Have you ever seen something like this?!?

[tR1cKy]

Vanilla civ3, with latest patch. I'm at the very start of modern age, researching fission. I end my turn, then hit <enter>. Among the various events happening, i see a global warming warn message popping up briefly. I mentally take note of the approx. location, then wait for my next turn.
Since global warming destroys both irrigation and mining, i send some peons to rework the tile. It was a plain tile next to a river. This make the tile turn into floodplain rather than desert. Fine. More surplus food. Let's irrigate it, then clean up some pollution around.

It's not until a few turns has passed that i sense something not very right has happened to my territory. I save the game, then try to look at the previous turns to figure out what was going on. I suspect there is something involved with the previous global warming event...

I'm lucky. Here is the autosave of the turn before that global warming happened. Let's look at the map...

What the hell?!?

Perhaps my own senses are fooling me, i load the turn after and look at the map, then reload the previous turn... Yeah, something really strange has happened here...

This is a screenshot of my map right before the global warming event happened...

 

[Shabbaman]

Then what? It becomes a sea tile?

 

[tR1cKy]

And here's a screenshot of the next turn...

 

[thetrooper]

GW turned the hill into desert? I've never seen that

 

[Mescalhead]

A hill turned into a desert. I've never seen that, I guess it was an environmentalist group doing a tit for tat attack on your industry. You turn beautiful plains into a desert and they bulldose a hill.

 

[tR1cKy]

Yeah, the hill tile at soutwest has turned into a DESERT tile...
Global warming turning hills into sand dunes?!? - i didn't know this could happen...
I wonder if someone else has stumbled upon some events like this...

 

[Tomoyo]

I think that it is impossible for a map to have the tiles in that configuration or something. Kinda like not being allowed to have deserts/plains next to tundra.

 

[braclayrab]

Worst global warming ever! Are you playing as Bush of the Americans? Another 25 turns and you'll be playing on Mars.

Could Tomoyo's theory be confirmed in the map editor?

 

[Flintlock]

Could Tomoyo's theory be confirmed in the map editor?

Yep, I just tried it, if you change the effected tile, it changes the hills to desert, too. And it doesn't let you change the ex-hills tile back to not-ex-hills, either.

Yet, the map editor otherwise doesn't have a problem with the three touching

 

[rbis4rbb]

Vanilla civ3, with latest patch. I'm at the very start of modern age, researching fission. I end my turn, then hit <enter>. Among the various events happening, i see a global warming warn message popping up briefly. I mentally take note of the approx. location, then wait for my next turn.
Since global warming destroys both irrigation and mining, i send some peons to rework the tile. It was a plain tile next to a river. This make the tile turn into floodplain rather than desert. Fine. More surplus food. Let's irrigate it, then clean up some pollution around.

It's not until a few turns has passed that i sense something not very right has happened to my territory. I save the game, then try to look at the previous turns to figure out what was going on. I suspect there is something involved with the previous global warming event...

I'm lucky. Here is the autosave of the turn before that global warming happened. Let's look at the map...

What the hell?!?

Perhaps my own senses are fooling me, i load the turn after and look at the map, then reload the previous turn... Yeah, something really strange has happened here...

This is a screenshot of my map right before the global warming event happened...

zug zug! been playing WC3 lately?

 

[tR1cKy]

zug zug! been playing WC3 lately?

Of course!
I should have called them 'peasants' but hey, don't they resemble the orc peons of War2?

And so Tomoyo's theory was correct... Amazing, i really didn't figure it out, was thinking about a bug or an easter egg...
It would be interesting to see if chain reaction events may occur...

 

[stachnie]

GW turned the hill into desert? I've never seen that

Long time ago something similar appeared as the SOTD, IIRC it was a desert with Iron. Perhaps it is a rare bug.


Best regards,

Slawomir stachniewicz.

 

[tR1cKy]

Things are not as simple as they seemed to be. Actually, a desert/floodplain sharing a border with a hill is NOT a forbidden combination - well, sometimes it is, sometimes not. I'm thinking again it's a bug and not an easter egg.

The attached image is the map i used to reproduce the bug. I've done some testing and the results are intriguing. In case there are some civ fanatics that will like to wast... ehm spend some time on it, i'll explain what i have discovered. I think the whole matter is not fully explained yet.

Tiles marked with (a) may be any land tile except for tundra.
Tiles marked with (b) may be coastal or any land except for tundra.
Tiles 1, 2, 3 must be plains. Tiles 4 and 6 must be coastal. Tile 5 must be a hill. (2 may be whatever you want, but since we're simulating a global warming on a river plain... for the same reason i've put the river)
Tile marked with (c) are ignored, for now.
In what i am going to write, the word "Event" is referred as "Simulating a global warming on tile 2 by turning it from plains to floodplains". Every experiment will start from the original map.

1) First, let's trigger the event on the map as is. The hill will turn into a desert tile, as expected.
2) We change tile 4 from coast to plains. Let's trigger again the event... surprise! The hill stays untouched, but tile 6 has turned from coast to desert!
3) This time we change tile 3 into grassland. Let's trigger the event. Once again, the hills turns to desert.
4) But if we change tile 3 into grassland AND tile 4 into plains, then trigger the event again, nothing happens. All the other tiles stays untouched.
5) Let's change tile 1 into grassland, then trigger the event. As (2), tile 6 turns from coast to desert; if we also change tile 4 into plains, the result is the same.
6) if we change tile 5 into mountains or grasslands then repeat the attempts above, the result is the same. But if we change it into plains, nothing happens.
7) Finally, let's change tiles marked with (c) into tundra, then repeat the attempts - now something really funny happens! It's not the chain reaction i expected but, hey, i won't spoil you the surprise...

Firaxis?!? please explain this...

 

[Tomoyo]

What the heck is this?

 

[tR1cKy]

What the heck is this?

I've asked myself the same question, but in a more "colourful" manner
If you right-click on the borked tile, you see it's desert. It seems that desert tiles hate so much tundra tiles that when forced to stay close they go nuts

 

[Yuri2356]

Global warming can actualy effect Costal tiles! Interesting...

 

[Chieftess]

The map (editor and game) seems to still have a few bugs in it with the way it handles river-terrain. It's probably some of the terrain generation rules conflicting with it.

@Yuri - there's a screenshot a LONG time ago (might not be around anymore) of a fish coastal tile turning into desert.

 

[tR1cKy]

Chain-reaction event achieved, at last!!!
Hint:2 extra tiles affected, both of them borked.
Turn the red-dotted tile into desert/floodplain and enjoy the mess!

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Strange...
Turn both the red dotted tile and the tile SE of it into desert. Then do it the other way around.

 

[tR1cKy]

Tested - amazing!
It unborks the 2 desert tiles and turn the surviving tundra into grasslands.
The inverse process is even more interesting. On the 1st step you obtain 2 new plain tiles, both of them borked, and end up having a mangled grassland tile.
But a REALLY fun thing may be obtained by:
1) turn the red dotted into desert
2) turn the NW tile into desert as well
3) right-click on the surviving tundra to see properties, then close the small window
... SURPRISE! [dance]
(hint: changeling tile)