Did they do it wrong?

[IceBlaZe]

Something came up to my head, maybe firaxis did the entire hills things wrong...
Hills should be just as foody as grassland, a lot of hills are full of rabits or gazzets, many fruit and other type of food, while mountains are hard terrain to settle on, hills are healthy, and a lot of big cities started on hills, I dont think hills should be less foody than grassland.

So, should hills contain same amount of food as grassland?

 

[dannyevilcat]

Probably, yes, but then add to that the defensive bonus and the hills suddenly become the dream place to plop all your cities, no?

 

[IceBlaZe]

Cities did settle on mountains for its startegic advances

 

[Dark Sheer]

Hill should contain as much food as grassland. I made it so in my own mod for the same reason. And I make them irrigatable too

Technically speaking rice do grow on hills (and those hill rice cost much much more in my country and taste better too ) And of course lots of fruits grows on hills. So hills should be as productive as grassland in term of food

 

[Bjorn Bjornson]

i dont think as much as grasslands - or if they do at base, more farm bonus should go to grasslands

cuz basically farming requires space, and it is more laborious to effieciently use slopes for farming - alot of engineering goes into terraces and all that

"Hills should be just as foody as grassland, a lot of hills are full of rabits or gazzets, many fruit and other type of food"
yeah but the problem there is all those food sources are forage type food - and in the scale civ3 is set, cities cant be supported on forage alone

but i agree that hills got a bum deal as far as food production, so like dark sheer i made hills irrigratable, so with farms they have the same effect as farmed plains, but with the defensive bonus, and the mining bonus if you wish to mine it instead (i have a +2 shild mining bonus for hills, +3 for mountains)

but like said, if you have hills with a base food of 2, hills would be like a grassland/shield tile with a fortress on it! thats just too perfect a tile IMHO


but thinking on this brought up a point - why is there only one type of hill. i mean when you tell me about rolling hills i think of vast open grazing lands, and dry-land farming; whereas there are lush rolling hills of greenery; maybe they should make multiple hill tiles - a plains hill and a grassland hill, each with the food of their flat counterparts, but have more farming bonus on the flat, more mining bonus on the hill....

 

[Anglophile]

I like the idea of two types of hills very much. One would be like the foothills of the Rockies/Appalachia/Canadian Shield - mineral/forest rich (i.e. shield rich in Civ terms) with a higher defense bonus but no food bonus. The other would be the rolling hills of New Zealand/England/NE US, etc that would be irrigatable (maybe 1 food goes to 3 with irrigation) but not much of a defense bonus and a lower mining bonus (+1 vs +2(?)).

Making hills irrigatable or minable seems to be a reasonable compromise until Firaxis provides the ability to add terrain types. I have also done this in my modified Civbic file. I have tried to add sheep as a bonus food resource for hills but they only seem to appear in plains tiles. Any ideas why this would be (and yes, both the Natural Resources and Terrain folders have been modified and all the other mods seem to have worked)? I have also considered making forest minable (would actually represent logging). They would then continue to be valid shield generating tiles post RRs. Any views on this?

 

[Agent Roo]

peronally, i'm surprised at them not keeping the 3d terrain from Alpha Centuri, just updated and improved [with spreading forests and all ]

 

[Phantis86]

It's a nice idea and a very good point, but I don't think they should be able to be irrigated.

 

[Rhandom]

They should have less food, but be irrigatable.

 

[amadeus]

It does make sense that hills should have more food.

Look at Japan for example, it's nothing but a rock, but they can support 170+ million people (granted, I don't know the foreign input of food into Japan)...

 

[Uto3]

I think you guys miss the point of these hills. It is true that food production CAN exist on hills, but think about the sun. Only 1 side of the hill has these green lush lands and the other side doesn't. This pretty much halves your food production and thus you'll use the other side for lumberstuff. This gives you 1 food and 1 shield.
But I do agree to this irrigation stuff as rice is really fast growing food and stuff so irrigating must be possible on hills.

To rmsharpe: about Japan: They have quite some farms, but not everything depends on that. You forgot FISHERY. The Japanese coastlines summed up is huge with all those islands and stuff.

Still, they do import pretty much, but that's because you can't survive on fish alone.

 

[Corvi #6]

Hopefully Anglophiles idea could be made to work... extra bonus resources such as rice for hill terrains. It would definatly work on pre-made maps, such as Satyas and Marlas.

Some hilly regions do produce alot of food, but most dont. I've lived in alot of hilly places and they tend to be... well... bleak.

 

[Dark Sheer]

Ok, irrigation on hill works. BUT, the effect is not the same as plain If a plain is irrigated you get 3 food with railroad. If a hill is irrigated you still get only 2 food with railroad

However, putting bonus resources on hill works. The only issue is, there is only so much bonus resources. Once, say, you put wheat on hills, wheat will appear less on grassland (the same amount will be distributed equally). However, if you add an additional resources and call it, say, rice. Then you can make rice appear on hills and wheat stays on grassland.