Lumbermills at Engineering - Balanced?

[Reprisal]

Hey all,

I was thinking about how it always seems better to chop forests rather than keep them around. So, I thought that moving the requiste technology for building Lumbermills from Replaceable Parts to Engineering might be a worth a shot.

My aim would be to make the question of Chop/No Chop actually a question with more than one answer. While early hammers are indeed worth more than later hammers, the sheer amount of production granted from lumbermills at engineering might make it more interesting.

Your thoughts?

- Rep.

 

[GRM7584]

I'm planning on moving lumbermills to paper, dramatically reducing the amount of hammers initially granted for chopping (say, to 2), moving chopping to agriculture, and associating the "normal" amount of hammers with gunpowder (and the increase with replaceable parts rather than Math).

Reasoning: Sustained forestry dates back at least to the middle ages for europe (invention of paper in europe: Middle ages) and the han dynasty for china (invention of paper in china: only 200-300 years before han dynasty), whereas the widespread removal of forests has generally been related to two things: agriculture or charcoal. Agriculture for obvious reasons (you can't farm on a forest square, after all) and Charcoal for heating and...Gunpowder. So, in theory, civs will only chop early to increase food production, and have to decide whether or not to chop later because of the increased production incentive.

 

[Naokaukodem]

I think that watermills (Machinery) should be able to be built on a forest without razing it.

By the way, who uses normal watermills?

 

[GRM7584]

I think that watermills (Machinery) should be able to be built on a forest without razing it.

By the way, who uses normal watermills?

That's an interesting idea, I might try it out. I already planned on moving watermills up one technology (to represent ancient roman and greek watermills). I almost never use watermills or workshops, but only because I never use a State Property strategy.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

Dose anyone else find it anoying that WaterMills and WorkShops dont have LateEra graphics like virtualy every other improvment, WaterMills should turn into some PowerPlant looking thing and WorkShops into SmokeStack Factories.

Overall I definatly agree early LumberMills would be great, and later WaterMills would be fine (perhaps they switch places)

 

[Reprisal]

Thanks for your input, I'll give it a shot.

Also, unrelated to the topic, but I read somewhere that the Dutch and other countries of the European lowlands used windmills as pumps to drain lands for use in irrigation and the like. Would it be useful if Windmills also "irrigated" the hills they're built on so you could "jump" farms over them into more useful areas? The only thing that might stand in the way is whether or not the game would let you build a farm on the hills, which would look kinda funny as a result.

 

[GRM7584]

The Ancient Mediterranean and Rhye's both succeed with farming hills, I dunno if that required additional modding beyond just setting farms to being hills-friendly in XML; as for carrying irrigation, you should be able to set windmills to do that very easily by adjusting the appropriate tag under IMPROVEMENT_WINDMILL in the Civ4ImprovementInfos xml to say:
<bCarriesIrrigation>1</bCarriesIrrigation>

But I might be giving you wrong information.

 

[Chamaedrys]

Overall I definatly agree early LumberMills would be great, and later WaterMills would be fine (perhaps they switch places)

That would not be historical correct! WaterMills were used since 1200 b.C., while chopping was used till the late rennaissance.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

Well I always though of WaterMill as being a bit more sophisticated then a simple grain mill, I was thinking of the Early Industrial revolution Mills using water power for looms and other various kinds of machinery.

 

[GRM7584]

Well I always though of WaterMill as being a bit more sophisticated then a simple grain mill, I was thinking of the Early Industrial revolution Mills using water power for looms and other various kinds of machinery.

Waterwheels were used as grain mills long before windmills, like chamaedrys said; both should probably have a +Food only effect when first built, and gain +Production and/or Commerce around Steam Power or Steel, and again with Electricity.

 

[Chamaedrys]

Waterwheels were used as grain mills long before windmills, like chamaedrys said; both should probably have a +Food only effect when first built, and gain +Production and/or Commerce around Steam Power or Steel, and again with Electricity.

Yeah! That's a good idea.