New realistic terrain and improvements mod. Bouncing ideas.

[Drakken]

Is deforestation becoming a problem in your games? Do you ever build workshops before the guild technology? Do you ever make woodmills at all? I have been playing around with mods for weeks and have played extensively with the slower tech and balances mod. I like many ideas that people have been floating out there in the forums. So I wanted to bounce these ideas off of other modders to see what you think of it all before I make all of my changes...

Issues I have come across: The map becomes deforested and jungles are removed very early on in the game. Some of the improvements are not improvements at all and are rarely if ever used in the game...

I think early deforestation is unrealistic. Based on a standard sized map each tile represents a huge amount of area. Although technology to remove trees has been around since the bronze age I do not think wholesale deforestation of huge areas was available until later in history.

Therefore I will modify the game like so: Forest will not be able to be removed until machinery. Jungle should be very hard to remove and should not be removable until steam power. Workers can plant forest with paper technology, but it will take a long time to reforest these large areas.

Now to rebalance the game and make deforestation more of a choice and not so much of a given.

Forest will be a -1 food, +1 production (this makes them more neutral)
Jungle stays the same at -1 food

All improvements can be built on tiles that have forest or jungle when the tech for that improvement is discovered. These improvements will not however remove the jungle or forest. Thus you can have a farm or a mine in the jungle/forest but it will not be as productive a tile for food.

Roads can be made in forest with bronze working and iron for jungle so no change there.

To balance the improvements and to make more plausable choices. Note only the things I mention will change and the rest of the values for an improvement/resource will stay the same.

Lumbermill will be available with machinery and will be +1 production, +1 commerce, also +1 production with replaceable parts and +1 commerce next to river.

Watermill will be +1 commerce as soon as available and +1 commerce with electricity instead of +2 with electricity.

Workshops will no longer be -1 food, +1 production with state property instead of +1 food, and will add +1 commerce with electricity.

Forts will add +1 production with machinery, +1 commerce with currency. This will make up a little for forts not being allowed with other improvements.

To make up for civs stuck in jungle areas and to help those in tundra or highly forested areas I suggest the following changes.

Make deer more plentiful on tundra, forested spaces, and add them to jungle spaces. After all there is wild game in jungles too!

Increase the food output from bananas and sugar to +2, and +2 with plantation. Spices to +1 food, +1 food with plantation.

Increase rice food output to +2 with farm.

Increase Whales to +1 food, +1 food with whaling boats, +1 production, +1 prod with whaling boats.

Make Fur to also have a +1 food with camp. After all some of those animals have got to be yummy.

With these changes I would expect the following "not necessarily intended "results.

1) growth would be slowed a bit now that forested areas decrease food values. I like this as I think civs grow a little too fast.

2) Some civs would be stuck in a hard spot with bad terrain especially now that jungles last a lot longer into the game. But the better values for "bad terrain" resources should help a little and it is realistic isn't it? Shouldn't civs living in a world of poop have a harder time?

 

[Ranbir]

I like it. Well done.

 

[Seven05]

I went with a less complicated method in my mod...

I doubled the time needed to clear jungles & forrests, increased the production output of lumbermills (also available at Machinery) and changed Watermills to not remove the jungle/forrest. So far in my games the AI has not cleared out every single forrest & jungle tile they see. I had also tried making cottages have a -1 food penalty but that just forced the AI to build farms (and remove forrets in the process) because they really want those cottages. There is still a problem late in the game, it appears as if the AI workers get bored and go around changing improvements just to have something to do so I still end up with barren countrysides by the 1900s.

 

[NikG]

I still end up with barren countrysides by the 1900s.

Which is also the case of many contries now day.

In the 1800s Denmark lost its fleet to England, as a result entire areas very deforested (is that a word), anyway, the lack of wood were so great that they planted entire new forests, but becuase a forest dont grow in a year or a decade, but centuries, Denmark has now a (not so) great forest!
A lot of seafaring nations, like Denmark, the Nederlands, England, etc. dont have huge areas of forest anymore, I am not saying they dont have forest, but until the mid 1800, a lot a the land in Europe were covered in forest compared to now!

