Basics of Nuclear Terraforming

[hbdragon88]

All right. This is an article on the basics of nuclear terraforming. First, I'm quite simply naive and only have a basic understanding of it, just the beginnings. I'm like a novice. Moonsinger is the real expert on this, having converted over 400 TILES in one game once.

In this documentary, this covers the beginnings and basics of this technique. In my opinion, the effort put into it sometimes just isn't worth the results. The example I will be showing is a very simple, easy way of doing it.

Keep these points in mind:
1) Terrain needs to be by a desert to change into flood plains. Otherwise, it turns to desert. Desert can't be by a river, so that's why it turns into flood plains.

1) Grassland -> Plains -> Desert/Flood Plains. This means, if there's grassland by a river that you're going to nuke, you're going to have to do it twice to get floodplains. But all the better if the terrain you're planning to convert is plains

2) Forests. Forests are like a cover - a nuke will destroy a forest and leave the terrain underneath it intact. All improvements are gone, but if there was a grassland underneath the forest, it'll stay a grassland. I'll explain in detail later why is so important.

Recipe:
18 workers w/ Democracy+Industrial Age boost (non-Industrious)
1 or 2 ICBMs
Three turns
The will to do such an act

What you do:

I have provided an example so I don't have to explain it such detail. Below is an easy example of how to do it. The river makes it tremendously easy. 8 tiles are plains and are next to a river. I have ordered a worker to build a forest (1 or 2) to build a forest on the plains square that isn't next to the river. If there's no forest there, it will turn into desert - IMPORTANT to cover all non-river-touching terrain. The square in the middle is the ICBM hitting point.

 

[hbdragon88]

This is a turn after I nuked it. Look below; I have about fifteen workers on the squares, madly cleaning it up. I'd have more on there, but I used SHIFT+P and the rest are busy with other polluted tiles. No matter; they'll be there in the next turn.

But that's not the point. See all the new terrain? The eight plains have turned into floodplains, and the forested plains have remained intact - that's because I covered it. Soon, Nottingham and London will be growing and thriving!

 

[hbdragon88]

Two turns after nuking the nine-tile radius. As you see, London is no longer in danger of starvation. Nottingham is still starving, but all it takes is to convert some of the grassland you see. Eight squares have been converted as a result of this which is great.

 

[hbdragon88]

So that's it. That's the basics of nuclear terraforming! But this is just an easy example of it, the very beginning of it. There are more elaborate ways of doing it - converting coastal tiles, for example.

I wrote this so it would be a lot easier for me, next time I decided to terraform (if I ever wanted to!), simplify it.

Credit: Moonsinger, for numerous posts on the issue; Bamspeedy, for pointing out that you need to nuke twice to get floodplains (on grassland); and my own boredom.

 

[hbdragon88]

Added note: to avoid global warming and stuff, make sure you have 20 workers on hand like I said before. Those twenty workers can clear the pollution very quickly. And be very sure before you change the terrain, make sure you have planted the forests in the right places - don't want to change into desert b/c you forgot to plant a forest

P.S. Comments please

 

[hbdragon88]

If you have workers when you nuke it, they'll be destroyed. So plant a forest, move the workers out, and then move them back in. So:

Turn 1: Plant the forest(s) and prepare, etc.
Turn 2: Move workers out, launch nuke. Move workers back in
Turn 3: Workers will clean up pollution, etc.

After that, build back the railroads and irrigate the flood plains and stuff. Depending on the terrain, it'll take longer or shorter (mountains will take a long time)

 

[stalin006]

wow.........plain and simple. grat job, what about converting costal tiles?

 

[hbdragon88]

Took me a while, but here's Moonsinger's thread "Converting Ocean to Plains/Desert/Grassland"

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=36131

I would not do this, but in one of my games it's already happening: five to six ocean becoming land It has turned two coastal cities into land - in one of the cities, I didn't even get to build a harbor.

 

[Grille]

Originally posted by hbdragon88
If you have workers when you nuke it, they'll be destroyed. So plant a forest, move the workers out, and then move them back in. So:

Turn 1: Plant the forest(s) and prepare, etc.
Turn 2: Move workers out, launch nuke. Move workers back in
Turn 3: Workers will clean up pollution, etc.

After that, build back the railroads and irrigate the flood plains and stuff. Depending on the terrain, it'll take longer or shorter (mountains will take a long time)

Maybe you rebuild the roads first on "turn 3". Other workers can move directly to polluted squares in turn 3 then, thus they don't *waste* a turn for movement only. The dirt might have gone away during turn 3.

 

[hbdragon88]

You could do that.

In the pictures I had there, that was v1.9 (beta) of the ArtilleryMod. Worker movement was upped to 2 and pillage was added to it - so it didn't matter either way I rebuild the roads or started on the pollution.

 

[Grille]

I see. BTW, w/o any mod, I'm assuming that there'll probably be enough workers around in modern era to ignore the "right" order of sequence (road, clean).
Anyway, can you make an estimation on global warming appearances? Would you suggest a limit to prevent adverse effects?

 

[hbdragon88]

I used terraforming twice in a regular game. The smart thing to do would be to first road; but I put the workers on automation (Shift-P) and they were turned loose. After most of the pollution was gone, I turned off the automation and ordered them to rebuild roads.

I'll rewrite it for more clarity.

I haven't mass experimented with this technique (only twice) and it was very low-scale - not a big global warming problem. I myself wouldn't do this too often, but more for fun. Moonsinger does it for fun because the added food doesn't build up as many points, I think.

 

[Hygro]

You know, I had never thought of using forests as bufferzones! Sadly nukes don't terraform in PTW do I won't be able to do it in that version however. Nice in depth pictures too!

 

[hbdragon88]

Oops, I should give credit to Moonsinger for that - in the "Fish on the Railroad" thread, she used forests to cover what couldn't be changed.

I'd give a lot to get my version of PTW to work so I can start relaxing in a global warming riddled game. The sun is red and global warming is fericous; I'm losing population to plains-desert and grassland-plains.

 

[Strider]

hmm... I always thought of nuking/pollution as a real bad thing. But thanks to this I've learned that it could help me out alot (changing plains next to a river to flood plains for example).

Going to have to remember this stuff.