Ancient Forest Question.

[Zanthorphs]

Hello there,

I have been looking at the FoL and have been wondering how the game decides to create an Ancient Forest. I am guessing that you have to be in FoL religion, which isn't a problem, but i have been racking my brain to figure out if it is a random chance for an Ancient Forest to spawn or does it happen after a number of turns.

If anyone has an idea on how this mechanic works i would be very thankful for the knowledge.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

There is a random (5%, I think. I thought this was defined in GlobalDefinesAlt.xml, but I don't see it there) chance for each forest in the territory of an FoL civ to turn to an ancient forest each turn.

This used to be done in python, but Kael recently moved it to the DLL so that the game would run faster. I haven't found exactly where it has been moved to.

 

[Zanthorphs]

My friend and me have spent the last hour or so poking around in the files to figure that out, thank you for clearing it up for us.

 

[Zanthorphs]

I just did a test and with 50 or so forest covered titles they all turned to Ancient Forest in about 36 turns. So it does seem that your guess of about 5% turn rate is reasonable.

Thank you for the help.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I think that the way it works now might not be hardcoded after all, but simply rely on the <FeatureUpgrade> and <PrereqStateReligion> tags. In that case, it appears that it depends on the <DefineName>FEATURE_UPGRADE_CHANCE</DefineName> tag in GlobalDefinesAlt.xm, which is set to 10 (%, presumably)

(Hmm..this makes my plan to allow Ancient Forests to spawn at a lower rate in unowned territory more difficult. It does make it easier to make some religion specific features for the other religions though, like a flame upgrade for AV or a eerie fog for OO)

 

[Ecofarm]

Ancients are broken. I remember getting 4-5 in an entire game (quickspeed). Now, I get my whole civ ancient in about 10 turns. If you dont go FoL first, just for the ancients, then you aren't maximizing your power.

Please nerf the ancient rate so I can not go FoL first. Changing writing was great, but now FoL = GS.

I had a treant appear to stop an army of 3 lightbringers and 3 warriors, deity. I don't think it's reasonable.

 

[Zanthorphs]

I agree with EcoFarm, i have played a few games since i started the thread to test both the rate of Ancient Forest growth and a new strategy i have been try that relies on the forests.

The event happens much to quickly for it not to be considered min/maxing a civilization. I can switch to FoL for 10 turns, get the Ancient Forests everywhere and then switch back to something like AV. The probability should be turned down significantly.

 

[Yaotzin]

Should just increase the amount of anarchy from switching religions (assuming that's possible). It's way too easy to switch around to gain benefits, which is totally unflavorful and gamey.

Or, perhaps make ancients gradually revert to normal if you're not FoL? Doesn't make much sense, but would remove the gamey aspect of going FoL for 10 turns then abandoning it.

If the rate must be increased again, at least make a spell to upgrade them, to avoid the annoying pockets that refuse to change, and to make expanding as FoL less painful.

Even if kept as is, it's probably still a bit too fast. May as well just make them instantly upgrade if some other solution isn't used.

 

[Zanthorphs]

You can't really increase the Anarchy on religions because a Spiritual Leader will just walk around that limitation while it just hurts every other leader more than normal. Only increasing the Power gap between Leader traits... though this is a good way to make the Spiritual Leader trait more desirable.

 

[Yaotzin]

Yeah it's certainly not an ideal solution, was just tossing out ideas

I really didn't like the old way though, it caused half my foresty kingdom to refuse to convert even after a few hundred turns, which is silly (and yes, that's hyperbole, but the point remains), and it made expanding and making new forests pretty lame.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I think I'm leaning towards making them never upgrade on their own, but instead have the Forest Preserve improvement (borrowed from BtS) change the feature when it is built. It could also turn jungles into ancient forests this way if you want.

I might also allow forests to upgrade through events (possibly happening in either FoL owned or unowned forests)

 

[Zanthorphs]

Honestly Magister Cultuum that is a really awesome idea, and a very good way to balance out the Ancient Forest. If you put in a few requirements other than just being the religion to get both the tree warriors and the Ancient Forests would definately level the playing feild for the other non-FoL religions.

At a minimum it seems that the workers... or even better the Religion spreading units for FoL have to do a rip off of the "Forest Preserve improvement" to get the benefits of the Ancient Forest.

