Settling on desert without water
- Thread starter Haig
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Disgustipated
Deity
We recycle our water and drink our own doody (after it mixes in with Lake Mead of course), I'm so tired of people criticizing my city when they don't know the facts.
California is the reason Lake Mead is going to disappear, not Las Vegas. We recycle our water, California does not. Nearly all the lake water goes to Arizona and California, very little goes to Las Vegas. And since we recycle, nearly all of it is "saved" aside from landscaping water which is lost.
HalveBlue
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I wish desert terrain had some sort of attrition effect on units' health.
"Desert" civ would be excluded or suffer less from this effect, and oases would allow units to replenish their health.
Deserts are notoriously harsh environments and have historically presented barriers to human movement and settlement. During one of the crusades, for instance, entire crusader armies were decimated before reaching their intended objectives because they ran out of food and water in the desert.
The same should apply to snow, tundra, and jungle tiles.
"Desert" civ would be excluded or suffer less from this effect, and oases would allow units to replenish their health.
Deserts are notoriously harsh environments and have historically presented barriers to human movement and settlement. During one of the crusades, for instance, entire crusader armies were decimated before reaching their intended objectives because they ran out of food and water in the desert.
The same should apply to snow, tundra, and jungle tiles.
Living in the jungle is nowhere near as hard as you make it to be, you only need to find a source of fresh water and have knowledge about the plants.
It's not hard to find food, medicinal herbs, and you have a lot of resources from all kinds (minerals, woods, huge animal diversity).
For example, brazillian natives like the Tupis and Guaranis are famous in Brazil for being lazy people because they spend a lot of their time sleeping, that happened because it was easy to find what they needed to survive.
The only really bad thing is:
-it's harder to move around, but once you create trails it becomes a lot easier, the natives had hugh trails connecting their tribes and they also used the large numbers of rivers the rainforest had to move around it.
-hot and humid climate, this makes food harder to store and also is a good climate for disease.
HalveBlue
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There are always going to be exceptions to the rule, I suppose. The Touareg and Innuit come to mind as further examples of populations that have managed to survive and establish themselves in inhospitable climates.
However, by and large, these types of terrain are not conducive to to supporting large numbers of people - either due to limited carrying capacity, climate extremes, or the threat of wildlife and disease - and have historically presented significant barriers to human exploration and expansion.
However, by and large, these types of terrain are not conducive to to supporting large numbers of people - either due to limited carrying capacity, climate extremes, or the threat of wildlife and disease - and have historically presented significant barriers to human exploration and expansion.
Aren't there plenty of "lost" empires in Asia (e.g. Khmer) and South America (Maya) that attribute their collapse to how hard it is to provide potable water to a large tropical population? Not rhetorical. Genuinely curious.
Sure, like Napoleon's marching his troops to Egypt (supposedly in full regalia), or how many people Hannibal lost trying to drag a few dozen worthless elephants over a mountain range.
The disconnect here is that in the real world, you don't need to establish a large population center in order to define an imaginary boundary or to harvest a resource or to build a military base to protect your imaginary boundaries within which your are harvesting a resource. Plenty of oil drills pumping away out in the middle of climate extremes all by their lonesome.
KrikkitTwo
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That's why a city can work 3 tiles out (5 for strategic/luxury resources)
Given that access to resources would be the main reason to settle in the desert, the reason why a player would concern himself with doing so is the distances you've mention don't cut it. It's not the desire to build a city in the desert that's unrealistic, it's the need to do so just to drop an oil rig
KrikkitTwo
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You still have cities ~3 tiles out... ie one city with 3 tile range = Saudi Arabia.. or Alaska..All the countries around the Sahara.
The cities in those areas are basically the support you need to run the oil rig 500 miles away... and its OK that the city stays small (its actually better that is stay small since then you won't divert luxuries to it.)
