loki1232
Loki
What if the enchanted forest improvement could only be built by adepts?
Design: Features and Terrain
- Thread starter Kael
- Start date
Chalid
Black Dragon
woodelf said:
Ancient Forest: +1 Food +1 Hammer
Forest with Lumbermill: +2 Hammers
When you need Hammers the Forest with Lumbermill is better than the Ancient forest. So people start cutting ancient forests to bloom forests to built lumbermills. Thats not good but understandable.
Enchanted Ancient Forest would be +1 Food +2 Hammer +2 Commerce. This is obviosly better than an Forest with Lumbermill, but not so good as an
Elven Ancient Forest with Town: +1 Food +1(+2 with Arcane Lore) Hammers + 5(?) Commerce
Chalid
Black Dragon
Elven can built towns/farms and so on in forests as well in ancient forests. (I would like to cut this to village at max in forests through)
Is this a vanilla thing: why does a plains hill have 1 more hammer than a desert hill? Or is that only after terraforming? I had my adept turn a desert hill into a plains hill and my production went up, but food didn't. I found that odd.
Chalid
Black Dragon
Year vanilla plain hills do give no food but 2 hammer. The reason is: the hill gives +1 hammer -1 food. in desert there is no food to be taken, by plains the food gets taken by the hill. the hammer is added to both but the desert starts with 0 hammers, plains strat with 1 hammer.
onedreamer
Dragon
Ancient Forests should get +1 hammer with Hidden Paths to balance out lumbermills.
edit: ops, I didn't know you could build cottages and farms in ancient forests. Sounds a bit silly... anyways disregard my comment.
edit: ops, I didn't know you could build cottages and farms in ancient forests. Sounds a bit silly... anyways disregard my comment.
loki1232
Loki
Are you sure? I thought that only the true elves could improve forests/ancienct forests with things other than mills.
loki1232
Loki
woodelf said:I guess I recall that.
Too bad we couldn't change the graphic or name. Maybe an elven cottage and have it swinging or built in the trees not on the ground.
Well we could...
Chalid
Black Dragon
*looks somewhere else*
Great posts about the various forest options for Elves. One thought occurred to me as I was reading through them. Shouldn't Elves or Fellowship of Leaves Civs be able to get more out of forests than other Civs/Races? Then I wondered how to balance those bonuses since forests (ancient forest excluded) are much more abundant than other resources.
Here is a suggestion on how it could be done:
Allow Fellowship Civ or Elves to receive a bonus to forest tiles. Elves get +1 commerce, Fellowship Civ gets +1 food. As a drawback, either the Civ or Elves get no food bonuses for farms on other resources, but do get the resource. Such as a farm on a rice resource only yields the rice resource, not the +2 food. And/or they are unable to receive hammer bonuses from mining resource areas such as iron or bronze.
This would change the whole play dynamic for Elves and the fellowship Civ and could still be partnered with the other forest suggestions to give different bonuses to the terrain. With the right improvements on a tile, they can get the bonuses they otherwise are lacking from the loss of mine or farm bonuses.
It could be taken further to allow Elves or Fellowship Civ the ability to convert excess food to hammers (I don't know if this is possible) to balance out some of the negative items mentioned above.
Finally, other civ units could be given the ability to burn a forest or clear cut, which would cause negatives for the tile such as burned forest has -1 food/-1 hammer/-1 commerce. Then the Elven worker or Adept could have a heal forest upgrade at some point to repair the damage.
This might help broaden the differences between some of the Civs/Races and could be applied to other groups as well. One thought is dwarven civ gets +1 food by mining a tile or some similar modifier.
Just a bunch of thoughts,
Gaebril
Here is a suggestion on how it could be done:
Allow Fellowship Civ or Elves to receive a bonus to forest tiles. Elves get +1 commerce, Fellowship Civ gets +1 food. As a drawback, either the Civ or Elves get no food bonuses for farms on other resources, but do get the resource. Such as a farm on a rice resource only yields the rice resource, not the +2 food. And/or they are unable to receive hammer bonuses from mining resource areas such as iron or bronze.
This would change the whole play dynamic for Elves and the fellowship Civ and could still be partnered with the other forest suggestions to give different bonuses to the terrain. With the right improvements on a tile, they can get the bonuses they otherwise are lacking from the loss of mine or farm bonuses.
It could be taken further to allow Elves or Fellowship Civ the ability to convert excess food to hammers (I don't know if this is possible) to balance out some of the negative items mentioned above.
