Display issue : trees density with Ljosalfar.

[Akka]

I love playing the Ljosalfar, because their defining trait is fun, and I also like the idea of a world covered in forests.
I love the idea of being able to build on forests, and to seed forests everywhere.

But the problem is in the tree density display. While young forests look very fine, mature and especially ancient forest, are nearly impossible to see when there is farms or village/town in the tile. There is barely one tree in the corner in most case, and often there is nothing at all, making the tile looks like regular plain or grassland.

I suppose that the surface occupied by the improvement hide the trees that would be here, but I'd like to see them nevertheless - like the young forest, which is displayed on top of the improvement. I'd prefer to have improvement obscured by trees than not having any tree displayed.

The question is : how is it possible ? I know it IS possible (again, see the young forest), but I don't have any idea how to do it, so I hope someone can point me in the rigth direction.

 

[BvBPL]

I suppose a quick and dirty solution is to replace your (ancient) forest tile file with that of the new forest. An inelegant solution a best though.

 

[snarko]

As far as I can tell this is caused by the forest having TILE_ART_TYPE_TREES (CIV4ArtDefines_Feature.xml) and the improvement art nodes having bCutTrees:1 (CIV4PlotLSystem.xml).

The easiest way to change it is to change the art type in CIV4ArtDefines_Feature.xml. But this makes forests look really ugly, just a few trees in one corner. There's a reason they have that art type instead of none (which is what new forest has).

Another way is doing a find/replace in CIV4PlotLSystem.xml removing bCutTrees:1 (or changing it from 1 to 0). However, this will cause some improvements to be largely hidden by forests. It's a difficult balance to get both right and CIV4PlotLSystem.xml is a difficult file to work with. Which is probably why it was never done.

 

[Akka]

I suppose a quick and dirty solution is to replace your (ancient) forest tile file with that of the new forest. An inelegant solution a best though.

Yeah, it's a bit too blunt ^^

As far as I can tell this is caused by the forest having TILE_ART_TYPE_TREES (CIV4ArtDefines_Feature.xml) and the improvement art nodes having bCutTrees:1 (CIV4PlotLSystem.xml).

The easiest way to change it is to change the art type in CIV4ArtDefines_Feature.xml. But this makes forests look really ugly, just a few trees in one corner. There's a reason they have that art type instead of none (which is what new forest has).

Another way is doing a find/replace in CIV4PlotLSystem.xml removing bCutTrees:1 (or changing it from 1 to 0). However, this will cause some improvements to be largely hidden by forests. It's a difficult balance to get both right and CIV4PlotLSystem.xml is a difficult file to work with. Which is probably why it was never done.

Ah, thank you !
Yeah, I was already thinking that they hid the trees so to not hide the improvement, but I much prefer to have the improvement largely hidden than to have most of the map completely devoid of trees despite being supposedly a huge forest.

I'll try this and see how it looks ^^

 

[Tholal]

You can try the City Style mod.

 

[Akka]

You can try the City Style mod.

This mod, while interesting, change the cities display, while my problem is with the tile improvements display.

Ok, I've tried the previous method (replacing the bCutTree:1 with bCutTree:0), and it works great for everything BUT the cottages, which still cut the trees.
I'm trying to locate where the problem may comes from, but any help would be much appreciated ^^

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Edit the cottages by lowering the fCenterCut value. I used 25, feel free to experiment with that a bit.

25 looks like this

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7724992

 

[Akka]

Oooh, that's a fine find !
I see I'm not the only one hating the way forests are cut by improvement at least, I wonder why it was never fixed in the official version.

Well, I'll try this modification this evening, thanks for the head-up !