Understanding FFH Terrain

[phizuol]

I figured I'd cook up a thread to help educate me on a topic I wanted to know more about and then edit it to provide that information to others.

New Terrain
Marsh: 1 Food, 2 Moves
Volcano: Impassible, Ugly

New Features
Ancient Forest: +1 Food, +1 Production, 50% Defense, 2 Moves
Blizzard: Units without Cold Resistance take ~10% Cold based damage when moving onto tile
Burnt Forest: Eventually turns to New Forest, No change from base terrain, No health bonus
Flames: Replaces Forest and Jungle, Eventually turns to Burnt Forest, No change from base terrain, Impassible to units without Fire Resistance
New Forest: Eventually turns to Forest, No change from base terrain
Scrub: +1 Production, Only appears on Desert - Reduces move cost to 1 & Removes Defense penalty?
Smoke: -10% Defense, Chance to change to Flames on Forests, Jungles, and Ancient Forest (Reduced chance for Ancient Forest)

Changed Terrain
Desert: -25% Defense, 2 Moves

Changed Features
Forest: +25% Defense

Hell Terrain
Removes Forest, Jungle, and Ancient Forest
Toads: Hell version of Sheep and Pigs
Nightmares: Hell version of Cows and Horses
Snake Pillars: Hell version of Corn, Wheat, and Rice
Sheut Stones: Hell version of Marble
Fields of Perdition: Hell version of Plains
Broken Lands: Hell version of Grassland
Burning Sands: Hell version of Desert (Flood Plains will be permanently destroyed)
Shallows: Hell version of Marsh
Gulagarm: Hell version of Banana and Sugar
Razorweed: Hell version of Silk and Cotton, reduces enemy heal rate in your territory by 1% (cumulative)

Terraforming Magic
Blaze (Fire I): Creates Smoke
Bloom (FoL): Creates New Forest
Sanctify (Life I): Cleanses Hell Terrain
Scorch (Sun I): Change Plains to Desert and Snow to Tundra
Snowfall (Ice III): Removes Smoke and Flames, Temporarily change terrain to Snow
Spring (Water I): Change Desert to Plains, Removes Smoke, Flames, and Scrub
Vitalize (Nature III): Removes Scrub, Change Snow to Tundra, Tundra to Plains, Desert to Plains, and Plains to Grassland. Flood Plains on Plains gives 4 Food, 1 Production. Flood Plains on Grassland gives 5 Food.

 

[phizuol]

One trick I've found so far is to prep a jungle area by casting Blaze on a few squares before settling there (or even after maybe.) If jungle catches on fire it will eventually regrow as a forest.

 

[readercolin]

Blizzard - note, any unit that doesn't have cold resistance will take damage. Winterborn isn't the only way, just the most common.

Burnt Forest - No change to base terrain

Flames - No change to base terrain, causes the terrain to be impassible to units that don't have fire resistance (100% fire resistance isn't needed, orcs have 20% and can walk into flame squares). Note, if a unit is on a tile and that tile turns to flames, it isn't kicked off the tile if it doesn't have fire resistance. However, if it leaves that tile, it cannot return. This can be used as a method to build cottages/farms/etc. under forests, by flaming the forest with your workers under it, build while the fire is there, and then the terrain will turn to burnt forest, with the improvement underneath, and eventually evolve to forest/ancient forest. It is also a viable method of turning large areas of jungle to forest if you want to put off bronze working.

New forest - no change to base terrain, may give defensive bonus (?), will turn into forest

Scrub - yes, it removes the defensive penalty, and gives +1 hammer. Still useless however - even more so in the mods that allow riverside tiles to be turned into floodplains.

Smoke - can turn any tile to flames, as long as it has a forest or jungle (ancient forest can burn to, but it has a higher resistance). It sometimes also spawns barbarian mistforms, invisible units that are a PITA to get rid of.

Hell terrain:
Toads are sheep or pigs who's tiles have turned to hell terrain
nightmares are cows or horses who's tiles have turned to hell terrain
Snake Pillars are crops (rice, corn, wheat) who's tiles have turned to hell terrain
Plantation resources will turn to gulgarn or razorweed, unsure which ones do which - note, reagents and incense are exceptions to this iirc
Marble will turn to sheut stones
Grasslands turn to fields of perdition
Plains turn to broken lands (note, I may have these two mixed up)
Desert turns to burning sands - note, this will change floodplains to burning sands squares, destroying the floodplains
Marsh turns to shallows (iirc, unsure about this)
Unsure about obsidian plains, don't remember ever seeing them

Terraforming
Vitalize floodplains and it turns to plains. Vitalize plains/floodplains and it turns to grassland. Note, floodplains are a feature, so cannot have a forest on top. Floodplains/desert gives 3 food, floodplains/plains 4 food/1hammer, and floodplains/grassland gives 5food.
Other things to note. In base FFH, tundra can only be turned to plains with vitalize - FF and Orbis both changed this, as well as most other mods (this info may be out of date). Vitalize can upgrade any terrain up to grassland

Ice
| scorch or vitalize
Tundra Desert
| | spring or vitalize
Plains <--------|
|
Grassland

 

[phizuol]

Thanks. I made a few updates, but I'll leave it to your post to spell out more of the strategic info like the Mistforms and building in forest. I took some of my info from the FFH2 manual so some things like Obsidian Plains and the effects of Vitalize. I'll see if I can get some confirmation on the base FFH2 effects and if some of that Hell Terrain exists (Maybe it's just in scenarios or something.)

