Mountains and deserts

[knightblk]

i find mountains and deserts are the most annoying land types(unless they have speacial resources), i usualy have my engineers change them to hills and plains. Whats your opinion on these annoying square types? and how do you deal with them?

 

[kmad]

i irrigate deserts and i build fortress/ fortify alpine troops on mountains

 

[Lucky]

I change almost anything to grassland, except a few hills for a few production cities and the special ressources to the best that can be gotten (e.g. wine on hills).

So, in a full game to the end, the world will be as green as possible!

 

[Hawkster]

I would use mountains to either place defenders as kmad says or mine them all!

Deserts - unless there are lots of them I tend to leave them alone .

 

[ferenginar]

I don't often use the engineer transformation as IMHO it takes to long, I'd like to edit the Rules.txt to correct this, but then I couldn't play GOTM.

The most annoying terrains are tundra, desert and Glacier. I think that a few mountains in key locations are great, though when you get too many it becomes a pain.

I like mountains at pinch points for fortification and on the coast. If you have a mountain onthe coast near a whale or fish, then build a city on it. It will not suffer too much from the bad terrain as it has use of the sea and its specials, and it becomes a superbly defended port and once you have a coastal defence it is inpenetratable from the sea.

ferenginar 93

 

[Sodak]

Mountains are the best defensive spots available, and I use them as such when possible. I don't mind them in the city radius - my games usually don't last long enough to warrant terraforming, and the population usually doesn't max out either.

Deserts are poor, yet usable terrain. I will sometimes mine them, irrigate if a city really is hard up for another wheatsheaf.

I will put a city on either of these terrains if the surrounding areas allow enough food production, or if it is a strategic placement.

 

[funxus]

Two or three in the cityradius are okey, but it's annoying when the "randomizer" has put 20 squares of mountains, hills and forests together

 

[starlifter]

With mining, a city on a mounain can produce identically to a forest.

In deserts, I usually mine and RR it.... the trade is more important than 1 unit of food, in a Democracy or Republic.

 

[Old n Slow]

I usually terraform deserts (the next form is plains, which turns out ok after irrigation), but mountains are a low priority -- the time taken for transformation is looooong.

 

[MajorGeneral2]

I never terraform anything. I'm just not concerned with population enough. Mountains, as mentioned, are great for defense. I think Glaciers are the worst, though. Avoided if at all possible.

 

[Ace]

Glaciers are the worst. They can be transformed to grasslands if you desire to tie up some engineers for a "couple of hundred" turns, but, IMHO, its not worth the effort. There is too much good terain available to spent so much time and effort on glaciers.

 

[funxus]

Yes, glaciers are the worst!

When you set a worker on the glacier a redface comes up instead of resources, I assume it's because the workers get miserable being in such bad terrain, but your citizens don't seem to get mad because of it, so why is there a red face? Wouldn't it be better just to not allow anybopdy working the square?

 

[Sodak]

Originally posted by funxus
When you set a worker on the glacier a redface comes up instead of resources, I assume it's because the workers get miserable being in such bad terrain, but your citizens don't seem to get mad because of it, so why is there a red face? Wouldn't it be better just to not allow anybopdy working the square?

It's telling you that you are wasting your worker - the red face shows you have somebody there, but that the return is 0 shields, 0 food, 0 arrows. If you edit any terrain to produce 0,0,0 (the default for a glacier), you will see the same result.

 

[Pongui]

Huge swaths of bad terrain give meaning to the map. Actually, I'd like to see most of the map (think Earth) virtually uninhabitable until late in the game, with ancient civs mainly existing in fertile river valleys and on coasts.

More mountains, and pass the deserts, please.

 

[Marlos]

Sometimes the random map generator is much more generous than others. I have played some randomly-generated games with large areas of mountains and desert. In the early years, I must build roads to get across these barren wastelands to get to the arable land. Later, I will let my scores of engineers transform the landscape to fill in the gaps. These maps more closely resemble those of Earth than some of the other maps.

However, I have also played some randomly-generated games where almost all of the land is grassland from the onset. This makes for a very challenging games for several reasons. First, there are no terrain bonuses for defense. Second, there are fewer shields to produce things, so all production becomes relatively more valuable.

Be careful what you wish for, knight. Sometimes the alternatives are also difficult to deal with.

 

[starlifter]

When you set a worker on the glacier a redface comes up instead of resources, I assume it's because the workers get miserable being in such bad terrain, but your citizens don't seem to get mad because of it, so why is there a red face? Wouldn't it be better just to not allow anybopdy working the square?

That is a confusing thing, at first. It was for me, too. I assumed it would make my citizens more unhappy, which it does not .

 

[fonz]

You may say i am weird i love moutains. They are so good fro defence and i never ever use transfomration. When I play Civ 2 i rather be equal stregnth with other civs as it makes it more fun. Its better than being supr string then just easily conquering somone. Its just like bullying. anyway deserts i mainly mine.

 

[LordValuna]

How about building cities in mountains and deserts.
Using 2 settlers, 1 starts to mine square then other build city. Settler provides garrison until mine complete.
This gets you 1 food 2 shield (instead of 1).
If you transform the mountain to a hill, the hill will be mined (2f 3s 0t).