The Netherlands

[Coilean]

re: polders making farms worse, isn't the sensible thing to make polders count as a farm for adjacency purposes? I would think this should be pretty simple to do, by adding another term to a conditional somewhere, but I could be completely wrong about that.

This might also be something to consider for Terrace Farms, which can suffer from the same issue.

 

[Funak]

re: polders making farms worse, isn't the sensible thing to make polders count as a farm for adjacency purposes? I would think this should be pretty simple to do, by adding another term to a conditional somewhere, but I could be completely wrong about that.

This might also be something to consider for Terrace Farms, which can suffer from the same issue.

This was the first thing that was brought up and Gazebo reported it being impossible. So no, it's probably neither simple nor the sensible thing to do

 

[Coilean]

I thought the thing which was impossible was adding another feature to terrain (i.e putting a farm on a polder)? That is not what I am suggesting: the farm adjacency bonus was added in CBP, so I assume somewhere in the code a farm checks on how many farms are next to it to determine this bonus. I am just suggesting that this check be expanded to also count polders and terrace farms, which is something that is already done inside CBP, or am I mistaken?

 

[PurpleMentat]

I thought the thing which was impossible was adding another feature to terrain (i.e putting a farm on a polder)? That is not what I am suggesting: the farm adjacency bonus was added in CBP, so I assume somewhere in the code a farm checks on how many farms are next to it to determine this bonus. I am just suggesting that this check be expanded to also count polders and terrace farms, which is something that is already done inside CBP, or am I mistaken?

I believe the issues is that each Farm then needs to check each plot around it twice, for each Improvement? I'm not certain. Gazebo mentioned being reluctant to pursue Terrace Farms improving lowland farms in the Inca thread because it is computationally expensive and plot-related issues already take up 75% of the computation between turns. However, in this thread he's experimented with making Polders buff surrounding farms, so maybe this entire thing is now a non-issue and Polders can just be added to the Farm adjacency system as a sort of super-farm (which puts them into the "always build a Polder if you can" box that I like and GamerKG doesn't like )

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I think allowing the Polders to grant gold yield to adjacent farm tiles makes sense. It makes the adjacent farms into a sort of pseudo-Polder.

 

[Coilean]

I believe the issues is that each Farm then needs to check each plot around it twice, for each Improvement? I'm not certain. Gazebo mentioned being reluctant to pursue Terrace Farms improving lowland farms in the Inca thread because it is computationally expensive and plot-related issues already take up 75% of the computation between turns.

Yeah, I guess it depends on how it is done. I used to program a decade ago, and in my mind somewhere there is a check where a farm queries each neighbor tile with something like if(farm). If that is the case, it would be as simple as changing that query to if(farm|polder). Alternatively, a farm might notify it's neighbor farms when created, in which case a polder would have to be made to do the same. But, I guess nothing is as simple as you first think it is in programming!

 

[Gazebo]

I thought the thing which was impossible was adding another feature to terrain (i.e putting a farm on a polder)? That is not what I am suggesting: the farm adjacency bonus was added in CBP, so I assume somewhere in the code a farm checks on how many farms are next to it to determine this bonus. I am just suggesting that this check be expanded to also count polders and terrace farms, which is something that is already done inside CBP, or am I mistaken?

That's not how the code works – you can't inject information into it without rewriting all of it, and have multiple things that can 'count as' the same thing means an extremely large amount of redundancy. So no, it's not feasible. What I've done above with the improvement granting adjacent improvements a bonus is the most efficient check I can make.

Edit: to explain, I don't want to make 'specific exclusions' like that, as they aren't modder-friendly and they aren't 'editable' outside of the DLL. If, for example, someone wanted to use the DLL for another overhaul mod but didn't want polders to have that bonus, they'd have to edit the DLL to do so.

In short, it's just not clean code, and it's not efficient. What we've got above is XML-editable, it's efficient, and it's more flexible from a 'uniqueness' standpoint. If Polders are simply 'better farms,' that takes away their uniqueness. If they are 'flood plains/lakeside improvements that give a unique yield bonus of x (amount) to all adjacent y (improvement), that's a lot more exciting.

Also, to address the other issue - I don't want polders to become coastal because we already have a coastal UI with the Moai. Each of the UIs has a unique location requirement/bonus, and I'd like to keep it that way.

G

 

[Funak]

In short, it's just not clean code, and it's not efficient. What we've got above is XML-editable, it's efficient, and it's more flexible from a 'uniqueness' standpoint. If Polders are simply 'better farms,' that takes away their uniqueness. If they are 'flood plains/lakeside improvements that give a unique yield bonus of x (amount) to all adjacent y (improvement), that's a lot more exciting.

