Terrain

[TechWins]

Sorry if it's not allowed for any ol' person to come in here and post ideas, but I figure this forum looks slow enough that it oughtn't be a problem.

My question is has there been any consideration on not allowing cities to be built on tundra and concurrently not allowing forest to be planted on tundra? The former is to help prevent worthless cities from the AI cluttering the map. Also, the value of colonies increases, since there are valuable resources in the tundra to be claimed. The latter would be to clear up the exploit of the player planting forest on tundra to build cities and the AI not being clever enough to realize the exploit.

The only problem(s) I could foresee is if the AI doesn't take advantage of colonies in this situation. While, I rarely, if ever, build colonies and I never see the AI building them either as is, I would know when and how to use them properly if it were necessary (i.e. in tundra).

Does anybody have any thoughts on this?



EDIT: I suppose I should have placed this in General or Creation, instead. Oh well.

[Theseus]

Good point about foresting tundra to build cities... I forget what the current setting is in the AU Mod. (There, I just saved you in terms of relevance. )

I've seen AI colonies.

[Solomwi]

Playing the Napoleanic Europe conquest the other day, I saw Denmark go down and colonize dyes on the Dalmatian coast and the Ottoman Empire colonize spices in Russia. In my current Rise of Rome incarnation, I also see Persia colonizing incense. Thus, we at least know the AI knows how to use colonies properly. Whether they only use them for luxuries, or will also go after a resource, I don't know.

[joncnunn]

Bottom line on terrrign types not allowing cities is it hurts the AI a lot more than humans.

The Human would plant a forest if tundra city not allowed but forest city is allowed. (Post Enginnering) The AI won't.

The Human would chop a forest if that's really where he wants a city if forest city is not allowed but the base terraign is. The AI won't.

Now, Age of Discovery does feature these restrictions, [along with no founding cities in jungle and can't even enter desert / tundra] but in this case, choping forest is 2.5 times as expensive as normal, which kind of slows down the human chopping and placing those cities.

AI making colonies has never been a problem, in fact they do that excessively. It's making it worthwhile for humans to found colonies without crippling the AI founding cities that's the issue.

[joncnunn]

The only terraign alternations I'm aware of in the AU mod is the addition of non-existent dummy resources and luxaries.

How the AI would handle X is relevent here to considering one purpose of the AU mod is to try to gently nudge the AI into doing the right thing.

Originally posted by Theseus
Good point about foresting tundra to build cities... I forget what the current setting is in the AU Mod. (There, I just saved you in terms of relevance. )

[TechWins]

[SIZE=1] The Human would plant a forest if tundra city not allowed but forest city is allowed. (Post Enginnering) The AI won't.

The Human would chop a forest if that's really where he wants a city if forest city is not allowed but the base terraign is. The AI won't.

That's why if you don't allow cities to be built in tundra you don't allow forest to be planted in tundra, so that whole problem is solved right there. If it's definitely possible, but as you point out does it hurt the AI more than it hurts the human player? I could see your argument from that point of view. The AI will continue to build settlers and without that extra tundra terrain they may not ever be able to build a city. Maybe this idea would be better suited for a human only game from that point of view.


Thanks, Theseus.

[joncnunn]

But the side affect is you've also prohibited the AI from founding cities in plains + forest & grassland + forest. The human just sends a worker 4 turns in advance. (3 if industrious)

In a mixed area, the AI cities are a little off where they are supposed to be. But in a dense forest zone, the AI now won't found a city in the center and has to stick with just outside the edges.

Increasing the time needed to chop forests like Age of Discovery might help on the margins.

Also, perhaps a custom map would help too. If you make it such that all forest on plains and forest on grassland are clearly suboptimal city sites to adjoining tiles without forest, then this issue could go away. [Say placing no forest on a fresh water tile, but instead most of the forest is one tile away from a fresh water tile]

Originally posted by TechWins


That's why if you don't allow cities to be built in tundra you don't allow forest to be planted in tundra, so that whole problem is solved right there. If it's definitely possible, but as you point out does it hurt the AI more than it hurts the human player? I could see your argument from that point of view. The AI will continue to build settlers and without that extra tundra terrain they may not ever be able to build a city. Maybe this idea would be better suited for a human only game from that point of view.


Thanks, Theseus.

