Flood plains?

[charon2112]

according to the manual (pg 32), flood plains have the exact same effect and value as a grassland. Is this right? In Civ IV flood plains produced much more food at the expense of being unhealthy. This pretty much renders flood plains useless...

 

[Valdyr]

Flood plains aren't useless. They're a terrain feature, which means they can stack on top of grasslands so you get both food bonuses. They'd only be useless if you could get grassland/grassland tiles with double food..which would just be bizarre.

 

[ShaqFu]

according to the manual (pg 32), flood plains have the exact same effect and value as a grassland. Is this right? In Civ IV flood plains produced much more food at the expense of being unhealthy. This pretty much renders flood plains useless...

It's a Terrain Feature, not a terrain type. The +2 food bonus is applied on top of whatever the tiles already produces, similar to how the +1 production from Forest is applied.

 

[watcharin]

Flood plains are a "feature", not a "terrain" like a grassland.

 

[Lancor]

But if the terrain generator works like in Civ IV then flood plains will only appear at desert tiles, as it's overpowered ontop of other tiles.

And forest doesn't work like it used to be in Civ IV. Now : "Tiles with forests covering them always yield 1 Food and 1 Production,
regardless of the underlying terrain type."
You can argue about it, but it seems a bit more realistic as the ground type should not matter when you use a region of forest for food and production in real life, withouth destroying/removing the forest itself. There's always wood and animals ;o

 

[charon2112]

It's a Terrain Feature, not a terrain type. The +2 food bonus is applied on top of whatever the tiles already produces, similar to how the +1 production from Forest is applied.

ah, that's different than IV. makes sense. so we could see grassland flood plains and plains flood plains and tundra flood plains?

 

[charon2112]

But if the terrain generator works like in Civ IV then flood plains will only appear at desert tiles, as it's overpowered ontop of other tiles.

THEN they would be useless, they'd just be grasslands.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Still, having them be like grasslands isn't useless, it's two food (plus one for farms). Considering there's no unhealthiness, that's still a solid food bonus.

 

[Pragmatic]

THEN they would be useless, they'd just be grasslands.

Wheat only appears on Flood Plains and Plains. Grasslands get Sheep and Cattle, but they get the Pasture improvement, which doesn't get the food bonuses that Farms do.

 

[DalekDavros]

But if the terrain generator works like in Civ IV then flood plains will only appear at desert tiles, as it's overpowered ontop of other tiles.

This also fits with what a floodplain really is.

And forest doesn't work like it used to be in Civ IV. Now : "Tiles with forests covering them always yield 1 Food and 1 Production,
regardless of the underlying terrain type."

Yep. This is how forests worked in Civ III also. It's a good mechanic for making sure all forests don't get clearcut, as a forest on tundra will make the tile actually usable.

 

[Lancor]

THEN they would be useless, they'd just be grasslands.

I believe it's more "streamlining" ... you wanted to settle near flood plains in CivIV really often because they gave 3 food and the river coin bonus, the unhealthiness was negligible, where any other tile only gave you 2 food at max. Now they earn you the exact same food as grasslands and the near river would give both tile variants the coin.
And as said, it's the only place, besides usual plains, where you find wheat, so a "Nile Delta" like region will be more common and make the usually nearby and worthless desert tiles a negligible loss for gaining these rich tiles. ( in addition, that desert may provide oil for you in the future, if you are lucky!)

Although the manual could be wrong as one could deduct, that flood plains can be found on top of other tile variants too, because it doesn't say that it couldn't, while features like "oasis" can only be found in desert tiles.

Well, now I feel really nerdy for running these kind of things through my head T.T

 

[Liquidated]

Floodplains turn 0/0/0 desert tiles into 2/0/0 (or 2/0/1 if the tile is adjacent to a river). This is a mechanic that makes an otherwise hostile patch of desert into a viable city location.

In a way, how this mechanic is portrayed in the rules balances well imo both intuitively as well as game play.

From an intuitive standpoint, flood plains form a relatively thin strip of super fertile land, while grassland represents much greater area of arable land.

Game play wise, without sickness to balance the extra food CIV4's flood plains were bestowed, the tiles are more inline with grasslands when taken out of context of the larger game.

Keep in mind that grasslands cannot normally contain wheat; the only farmable food resource in Civ5. Floodplains and plains are the only tiles which can receive wheat per the rules and minus world builder/ custom map script antics.

So freshwater based tiles with a farm, best final food. Keep in mind farms adjacent to fresh water get +1 food with civil engineering (+1 food with fertilizer for farms not receiving civil's bonus.)
Grasslands 2base +1 farm +1 farm/civil = 4 food
Plains 1base +1 farm +1 farm/civil =3 food
Flood Plains 2base + 1farm +1 farm/civil = 4 food
Plains+Wheat 1base + 1farm +1farm/civil +1wheat =4 food
Flood Plains +Wheat 2base +1 farm +1 farm/civil =5 food

What really broke flood plains in civ4 though was the synergy created when playing as an financial leader. That little combo turned FP's into 3 food +3 commerce right off the bat, circumventing the early game tradeoffs regarding the slow maturity of cottages.

Civ5 lets you farm on any normally passable land tile (the rules say "anywhere but ice" but eh, that makes no sense.) regardless of access to fresh water. This is balanced in that farms next to rivers lakes and oasis are +2 food by the medieval era, while the land locked farms need to wait til the late renaissance era to get that additional +1 food.

Overall, I really like the changes in farming, as no longer is an expanse of dry plains only marginally better than tundra or desert. Play civ 4 on an ice age map to really get a taste of the despair endless plains can invoke and you'll get an idea of what I'm speaking of.

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[EmpireOfCats]

Civ5 lets you farm on any normally passable land tile (the rules say "anywhere but ice" but eh, that makes no sense.) regardless of access to fresh water.

To be honest, I don't like this part. It seems you can just spam farms now, while in Civ IV you had to think long and hard where to put your city, and you had to think about which tiles you would be running water through later. With pollution removed, this is even more apparent: Big "Cairo" type cities on rivers with flood plains needed work to keep them clean.

We'll have to see how this plays, but this is definitely one area where the game seems to have been dumb-, ah, to require less thought.

 

[Liquidated]

Farms without fresh water do not mature like their freshwater based siblings until mid game...after chemistry. This means all early cities will treat fresh water as a major goal as those farms will produce the most food much sooner while less viable foundings will be tolerable but will take a long time before they can catch up in terms of food output to those with access to freshwater.

Keep in mind that since Civ5 will require multiple resources to fund buildings and military, there's most likely going to be many areas where you need to stake a claim but are obviously not hanging out in the most bountiful locations. Being able to ekk food out of even snow and tundra is a welcome change over its' absolute uselessness in civ4 imo.

As you said, need to see how it plays, but I personally cannot fathom why one would want to spam farms everywhere nor how easing up on early to mid game food is considered 'dumbing down' the game.

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[Pragmatic]

To be honest, I don't like this part. It seems you can just spam farms now,

Depends. Each citizen (and specialist, barring certain social policies) requires 2 food. If a farm is placed on the wrong sort of terrain (prior to certain technologies), you could end up with 1 food per wasteland farms.

With 36 tiles possible, and the biggest cities seen running 14-17 citizens, it's unlikely that more than a few wasteland tiles will be turned into farms.