Removing/improving Marsh's

[Kjara]

Haven't played non FF for a while. Marsh's are new to me(I'm used to lizardmen swamps). Does scorch(or anything (vitalize?)) remove marsh? Did a quick search, but couldn't find anything, sorry if this a repost.

Thanks

 

[Mailbox]

I've never seen Marsh show up in a game and I just assumed they were added for scenarios.

 

[RogueThunder]

They appear near/in jungles. Its insanely irritating actually...

 

[Kjara]

Its also a little buggy in that you can't build anything on them, you have to chop the jungle, then you can build the farm/etc, hmm should check if thats been added to the bug post yet.

 

[Verdian]

I would like to see the Water 2 spell sphere add the ability to create marshes over 3 turns, much like Vitalize. People are always saying how Water Walking is not worth it, so how about giving it two abilities and continue Water's terraforming trend? Use the annoyance marshes create on your enemies.

 

[odalrick]

Its also a little buggy in that you can't build anything on them, you have to chop the jungle, then you can build the farm/etc, hmm should check if thats been added to the bug post yet.

The reason, if you're interested, is that many improvements require the improved tile to produce at least one food. Marsh gives one food; jungle removes one food, so jungle marsh prevents any improvement that requires food.

It can work in reverse too. Cottages requires one food to build, plains hills don't produce food. However, if you somehow manage to get ancient forest on the tile, you can replace it with a cottage.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

The reason, if you're interested, is that many improvements require the improved tile to produce at least one food. Marsh gives one food; jungle removes one food, so jungle marsh prevents any improvement that requires food.

It can work in reverse too. Cottages requires one food to build, plains hills don't produce food. However, if you somehow manage to get ancient forest on the tile, you can replace it with a cottage.

this should be changed imho. it doesn't make a lot of sense, it just seems to be a vanilla civ leftover

 

[odalrick]

It doesn't make a lot of sense in vanilla either. My guess is that it's a remnant from a cut feature.

 

[Kjara]

It doesn't make a lot of sense in vanilla either. My guess is that it's a remnant from a cut feature.

Might have just been a hack to prevent people from building things(farms, cottages) on ice/desert in vanilla?

 

[Kael]

Might have just been a hack to prevent people from building things(farms, cottages) on ice/desert in vanilla?

Nah, it would definitly have just been easier for them to block farms on desert/snow. They added it because the thought is that you can farm an area that is "infertile". Defintly easy to remove this requirement from farms, but their definition made more sense and was more flexible (if people added/removed terrains, etc).

 

[MaxAstro]

Nah, it would definitly have just been easier for them to block farms on desert/snow. They added it because the thought is that you can farm an area that is "infertile". Defintly easy to remove this requirement from farms, but their definition made more sense and was more flexible (if people added/removed terrains, etc).

Actually seems LESS flexible, since if I am understanding right it is impossible to create unfarmable terrain except by giving it 0 food value. For example, I'd like to make Hell terrain unfarmable, just to see what it is like balance wise. However, there's no way I can do this without removing the food value from hell terrain, which is obviously not ideal.

 

[Mailbox]

Actually seems LESS flexible, since if I am understanding right it is impossible to create unfarmable terrain except by giving it 0 food value. For example, I'd like to make Hell terrain unfarmable, just to see what it is like balance wise. However, there's no way I can do this without removing the food value from hell terrain, which is obviously not ideal.

In most cases, unfarmable terrain would have 0 food value. Hell Terrain is a special case that only shows up in a fantasy situation. And it's fairly easy to remove the 1 food requirement and require freshwater/flatlands, which covers everything but Snow terrain.

 

[odalrick]

Nah, it would definitly have just been easier for them to block farms on desert/snow. They added it because the thought is that you can farm an area that is "infertile". Defintly easy to remove this requirement from farms, but their definition made more sense and was more flexible (if people added/removed terrains, etc).

But you should never add a new terrain without considering all improvements. So all it does is allow lazy people to add bad terrain.

The only way it makes sense to me; is if they once had a more flexible terrain system, like in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Then you couldn't say farms are forbidden on plains, since there would be no plains terrain.

Of course, it could just be a brainfart by the designers.

As an aside, ever since Civilization I had a dream of irrigating Sahara. Civilization IV killed that dream.

 

[zup]

How did it kill your dream? Just mod the game.

Ahhh the awesome SMAC terrain. Million times better than CIV.

 

[Kael]

Actually seems LESS flexible, since if I am understanding right it is impossible to create unfarmable terrain except by giving it 0 food value. For example, I'd like to make Hell terrain unfarmable, just to see what it is like balance wise. However, there's no way I can do this without removing the food value from hell terrain, which is obviously not ideal.

This is such a weird argument to me. You have a variety of things you can place requirements on. You can place them directly between improvements and terrain if you like. Or you can have something else qualify it, such as the food yield.

Using the food yield gives you different options than a terrain requirement. Not better or worse, just different. For example since farms are based on a food requirement on the plot the Illians can farm snow tiles, since they get food from snow tiles.

Likewise a direct terrain mapping has benefits in that you can ignore the terrain yields, all that it needs is the terrain requirement.

Either way you prefer is available through xml. So its all good stuff. Just like units can require a tech, a building, a religion, etc etc. You wouldnt argue that it was bad design on Firaxis's part to have units be able to require religions. You could argue that you dont like that a certain unit requires a religion, but then its avilable to you to customize. Its the same arggument for farms.

 

[Rystic]

I'd like to see Genesis do something to marshes.

 

[Imuratep]

I'd like to see FF and FFH by some way connected just to include Lizardmen who can actually do something with marshes. Other changes I don't like so much in FF, but this is a thing missing.

 

[MaxAstro]

This is such a weird argument to me. You have a variety of things you can place requirements on. You can place them directly between improvements and terrain if you like. Or you can have something else qualify it, such as the food yield.

Using the food yield gives you different options than a terrain requirement. Not better or worse, just different. For example since farms are based on a food requirement on the plot the Illians can farm snow tiles, since they get food from snow tiles.

Likewise a direct terrain mapping has benefits in that you can ignore the terrain yields, all that it needs is the terrain requirement.

Either way you prefer is available through xml. So its all good stuff. Just like units can require a tech, a building, a religion, etc etc. You wouldnt argue that it was bad design on Firaxis's part to have units be able to require religions. You could argue that you dont like that a certain unit requires a religion, but then its avilable to you to customize. Its the same arggument for farms.

*bangs head against wall* Forgive me, I'm an idiot. I was reading the XML wrong and totally missed the part where said requirement was completely XML customizable. I thought it was something in the SDK for some reason...

Nothing to see here, we are a hedge, move along.

Kudos to the maybe one person on the planet who will get that reference.

Actually, there is one more thing: Is there a way to combine the two requirements, instead of one taking precedence over the other? For a random example, make it so that Farms can normally be built on any terrain with at least 1 food, but can NEVER be built on Burning Fields, no matter how much food it has? Currently it seems that the "at least one food" requirement takes precedence, since the only naturally valid terrains for farms is plains and grassland, and they obviously can be built on quite a lot more than that.

EDIT: Well, plains, grassland, tundra, and snow, as of .34. But they can be built on hell terrain, even though it isn't listed, leading to my theory.

 

[Kjara]

Back the the original question, was wondering what, if any, were currently options to improve marsh(spellwise)?

 

[Mailbox]

Scorch and Vitalize should turn it to plains.