[TechWins]

Originally posted by joncnunn
But the side affect is you've also prohibited the AI from founding cities in plains + forest & grassland + forest. The human just sends a worker 4 turns in advance. (3 if industrious)

I'm pretty confident that there is a checkbox for selection which terrain can have forest built on it or not, but I'd have to check when I get home to make sure. If I am right, with that it would only be tundra, not tundra+forest, not grassland+forest, not plains+forest, that would NOT be able to build cities anymore. Then to prevent the human, who as you point out is smarther than the AI, from planting forest on tundra you deselect the checkbox for allowing forest to be built on tundra. Forest should still be able to be built on all other terrain.

The question then becomes is it worth to not allow cities to be built on tundra becuase nothing else is effected from the change AFAIK...

[nbarclay]

Tundra areas almost always have forest scattered through, so as long as players can build cities on forest, keeping them from building on tundra isn't likely to force humans to make much more use of colonies. Mostly, what would happen would be (1) players would be seriously irritated at having to build our tundra cities on forest instead of where we really want them (especially when it means missing out on fish or whales), (2) we'd lose the strategic options involved in planting forests on tundra for extra shields, and (3) AIs might miss out on some useful opportunities to build cities because they can't plant the city on tundra and the only forest alternatives are unacceptably close to other cities or to neighboring borders. So while the idea is interesting, I think the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.

[Hermann the Lombard]

Originally posted by joncnunn
The only terraign alternations I'm aware of in the AU mod is the addition of non-existent dummy resources and luxaries.

Not having waded through the discussions about that, may I assume that the purpose is to create some doubt about where unrevealed resources actually are?

[joncnunn]

Doable on a custom map that has no forest in tundra.

Just not on compuer generated ones.

Originally posted by TechWins

I'm pretty confident that there is a checkbox for selection which terrain can have forest built on it or not, but I'd have to check when I get home to make sure. If I am right, with that it would only be tundra, not tundra+forest, not grassland+forest, not plains+forest, that would NOT be able to build cities anymore. Then to prevent the human, who as you point out is smarther than the AI, from planting forest on tundra you deselect the checkbox for allowing forest to be built on tundra. Forest should still be able to be built on all other terrain.

The question then becomes is it worth to not allow cities to be built on tundra becuase nothing else is effected from the change AFAIK...

[joncnunn]

The dummy luxaries / dummy resources are not placed on the map at all.

What's they are doing is making the techs that "reveal" it more valuable to the AI. It's actually more inflationary than anything else because of the sheer number of such techs. [Causing all techs to be worth more in trades]

There's also a lot of powers granted by techs that take place after it's already been granted. Also more inflationary than anything else due to shear number of such techs.

Originally posted by Hermann the Lombard

Not having waded through the discussions about that, may I assume that the purpose is to create some doubt about where unrevealed resources actually are?

[Theseus]

Originally posted by joncnunn

There's also a lot of powers granted by techs that take place after it's already been granted. Also more inflationary than anything else due to shear number of such techs.

Huh?

[punkbass2000]

These techs have more value than they should because of the resource. It does not balance out, it inflates prices.

[TechWins]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Tundra areas almost always have forest scattered through, so as long as players can build cities on forest, keeping them from building on tundra isn't likely to force humans to make much more use of colonies. Mostly, what would happen would be (1) players would be seriously irritated at having to build our tundra cities on forest instead of where we really want them (especially when it means missing out on fish or whales), (2) we'd lose the strategic options involved in planting forests on tundra for extra shields, and (3) AIs might miss out on some useful opportunities to build cities because they can't plant the city on tundra and the only forest alternatives are unacceptably close to other cities or to neighboring borders. So while the idea is interesting, I think the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.

My goal in the idea is to make less cities possible for both the human and AI, but as you point out forest is scattered through the tundra anyways defeating the whole purpose. The only real purpose would be to take away those pesky 1 tile island, tundray cities; however, ultimately the advantages of that don't surpass the disadvantages.

The change would only be useful on very specific maps and like joncnunn pointed out it would more than likely only work on user created maps. If a map was more Earth-like with a layer of tundra/forest (mid-southern Canada) then a big chunk of only tundra (northern Canada) without scattered forests the idea would work great. The foreseeable problem with that is will the AI have too many wandering settlers looking for land?



Thanks for listening...