DESIGN: Terrain Values

[Maquiladora]

I think some of the terrains definately need a look at because some of them make terrible locations (not just swamp but forest, grassland even) and some make much too good locations (plains w/ mountain river anyone).

First of all the 2 most common terrains for a civ, Plains and Grassland. These 2 need to be close in resources because it can mean life (plains) or death (grassland). Everyone goes for them because a) its cheap to terraform and b) it can be farmed, its also good for defence later on. So i was thinking

Grassland F10 P10 C10
Plains F10 P10 C5

Its a difficult one really, ideally we need a shielded grassland, but definately grassland and plains need the same Production and Food, because settler production is too important.....

Next is Forest, its quite common to start near forest, if not on it, so it needs something better. I think we should go the way of Apolyton Pack and give them more production, i think F5 P15 C5 is pretty good, because F5, because it needs some food but also some incentive to find farmable land, P15 to get the poor civ that starts in the middle of a forest a good start to get out of the woods and C5 because zero just seems wrong, especially if your surrounded by forest! Also you will need all the P15 when it comes to clearing the forest for farms.

Mountains, i think straight away they provide too much commerce (10), i mean if youre lucky enough to find mountains then youve got production there you shouldnt get 10 commerce too, Commerce 0 i think, so F0 P15 C0, maybe F5 not sure.

Coastline or "Beach" is mostly going to be near grass or plains so it needs commerce and some encouragement to build Ports not totally ignore them! so something like F10 P0 C15 too radical? ....not sure.

Thoughts?

[Martin Gühmann]

I think there is a trade off needed between plains and grassland, so one of them needs less food and the other more production and vice versa. Something like:

Plains: F5 P10 C10
Grassland: F10 P5 C10

For Beach I think it is a good way to increase the commerce value like that, I think even the default AI would use them for ports.

-Martin

[Maquiladora]

I would say at such an early stage, that F5 P10 is much better than F10 P5, as a general rule, anyway thats my feeling but i will test all these things eventually. In the unmodded game, P5 for grassland is really bad for building more settlers, compared to plains P10 the gap is very big in expansion speed of more cities.

Well i tried to make Beaches and coastline generally mostly commerce because i took it away from Mountains and Forests. The only thing i am worried about for coastal cities is the production levels, it might lower sea unit activity.

[Maquiladora]

Well ive been doing a little testing and as i expected production is really too low on the coast, i think ill make beach F10 P5 C10, and we could also make Ports give an extra P5 C10 for something like 600PW.

Commerce was also too high along the coast too, i had 90% of my cities along the coast and i was advancing much quicker than normal, so we can make beaches C10 as before instead.

Forests at F5 P15 C5 worked well, not too powerful, not too weak.

I used Grassland at F10 P5 C10 and Plains at F5 P10 C10 and i would say i still prefer Plains...... we could try Grassland F10 P10 C5, Plains F5 P10 C5, what do you think? Grassland is better for growth, but BOTH can produce settlers fast, which is the important thing.

edit: so to recap,

Grassland F10 P10 C5
Plains F5 P10 C5
Beach F10 P5 C10
Forest F5 P15 C5
Mountain F0 P15 C0
Hills F5 P10 C5

[MrBaggins]

I always liked the complimentary nature of Grassland and Plains in CtP2... that one terrain was not necessarily optimal...

If Grassland were 10/10/5, then it would be automatically the best terrain for cities, which I'm not sure I like...

Perhaps we can use another method for early progress; perhaps make settlers cheaper under tyranny... a government that you are working to get of.

A government on plains wouldn't extraordinarily benefit from this reduced cost, by building hyperfast anyway... since settlers still cost a pop point.

[MrBaggins]

How about...

Grassland F10 P5 C10
Plains F5 P10 C10
Beach F10 P5 C10
Forest F5 P15 C5
Mountain F0 P15 C0
Hills F5 P10 C5

Thus there is a reason for each of Grassland, Plains, Beach and Forest to be... even after the start of the game...

Mountain and Hills should keep their beneficial production TI's, so they are the optimal production terrains later in the game...

[Maquiladora]

I always liked the complimentary nature of Grassland and Plains in CtP2... that one terrain was not necessarily optimal...

If Grassland were 10/10/5, then it would be automatically the best terrain for cities, which I'm not sure I like...

Its not just the production of settlers that makes Plains in the unmodded game better, but later in the game its the overall production generated on a plains empire, you can build so much more PW, support more units etc, so much so its better to terraform all grassland to plains then build farms on it.

We need to make grassland as effective at churning out raw production as plains..... somehow, or totally reform the game so more cities, faster, isnt always better.

How about...

Grassland F10 P5 C10
Plains F5 P10 C10
Beach F10 P5 C10
Forest F5 P15 C5
Mountain F0 P15 C0
Hills F5 P10 C5

The extra commerce of grassland is tempting but again i can produce more cities with plains, along with exploring/martial law units faster.

Maybe we arent approaching this right, its the "more cities, quicker is better" thats breaking the terrain balance not the terrain themselves.

[Tamerlin]

Originally posted by Maquiladora

Maybe we arent approaching this right, its the "more cities, quicker is better" thats breaking the terrain balance not the terrain themselves.

