Floating Guardens

Rakshasa72

Warlord
Joined
Jun 9, 2012
Messages
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The Aztec UB: Floating Guardens is OK but, sometimes I feel like we cann't get as much use out of it because it seems like maps generating fresh water lakes are fairly rare. It's true that the few times I've manage to build a city near a decent sized lake the Floating Guardens bonus is crazy OP. However most of the time your lucky enough to find a map with enough river front property to plop a few cities down to take advantage of the 15% food bonus. I think this failure of the map script generators kind of makes this UB less useful then it could be.

Anyone know of a good map or map script that has or has the potential to generate more lakes? (Kind of makes me miss the "free" lake you usually get on Civ4 maps.

Personally I think the Floating Guardens would probably work better as a tile improvement. Historicly the Floating Guardens or Chinampas where built in swappy areas and used to turn swap land in to productive farm land where normally farming wouldn't be possible. They were incredibly productive. Modern archeologist have even found evidence of these guardens and, even have created them using tools that would have been available to the natives at the time.

So I think Chinampas should be a special tile improvement for Aztec Workers to build in unimproved Marsh lands that increase the food yeild by +4 (remember marshes have a base of -1 food).

Foot Note: Definition of Chinampas found here http://library.thinkquest.org/16325/y-farm.html

Chinampas were floating gardens built on swamps. The process of making chinampas was a relatively simple one. First, canals were built through the marshes and swamps. Then, the mud from the canals was placed on mats, which were made from weeds and straw. Then, trees were planted at the corners. When these trees took root, they secured the chinampa firmly in place. Once the floating island was secure and useable, the Aztecs used it to plant their principal crop: corn. They also grew various vegetables (such as avocados, beans, chili peppers, squash, and tomatoes), and sometimes—even flowers. Unfortunately, the Aztecs had no animals or machines to help them work the land. In fact, they didn't even have plows. Thus, it was even more necessary to have soft land. Luckily for the Aztecs, the chinampas were soft enough that it was possible to plant crops with nothing but pointed sticks.
 
I believe in my civ career, I have seen maybe like... 10 lakes.
 
I actually played Aztec on Lakes once. Funny thing was yeah, there were tons of lakes, but there were very few rivers. I don't know if it was a fluke or what, but I found that I actually got more Floating Gardens on just a normal Continents or Pangaea because of the rivers. The other funny thing was because of all the lakes, there weren't many barbarian camps so I got very little use out of barb farming. I was a little disappointed.

But again, could have just been a fluke.
 
I wonder if that is as ridiculous as Polynesia on Archipelago. I think I won culure in the 1600s from mega Moai spam. I am trying Monty on lakes tonight.

Playing now with nine lake tiles for 36 food from those tiles alone. Capital is 12 pop on turn 55 and only 3 turns to 13.

On a related note, how the heck does the game figure out the food bonuses. It shows me with 41 terrain + 2 buildings - 24 eaten by citizens = 29 base

Then I show +10%, +15%, +10%, but the net food shows 32.72. Even worst case of adding the % then multiplying, that should be +35% for 39.15 total.

What part is the bonus applied to and when is it taken?

Gosh now I'm totally baffled! I just completed tradition for another +10% and the net food jumped to 40.31.

It just looks like it's a glitch with how it displays the data. When I was getting close to 100 pop. It was showing something like 25 food (155 food - 156 eaten by citizens). I will have to manually calculate things tonight and see if it is just displaying wrong but still working as it should.
 
I played a Continents game the other day where a single hex was surrounded by 5/6 tiles of water with a mountain tile being the other tile. 3 Sugar, 1 gold, and a gem in the vicinty and it was inland so no ships could reach it. Was an amazing spot one of the best lake spots I have ever seen.

I have seen some large lakes before and seen some small oceans before. Sometimes I wonder what the cutoff is between the two.
 
How hard is it to find a river? I always build on them.
Even without the lakes its powerful. The few times I
did play the Aztecs it rapidly gets nuts
especially with tradition involved.
 
How hard is it to find a river? I always build on them.
Even without the lakes its powerful. The few times I
did play the Aztecs it rapidly gets nuts
especially with tradition involved.

I didn't see any rivers on my lake map either. It also didn't have coasts. The land just wrapped around to the east and west. But lakes serve the same purpose as rivers. You can build farms on hills by lakes. You can build floating gardens/watermill if the city is next to a lake. You get an extra food with civil service on farms built next to lakes.
 
I didn't see any rivers on my lake map either. It also didn't have coasts. The land just wrapped around to the east and west. But lakes serve the same purpose as rivers. You can build farms on hills by lakes. You can build floating gardens/watermill if the city is next to a lake. You get an extra food with civil service on farms built next to lakes.

Floating Guardens can be built next to lakes and rivers. I don't think watermills can be built next to anything but rivers. It's specific to the UB.
 
Any fresh water is the key, dont get hung up trying to assign lake tiles. Its like a mini Hanging Gardens. Insane. I think you can skip Tradition and go right to Honor, then Piety, But thats just a hunch. I havent tred it yet.

See my thread in the Strategy section.
 
Another odd thing when you think about it you hardly ever see a lake and a river next to each other in CiV. Where in the real world if there's a lake you can almost bet that there is some form of river that feeds it.
 
Really, the lakes food is not the thing that makes the UB really good. It doesn't really turn lakes into amazing tiles. They're quite bad for everyone else, but the UB makes them quite usable for aztecs. Still, they're just a river grassland with a farm on it.

What makes it amazing is that it multiplies your food before subtracting off what you're eating. Most (all?) other % mods on food work on growth which is just the food that is left after what you use.
 
Another odd thing when you think about it you hardly ever see a lake and a river next to each other in CiV. Where in the real world if there's a lake you can almost bet that there is some form of river that feeds it.

Funny that you should mention that, because that's my experience too; however, in the game I'm playing right now (as the Aztecs), I came across a city spot that was so close to perfect, it nearly brought tears of joy to my eyes. A long river, feeding into a 6-tile lake and lined with forests 2-3 tiles deep on either side. With stone, iron, deer, and cattle close by. Later on, I even found 7 coal there. Probably the best production city I've ever had.
 
Too bad FG and LH is not stacks, personally I think it is a bug.
Sometimes there are lakes 1 title near sea so it is possible to have both.

LH lake 3 food, FG lake 4 food, LH+FG lake 4 food not 5 as it should be.
 
Another odd thing when you think about it you hardly ever see a lake and a river next to each other in CiV. Where in the real world if there's a lake you can almost bet that there is some form of river that feeds it.

And usually a river that drains it as well; (when there's not it's a salt water lake & not fresh water.)

I'm thinking though that Civ V only shows navigable rivers.
 
Any fresh water is the key, dont get hung up trying to assign lake tiles. Its like a mini Hanging Gardens. Insane. I think you can skip Tradition and go right to Honor, then Piety, But thats just a hunch. I havent tred it yet.

See my thread in the Strategy section.

I go with Tradition. You get 4 extra food in your capital, that gets 15% extra, and than the leftovers get an additional 25% growth. And of course if you are going for a size 30+ capital, Monarchy gives you more happiness than anything else, plus a decent pile of gold.
 
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