Finally, other civ units could be given the ability to burn a forest or clear cut, which would cause negatives for the tile such as burned forest has -1 food/-1 hammer/-1 commerce. Then the Elven worker or Adept could have a heal forest upgrade at some point to repair the damage.
This might help broaden the differences between some of the Civs/Races and could be applied to other groups as well. One thought is dwarven civ gets +1 food by mining a tile or some similar modifier.
Just a bunch of thoughts,
Gaebril
loki1232
Loki
I think that this is too drastic unfortunately, but perhaps could be toned down a little?
Arcadian83
Prince
First of all, awesome mod. 
I played as Ljosalfar a couple times, and I have some thoughts on Ancient Forests:
Time:
Ancient Forests are ancient, they should take a long time to grow.
Randomly turning forests to ancient forests in 'Leaves lands is a good implementation, but can be spotty and makes it difficult to schedule the workers. One really should be able to measure the aging of forests.
Perhaps a more predicable cottage-like upgrade system ("X turns to ancient forest") would be better? Forests as a whole could be tiered like "Young Forest" -> "Forest" -> "Ancient Forest", with ancient requiring 'Leaves territory and a laborer on tile. This ensures that the city is cultivating and tending the forest so it can grow greater than a un-tended wild one. Perhaps the number of turns needed can have a random component and druids can expidite the process -somewhat-. The game could also randomly plop down "Young Forests" instead of full-grown ones for new forest growth.
Pillaging:
What is ancient majestic forests filled with wonderous creatures to the Fellowship of Leaves, may be prime timber or charcoal, inhabited by pelts filled with reagents to many enemies of the forest. While the treants defending it may be huge, so are the looting possibilities. Allowing military units to pillage ancient forest or workers to chop it for great rewards only makes sense. The infernals might even burn them as a ready-made sacrifice to the hells for a boon. The time taken to grow ancient forests means that destroying them would be true defilement, a more devastating loss than towns to the owner, hence why they are so protective of them.
Balance:
Ancient forests with towns/farms on them were unbalancingly powerful. The ability to add another improvement on top of the bonuses of the forest is what is unbalancing, as the ancient forest by itself is not so great with Grassland + Ancient Forest = 3F 1H. As a result, only the elves have a -huge- incentive to go 'Leaves, whereas other races, while welcome to go 'Leaves for the happy/healthy bonus, don't have incentive to grow forests since they can't build improvements on them, making their use of 'Leaves as a nature religion half-hearted at best. One thing I prefered about FfH1 was that your race didn't so directly determine your strategy. Allow other races to build these other custom forest-improvements you've been talking about. Specializing different parts of the forest is good, but uber-town-forests is too much.
Also, maybe ancient forest bonuses should only be present while 'Leaves is state religion, to prevent freeloaders from upgrading and improving forests only to switch to another religion and keep the bonuses. If they want to switch they can lose the bonuses and gain incentive to chop all that giant timber they've grown.
Bugs?:
I noticed the ancient forest model doesn't behave like Civ4 forests, but rather as Civ4 buildings. This is probably so they won't sink into the ground around roads and improvements. Unfortunately this means they float in mid-air around hills and look repetative in consecutive tiles. It'd probably be tricky coding to get the best of both worlds, but I thought I'd mention it since I don't think anyone else has reported it. I also noticed Bloom can be cast over improvements that don't normally mix with forests, like mines and quarries.
I played as Ljosalfar a couple times, and I have some thoughts on Ancient Forests:
Time:
Ancient Forests are ancient, they should take a long time to grow.
Randomly turning forests to ancient forests in 'Leaves lands is a good implementation, but can be spotty and makes it difficult to schedule the workers. One really should be able to measure the aging of forests.
Perhaps a more predicable cottage-like upgrade system ("X turns to ancient forest") would be better? Forests as a whole could be tiered like "Young Forest" -> "Forest" -> "Ancient Forest", with ancient requiring 'Leaves territory and a laborer on tile. This ensures that the city is cultivating and tending the forest so it can grow greater than a un-tended wild one. Perhaps the number of turns needed can have a random component and druids can expidite the process -somewhat-. The game could also randomly plop down "Young Forests" instead of full-grown ones for new forest growth.
