Design: Features and Terrain

[Nikis-Knight]

To Unser:
Your comments seem to be mostly about flavor. I don't really see a problem with it, because I see the civ bonuses as natural, cultural adaptations to the environment that that civs has been associated with, in this age or in ages past. Elves have been reverent towards forrests in the past, leading them to be able to build in them; but if their ideology changes, that doesn't mean that they will discount the bonuses they got, though natural means, by building in forrests.
Lanun know how to build better ships well; this doesn't necessarily have a thing to do with the Octopus overlords. If they adopt that creed, they can retain their shipbuilding knowledge and get the ability to summon big squids as well, but if they follow, say, the order, they still remember how to build better boats, etc.
That's my take, anyway.

 

[Endovior]

I proposed the automatic start of the mine to prevent any idea of giving dwarven workers the ability to cross mountains. An early unit capable of entering mountains would be unbalancing and annoying. (haha, my workers on a mountain and you can't kill him)

Unbalancing? How so? It's a 0 Str worker. He can sit there and wave.

It's not like there aren't any other units that can move through mountains, either... Druids can, for example, as can all manner of spells. So if a worker hiding in a mountain bugs you, fireball him.

 

[feydras]

This may have been mentioned somewhere but i couldn't find it in a read through of this thread.

Has any thought been given to a Raise / Lower land mechanic? This would make it possible to make land bridges and raise mountains or create channels to make more effective borders. Maybe this could be limited to within your own cultural borders. This was one of my favorite things about SMAC. In FfH i enjoy sinking enemy cities with the tsunami spell.

Also - what about forest chopping outside your borders, particularly in enemy territory? It would be cool to send in a squad of workers escorted by a tough troop and start chopping. You shouldn't get the production bonus (too far away) but it could wreck your opponent's lands. This could also be used to lessen the value of potentially settlable lands.

Disclaimer: ideas stolen from a friend i just introduced to FfH. He loves it although he generally doesn't like fantasy stuff.

- feydras

 

[QES]

This may have been mentioned somewhere but i couldn't find it in a read through of this thread.

Has any thought been given to a Raise / Lower land mechanic? This would make it possible to make land bridges and raise mountains or create channels to make more effective borders. Maybe this could be limited to within your own cultural borders. This was one of my favorite things about SMAC. In FfH i enjoy sinking enemy cities with the tsunami spell.

Also - what about forest chopping outside your borders, particularly in enemy territory? It would be cool to send in a squad of workers escorted by a tough troop and start chopping. You shouldn't get the production bonus (too far away) but it could wreck your opponent's lands. This could also be used to lessen the value of potentially settlable lands.

Disclaimer: ideas stolen from a friend i just introduced to FfH. He loves it although he generally doesn't like fantasy stuff.

- feydras

The Engine (as far as i know) does not work like the SMAC engine.
There isnt a three way axis for the game. There are tiles, and features. Those features can include peaks and hills. Which would simulate "up". But there isnt a "down". If I understand this correctly. There are water squares, and land squares. The water squares vary in "depth" but its a misnomer. Really its like the diffrerence between plains, grasslands, and desert. Its just that each is more or less likely to be close to land squares. You cant "Raise" terrain. Or "lower" it.

If I'm wrong, I'll be very excited to see something like this implemented.
-Qes

 

[Sureshot]

i have a mod that makes tsunamis lower land in stages, and im gonna make one that will raise land with the same mechanic once i find a good earth spell that targets that way and if high level (will only take a second to make it since itll be the reverse of the tsunami one)

i dont think workers should do what you suggest, but currently in 0.16 Axemen can chop forests like workers, and kael expressed interest in making them do so outside their own borders, but that involves the "build outside borders" mechanic, which is an SDK change so not sure if hes gonna do it (or yet maybe), i hope so because so many neat things can be done with such

EDIT: QES, theres features and terrain, and Plot type which includes varying heights, of Water, Flatlands, Hills, Peaks. My tsunami spell uses such quite nicely.

 

[kevjm]

It's an improvement more than a feature or terrain type, but eh

This is more aimed for the clan or Dovellio


-Training camp: +2% military unit production (whilst worked) and/or +1 great commander points

-Whaaaaag! Banner (Yup, stealing the name from warhammer): Replaces cottage, can be built in forests.
Gives a smaller monetry output but will spawn a melee unit when it reaches its last upgrade, and simultaneously degrade the banner to the lower level- so that it cycles and produces more units. Units have a chance of gaining a promotion based on the terrain it occupies.