I disagree with this, I don't think letting you build polders on grassland river and plains river makes the polder any less unique than the current version. It merely removes the BS RNG of sometimes getting a floodplain start as the netherlands. Honestly the more I think about it the more it makes sense, if you let them be build anywhere with freshwater, and you give them the farm adjacency bonus you're still going to have some flavor, as in you need to settle near freshwater (makes sense) and the more freshwater clumped together the better, that would make those huge river-formations optimal for the netherlands, which is fun.

Letting polder buff all nearby improvements (and I'll assume it's stacking) is just going to make them so powerful that the base-yields need to be minimal, which isn't fun at all.


EDIT: Could even mix it up by letting the base Polder be Food heavy and the adjancency bonus provide gold.

 

[PurpleMentat]

If Polders are simply 'better farms,' that takes away their uniqueness. If they are 'flood plains/lakeside improvements that give a unique yield bonus of x (amount) to all adjacent y (improvement), that's a lot more exciting.

Also, to address the other issue - I don't want polders to become coastal because we already have a coastal UI with the Moai. Each of the UIs has a unique location requirement/bonus, and I'd like to keep it that way.

G

I don't really agree with the statement of them not being unique as better farms, as that is literally what polders are. Trying to make them something else, thematically, is a mess.

However, I think there is a way to hit the theme and aesthetics of Dutch polder country while also getting the mechanical effect you are looking for. If they are buildable only on tiles with fresh water and marshes (so we include rivers and exclude coasts), and buff adjacent villages and towns, we end up with a unique effect that thematically matches this:

Spoiler :

I know a big focus of CBP is to avoid trading post spam. At the moment, villages tend not to get used much if at all unless going Rationalism for Science. Adding food or culture to them from polders would give the Dutch fairly unique cities. Letting the bonus also apply to towns gives greater desire for Great Merchants and using them for things other than empire-wide WLtKD.

Anyway, just thinking outside the box and pushing my agenda. I like the idea of the Dutch building lots of polders everywhere, because something like 2/5s of the country is polderized, giving them one of (if not the) highest population density in Europe. This lets them do this without the polder just being a better farm, and keeps the polder focused on the cash and culture theme of the civ.

 

[Gazebo]

I don't really agree with the statement of them not being unique as better farms, as that is literally what polders are. Trying to make them something else, thematically, is a mess.

However, I think there is a way to hit the theme and aesthetics of Dutch polder country while also getting the mechanical effect you are looking for. If they are buildable only on tiles with fresh water and marshes (so we include rivers and exclude coasts), and buff adjacent villages and towns, we end up with a unique effect that thematically matches this:

Spoiler :

I know a big focus of CBP is to avoid trading post spam. At the moment, villages tend not to get used much if at all unless going Rationalism for Science. Adding food or culture to them from polders would give the Dutch fairly unique cities. Letting the bonus also apply to towns gives greater desire for Great Merchants and using them for things other than empire-wide WLtKD.

Anyway, just thinking outside the box and pushing my agenda. I like the idea of the Dutch building lots of polders everywhere, because something like 2/5s of the country is polderized, giving them one of (if not the) highest population density in Europe. This lets them do this without the polder just being a better farm, and keeps the polder focused on the cash and culture theme of the civ.

You both misunderstood, as I wasn't being clear - I'm referencing the issue above of 'making polders count as farms' for the purpose of the adjacency-with-farms hard-coded bonus, not the future role of polders as a 'farm-esque' UI. I like the idea of polders being riverside, but I don't think we need to make the UI have a special relationship with farms specifically in order to make them fun.

G

 

[Funak]

You both misunderstood, as I wasn't being clear - I'm referencing the issue above of 'making polders count as farms' for the purpose of the adjacency-with-farms hard-coded bonus, not the future role of polders as a 'farm-esque' UI. I like the idea of polders being riverside, but I don't think we need to make the UI have a special relationship with farms specifically in order to make them fun.

Absolutely not, Polders can have adjacency-bonuses with themselves and have no interaction with farms, that would make perfect sense considering polders are polders and farms are farms.

 

[Gazebo]

Absolutely not, Polders can have adjacency-bonuses with themselves and have no interaction with farms, that would make perfect sense considering polders are polders and farms are farms.

Absolutely not what? I'm confused.
G

 

[Funak]

Absolutely not what? I'm confused.
G

but I don't think we need to make the UI have a special relationship with farms specifically in order to make them fun.

That.

 

[Gazebo]

That.

Gotcha. I thought for a moment that you were disagreeing with me stating that you had misunderstood me, and I was quite confused.

So, I'm seeing that polders should become riverside, have their base/tech yields lowered a bit, and then boost nearby villages and towns with gold? Sound fun?

Also, let's do a similar treatment to the terrace farm. Brainstorm in the inca thread?