 

[MasterofDisasta]

Actually, burnt forests and new forests act almost exactly like regular forests wth just a few minor differences.

Forest - +1 hammer, + 0.25 health, enables lumbermill

New Forest - + 1 hammer, + 0.25 health, no lumbermill allowed

Burnt Forest - +1 hammer, no health bonus, no lumbermill allowed

I'm not sure which ones give defensive bonuses, I'll have to check that.

 

[Emptiness]

Burnt Forests and New Forests do not have terrain defense bonuses.
Base Deserts have a defense penalty, but any feature in the tile (Oasis, Flood Plains, Scrub, Burnt Forest, et c.) will negate that penalty.

Forest-type features are removed when terrain changes to hell terrain. Ancient Forests are removed from Tundra and Ice when they would change (but of course they don't actually change since they are their own hell versions). Other Forest-type features are not removed from Tundra and Ice by the hell shift, however.

Oh, and "Snow" isn't a terrain type, it's called "Ice".

 

[cabbagemeister]

Burnt Forests and New Forests do not have terrain defense bonuses.

Burnt and new forests also don't have a movement penalty.

 

[saathei]

I believe Obsidian plains are the hell equivalent of floodplains. Not sure about tormented souls.

Also note that lumbermills are not allowed in ancient forests.

 

[Fourpaws]

There is a point to Volcanos, that I learned just recently the hard way. Volcanos can turn into regular passable terrain. I don't know, if this always happens or how long it takes, but it has happend multiple times. On Eberus-Maps it opened access to new areas and turned more than one war into ugly chaos.

 

[readercolin]

When floodplains turn to hell, it becomes burning sands, and removes the floodplains. This is the real reason why flavorstart malakim hate hell. Lumbermills are allowed on ancient forests, but they are not allowed to be constructed on ancient forests, meaning that you have to build lumbermills on the forest before it upgrades to ancient forest to be able to get them.

-Colin

 

[phizuol]

Updated things a little. There's a lot of good info coming in so I'll leave the details in the discussions.

So do hell terrain tiles retain their bonuses? I'll have to look up the value of the bonuses. When tiles change is it instant or will you know that it's about to happen soon? How often do you need to micro your "cleanup" adepts?

 

[Emptiness]

Volcanos can turn into regular passable terrain. I don't know, if this always happens or how long it takes, but it has happend multiple times.

Volcanos are removed by the hell terrain shift.

So do hell terrain tiles retain their bonuses? I'll have to look up the value of the bonuses. When tiles change is it instant or will you know that it's about to happen soon?

Hell versions of terrain have the same base output as their non-hell counterparts. Hell resources often provide different yields, however. There's no specific warning that a tile is about to change, but since hell terrain encroaches as a wave you can generally tell when a tile is in danger. The exception is when the "wave" approaches from tiles that don't have hell versions, such as water or cold tiles. There's no change in appearance to warn you, so it can sneak up without being noticed.

 

[Onionsoilder]

I see a lot of people complicating one simple mechanic: Hell Terrain removes all Features. This means:

Hell Terrain removes Forests.
Hell Terrain removes Flood Plains.
Hell Terrain removes Oasis.
Hell Terrain removes Volcanoes.
Hell Terrain removes Blizzards.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

It does not remove all features, it removes features that do not have both the hell and non-hell version of the terrain in their TerrainBooleans.

Ok, that means it removes all terrains, but changing that is almost trivial if you want to do it. (I tend to make flood planes and obsidian planes valid in both deserts and burning sands so that the python part of the code can switch them back and forth.)

 

[Onionsoilder]

It does not remove all features, it removes features that do not have both the hell and non-hell version of the terrain in their TerrainBooleans.

If you want to get into the technicalities, yes. In regular, unmodded BTS, it will remove all features, because no features have both a normal and a hell boolean.

 

[MasterofDisasta]

Burnt and new forests also don't have a movement penalty.

Interesting. Do elves still get double movement in new forests and burnt forests?

 

[FreeTacos]

Staring at the map on my other computer, Ancient forests at the start only seem to give +1 food, is there a tech for the +1 production ?

 

[Emptiness]

Forests give +1 , Ancient Forests give that plus an additional +1 . They do not give +2 .

 

[FreeTacos]

Ahh, reading comprehension error on my part! Thank you.

 

[FreeTacos]

How does Marsh figure in to the vitalize/Genesis scheme of things ?