 

[Seven05]

I guess the only bad part for me is that the AI insists on "improving" tiles that aren't even within the radius of any city. I could understand some clearcutting when you need to build something quickly, but why put a cottage or farm out there if it will never get used? Well, you put it out there to pillage of course, since it doesn't actualy take that money from anyone. At least the AI doesn't pillage their own improvements until you occupy their cities

Anyway, before we hijack the thread...

A question for the OP; Have you had any time to test the reduced food output of forrest/jungle tiles? I was thinking about doing something similar but considering I don't want to encourage removing even more forrests from the maps I'm a little concerned. Perhaps adding extra production or commerce would help?

 

[Sidewinder00Q]

Something I would consider, is make it so that building a cottage doesn't actually clear the forest/jungle. It shouldn't clear it until it becomes a town anyway. Given how slow cottages develop that should take care of immediate deforestation. (why clear it? you've got a road through it, all it does it slow down your enemy and make your villages easier to defend.)

Additionally, Workshops shouldn't clear the forest ever. I think only Farms, Plantations, and Windmills should actually clear the tile, theres no reason the others can't exist with the woods/jungles.

 

[Drakken]

to: Seven05 No I have not tested it yet but I know growth will be slowed a bit especially in the very early game. Now forested tiles will only produce 2 total either bread or hammer tokens. Right now they produce 3. They will no longer be the great spaces that they prove to be in the early game. I also really like the idea of towns clearing the forest space but only when they grow to "town" size. I hope I can do this in the mod. This would limit their growth until a little later in the game as well.

to: Sidewinder. Actually none of the improvements will ever remove the forest or jungle. You have a choice to build the imprvement and leave the forest/jungle or you have to take extra time to remove it. It is a tradeoff with forest tiles. You can keep the forest and improve production from the space or remove it for greater food production. With jungle it is a no brainer you want to remove it as there is no real benefit, but you have to wait until the industrial age to start doing it. Just like in real life.

To: NikG Good point Nik, you said it better than I did. Yes many countries have greatly reduced forested areas. The point I was trying to convey but maybe didn't in my original post, is that deforestation didn't happen to any great extent in any of the early ages the game represents.

To everyone thanks for the input and note: now there is an advantage to keeping the forests as lumbermills come much earlier and are actually a good option on par with other improvements.

What do you guys think about allowing forts in jungles and forests as well?

 

[Seven05]

So I did some different testing on my own mod, but it may prove interesting for you

I did not reduce the food output of forrest or jungle tiles, but I did change the "Camp" improvement so it can be made on any forrest or jungle tile or any tile with a deer, beaver or elephant resource. If there is no resource it simply adds +1 food to the tile. I'm going to test it with reduced food on the forrest tiles to see how it works when you have the option of restoring the food output. The AI currently seems to really like the hunting camps, especially on forrested grassland hills and tends to keep them (and the forrest they occupy) until machinery when they build some lumbermills & watermills. Some of the AI wil prefer to keep camps on the hills while others will build windmills. If nothing else there is some variety and they still end up clearing out most of the forrest & jungle tiles later in the game anyway.

I'd go with the same method you described, leaving the forrest in place, except I'm not sure if the end result would be what I'm looking for.

As for the fortifications, I would definately clear out the forrest or jungle from their tile. From a defensive standpoint you don't want that degreee of "cover" available to the attackers, you'd want them to be forced into crossing open terrain to get to your fortified position. It's easy to adjust the defensive bonus of forts to make it worthwhile in clear tiles, but if you have some in forrests and others in clearings the ones in clear terrain will be as useless as they are by default.

 

[LoneTraveller]

Which files did you edit to modify your tile improvements ?

Cause I'm trying to create a tile improvement that would come after the railroad called "maglev" that would reduce the mobility points required. It's actually a copy of a tech in CTP2 that I miss especially when playing on Huge maps.

Any help would be appreciated.