Creating animated resources... (Idea Abandoned)

[ZergMazter]

EDIT: Abandoned... Too difficult to achieve.

I was thinking of a way to animate my resources just to make my game feel more lively. I'm facing some drawbacks and was wondering if any of you smart people could lend me a hand. Obviously resource textures themselves cannot be animated, but I'm doing this as a workaround:

1- Using LM terrain for animated animals that appear on grass (More on this later).
2- I'm creating "LM" resources such as "LM Cattle". Same stats but empty icon so it doesnt show on the map.
3- Making a Cattle unit to pre-place on my map which will be immobile. Fortify animations will play moving animations. Can be captured and havent decided if hidden nationality or not. Having issues.

That's the idea and still have testing to do. I've tested some things in the past but not all this together.

Issues:

1- If I recall correctly on one of my tests if I make the cattle a hidden national then it's all good up to the point when airplanes come in. They bombard more and more unless I fortify another unit on top. It slows down the game.
2- If I recall correctly on one of my tests if I make the cattle a non-hidden unit then it's all good up to the point when a civ other than it's owner captures it, but it's still within the original owner's borders. Then when the time comes for a forced withdrawal it takes the cow to the new owners city. This defeats the immobile flag and leaves an "empty" tile that actually does have a cattle resource, just not visible.

In Progress:

1- The LM grassland I was hoping to use for the sole purpose of gaining access to LM forest if a forest is planted and making some changes to the yields. Anyways the question is what happens when you plant a forest on LMGrassland? LMForest?

Summary:

Cows are getting attacked if HN by bombardment unless defended.
Cows are getting withdrawn if non-HN after capture within foreign borders.
Does LMgrassland yield LMForest after planting?

 

[ZergMazter]

It works in the mini map. I was able to use LM forests as a tile improvement and adjusted yields accordingly. I'll just have to see if the LM grass/plain turn to LM forest by planting forests on their LM base terrain. Also I wonder if the AI will plant trees since I turned off irrigation and mining for those LM tiles with the cattle. From experience the AI will do what you want it to sometimes when you corner it and give it no other choice.

 

[ZergMazter]

Well I'm disappointed. LM terrain has 0 functionality beyond the stats given in the map editor. When a worker plants trees on a LM grass/plains the result will be a normal forest not an LM forest. I can just invert my strategy and make normal forests into LM forests then I'll plant and use the normal forests as I wanted. I did discover something interesting. LM grass/plains will convert to normal forests after planting trees. After you chop the forest it will then convert to regular grass/plains. This game has a way of doing its own thing and almost never what you want it to but it's ok.

 

[ZergMazter]

I tried but this creates more problems for the sake of looks. I'm gonna call this one a failure. Too much effort for too little reward. I did manage to make some discoveries about AI behavior in relation to what I tried to do here, and might be useful to talk about on a separate post.