WesW's terrain mod

[Slax]

I have always exploited CTP's obvious unbalanced terrain production values, that being the huge advantage of ocean tiles over land tiles. I very rarely build a farm until late in the game as long as my cities are near ocean. Pretty unrealistic. WesW's mod does a good job of balancing them, making grassland and plains more attractive.

I have one question, though, WesW : why have you increased the gold production of ocean tiles? Food and production is re-distributed so that overall it is not changed much from the original settings (summing all terrain), but you have increased gold greatly. I don't think we need more gold in the game (although perhaps a little more production would be nice).

Otherwise, a great, and necessary mod.

I suggest others take a look and comment.

[WesW]

Thanks for your comments, it's nice know someone else agrees with me on this need.

As far as the gold is concerned, I felt that the increase made it more like it was in Civ I & II. They represent a sea-faring people who would do a lot of trading.
I still generally use the land tiles first, then the non-beach ones, and lastly the beach. If a city has access to several non-beach ocean tiles, then it probably has relatively few land tiles to use, so I wanted to leave these tiles comparable to land tiles to give these cities an equal chance to succeed.
I'll make a through study of the AI's use of its terrain to see if the extra gold is enticing it to concentrate on ocean tiles while neglecting good land tiles. In the original setup, the AI almost always developed the ocean tiles before any of the land tiles, and I'm certain that my changes have helped correct this. What may happen, though, is that if I reduce the gold in the ocean tiles, the AI will actually concentrate on them more if the land squares don't offer any gold.

[WesW]

It looks like you were right, Slax. I have a mature game going, and after looking in the AI cities, it is clear that the AI is still concentrating on ocean squares while neglecting the land. Apparently it values the gold I added more than the food and production I removed. I'll try reducing the gold back to 5 for ocean types. I'm also going to try giving the forest and jungle types 5 gold, as the AI very rarely mines them.
The problem is that the designers must have meant for the computer to concentrate on the ocean types with their gold, and moving that focus to gold-less grassland and plains types might upset the flow of the game. I guess I could add 5 gold to the grassland and plains, but that would feel odd.

[Slax]

I haven't thought this all the way through, but my instinct says that gold should only come from ocean and river terrain, as well as special resources, and roads/railroads. That just seems realistic as they are tiles which improve trade and thus taxation. If extended to other tiles, gold should correspond to production and food levels, since they are the products being traded or sold. This may be how it was in Civ II, but I don't remember.

[TheBirdMan]

How about rising the gold for tiles with alligators and diamonds to a very high level (15-18-20 gold). Then see if this animates the AI to mining these areas?

Certainly I would like to mining tiles with such gold values(!) even fight hardly for them.

[WesW]

The AI already puts a premium on resource tiles, so raising their values for attention-getting would not be necessary.
It is odd you mentioned alligators, though. For the next version of my terrain mod, I have given swamps the same atributes as grassland, thereby making tropical regions as attractive as temperate ones. This eliminates the biggest annoyance I had with the map generator- that of large expances of unusuable swamps.
If I can get the computer off the ocean types, and to start mining the forests, I think this could really improve gameplay.

[Slax]

What? Swamp as good as grassland to place a city? Thats crazy!

[WesW]

I agree that it is, except that I couldn't figure out how to replace the swamp graphic with the grassland one.
In nature, swamps are fairly rare as a percentage of overall land mass, but CTP treats them as the grasslands of the tropics.
In the const. text file it states that wet tiles in temperate zones are made into grassland, while those in dry zones become plains, and in tropical zones are made into swamps. This is totally unrealistic in my opinion, and can't be changed without eliminating the tropical region altogether.
It feels weird at first, but it makes large areas of the map playable, and isn't that something we should all want- to have good starting positions for everyone, and therefore more challenging and enjoyable games?

[WesW]

Slax, I set the oceans back to 5 gold, and this has finally persuaded the AI to use land tiles instead of beach. It will use other ocean types occasionally, which is what I was aiming for all along. I feel stupid for not seeing this six weeks ago.
I should have my second version of the True Terrain Mod ready very soon, and I think you and anyone else willing to give it a try will be very pleased.
I haven't had any luck getting the AI to take advantage of the forest and jungle mining capability, though, even by giving them 5 gold. I guess I'll take the gold back out. What do you think about deleting the gold from the mining improvement on these types?