Pillaging:
What is ancient majestic forests filled with wonderous creatures to the Fellowship of Leaves, may be prime timber or charcoal, inhabited by pelts filled with reagents to many enemies of the forest. While the treants defending it may be huge, so are the looting possibilities. Allowing military units to pillage ancient forest or workers to chop it for great rewards only makes sense. The infernals might even burn them as a ready-made sacrifice to the hells for a boon. The time taken to grow ancient forests means that destroying them would be true defilement, a more devastating loss than towns to the owner, hence why they are so protective of them.
Balance:
Ancient forests with towns/farms on them were unbalancingly powerful. The ability to add another improvement on top of the bonuses of the forest is what is unbalancing, as the ancient forest by itself is not so great with Grassland + Ancient Forest = 3F 1H. As a result, only the elves have a -huge- incentive to go 'Leaves, whereas other races, while welcome to go 'Leaves for the happy/healthy bonus, don't have incentive to grow forests since they can't build improvements on them, making their use of 'Leaves as a nature religion half-hearted at best. One thing I prefered about FfH1 was that your race didn't so directly determine your strategy. Allow other races to build these other custom forest-improvements you've been talking about. Specializing different parts of the forest is good, but uber-town-forests is too much.
Also, maybe ancient forest bonuses should only be present while 'Leaves is state religion, to prevent freeloaders from upgrading and improving forests only to switch to another religion and keep the bonuses. If they want to switch they can lose the bonuses and gain incentive to chop all that giant timber they've grown.
Bugs?:
I noticed the ancient forest model doesn't behave like Civ4 forests, but rather as Civ4 buildings. This is probably so they won't sink into the ground around roads and improvements. Unfortunately this means they float in mid-air around hills and look repetative in consecutive tiles. It'd probably be tricky coding to get the best of both worlds, but I thought I'd mention it since I don't think anyone else has reported it. I also noticed Bloom can be cast over improvements that don't normally mix with forests, like mines and quarries.
loki1232
Loki
1. Welcome to the forums and I'm glad you liked the mod.
2. I don't think they need a laborer. Instead, the city will have to be working hte tile. In a leaves civ this implies them taking care of the forest.
3. I really like your aging forest ideas. However, perhaps here and there the game can start with a few groves of ancient forests that survived the age of ice.
4. Yah, switching out of leaves should simply make your ancient forests start devolving into normal forests. Not immediate, but pretty quickly.
5. Perhaps pillaging them gives some gold? Or a lot of gold? Maybe a happiness bonus for some civs?
6. I'm not sure how to balance the ljosfar using leaves.
2. I don't think they need a laborer. Instead, the city will have to be working hte tile. In a leaves civ this implies them taking care of the forest.
3. I really like your aging forest ideas. However, perhaps here and there the game can start with a few groves of ancient forests that survived the age of ice.
4. Yah, switching out of leaves should simply make your ancient forests start devolving into normal forests. Not immediate, but pretty quickly.
5. Perhaps pillaging them gives some gold? Or a lot of gold? Maybe a happiness bonus for some civs?
6. I'm not sure how to balance the ljosfar using leaves.
Nikis-Knight
Deity
I think disallowing building towns in ancient forrests. Doing so should make it revert to normal. How many civs can have a farm, mine, and town on the same square?
Arcadian83
Prince
loki1232 said:
1. Thanks for the welcome
and for reading a long post 
2. That's what I meant: in Civ3, citizens working tiles were called 'laborers'. Sorry, I should have been more clear.
3. Thanks, and interesting idea, maybe that could be connected to this "wilderness" thing being discussed elsewhere and Ancient Temples.
4. and 5.
6. This is tricky. Fellowship of Leaves is definately all about the forest economy. The problem is that when Ljosalfar is all about the forest economy as well, it kind of stacks. While it makes sense for elves to be more synergistic with 'Leaves, it's too much. Being Ljosalfar and not founding 'Leaves is like being Catherine and not building a single cottage, and doing so feels wrong like Catherine cottage-spam.
This goes more towards civilization design, but perhaps Ljosalfar should be about combat in forests, while 'Leaves emphasizes the
/ 
/ 
/ 
/ 
aspects of the forest. This way Ljosalfar would be better at attacking/defending forested kingdoms, but any civ could get the full 'Leaves economic benefit of forests. Maybe the "Elf" promotion could give attack bonus against a defender in the forest and not spawn opposing treants when attacking ancient forest.Strangely though, this might make Ljosalfar a Fellowship of Leaves backstabber.
