Merged a pull request by merijn_v1: hybrid and bamboo forest varieties
Per the link, the Seattle shipyard built 40 destroyers over the duration of World War 2. That is the third-most for individual shipyards, but about a tenth of the total production of destroyers during WWII, and other shipyards along the Pacific (mostly Oregon and California) were producing all the other classes of ships, including aircraft carriers.This link disagrees with you (to the tune of building the third-most destroyers during WW2).
That's fair. Part of my interest in making it an actual rainforest was a) because holy crap, there's a rainforest there, and b) to ensure that it wouldn't be removed for a mine or used for a lumber mill like most forest tiles. A normal peak would fulfill the same function, of leaving the tile unexploited, but a rainforest felt more appropriate. OTOH, you're right that it isn't visually consistent -- though I wonder what those regions of Australia & New Zealand would look like with a rainforest feature....Personally, I would prefer that the feature used to depict them is a temperate forest feature, as imo "rainforest" in this game actually represents tropical forest
Seattle does have shipyards, and the Port of Seattle is a major center for shipping. But, especially compared to the rest of the Pacific Coast, it was not a major center for ship construction.
Seattle is about 100 miles away from the Pacific Ocean. Rome is maybe 15 miles away from the Mediterranean. It's fair to depict Rome on the coast, but erasing the Olympic Peninsula (a 3600-square-mile mountain range) to get coastal access for Seattle feels wrong. I agree I would very much prefer to give Seattle direct access to the ocean, but the only way to do so is to erase a bunch of land. We could add a bunch of tiles (one tile for Strait of Juan de Fuca, one tile for Olympic peninsula, two tiles for Puget Sound) but that'd be even more distorted.Seattle should have access to the coast (hey, Rome does & when was the last aircraft carrier built there?)
"Puget Sound /ˈpjuːdʒɪt/ is a sound along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is a complex estuarine[3] system of interconnected marine waterways and basins, with one major and two minor connections to the open Pacific Ocean via the Strait of Juan de Fuca—Admiralty Inlet being the major connection and Deception Pass and Swinomish Channel being the minor."Seattle is about 100 miles away from the Pacific Ocean. Rome is maybe 15 miles away from the Mediterranean. It's fair to depict Rome on the coast, but erasing the Olympic Peninsula (a 3600-square-mile mountain range) to get coastal access for Seattle feels wrong. I agree I would very much prefer to give Seattle direct access to the ocean, but the only way to do so is to erase a bunch of land. We could add a bunch of tiles (one tile for Strait of Juan de Fuca, one tile for Olympic peninsula, two tiles for Puget Sound) but that'd be even more distorted.
As for your links, note that in the updated map, Seattle does have access to a coast tile (the San Juan islands) which allows it to construct a harbor, lighthouse, port, etc. That coast, plus the river tiles, allows Seattle to fully exploit the commercial benefits of a coastline. It just doesn't allow Seattle to build warships (or rather, it wouldn't allow Seattle-built warships to enter the Pacific Ocean), and my argument that Seattle is much less notable for ships than it is for everything else, especially planes. A historically accurate play-through would see Seattle building fighters and bombers pretty much non-stop for most of WWII and the post-war period, up until the 80s when Microsoft entered the scene and turned the region into a technology powerhouse.
Sure. An inland Seattle still has coastal access for buildings and trade; just not for ships. An inland Portland has none of those things. The easiest way to fix Portland is to change the mouth of the Columbia to a coastal tile, which would also give the city access to the ocean for ship-building (which is something Portland was especially notable for).It's definitely more on the Ocean than Portland but you're more willing to put Portland on the Ocean than Seattle?
That's a pretty good point -- my plan was to use the peak + rainforest to keep the Olympic Peninsula intact, but that's not going to fly if it's just a hill + forest.You should also consider gameplay - most people aren't going to settle a city one away from the coast like that unless there's a strong incentive to.
