Too Many Mines (Suggestions for Limiting Them?)

[SayHayKid]

Aesthetically, it is bad enough that every inch of my empire is covered by roads/railroads, but mines on every grassland (plus other terrain) is just too much. Makes the late game map look like poo poo. Anybody, have some suggestions for alternative mine graphics that are minimalistic? Or perhaps no mines on grasslands, but then I need to compensate by boosting production some other way. Maybe some additional resources? I have added forge (iron in radius) and windmill (granary) that boost production 25%.

Maybe I remove mining all together for grassland and allow Windmill without Granary requirement, add Watermills with rivers, etc. to have buildings boost productivity instead of mines, mines, mines everywhere.

 

[tjs282]

I can certainly sympathise with the aesthetic objection (I especially hate to see the AI's "minefields" choking the growth of any Plains-towns that didn't have immediate access to freshwater in the early game), but the gameplay problem with removing the Mining job from Grassland is that it tends to leave Grassland-towns (including those originally founded near Jungle- and Marsh-tiles) very shield-poor -- particularly in the more distant towns, after Corruption has taken its bite out of the base-shields harvest.

(Floodplain-towns already have this low-shield problem in the epic-game, but at least they usually also have plenty of mineable Deserts nearby to compensate)

So even if the suggested production-boosters were each giving at least +50% (and could be stacked without breaking the bank with building maintenance!) there still won't be much for them to magnify in the first place, in the Grassland-towns that really need the extra shields.

My inclination would therefore rather be to make Grass (and Plains!) non-mineable, but compensate by adding 1 shield to the basic Grassland yield (i.e. BGs would therefore give an unimprovable 2 shields -- but this would only affect 1 in 3 non-resourced Grass tiles). If that leaves most maps too shield-rich in the early game, shield-costs could perhaps be increased accordingly.

I'd continue to allow all the other Worker-jobs on Grassland (and Plains), but I would also delay Foresting until the very late game (in my mod, this job is enabled by Ecology, but only for Grass and Plains, not for Tundra).

 

[timerover51]

I would agree with the previous quote, giving both Grassland and Plains 1 shield each with no mine, but I also increase the value of mines on hills and mountains. Deserts probably should have a Shield production of 2 as well. I am not a fan of having mines on every tile either. Buildings that add production are also a good idea.