On a balance note, these cottages would take time to develope so these would not give the civ lots of quick units to rush with.

 

[Thonnas]

I'm not sure how difficult it will be to add in, but Maybe somewhere down the line a marsh terrain (like in Rhye's) could be put in. I wouldn't expect it to be implemented for use in generated maps, but it would be nice to have available for use in pre-made maps and scenarios.

 

[Thonnas]

please? (/bump)

 

[AlazkanAssassin]

Why would you want marshes? What purpose would they serve? How would their function differ from that of jungles?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I would guess it would be to make terrain impassible to some (heavier) units. It might also be nice to add a terrain (shallows?) that is passible to both land and to the smaller water units.

 

[Kael]

It is a cool looking terrain, Rhye did a good job on it. Unfortunatly it takes a terrain, feature and bonus to make. Since we are heavy on bonus's (we've maxed them out until I rebuild the gamefont file) we won't be adding anything that requires them for a little while.

 

[Thonnas]

the important functions of the marsh (from my pov) are to: a.) create natural barriers that aren't mountains (differing from mtns. in that they don't block LoS and are better fitting aesthetically in certain places); b.) create unhealthiness that can reduce the usefulness and potential of certain areas; and 3.) create 'undevelopeable' land titles that allow for expanded landmass with less of a performance hit.

I haven't really examined the implementation in RFC, but it seems to me that all the important functions could come from the base and feature. I'm not sure what role the resource part plays. Actually now that I think about it, just a feature might suffice for ffh. I think it would just have to prevent movement of most units (like peaks), not allow improvements, have -3 food,hammer, commerce(or so), and have a negative health of like .7

I know it's not terribly useful to the mod as a whole, but I think it could be quite useful in map and scenario making. I certainly wouldn't expect it to be high on the list of things to do, and I can wait or go without if i must. I'm just happy you consider it.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

It should definitely have negative health and hammers. I don't see why it should have negative food instead of just 0. I believe rice actually grows better in such terrain. Maybe you could only build the farm improvement there, and only if rice is present. In that case, I can understand something like a -1.

I think it would be interesting if some resources could initially be very rare, but would spread in the territory of whoever already has it. This could represent the process of domesticating and spreading crops or animals. If you already have wheat or rice, these could spread to your other farms. Perhaps you could build pastures for horses, pigs or sheep to appear in,if you already have some. These would either need to take longer to build, or have a low chance to actually be useful.

Why don't smokehouses give a bonus for fish like they do for pigs, sheep, or cows?

Getting back to the thread topic, the most needed terrain change is creating a hell version to replace the remaining terrain types, so players can tell just where hell exists.

 

[[NWO]_Valis]

I can give you another reason for marshes. Make gunpowder only appear on them, not on hills. I always thought it was very strange to mine something that is explosive. Off course then marshes would have to be crossable.

Alternate hell terrain for it would be some kind of tar pits.

If attached to a river or a lake then the marsh would spawn along side. You would have to prevent it with irrigating.

Ok, here is an idea of mine that comes with the marsh idea. There are some land areas were there is no access to water thus making farms impossible. Sometimes there are lake nearby but I have to build several farms in a no-city land to get the water to the city. Now, why not make a irrigation improvement just to spread water. You could build it only in your cultural borders but it would be faster then a farm. It would be used only to get water near your city and maybe lower the chance of caching fire to nearby titles. Available with sanitation or a tech before.

Then on some islands there is no way to get water. Could we have a well? Buildable only in your culture borders or even not. That would be a nice feature, nothing big but helpful.

 

[DieselBiscuit]

I can give you another reason for marshes. Make gunpowder only appear on them, not on hills. I always thought it was very strange to mine something that is explosive.

Strictly speaking you aren't mining gunpowder but saltpeter. Gunpowder is a generic term for explosive compounds based on saltpeter, explaining vanilla Civ4s saltpeter resource instead of gunpowder. The most commonly known gunpowder recipe is saltpeter, sulphur and charcoal, which produces a rather primitive version of black powder. The charcoal has to be as pure as possible, making certain types of wood more suitable than others for producing it.

