyed, surrounding cities won't suddenly have a huge food boosting square next to it. The only way to take advantage of the bonus is to build a city right on it.

I imagine this could be used for other purposes as well. Or rather, taken advantage of and used in an unconventional way. Imagine it as a special sort of resource you can only use by building the city on top of it, rather than just by having it inside the city radius.

[Boco]

I was toying with this for a while, but dropped it. Not because it's a bad idea. To the contrary, it's very useful. In EA, I don't want the cities to grow quickly at all. Most just have a surplus of 1 or 2.

Distantly related to this, I set up a tough irrigation scheme. Most terrain takes a prohibitive amount of time to irrigate. Instead, the Supermarket (named "Irrigation Works", since the Brits named everything 'works' back then) is available. For an expensive maintenance cost, it adds a food to the city square.

In addition in EA, most 'border' cities are founded by the opposing civ. That seems to limit AI pillaging, although River War shows a few examples to the contrary.

The interesting thing is, though, that you get the irrigation bonus regardless of whether you can actually irrigate the terrain.

There's a nasty bug, that I think is related to this. If an @TERRAIN line gives a terrain type an irrigation bonus, but sets the Irrigate field to 'no', then when you try to [Shift]-F8 the terrain, Civ2 crashes. Like I say, I think this is the case. Lack time to test at present.

[Harry Tuttle]

Useful idea, I've never seen it used the way Merc describes it.

I can see this used in a sci fi or fantastical scenario. The cities could be a metaphor for a water well. Build a water well on a piece of "dry lake bed" and out comes the water. Water could supplement food was the driving force behind population expansion. Water could be caravaned out to other cities. Naturally a population grows around the water wells, hence the normal city ability to build units and improvements.

[Mercator]

Oooh, great idea there, Harry.

Hmmm, if you'd only have a few "well cities", you could have a war fighting to control the wells (um, let's forget about the AI for a moment). Lose control over a well, and your entire civilization could be in trouble. Moreover, you'll actually have to try and keep the well cities small in size, to make sure you have enough surplus to go around for the rest of your cities.

Originally posted by Boco
There's a nasty bug, that I think is related to this. If an @TERRAIN line gives a terrain type an irrigation bonus, but sets the Irrigate field to 'no', then when you try to [Shift]-F8 the terrain, Civ2 crashes. Like I say, I think this is the case. Lack time to test at present.

Oh? Nothing crashed for me.

[Boco]

Nope, what I described doesn't happen, that's for sure. Knew I should have posted when I encountered the bug. The memory's pretty stale now.

[Cyrion]

Now this is really interesting, Merc!

I never saw it used, but I just wrote it down for further use...

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Mercator
Oooh, great idea there, Harry.

Hmmm, if you'd only have a few "well cities", you could have a war fighting to control the wells (um, let's forget about the AI for a moment). Lose control over a well, and your entire civilization could be in trouble. Moreover, you'll actually have to try and keep the well cities small in size, to make sure you have enough surplus to go around for the rest of your cities.

Thank you! I'll have to try this one day. I've got an idea for a very strategic scenario in mind that might be fun. I think I'll try this out in the game.

[cousarmy0001]

wouldn't the water caravans continue even if another civ took over the city?

[Harry Tuttle]

Yes, they would. One method of eliminating this problem is to use the strategic food route method I devised.

[Harry Tuttle]

Or have the well cities pump out settlers for rehoming or plain old city building.

[Mercator]

Originally posted by cousarmy0001
wouldn't the water caravans continue even if another civ took over the city?

Ah, didn't realise that. Don't use caravans too often.

[Ecthy]

Whose fault is it we're not getting Civ2 hardcode improvement by that guy?

Merator's

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Mercator
Ah, didn't realise that. Don't use caravans too often.

You could always have the well cities swept away periodically by some major terrain changing event, like a sandstorm or flood. This would eliminate any permanence to the food routes.

[Eivind IV]

Only problem with the irrigation bonus as a replacement for the use of a fertile terrain, is that most of the times you don't want all cities to have that kind of bonus. For instance a colonial scenario, you only want European cities to have it. And this irrigation bonus will apply to all cities built, no?

Still this fertile terrain is often used to depict high trade and shield production as well as the food production.

But I agree, that it is a neat thought, that has some interesting potentials!

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Eivind IV
Only problem with the irrigation bonus as a replacement for the use of a fertile terrain, is that most of the times you don't want all cities to have that kind of bonus. For instance a colonial scenario, you only want European cities to have it. And this irrigation bonus will apply to all cities built, no?

Still this fertile terrain is often used to depict high trade and shield production as well as the food production.

But I agree, that it is a neat thought, that has some interesting potentials!

As I understand it the bonus applies to only one kind of terrain. So it only applies if a city is built on that one kind of terrain.