Now if you want to allow jungles to be converted to Ancient Forests i will never say no, since my answer has always been to burn the jungles down with an Adept with Fire I (Blaze) and get a new forest were it was. So please make it so when a jungle when hit with either the "Forest Preserve" rip off or till then just a border pop can be turned.

 

[hbar]

Just an idea - you could make it so a barbarian treant has a (smaller) chance to spawn on your own units entering squares w/ Ancient Forests if you aren't FoL. That way you can still get the benefits, but there are risks involved.

 

[Caradoc]

Another possibility is having a Spell that converts a regular forest.

I've noticed that New Forests can turn immediately into Ancient Forests. That does not seem quire right.

 

[PotatoOverdose]

How about having ancient forests only available to civs with FoL as their state religion. If the player switches to say AV (which is in many ways opposed to the teachings of the FoL), the forests start disappearing as quickly as they started appearing. It doesn't make sense that nature would continue to help the now AV civ despite the whole burning the world thing (which actually destroys the forests).

The implementation seems pretty simple. Use the same code that quickly converts forests to ancient forests in FoL state religion territory to quickly convert Ancient Forests to forests in non-FoL territory. Thus if someone was to get FoL early on just to beef up their early game only to switch to oh lets say emperyan to get Chalid (just an example) , they would loose their forests.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I don't think you can do that, at least without making some more changes to the features schema or hardcoding something in python or C++. You can't check to see if a civ is not of a religion, only if it is. You could make ancient forests upgrade to "Accursed Forests" (or something) in AV lands, but a feature can only upgrade to 1 tye of feature, so only one religion will be able to get rid of them in this way.

 

[PotatoOverdose]

but you can check state religion (I mean your priests leave you if you switch religions.) Can't you do essentially the same thing as a condition for what I proposed. My lack of knowledge in the field of civ IV modding might be showing here (and I apologize if this is the case), but it seems that, logically, if there is a check for priests and religious units as a whole and state religions, the same should be plausible for forests. Likewise, if the requirement for "upgrading" forests is having FoL as your state religion, then you could have the "upgrade" of ancient forests be regular forests pending any other state religion (just like the conditional dessertation of priests).
So:
If FoL is your state religion, then forests have 5% chance to "upgrade" into ancient forests.
If FoL is not your state Religion (or if this is impossible to code, make the condition If [insert other religion] is state religion, essentially whatever worked for priests), then Ancient forests have a 5% chance to "upgrade" into regular forests.

The forest "upgrade" mechanics are already present in game, and the religion check is also present in a working form for religious units (and come to think of it, in the check for creating ancient forests with FoL). Essentially, everything is already there. So instead of using your "accursed forests" for av, you use regular forests for all other religions as the upgraded form of Ancient forests, which would make sense as you would no longer be receiving the perk of a religion that is no longer your state religion.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

It wouldn't be too difficult to code in python or C++ when, but what I'm saying is that it couldn't use the forest upgrade mechanic as currently implemented. If we went back to the way it was done before .31 then it would be easier.

 

[vale]

I really dislike the idea of ancient forests downgrading into regular forests when not in FOL. It's hard to suspend disbelief on that.

Lots of things you could do instead to nerf the ancient forest spread:

1. Tie it to the guardian of nature civic rather than the religion. That ups the beaker cost on getting to ancient forests and prevents the tech paths that include a quick diversion to Way of the Forests before getting onto the real goal.

2. Put it into a spell. For instance, it could be that casting bloom on a regular forest turns it into an ancient forest. Remove automatic growth of ancient forests.

If you make the investment to get the ancient forest reward steeper, then that solves alot of the problems mentioned here.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I'm still leaning towards reducing the change of becoming ancient significantly (but not removing the chance altogether) and making Forest Preserves (which I'm adding back from BtS, requiring Hidden Paths, or maybe Commune with Nature, which FoL UUs will be able to build) spawn ancient forests too.

I may allow any unowned forest to become ancient. Or maybe any unworked one instead. Of course, this would require going back to using python for this (or hardcoding in the SDK)

I may also make there be a (smaller) chance of barbarian Treants defending any ancient forest not in an FoL civ's territory.