Flood Plains in... Tundra?

[Barathor]

I'm working on a map script and wanted to get a sample of some users' opinions regarding this change before fully implementing it.

Currently, in the default game, an adjustment function is ran during map creation which changes riverside snow to tundra and riverside tundra to plains (for more fertility around rivers).

In my script, one small modification I made was turning tundra into grassland, instead of plains, for 2 food tiles around rivers (similar to 2 food flood plain tiles around riverside desert) so river areas are more habitable for fledgling cities, and because there's enough production within the tundra in the form of not only hills, but forests too. Also, for more context around this modification, I've also disabled the snow terrain, and ice generates much less and never comes near land. (I also have a check which makes sure at least all northern/southern coastlines within a certain latitude are tundra, for aesthetic reasons. It just looks nicer when ice is a few tiles across the sea.)

Though, upon reevaluating things, I decided that I want to try and have a feature effect similar to riverside deserts instead of converting terrain types, because I don't want to deplete the total amount of tundra on maps. Also, it may simply look nicer since converting tiles to other terrains can leave things looking odd at times.

In statistical printouts, my tundra totals can become a little bit lower than I want them to be, and these conversions play a part in that decline (along with land formations and latitudinal changes via shifting). I rather not increase the tundra band and further lessen the area between it and the desert/plains band. I like adequate representation of both tundra and desert on maps. Desert doesn't have much of a problem since it remains desert when the flood plains feature is placed on it.

I also would like Dance of the Aurora to work on these attractive riverside tundra tiles, much like Desert Folklore works with flood plains.

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I backed-up the script and did a small bit of tinkering and now have flood plains correctly spawning on riverside tundra. I also edited AssignStartingPlots.lua to prevent wheat from spawning on flood plains when it's tundra, while also preventing citrus and sugar from spawning there (they remain on desert ones though). I kept incense and cotton, since I believe they can be found in northern climates (also, personally, I like to think of tundra in this game as taiga instead; especially with forests all around.).

I then thought of separating the two types of flood plains and instead calling the colder ones "mires". Though, that would require further modifications to the lua file and I favor keeping things simpler when possible. Plus, I foresee other balance issues requiring heavy modding that I won't get into here.

Finally, though, I think I'm set on simply changing the name of flood plains and calling both tundra/desert versions "wetlands" instead. I want to know others' thoughts.

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Questions:

This script modifies/tweaks many things that are involved in creating maps and all the the things initially placed on them to setup a game. With this in mind, if you were maybe interested in this mod, would you like this change to be included in it?

Would "Wetland" be an acceptable generic title for both of these?

Also, should I enable wheat again along these colder rivers? (Trying to avoid that "tundra" word, haha). Like other things, it doesn't necessarily have to represent only wheat, but instead, all grains. For example, Rye is a hardy plant in cold regions.

If not wheat, what about having some cattle along these colder rivers? The amount of bonus resources are limited, and I rather diversify things and not throw even more deer there.

Any thoughts on leaving incense and cotton along these rivers and introducing them to the cooler regions of the map? They would be alongside gold, silver, gems, copper, marble, fur, salt, dye... plus whales and crabs in the water. For example, desert gets incense and cotton alongside gold, silver, gems, copper, marble, salt, sugar, citrus... plus whales and pearls in the water nearby.

I did a bit of googling and wikipedia digging to get some information for all these things (like types of wetlands... how mires are one of the four types... how bogs and fens are the two types of mires... their differences... lol), but I'm curious what others more knowledgeable may think.

Default:

click to enlarge


Modified:

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EDIT: Perhaps I should've chosen a different "Default" comparison screenshot as the American-style autumn forests really complements the warmer look of the tundra plains, haha... oh well.

 

[smallfish]

I'm not exactly sure why tundra gets lumped with huge swathes of desert in base game, so I definitely love your modified version.

Another grip of mine is the lack of archipelagos style terrain on normal Continents or Hemisphere maps - you could sometimes get them on the Large Continents settings of Arborea/Frontiers, but they be kinda rare.

 

[Barathor]

Oh, well then my new script will make you happy with regards to pieces of land like that.

Actually, I've even implemented an Advanced Settings option which allows players to choose the amount of tectonic islands they want on their map to suit everybody's unique tastes. There's 3 levels, a random option, and an option to disable them.

I thoroughly tested the options by temporarily tweaking plot generation so that hill plots are ONLY placed using the tectonic island method within the loop. This helped to visually separate them from regular land (with hills disabled for them) and allowed me to observe the results map after map after map.

A bit of tectonic islands are nice for connecting larger land masses together, via coastal water, for exploration.

 

[whoward69]

I've always hated the juxtaposition of "tundra as far as the eye can see, plains, river, plains, tundra as far as the eye can see" regions, and the modified version looks much better.

Sprinkle a few cows in there, possibly sheep on tundra hills next to a river, and it'd be even better IMHO

 

[Junuxx]

Promising script! I love the look of it. Like the other posters, I detest vanilla's terrains (one of the reasons I built my own map generator for Civ4, actually).

This category of Wikipedia maps might be useful to find plausible cold climate crops.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Agricultural_maps_of_the_world

For example, I don't think cotton would be a very plausible fit:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CottonYield.png

However, lentils, peas and oats apparently all have high yields in central Saskatchewan/Alberta, and the latter two also in Siberia.

 

[Barathor]

@whoward69

Thanks! Haha, yeah, those instances where tundra still surrounds the plains river are especially sore on the eyes.

Yeah, I'm thinking of leaning more towards the cattle solution.


@Junuxx

Wow, very cool... if I still had Civ 4 installed, I would've definitely tried that out! Nice work!

Those maps are very useful. Regarding the cotton, I think I mixed it up with "cotton grass" which grows in those regions. Also, according to this source, it's isn't suitable for weaving. Darn.

I think I'll just remove the incense and cotton from spawning in the tundra wetlands, and keep them on only the desert ones.

Those examples you gave are good ones, especially the oats. I could get away with using the wheat terrain graphics and would only have to change the icon and such (along with the bit of Lua code additions, of course). Though, wheat itself doesn't seem so bad on those maps either. The only problem is that the yellow-orange color really contrasts the gray terrain and looks a little off. I'll have to think about it.

Another possibility are potatoes; that would probably be a really good one too. The crop also makes me think of cooler regions. I could use some green crop graphic, and then make the completed improvement simply look like a farm. Then, with something like potatoes in the colder areas, I could replace the silly deer bonus given by granaries.

Though, I may just use cows for now and keep it simple if wheat looks too off. Plus, when the expansion is released, who knows, maybe it'll introduce a few more bonus resources to diversify things and/or enhance more buildings. Then, they can be easily modded and utilized.

 

[Junuxx]

Concerning the floodplain terminology: what about alluvial desert/plains/grassland/tundra? It appears "alluvial desert" in frequently used for the Nile and Mesopotamia, especially with regard to the ancient civilization in those areas. I found some occurrences of "alluvial tundra" referring to the Yukon delta, which seems a good fit for the type of terrain you're describing.