G

 

[Atlas627]

I'll give it a try. I think the buffing adjacent tiles is far more fitting for the terrace farm, though I think gameplay is more important than theme in all scenarios.

 

[Funak]

Gotcha. I thought for a moment that you were disagreeing with me stating that you had misunderstood me, and I was quite confused.

So, I'm seeing that polders should become riverside, have their base/tech yields lowered a bit, and then boost nearby villages and towns with gold? Sound fun?

I don't really see a need for the polders to buff villages or towns, you shouldn't want to build a village on a river-tile (imho) and you would always build one on a non-river road-tile either way.

As for yields, I would personally suggest Food/gold for the polder, I'm not really sure why the old polder was so hammerheavy, but imho it should go. (culture on them might make sense however)

 

[Llednar Twem]

So, I'm seeing that polders should become riverside, have their base/tech yields lowered a bit, and then boost nearby villages and towns with gold? Sound fun?

Sounds like an absolute convoluted mess to optimize with villages getting buffed from trade routes and city connections too...which really just means a greater degree of potential interaction between the player and the game, so that sounds good to me. Terrace farms are much more straightforward, but I'll go post in the Inca thread for that.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Gotcha. I thought for a moment that you were disagreeing with me stating that you had misunderstood me, and I was quite confused.

So, I'm seeing that polders should become riverside, have their base/tech yields lowered a bit, and then boost nearby villages and towns with gold? Sound fun?

Also, let's do a similar treatment to the terrace farm. Brainstorm in the inca thread?

G

Sounds good to me.

 

[PurpleMentat]

What is the intended use case for this implementation of the polder? As they are currently balanced, the only use I can find for them is squeezing them in where you otherwise can't get decent farm adjacency. They max out at +2 Food, which I can beat with 3 farms in a triangle. By the time I'm able to build them at all, I likely have or could have Civil Service to get the same food yield from a farm, plus adjacency. It seems I'm trading a very valuable and rather difficult to obtain yield (food) for a bunch of easy to obtain and unhelpful yield (gold). I also get a production and a culture in the swap. When I'm making a choice between 2 Food, or 1 Production 3 Gold 1 Culture, the 2 Food is almost always the better choice.

You made farms give adjacency food bonuses to each other. You balanced your population growth and specialist food consumption to match the now-inflated food potential from the adjacency-fueled farms. If you want a Civ to have a unique improvement that takes the place of farms, they HAVE TO provide equal or superior food. This is why I suggested they buff village food yield instead of gold, and suggested higher Polder yields, in the post I made here. As a reminder, these were the suggested yields:
Base 3 Food 1 Gold
with Economics Polder gains +2 Gold
with Chemistry Polder gains +1 Culture
adjacent Villages +1 Food

An example from an (effectively) late-game city. Six tiles and their yields, first as Polders and a Village, then as Polders with 2 Villages, then as Farms. Total yield counts from each, in spoiler text and above image.

Spoiler Polders 20F 24P 22G 6C :

Polders 20F 24P 22G 6C

Spoiler 2 Villages 18F 23P 26G 6C :

2 Villages 18F 23P 26G 6C

Spoiler Farms 34F 17P 0G 0C :

Farms 34F 17P 0G 0C

So we're trading 14 or 16 Food to get 7 or 6 Production, 22 or 26 Gold, and 6 Culture. Conversely, specialists in Information Age cost 6 Food each, so we can support a couple more Specialists with the Farms. We can get 18 Gold, 4 Production, and Great Merchant points using merchant specialists. We can get 18 Production 8 Science from Engineers, 18 Science 4 Culture from Scientists, 18 Culture 6 Production from Artists, 18 Culture 6 Science from Writers, 16 Culture 8 Gold from Musicians, and 6 Culture, Science, and Gold from Civil Servants. This is before Wonders, Policies, and Religion. With Freedom, that becomes 5 more Specialists instead of 2. On top of greater yields for everything but Gold, you also get Great Person points from working these specialists.

If we were to use the yields I suggested earlier, we would have these results:
Polders, 1 Village: 27F 19P 20G 6C
Polders, 2 Villages: 28F 19P 22G 6C
Farms: 34F 17P 0G 0C
This is a trade-off worth making. The 2 village yields show that it takes a river bend where you can get 4 polders adjacent to 1 village to get superior yields compared to just putting a polder there. Looking at these, the polder gold yield is likely too high and should come down by 1.

Something similar to this change needs to happen if polders are to be a useful improvement we want to build when possible. I'm sure this isn't the only solution, it's simply one solution that looks good to me.

 

[Atlas627]

I too am confused as to why the yields are so low. I'm enjoying the task of optimizing it which is nice, but it still feels like the yields are just plain weak.