Trade special squares

is there any pattern to the special squares. Occasionally I will find a silk forest square when I forest a grassland square. I look at all of the open grasland on a continent and wonder "is there trade specials hiding under there?"

Yes there is. If you check the map editor, and make it all sea, you will see the pattern easily. There is also a pattern for huts. To better find them, you can use a program called Hutfinder. I don't have a link though.

There is a chart somewhere with the special pattern (apparently it's the same pattern for every map) and it would be easily found if Search weren't disabled. You might be able to find it by having a scan of the forums yourself or maybe search Apolyton's forums.

There is a general pattern of specials, but it can be moved around and the type of special (Whale/Fish) changed by changing the Resource Seed before you start a game. Go into Map Editor (civ2map.exe) and call in a SAV from your game. Hit S to see the seed. Start a blank map and look at the Whale and Fish patterns, then hit S and change the Seed number and look at the resulting patterns.

Every 16 Seeds the pattern is back in the same location, but the type of special (Whale or Fish) will change. There are 4 sets of arrangements, so after 64 the Seed will repeat.

For land tiles, there are two groups: those that are drawn over Whales (Wheat, Silk, Wine, Iron, Fruit, Spice, Oil, Furs) and those over Fish (Buffalo, Pheasant, Coal, Gold, Gems, Peat, Oasis, MuskOx, Ivory/Seals). You cannot change a Wheat into a Buffalo, but just as you can irrigate a Forest to a Plains, if you irrigate a Silk it becomes a Wheat.

Good thing i saved this on my computer...

Red are specials, and brown are huts.

KNAS

Congratulations!

As we say in French: "un petit croquis vaut mieux qu'un long discours"

After checking dictionary:
"A small sketch is better than a long speech"

I guess you're right.

Wish i could remember who originally posted this though. I do find it very useful especially during multiplayer games. The guy who made this map deserves a big-ass applause.

pattern.sav

Check this one out (I hope it's no problem that the civ is the Honourable Golfers.)

Look at the two specials within the territory of St Andrews. The buffalo and the silk lie on the same diagonal with 3 spaces between. That pattern doesn't exist anywhere on the above map. All the diagonals are seperated with about 12 spaces. This is an automatically generated game; I just fired it up to start a game (2.42).

Notice that the furs are seperated from the silk by two on the horizontal. That relationship occurs once between every 11-to-5 o'clock set and twice between every 8-to-2 set.

That is because the section you are at crosses the meridian (0,X) line.

The game does weird things with that. First, "Go To' paths may have problems figuring out how to cross it, the special pattern is 'wrapped' from the other side of the map and doesn't match up there and the game doesn't recongnize if there is a city on each side of the line and lets each city use the squares for production. So, if you build a city at (149,23) both cities can use the Silk square and every other square they overlap without having any effect on the other city.

Originally posted by Duke of Marlbrough
The game doesn't recongnize if there is a city on each side of the line and lets each city use the squares for production. So, if you build a city at (149,23) both cities can use the Silk square and every other square they overlap without having any effect on the other city.

Click to expand...

I never knew that. Does it recognize the square the other city is built on though?

Only if it's in the cities radius.

glad I asked!