Hills are overpowered

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Before you can farm hills you want large flat areas because of farm adjancency bonus but later on hills seems to be superior to flatland even as farmland.

 

[Biz_]

View attachment 415907

marsh/jungle are better terrain if you don't remove them?

 

[chazzycat]

I'm not too worried about it TBH. Civil engineering is industrial era, that's too late to drive the majority of tile-improving decisions. They will be mines already. You will still need good flat land to grow in the early-to-mid game.

 

[mzprox]

marsh/jungle are better terrain if you don't remove them?

marshes would deserve their own topic.. in civ6 they seem to be like bonus resources.. they even give food boost when removed.. makes no sense

 

[Seek]

Growth seems to be much more limited by housing than food, especially once trade routes are up and running. In just about every one of Filthy's games he had no problem getting food to cities without even building many farms, and was constantly hitting the housing wall.

Edit: though he would probably have fewer housing problems if he had built more farms!

 

[Calcifer]

marsh/jungle are better terrain if you don't remove them?

They are better in the early stages, but when technologies give additional yelds to improvements you'll want to clear those features to improve the tiles.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

If farms can eventually be built on hills, then they should make hills 0 food, 2 production

marsh/jungle are better terrain if you don't remove them?

Not quite

Marsh/rainforest=+1 food
Farm (which requires removing Marsh/rainforest)=+1 food +0.5 Housing

 

[dunkleosteus]

Was listening to a podcast on Rome a couple weeks back (I don't remember which, but it was a very long, detailed multi-episode series) and one of the things mentioned was that in the early days of Rome's existence, its location in a valley surrounded by hills provided protection from incoming attack. Hearing that made me rethink how I viewed hills in the Civilization series. Even though in Civ V they rendered as a single hill, I feel like it's more likely that the hill tiles represent an area of low and flat terrain interspersed. This explains why it costs movement to move from one hill to the next as they can't be attached. To me it also explains away the new take on hills.

If hills really are a mix of hilly and flat terrain rather than totally inclined land, there's enough room for farming or anything that the tile might be able to do as flat land. Maybe the devs view a bit of terrain variation as a straight up boon rather than something that should be penalized. Maybe they just hate Kansas. Who knows?

For balance though, I agree, hills are unfairly favourable. If we're saying that hilly terrain is beneficial enough to warrant an extra hammer on each tile, maybe we can find something that flat terrain can do as well? I don't recommend adding yields to the tiles the way hills do, that's too obvious and I don't think it's warranted. Maybe we can improve adjacency bonuses for improvements though. Civ 6 introduces this, I believe farms get +1 food for having two adjacent farms. Maybe this adjacency or other adjacency bonuses don't apply to hill improvements. I can see that happening too, any farms built in hills will be designed more like pockets of farmland, spreading through flatter valleys and up shallower slopes. Any rocky or rough terrain would make farming impractical though. It's the flat "Kansas" type areas that really give you that "as-far-as-the-eye-can-see" feel.

I guess it would have to apply to more than just farms, but it's a thought. What flat land lacks in variation it makes up for in homogeneity.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

They could ea

. Civ 6 introduces this, I believe farms get +1 food for having two adjacent farms. Maybe this adjacency or other adjacency bonuses don't apply to hill improvements. I can see that happening too, any farms built in hills will be designed more like pockets of farmland, spreading through flatter valleys and up shallower slopes. Any rocky or rough terrain would make farming impractical though. It's the flat "Kansas" type areas that really give you that "as-far-as-the-eye-can-see" feel.

I guess it would have to apply to more than just farms, but it's a thought. What flat land lacks in variation it makes up for in homogeneity.

The easiest way to do that would be to introduce a separate improvement "hill farms" that didn't give/receive adjacency bonuses from nearby farms. (and was available late)

 

[Big J Money]

Hills are a little weird to us, yes. They're more like a non-exclusive feature that can't be removed IMO.

I kind of miss the flat 2p since it made it easier to calculate a city's potential

"Okay, this city has 4 hills, so I'll need 8 surplus food to work them all"

 

[Cyberian]

You could say its fine there always have been more OP starts whether it was salt or floodplains or whatever this time its grassland woods on river.

But yes it is very limiting basically everything where there isn't a river or no hills is a bad spot to settle.

 

[Olleus]

I think people are forgetting that you can build farms on hill until a late (industrial?) era tech. That on its own balances them out because - as everyone is saying - farms post feudalism are going to be really good.

 

[homan1983]

That on its own balances them out because

No it doesn't.

 

[Cyberian]

To add some reason with a hill start you will still be able to produce farms because you never have just 100% hills. So its no problem having like a small patch of 3 farms with 4 food each (hopefully even more with additional grain/rice) with feudalism and having the rest on lumber mill wooded hills or such.

 

[Seek]

in case anyone missed it (like I did until today) the Conservation civic allows builders to plant forests. These forests will not be old growth forests though, so they have less appeal.

Will it be worth it I wonder? Will they get the same chopping yield?

 

[stealth_nsk]

in case anyone missed it (like I did until today) the Conservation civic allows builders to plant forests. These forests will not be old growth forests though, so they have less appeal.

Will it be worth it I wonder? Will they get the same chopping yield?

I believe the idea behind having "old growth" forests was to prevent grow-chop exploit first, and reduced appeal came as a second thought. So. I'm pretty sure new growth forests will not give chopping yield or it's really small.

 

[God of Kings]

Lumber mills are the same on old-growth forests or builder-planted forests.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Lumber mills are the same on old-growth forests or builder-planted forests.

Yes, why not? The main problem - if you can grow and chop forests to get production, you could set new cities up and running very fast by spending core cities production on Builders, which looks like exploit to me. Lumber mills aren't exploit.

 

[Midori]

Lumber mills are the same on old-growth forests or builder-planted forests.

A lot of lumber and other wood products come from planted forests in real life, so as long as you can't do something crazy like plant forests on desert tiles, I'm okay with this.

 

[Wolle68]

Yes, why not? The main problem - if you can grow and chop forests to get production, you could set new cities up and running very fast by spending core cities production on Builders, which looks like exploit to me. Lumber mills aren't exploit.

With the rising cost of both builders and districts, I think the chopping strategy is going to be obsolete by the time Conservation rolls around. Planting forests will be mostly for lumber mills.