i hate mining grasslands!!!!

[Boris Godunov]

Ok, my thoughts:

1st, the mining thing on grassland bothers me for purely historical reasons. Open grasslands were used for agriculture and livestock grazing, not mining. Mining is done in the hills. It detracts from the historical nature of the game, for me personally.

2nd, however, yeah, I want the production bonuses. Sooo a good compromise:

One of our resident graphically-inclined friends (someone call Sn00py) could alter the mine graphics to be something else. Something purtier. Like...suburbs? Dwellings? So you can actually have a sprawling metropolis?

Just an idea...

[Carbon Copy]

Everyone else has weighed in on this, I might as well, too.

I personally have nothing against mining grasslands, either with the icon or with the practice in general. Irrigation and Mining are treated so abstractly by the game that you can basically reduce it down in your mind to developing the land for raising food (whether it be raising crops, raising livestock, fishing in local ponds/rivers, etc.), and developing the land for something other than food (manufacturing, refining, actual mining, etc.). Actually, I do have a beef with the mine icon: It almost completely obscures any rubber or coal that it shares a tile with. But that's it

In despotism, there is no point to irrigating a grassland tile without a cow or a wheat on it unless you're extending the irrigation through there to reach another square. If the city in question is thoroughly surrounded by hills and mountains, any grasslands or plains in the vicinity will need to be irrigated eventually so that the city can grow enough to use those high production tiles, but if it's a city surrounded completely by grasslands and plains, then you'll never get any worthwhile production from that town by just irrigating and you'll hamstring your growth if you plant forests on grasslands (it doesn't really matter on plains until rails). On regent or even Monarch, this might not matter, but in Emperor and Diety, if you're interested in winning the game you'd best endure the ugliness when it's to your advantage.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Ok, my thoughts:

1st, the mining thing on grassland bothers me for purely historical reasons. Open grasslands were used for agriculture and livestock grazing, not mining. Mining is done in the hills. It detracts from the historical nature of the game, for me personally.

2nd, however, yeah, I want the production bonuses. Sooo a good compromise:

One of our resident graphically-inclined friends (someone call Sn00py) could alter the mine graphics to be something else. Something purtier. Like...suburbs? Dwellings? So you can actually have a sprawling metropolis?

Just an idea...

I agree.
Someone (I forget who) made a new graphic for rail tiles where they have big skyscrapers and whatnot on them, which added to the realism, and was quite a site to see... a (seemingly) massive city stretching from one continent to the other.

As far as that little mine icon... personally I hate it. It's a miscolored blockish blob that doesn't belong in my game. I think the little village or hamlet idea is excellent. You would have irrigated farmland-like tiles along with small villages helping to produce junk for you. Perfect.

[Captain]

Originally posted by Grrr
You'll be stuck as a tiny civ.

But what if you get one of those great Jungle/Tundra/Desert starting locations.

heh... you run!

same goes for fresh water access. very important! i guess this way it's more like the start of an occ in civ 2, look for a great start position or take one from your nearest enemy.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Trip

I agree.
Someone (I forget who) made a new graphic for rail tiles where they have big skyscrapers and whatnot on them, which added to the realism, and was quite a site to see... a (seemingly) massive city stretching from one continent to the other.

As far as that little mine icon... personally I hate it. It's a miscolored blockish blob that doesn't belong in my game. I think the little village or hamlet idea is excellent. You would have irrigated farmland-like tiles along with small villages helping to produce junk for you. Perfect.

The only problem is that the mine/irrigation tiles do not update with what epoch you are in, they are the same no matter what era. So they would have the be "generic" enough buildings to match with any city style in any period. That's a mess.

[Deornwulf]

A simple suggestion



I also deplore the idea of mining the grasslands and have set mining for grasslands to 0 in the BIC. Now no one can mine them.....bwuhahahahaha.

I also set irrigation for hills to +1. I missed that option from civ2. The AI actually irrigates them too.

I prefer a forest to a mine any day.