Sure, but you don't need a city to support an oil rig. You can drop those far away from any hint of civilization. Way off-coast out in the ocean, up in arctic regions.
Not sure why I'm having difficulty communicating this point, but the assertion that I was initially addressing is the supposition that players should be steered away from settling in extreme climes through city unsustainability. The reason players need to do it sometimes is that the three tile range doesn't consistently accommodate this notion. You'd just wind up with untappable resources (as sometimes does happen with off-shore resources in Civ V).
KrikkitTwo
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Well I think you should steer players away from settling in extreme climes, that makes the 'unextreme' climes better.
The issue then becomes what about resources in those climes... 2 possible solutions
1. found a worthless city... its only there to get the resource, and that's all it will do for you
2. have a mechanism for claiming a resource other than a city (like Airbases/Forts..things you can build outside your borders) that sound reasonable, particularly in the Modern Era (maybe you have to send a trade route to the location to get it)
but in any case I would prefer that a city in a 'true' Sahara ie only desert in 3 tiles is stuck at 2 population .. no neighborhoods/farms on desert/tundra
need my speed
Rex Omnium Imperarium
I would very much like forts to spread a tiny bit of culture and connect any resource they may be placed on top of, no matter where. One would, however, need to build a road from the fort to a friendly city, or to the coast - provided there is a route available and visible between this coast and a city of yours - or wait until one has discovered Flight.
stealth_nsk
Deity
I don't see a problem with a city with low housing being founded in a desert, for example, to grab resources. It will grow slow and eventually stop, but it will not prevent the city from having a monument and grabbing required tiles. Yes, it will increase settler and district cost a bit, but nothing serious. No global happiness, no corruption, no other sources of pain which prevented having bad cities in previous civ games.
Kouvb593kdnuewnd
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As long as the city have access to a few resonable good neighbourhood tile it can grow large with the help of trade routes.
KrikkitTwo
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Of course those trade routes are Imperial level, and much more limited (It seems like internal tr are +1 food, +1 prod base and then districts either add +1 food or +1 prod)
so a end game internal tr to your capital may be 5-6 food not the 13-16 food of BNW.
Sounds like we're talking about mechanisms for outposts. Basically, something with the capability to garrison units, but not have a production queue or a capacity for districts. Population is small enough that food isn't even a consideration.
But I guess a really crappy city can be considered an outpost. You just have to gold-build the granaries and walls and whatever else you need.
There aren't food-specific districts, so which actually supply that?
Going by the live streams, it seems that the emphasis on agriculture is actually being downplayed a bit in Civ VI, with them specifically saying that in their "1, 2, 3" approach to housing, eventually players will start tearing down their farms and replace them with neighborhoods. Of course, like I said earlier in this thread, the role of food has never really been laid out correctly; food should be a distributable commodity, not just something that drives local sustenance. Agricultural centers should feed mining and industrial centers. Should even tie into unit maintenance. Heck, ideally, food would be something civilizations could trade each other.
So, always feel a little disappointed with how internal trade routes (or Egypt's unique trade-route bonus) provide food in an abstract way, without players having to generate any kind of surplus.
Kouvb593kdnuewnd
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Could neighbourhood add food to the trade route, aqueduct may as well. Both use the color green which may mean that they countribute food to the trade route.
They have said you may need less farms as the game move on and thus they could mean that because neighbourhoods increase food yield from trade routes you will need less farms to support your city.
They have said you may need less farms as the game move on and thus they could mean that because neighbourhoods increase food yield from trade routes you will need less farms to support your city.
Hmm. I tended to interpret the remarks that less food is necessary at "level three" because buildings, techs, and civics will have made local consumption and generation more efficient. And meanwhile, housing limits will put a firm cap on growth. No point in having lots of farms generating food if you lack the needed neighborhoods to raise the population ceiling.
Wonder will eventually become of aqueducts? They'd be pretty anachronistic in a post-industrial city, so perhaps they too become neighborhoods.
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