True Greens

[johndmuller]

I thought that I've seen a post or posts which asserted that forest grows downHILL, rather than downWIND. I admit tha it's possible that my eye-mind coordination was off and it/they said downWIND, but in any event, I've been acting on that notion when choosing where to start planting forest and I can't say that I noticed any trend to reinforce the downHILL theory, so I could believe that it was really downWIND. In RL, some tree seeds are pretty heavy like chestnuts, and others pretty light or aerodynamic like elm or maple, so a case could probably be made for either/both. Of course, some trees seem to rely on birds and/or animals spreading and even planting (squirrels & acorns) their seeds, so who's to say.

[Fitz]

A test of raininess and rivers would be a great idea. I have seen lots of people post here asserting that forest spreads faster along rivers, slower across rivers, faster in rainy, no wait it's faster in arid ...

It would be nice to know the truth of it.

[freshman]

It would be nice to know forest growth trends - hard to test unless you make up a map with say all arid squares - or all rainy squares - lots of high ground - or lots of rivers. I've heard that the number of neighboring forest squares also affect growth rates. So that might be another variable to test. I certainly don't have the patience to do these tests (yet) - I'm too busy playing my second game ever!

Speaking of playing True Green, how's this for a strategy:
I've heard others having a worm-collector base to attract all worms by running high eco-damage, and have units on hand especially built up to deal with them - and to get the energy from them - but I've never heard of anyone doing what I did during my game. In OCC, sometimes a faction starts eating into your territory. In my case, Miriam, who was unbribable, ploped down a city smack in the middle of my energy farm. I tried all diplomatic efforts to raise our level of friendship from Treaty to Pact to no avail. It didn't take long before she complained about all my energy farmers - in "her" territory. She was the biggest neighbor, so I had to comply and pull out - in hopes of a diplomatic solution in the next few turns. The next few turns came and went with no solution. Frustrated (in OCC can't build military units - and nobody had gifted me any either), I tried something I had never done before. I raised my eco-damage significantly, waited 2 turns for 2 rounds of worms to come on the scene, then droped eco-damage to zero. The worms became disinterested in me and headed for Miriams' base - which they promptly took out (it was only size 1 - I guess since mindworms cant take over a base, they only drop its pop by 1 when it enters).
Problem solved - and I immediately refarmed energy. Is that symbiotic or what? I didn't even need to capture them (couldn't without any military units). Not only that, but I maintained my diplomatic stance with Miriam because she didn't get to blame me for loosing her city. I used the planet's defense mechinism against my enemy by calling upon it. Granted the land was surrounded by sea and so there was only one route of escape for the worms which led them to Miriams' base. OCC has to be one of the most fun challenges - it sure forces you to get creative to handle tough situations - creativity that can only come in handy in an unrestricted game.

[Avenoct]

The whole forest growth question and John's comments about seed-dispersal got me to thinking (fantasizing) about a hybrid sim-earth/Smac game. You could have say 10 species of plants, 10 animals, and then add Smac on top of it. A player could choose which plants to plant and which animals to breed and each would interact. Some plants might grow like crazy but be low-producers, or even disturb your agriculture. Other plants could be high producers but only spread if you have certain animals in the same square. I know it's an impractibly complex idea (I once tried something similar as a board-game for middle-schoolers), but it's especially interesting on an alien world where being 'Green' might be being 'Red'. Alien-lovers vs. Terran-exporters vs. Industrialists, and so on.

O.K., I'll try to stick to the topic. Congratulations on the Worm-release implementation freshman! I say worm-release because there's a more commonly held practice of capturing or breeding worms and releasing them into your neighbors turf. Your worm-inducer is brilliant.

-Smack