Changing Terrain

[Seeker]

Do any of the rest of you keep a settler around to mine grassland for specials?

comments about this:

-always turn corn to silk because more trade and more shields is better than just a lot of food.

-always turn pheasants to buffalo because with buffalo you get more trade, the same food with irrigation, and more production.

[Smash]

yes.I'm always looking for specials.My grandfather was a "prospector" so I guess it runs in the family.

I'll change food specials to trade specials after a little growth and irrigation.

fruit>silk..also

[Seeker]

Oh, I forgot that one

[Jim W]

What I do, when I have the wherewithal, is put two Engineers (or more) terraforming the same location. It akes less time, which means I get the benefit sooner.

I don't usually bother with transforming hills, unless there seems to be a real good reason, like not enough food, etc. I have, on the other hand, transformed grassland into hills in order to get a mine, but then again, not always either. I've learned one thing for sure about this game, whatever strategy you pick, you have to be adaptable.

Jim W

[Sten Sture]

Something I learned from Paul...

Forest your rivers, and irrigate your non-river forests.

You get trade arrows both ways. With some very limited early exceptions more trade is better that everything else. I will forest every grassland in the pattern looking for specials.

[Andz83]

Well, I'd like to change all forests to hills and then mine them, but it takes too long time to do that, because you need TWO terraforms. I'll never irrigate forests because Plains got less production than forests.

But actually the double-terraforming from forests to hills will always be a good way to improve your production, except for the specials (Silk moves to Coal, I think...)...

Yes, there's no reason to keep the pheasants, they suck.

I never terraform ALL my plains to graslands, just when the city gets the max size and I don't want the citizens to starve each turn, I terraform the plains to get a number of food "dividable" by 2, so there's no starving and then growing anymore...

------------------
"The more I know, the more do I know that I don't know anything" - forgotten who said that...
"Within the peace, enemy attacks us..." - Kaiser Wilhelm II, August 1914
"Hell, yeah!" - James Hetfield, while singing "Master Of Puppets" on Metallica-S&M-concert in spring 1999 in San Francisco

[Crustacian]

You bet i do It is a fun part of the game to me as well as helpfull

------------------
The journey itself is the thing~Odysseus

[Ming]

Yes, I will change the terrain on specials to meet my needs. Early on, food for growth is key, but after the cities have grown, who cares. Switching them to trade or production specials is something I will really consider.

When it comes to grasslands, I check the pattern out to see if their is a potential for something better. Again, once the city has grown to a good size, the food from the grassland becomes meaningless. Converting it to a trade special is big. Granted, sometimes I guess wrong, but in the middle game, the settler is probably bored anyway

[SilverDragon]

I always change specials to ones like coal and buffalo. It is a lot better. Too bad you cant change things to whales

------------------
Long live the Communists!
-- SilverDragon

[geofelt]

Considering how long it takes, I rarely terraform. Irrigating swamp/jungle to get grasslands is ok, and mining same to get forests is ok. There are usually a lot of more productive things to do with a settler or engineer.

[Steve Clark]

Like geofelt, I only transform when I have a spare engineer or two that is not out building roads/railroads/fortress.

[cavebear]

Let's consider game context: I often use engineers to terraform. By the time engineers are available, there isn't any land left to colonize.

When I am forcing my cities toward one particular resource (say shields for Wonders/freight), I hit food production problems. I think it is worth it to turn mountains into hills for mining and forests into grassland for food.

And, when I find (earlier in the game) a spot for a city with several resources, but the city square is a mountain, I'll build there anyway and terraform the city square later.

Here's my view of settlers/engineers: Most units only affect the square they are on. When you move them, the value to the vacated square is zero. But set/eng's leave value behind when they move! So, after the very first thing they do, they are "found money", meaning that anything they do after that is for free. I don't worry about the time it takes them to accomplish another task after the first. If terraforming takes some time, so be it.

[granite00]

For Tim Hobbit: I don't know how you took advantage of building a city on mined hills. When I do that in a test, the mine is ignored...all I get in the city square is two food and one shield...that's it.

[Tim_Hobbit]

For granite00 - It maybe a bug with my version, but if you "start" but not complete a mine on a hill, you can use a different settler/engineer to build a city on same hill and the mine gets completed and stays. Discovered this by accident a long time ago.

[Tim_Hobbit]

This is probably old hack to you guys, but I did a new thing for me the other day. Located a river grass delta square that was in the pattern. Raised a hill, that turned to coal. Started a mine and then bult a city.

Now have a port city on a mined coal hill with a river going through it. Oh, did I also mention it happened to be on a chock point between land masses (Panama)? Already had Great Wall, so the two musketters I moved on held off an entire invading army.

I was very impressed!