Ive been playing Civ 2 (MGE with UIA) for about a year now and recently got into messing with the editor, adding some custom units, techs, messing with terrain etc. I had set it up so most terrains can be Irrigated up to grassland plus having citizens only eat one food to get some massive growth... Which worked really well, but I was wondering whether the AI transforms terrain optimally if at all. Not sure I've ever observed it but I intend to test it this week.
[Civ2] Can AI engineers transform terrain?
- Thread starter Firedog
- Start date
I get the feeling that's why swamp Irrigates into grassland, to keep the AI from being totally eclipsed by the player after an ecological disaster.
Quite likely! Looking back I remember playing a bunch of Civ2 mars scenarios over the years and the AI would just struggle on the Martian terrain due to never terraforming, whereas it would happily irrigate of course and seemingly sometimes demonstrate that it has no adjacent water requirement for irrigation too as presumably that was too messy to code too lol.
The AI definitely performed better just being able to irrigate everything up to grassland, combined with a higher tech paradigm (30/10) so they have time to really build up all their cities. Made for a more interesting late game imo. Also tweaked the settings so they'll irrigate terrain regardless of government level.