I agree with you, the terrain values being the same for everyone, the difference will be made through the ability to manage your TI and your capacity to grow as quickly as possible. As far as I am concerned I think that the terrain values of the SAP2 are good.

Food/Production/Gold

Forest 5/15/5
Plains 10/10/5
Tundra 5/5/0
Glacier 0/0/0
Grassland 15/5/5
Desert 0/10/5
Swamp 5/5/5
Jungle 10/10/5
Mountain 0/15/5
Hill 5/10/5
Brown Hill 0/10/5
Beach 10/0/10
Shallow Water 10/0/10
Deep Water 10/0/10
Water Volcano 10/20/10
Water Shelf 10/5/10
Water Trench 5/10/10
Water Rift 5/20/5
Brown Mountain 0/15/5
White Hill 0/10/5
White Mountain 0/15/5
Water Kelp 15/0/10

[MrBaggins]

To flatten out the effect of production, what you'd do is:

* Increase the "city" production bonus for each terrain
* Increase the workday divisor

This will flatten the effect of terrain on the cities production. Production CI's also gain slightly against terrain production too. If you proportionately increased production TI's, then they'd be uneffected also.

Its just a ratio thing.

This will, however mean that its the number of cities that you have which determine your strength... it rewards ICS or REX behavior.

The basic culprit for this IS the city square bonus. Thats why the more cities = better problem exists.

To solve it, you'd remove all city square influence... set it to the inverse of the terrain its on... so if Grassland's basic value is 15/5/5, you'd need the city bonus to be -15/-5/-5.

The basic terrain values need to be increased significantly to offset the loss of the city bonus, to bring them up to

Growth, production and income all become directly proportionate to city size.

Growth is increased in value directly, because more growth directly equals more production and income.

It also causes huge early game problems... the difference between production and science for a size 1 and size 2 city are significant... a size 2 city is potentially double the production, etc... You have to reduce all early game values to suit the system.

A system without the city square/ICS, magnifies the effect of locational luck. High early growth = a massive advantage.

The solution of an empire size cap, and a distance cap combined with a flatter production model (see top) work very well in combination. It should all serve to keep the number of cities everyone has closer AND make the differences less profound in terms of production.

BTW... is there any reason why we always use multiples of 5 for these terrain values? Its not like the final empire and city bonuses end up in multiples of 5 for user friendliness. Having a mid value like 7 or 8, or 12 or 13 might be useful...

[Maquiladora]

We could work out to make it equal if, a grassland city with all mines was equal in production and food to a plains city with all farms.

I tried this with,

Grassland 10/5/5 - City Square gives extra 10/15/15
Plains 5/10/5 - City Square gives extra 15/10/15

Mines P5
Farms F5

Both cities are identical in every area, i mean it solves the problem and still lets the 2 terrains compliment each other.

The only thing i would say is, Slave Labour (mines) comes a little later in the tech tree, whereas everyone starts with farms (Agriculture).

edit: By the way im not suggesting this will be the only strategy, im just trying to make way for them to be exactly equal, i mean the plains player may choose to build all mines instead, or some trading posts the grassland player.

I dont know why i posted a picture really, its fairly obvious.

[Tamerlin]

Your values sound good to me Maquiladora but I have just thought of another problem... if you even the terrain values you eliminate the drive to find valuable lands for your nation which is, IMO, an important part of any "civilization building" game..

[Maquiladora]

Well as you can see im not going to even them really, its still the choice of the player to decide, he might build mines, he might not.

I think its important we even all city squares at least, this will balance the start of the game, to let everyone get a (more) equal start but will still mean a good player improves his land better.

[Maquiladora]

I made a whole list of values if anyone is interested.

terrain - food/prod/comm

grassland - 10/5/5
plains - 5/10/5
hills - 10/10/5
mountains - 5/15/5
forest - 5/10/10

jungle - 5/5/10
swamp - 5/5/5

tundra - 0/5/0
glacier - 0/0/0
polar hill - 0/5/0
polar mountain - 0/10/0


beach - 10/5/10
shallow water - 10/10/5
water deep - 15/5/5
water volcano - 0/20/5
water shelf - 10/15/0
water trench - 10/10/5
water rift - 5/10/0

kelp - 10/5/10
reef - 10/5/15

desert - 0/5/0
desert hill - 0/10/0
desert mountain - 0/15/0

Grassland and Plains still have their basic differences, they also have 5 less TOTAL resources allocated, i did this because grassland and plains are flexible with different tile imps and above all they accept farms, but a forest can only accept commerce imps, so it has high total resources, because it cant be improved easily. I was thinking about forest 5/15/5 but i thought the prod was a little too much that was in SAP.

To compliment those changes, mines and farms should cost the same and have the same effect, except mines +5 prod and farms +5 food, obviously. Im not sure if 5 is enough, because you may just wait for Adv Farms instead, but mines hopefully will be worth it.

I knocked 5 off Beach production to make them less all-round too. I was thinking along with that Ports could be made something like +0/+5/+10, so they give prod as well as commerce.

Just little bits here and there, but i was surprised how much little changes in only terrain affected the game.

[Martin Gühmann]

So Maquiladora are these values now tested very well so that we can add them to the altered source pack?

-Martin

[Maquiladora]

Tested? Yes. Very well? No I dont have much else to say as of now, but testing is still moving forward and things evolving all the time, well as much as things can with a single tester.