[Akka]

Re: A simple suggestion

Originally posted by Deornwulf


I also deplore the idea of mining the grasslands and have set mining for grasslands to 0 in the BIC. Now no one can mine them.....bwuhahahahaha.

I also set irrigation for hills to +1. I missed that option from civ2. The AI actually irrigates them too.

I prefer a forest to a mine any day.

Same here
I added the irrigation for hills and removed mining for grasslands and plains in my mod
(though I'm still wondering if the plains should be allowed to be mined)

The problem in the game about the irrigation is that, contrary to history, it's actually TOO EASY to feed your subjects. Until very recently, food has always been of the utmost importance, much more than production. There should be at least two or three "upgrade" in the irrigation technology, to reflect the progress between neolithic irrigaiton and modern farmland (which is actually barely existant...).
I will never understand why they had removed the Civ2 method of improving land to come back to the Civ1 one, rather than EXPANDING on it...

(oh, and for the "winwinwin" people wit the "who care about looks, let's just use what make you win !" : if it's just a victory that count, don't see the point of having a game that has any historical/cultural/anything settings. Play an Excel-style TBS game with list of numbers, that will probably fits better your tastes)

[wohmongarinf00l]

in general, i think the governor is quite deficient.

workers on automation will mine a cow/wheat. even during the milking phase where i tell the gov to just produce growth and
happiness tiles that get global warming get to be mined.

in addition u will be in a race to complete smith trading and
ur workers are running around building useless roads, cutting jungle, etc...leaving the city building smith trading with no improvements. when u zoom in, the tile allocation really sucks...
they will leave mined hills to work on irrigated grassland or some such.

and u wonder why the AI beats u to a WoW by one turn.


they really need to improve the governor to conform with what u specify.

[Captain]

Re: Re: A simple suggestion

Originally posted by Akka le Vil


The problem in the game about the irrigation is that, contrary to history, it's actually TOO EASY to feed your subjects. Until very recently, food has always been of the utmost importance, much more than production. There should be at least two or three "upgrade" in the irrigation technology, to reflect the progress between neolithic irrigaiton and modern farmland (which is actually barely existant...).

Agreed!!!

I will never understand why they had removed the Civ2 method of improving land to come back to the Civ1 one, rather than EXPANDING on it...

I suspect the reason they killed farmland and reinstated RR bonuses to everything was to make it easier for the ai. it doesn't have to make decisions, it just automatically puts rr everywhere and gets all bonuses. it can't go wrong by rr everything in the current status. (there was a better explanation provided by analyst redux in some long ago thread). so now you have a tougher ai, just as stupid, but the rules are bent so it plays better.

[Grrr]

I do agree about akka's point, that food has always been a problem, unlike in Civ 3. Something should be done about that.

[tishco]

thanks for the way of getting the civ 2 settings for mines and irrigation on hills, i have my mod now, and no-one will build grass mines, or even cow/horse mines, or fluffy white blob mines, i mean, what is there to mine in animals or grass, or white blobs?

[Random Passerby]

Contrary to popular belief, grasslands do not, in fact, consist of nothing but pure vegetable matter from the surface all the way down to the earth's core. Painstaking laboratory analysis shows that there is, in fact, significant mineral material even within the first inch beneath a surface covering of grassy plants, and although the theories are not universally accepted, some scientists have hypothesized that there might in fact be some sort of "bed rock" not far below the surface in some areas.

[Dominae]

You don't mine bedrock just because it exists. You search for useful minerals, and build a mine or quarry close to those minerals. Useful minerals rarely appear in the bedrock under grasslands.

The fact that mines are the default improvement in Civ3 is a consquence of the game rules, which were created first and foremost for fun gameplay, not realism.


Dominae

[Ben Williams]

YES, I hate mines anywhere but hills and mountains. I really hate it when you gotta fine tune your population growth later in the game and play catch the resource square between overlapping cities. In my mind the utopian socity consists of expances of irrigation, and since I'm a perfectionist I hate not to do so. I say overhaul the whole resorce system so terrain squares work like the real thing.

-Ben

[Grrr]

LOL @ tishco

That goes against my religion .