Ive discussed this in the FFH2 thread but feel like it would get better attention for FF. The illians can not build farms on snow without a river or lake nearby to spread irrigation. Since snow has a penalty for hammers (turning plains into ice as well as floodplains to ice!) I think they should be compensated by being allowed to build farms on any snow tile. Conquest could make up for hammer issues, and this would allow illians to spread to naturally frozen places at the polar caps where rivers and lakes are less common. So if FFH doesnt change this, I hope FF or Orbi will. Any other agree or have ideas how this could be balanced other than this?

Just a question... How do you build a farm on a glacier?
Do you mean ICE terrain or SNOW terrain? >_>
And if you meant SNOW terrain I withdraw my top statement and replace it with a new one:
How do you build a farm when it's under 10 feet of snow? (this applies to the building of farms by rivers that are frozen solid and buried under 10 feet of snow too!)

I suppose they could be something like snowman farms where you grow carrots out of the place where the nose goes... :p
^-- That's sarcasm, and I mean all of it.

P.S. I know there's a lack of trees way up north but at least you get tundra and SOME trees... The Malakim have a real hammer dilemma when their in the middle of a desert! Well at least until I find the time to research mining! ^___^

Seeing as the Illians automatically convert their terrain to snow, I'd have to support this change... 2 food per tile isn't enough to grow a population, and an inability to farm the terrain they terraform hurts.

they are expert ice fishers.

maybe they eat yellow snow - reguardless, they should be able to farm all snow tiles!

Well they can at Construction, or that's when farms spread irrigation. I don't see why the Illians deserve a special reason. They can cottage every single tile in their fat cross and their mines always have a little food to spare and support themselves.

The reason being that the polar ice caps rarely have rivers, meaning they can't spread irrigation when there is nothing to spread from. And the other reason is they have penalties for snow. Snow changes floodplains to only snow, and changes plains to snow, they lose hammers and food. adding farms to all snow tiles makes up for that loss.

If you're spamming farms, you can carry irrigation a very long way.

But not across a stretch of pure hills/mountains, and not from a river which is outside of your territory. I have had quite a few times where I ran into tiles which were impossible to irrigate (mainly happens on the very hill heavy Erebus mapscript, even though it also has plenty of rivers).

But if the map if that hill heavy, then you shouldn't want for production. Not trying to be contrarian, I just think the Illians are very powerful as of now and this move would allow them to have the conquest equivalent of many, many mines.

This is more a general problem then a Illian specific one. I vote for an added spell/wonder that creates one dot (or rather a two-dot) of water in a choosen location.

In fact, I invented a spell that did that by misstake - killing the unit instantly:lol:.

that would be awesome, I agree. and one for spawning oasis in the desert as well, please :D

If you feel like this is a general problem, how about when the tech for aquaduct and irrigation spreading have both been researched, it allows farm building on any flat tile? That way you dont have to build an aquaduct of useless farms to reach certain areas to intruduce irrigation. - this seems to balance it out more, and the illians are still able to expand to the polar caps, a natural area for their expansion. -

@mailbox would this work better for you?

edit: wrong thread, sorry

I actually thought that a tech did that in FfH like Biology did, I'm surprised that none of them do. I'd definitely support adding it to a mid-late game tech.

What about something like aquaducts making non-hill(or even hill?) cities spread freshwater even if they aren't near a river/lake/irrigated farm? That way with a late tech you could at least put farms near most cities, and makes some thematic sense.

I am very tempted at trying to solve this. ;)

ahwaric in orbi is allowing irrigation to spread through plantations and farm hills. Also the effects of biology have been included with the commune with nature tech, worth a test in orbi, and then people can see if it would be useful in FF.

Windmills could pump water, id est spread irrigation, with very little effort.

Windmills could pump water, id est spread irrigation, with very little effort.

That would be an easy change that wouldn't require allowing farms on hills, and makes sense anyway.

Windmill powah! Sounds like a simple yet effective solution.

yep, nice idea. commune with nature allowing farms without irrigation ( a la Biology tech in vanilla ) is also awesome!