That being said (sorry for the off-topic'ing above), I think marshes would be a nice addition but not nice enough to warrant a high priority at the moment.

 

[Gola'Waya]

I am working on a marsh/swamp terrain/feature for FFH. (Marsh is a terrain type and swamp is a feature). Swamps have a chance of "swallowing up" any unit that passes through them. (with the exception of some units or units who take a swamp promotion (or woodsman, not sure yet))

I have the marsh part done but may need someone to model a good looking swamp feature (if not, I am attempting to do it, but I = teh suck when it comes to 3d modeling)

The other idea I had was a cliff feature that prevents land units from entering a sea square (or disembarking off a ship) and prevents a land unit from moving to another land square if a cliff is in the way.

 

[dot]

(If this doesn't belong here please feel free to move it.)​

I've only just dl'd FfH 2.025 a couple of days ago and I picked the Ljosalfar right away and came to notice the already mentioned issues/thoughts about the ancient forests. And I'm a bit torn on the production discussion, i.e. the lumbermills.

I've noticed, that the elven workers can build lumbermills on forests but not on new or ancient forests. I found that rather disturbing. It forced me to build an improvement that would force the worker to chop the forest. After that the bloom, wait for forest and be fast with lumbermilling combo. Because oddly enough a lumbermill stays in the forest when it upgrades to ancient, iirc.

So here's what I'm torn between: #### Would a native speaker have put it this way? ####

Option A - The more moral and logical option

# File is CIV4UnitInfos
# In the define elven worker section change

	<Build>
            <BuildType>BUILD_LUMBERMILL</BuildType>
            <bBuild>1</bBuild>
        </Build>

# to

	<Build>
            <BuildType>BUILD_LUMBERMILL</BuildType>
            [color="green"]<bBuild>0</bBuild>[/color]
        </Build>

Option B - The "dream of more power" option

# File is CIV4ImprovementInfos
# Add the following code to the lumbermill info:

	[color="green"]<FeatureMakesValid>
            <FeatureType>FEATURE_FOREST_ANCIENT</FeatureType>
            <bMakesValid>1</bMakesValid>
        </FeatureMakesValid>[/color]

Option A seems to be more elvish since it simply disallows to industrially exploit the forest. While Option B is certainly empowering the Ljosalfar-FotL Combo but is granting this bonus to other civs that use FotL as well.

---

Please note that I have only played FfH for a couple of days and that I have no clue of programming or modding at all. I'm a music therapist after all. But I'd highly appreciate your comments and witty remarks.

Oh ... this is probably the place for a big fat

Thank You!

to all those modders who made this come true.​

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I wasn't aware that the Elven workers could build lumbermills; prior to BtS, they could not. I don't think there supposed to be able to build them now. (There isn't really a reason to change bBuild to 0; just delete that section entirely)

Actually, I was just thinking that it would be more appropriate if no FoL civ could build lumbermills, but if only they could build the Forest Preserve improvement from BtS. (I would also want eh Dark Elves to have the same workers as the Ljosalfar.) Forest preserves should increase the rate at which a Forest becomes an Ancient Forest, spread Forests/Ancient Forests, and have synergy with Guardian of Nature civic (probably happiness, maybe free bards if possible). Lumbermills should also be builable on Ancient Forests, be more productive there, have negative effects with Guardian of Nature (probably unhappiness), and have a chance of demoting an Ancient Forest back to a normal Forest. (It might be appropriate for lumber mills in general had a small chance to clear the forests from the tile completely, and then be destroyed since there is nothing left to cut. This could probably just be handled trough events.)

 

[Rex rgis of Ter]

I found the same thing with the lumbermills as maniac - perhaps a Leaves wonder giving +1 hammer per ancient forest?

Ahem......

 

[dot]

[...]
Actually, I was just thinking that it would be more appropriate if no FoL civ could build lumbermills,
[...]
Lumbermills should also be builable on Ancient Forests, be more productive there, have negative effects with Guardian of Nature (probably unhappiness), and have a chance of demoting an Ancient Forest back to a normal Forest.
[...]

Err, ?

But I hear you on the events. That's a cute idea. And I definitely hear you on the same worker units for the dark elves. I second that.