[Slax]

I like the idea of a forest improvement, but it shouldn't give gold if regular mining doesn't. I think either all mining, farming, and forestry tile improvements give gold, or they don't.

In a recent game, though, I really noticed the disparity in gold between a city with no rivers or ocean versus one with some. There should be some way to increase gold from tiles. I liked the old method by which roads increased gold, but often you'd end up building roads all over the place. I think building roads between cities involved in trade get bonus gold, so perhaps this is where this idea is implemented.

I equate gold with taxation. Why does a mountain or hill give taxes while grassland does not? You are not mining the gold, gold is money. I suppose my opinion is that all terrain but rivers and oceans produce NO gold, but food and production tile improvements all increase gold.

Increased land use = increased trade and taxation = increased gold.

I am rambling...sorry, did I answer your question?

------------------
Light the fuse!

[Big Dave]

I like the idea of roads/rail/maglev's giving more gold. Unfortunatly CD was right when he removed most of the gold from the game, because there's just too much cash floating around. Maybe 1/1/2 gold (or 1/1.5/2 if you can do fractions) for roads, etc.

[WesW]

Dave, I don't think there are any formulas for adding gold to roads, and anyway I'm almost certain there wouldn't be any way to teach the AI how to manage this feature if there were.

One thing I've learned from my mod-making is that teaching the AI how to use something is just as important as creating it, and sometimes more difficult.

I thought about the forest gold question last night, and decided to leave it in.

[WesW]

Here is the readme from my True Terrain mod. Let me know what you think. I'm going to send it in soon, when I finish the aip mod I'm putting together. The stats don't precisely line up, but should be close enough to figure out. It's the best I can do with this setup.

True Terrain 2- No Swamps
By Wes Whitaker Oct.06,1999.

Version 2 changes:

Swamps now have the values and abilities of grasslands. The map generator assigns wet tropical tiles to swampland (wet temperate tiles are grassland, and wet desert tiles are plains). This renders large sections of the map unusable. This change allows tropical areas to develop competitive civs, resulting in better opponents, and thus more enjoyable games.

Oceans and rivers have been set back to 5 gold. This has finally persuaded the AI to shift away from beach tiles and onto land. Forests and Jungles have been given 5 gold, to allow flat areas to have more productive cities.

Nets cost 200 PW, and all fisheries 600.
Advanced Farms now costs 600 PW, instead of 500.
Finally, placing Forests costs 400, instead of 800.

In the goods.txt, Caribou and Giant Squid are now worth 10 gold.

Version 1 changes:

Originally, ocean types were generally better than land types in overall value, which didn't seem right to me. Therefore, I have strenghtened some of the land types, and weakened some of the ocean ones. Each of the basic six land types now have a total of 20 food and production, while the five basic ocean types have a total of 15.

Rivers only add 5 food OR 5 production, not both.

When mining, all terrain types now have approximately the same cost-to-benefit ratio as Mountains. This significantly reduces costs for all other types. In addition, Forest and Jungle tiles can now be mined (representing tree plantations), with the same benefits as on the Plains tiles. However, they start with 5 less production. These mining changes should give non-mountain types more potential at a fairer cost.

Railroads and Superconductors now cost slightly less.

Terrain......Food.Prod.Gold.River

Grassland.....15....5....0...5f
Plain.........10...10....0...5f
Green Hill.....5...15....5...5p
Br/Wh Hill.....0...15....5...5p
Mountain.......0...20....5...5p
Forest.........5...15....5...5p
Jungle.........5...15....5...5p
Desert 0 10 0 5p
Tundra 0 5 0 5p
Glacier 0 0 0 5p

Beach.........10....0
Shallow Water.10....5
Cont. Shelf...10....5
Deep Water.....5...10
Trench.........5...10
Rift 5 25
Volcano 5 45

The terrain.txt and goods.txt files go in the default/gamedata folder, while the gl files go in the language/gamedata/gl folder. The gameplay description will not show the changes, but the info to the right and left of the picture will be correct, as will the info displayed by rt.-clicking over the terrain.
[This message has been edited by WesW (edited October 06, 1999).]
[This message has been edited by WesW (edited October 06, 1999).]
[This message has been edited by WesW (edited October 06, 1999).]

[skorpion59]

Wes,

Is True Terrain 2 going to be standalone like True Terrain 1 or will it be incorporated into the AIP mod you are working on?

[WesW]

True Terrain 2 will be a stand-alone, as will the Aip mod. This way, the greatest number of people can enjoy them.