This gives me an idea... why don't we move Vancouver Island up by one tile? Then we'd have room for a three-tile Puget Sound (one for Strait of Juan de Fuca, two for the Sound proper), which would give a direct coastal connection to both Seattle and Vancouver, and separate the two cities by one extra tile so they'd be outside each other's BFC.I might also add that putting Vancouver and Seattle so close together (within each other's BFCs) might be problematic if we want to see them coexist most games.
@merijn_v1, as long as you're working on forest variants, would you be willing to put together a variant for temperate rainforest? I'm thinking something like: replace the rainforest's coconut trees with normal 'temperate forest' trees, and adjust the color level a bit so it's brighter than most forests but darker than the default rainforest. That way it'd have the properties of a rainforest, without looking like it belongs in the Amazon.Merged a pull request by merijn_v1: hybrid and bamboo forest varieties
I don't hate this one but I'm not sure how I feel about shifting Vancouver up, giving it even less space before we hit mountains/tundra. That's the problem while moving Vancouver up keeps it out of Seattles BFC it gives Vancouver a much worse BFC compared to Seattle. Also, still not sure why it's entirely necessary to put a massive non-existant bay there for Portland. I'd just accept that it is an important "coastal"ish city and put the canonical on the coast. From gameplay and aesthetic, it's better. No one thinks of Portland as an inland city and it functions as a coastal city so what's the appeal of placing it inland?Here's my latest pass at the Pacific Northwest. I kept the Olympic Penisula a rainforest rather than temperate jungle because a) I'm not completely sold on making it a normal forest tile and b) to clearly indicate what it represents. I moved Mt. Rainier north one tile, kept the changes to Spokane, and adjusted the whole Vancouver (city) and Vancouver (island) group one north as well, removing the mountain tile 1 NW of the current Vancouver tile.
Considering that whole area is basically empty (full of mountains in -game, full of wilderness in real life), shifting Vancouver to give the three big cities more space seems like a workable solution.
Spoiler Round 3 :![]()
Then we can adjust Vancouver's BFC accordingly. The northern part of British Columbia is basically empty, so it shouldn't be too difficult to adjust its tile quality.That's the problem while moving Vancouver up keeps it out of Seattles BFC it gives Vancouver a much worse BFC compared to Seattle.
I was curious, so I found a transparent U.S. outline map, cut out the PNW, and rotated it to fit the coastline. Here's the result:Re: Portland, just map the borders of the state over the game map, and see where the exact location of the city falls (ie, in relation to the state as a whole, not to the coast). My guess is that it's not sufficiently inland for it to fall outside the coastal tile.
The properties of the rainforest feature are specifically geared towards tropical terrain. Names of features in the game do not completely map to real life terminology.@merijn_v1, as long as you're working on forest variants, would you be willing to put together a variant for temperate rainforest? I'm thinking something like: replace the rainforest's coconut trees with normal 'temperate forest' trees, and adjust the color level a bit so it's brighter than most forests but darker than the default rainforest. That way it'd have the properties of a rainforest, without looking like it belongs in the Amazon.
This sort of 'temperate rainforest' could be used in places like:
We might also be able to use that terrain type for a tile in southern Appalachia (in the U.S.), as well as in Northern Iran.
- Pacific Northwest
- southern tip of South America
- Australia and New Zealand
Looking at this again, it might look even more natural if the new taiga variety would not just consist of these new most snow covered trees but would also include some of the more snow covered trees from the cold forest variety.Small reskin experiment for a better distinction between taiga (left) and snowy forests (right). Currently they both use the snowy forest art. As you can see, I made the taiga more covered with snow.
I think it would nice if there is another feature variety of the taiga. The trees have the same art, but the amount of trees is much smaller. (About the same amount of trees as the Savanna)
Spoiler :![]()
I was curious, so I found a transparent U.S. outline map, cut out the PNW, and rotated it to fit the coastline. Here's the result: