Weird deserts

[Chipacabra]

The short and not-exactly-right-but-sorta version is that winds tend to go from west to east. Winds push clouds. Clouds form over oceans, get pushed to the east, bump up against the mountain ranges, and build up on the windward side.

So, is anyone else hoping they come up with some variation of SMAC's world generation system for a future CIV?

 

[Antilogic]

I don't have the know-how to make map scripts yet, but I'm interested as well.

 

[torin23]

Well, funny. I've seen more than one flooding here and I always thought that mountains collect rain and direct it to the plains beyond them, rather than blocking it ?

You can look at this map of Washington State in the Northwestern U.S. and you can see that the areas just to the east of the Cascades get very little rain. Richland, WA for example gets 7in rain a year. The description calls it "near desert conditions". You can also explore that URL and it will give you much more information.

According to the McGraw-Hill Science and Technology Encyclopedia, "No precise definition of a desert exists". I'm amused; I figured there was a specific definition in terms of rainfall somewhere.

 

[HardCoder]

yea i hate the deserts too, but always been afraid of modding the original game. i may have to now though. if they were workable, that'd be one thing, but deserts are horrible tiles. even tundra beats desert.

in RL, its possible to build large cities in the desert!! Las Vegas, and even to some degree Los Angeles are cities in the desert.

The large expanses of desert are one thing but the little bits of desert here and there are No Fun.

I think desert tiles should support some kind of improvements. In the real world, the desert is mined and irrigated. The San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys in California produce mind-boggling amounts of food, and the Imperial Valley supports a population of a million or two (Bakersfield through Fresno on Rt 99). You could call both of those "floodplains" but they are irrigated by water from hundreds of miles away. There are huge (huge) open copper mines in the Arizona Sonoran desert, and of course Death Valley and the Mojave have large borax deposits. The Phoenix area is surrounded by many different kinds of farms - most obviously cotton and citrus, but there's also alfalfa, corn, dairy, and so forth.

Also, there are aliens in the New Mexico desert ....

I dunno, to have desert support nothing is a bummer and was a surprise to me after being able to work it for the past umpteen years.

 

[cymru_man]

Well, if there is copper in the square, you can mine it in Civ4 Same goes for iron etc..

I don't have much problem with deserts - indeed a loose scattering of desert tiles seems a much better idea to me than vast expanses of desert which does NOTHING for game balance. You complain when you start off at the edge of the world in a polar icecap, imagine starting in a huge desert? Nasty. Not even seafood to keep you going. No, I think the loose scattering of desert idea is a lot better for gameplay, and you have flood plains and oases to mitigate their effect anyway.

 

[Antilogic]

According to the McGraw-Hill Science and Technology Encyclopedia, "No precise definition of a desert exists". I'm amused; I figured there was a specific definition in terms of rainfall somewhere.

It's not exactly clear-cut, but the generally agreed-upon value for rainfall is 25 cm/10 in. or less on average per year. But does that mean a place that gets 26 cm of rain isn't a desert? The general agreement for making the maps of climate zones is the 25 cm mark, but as this Encyclopedia correctly states, this is just a general convention and not precise. It's more of a "I know a desert when I see one" kind of deal. Same thing with planets--there really isn't a good definition of that term either.

As for what HardCoder said...well, the game does have metal deposits in the desert, as well as incense. It's not perfect, but some desert tiles are usable. It's probably a simple XML change to allow deserts to support farms, as well...

 

[Willowmound]

I don't have much problem with deserts - indeed a loose scattering of desert tiles seems a much better idea to me than vast expanses of desert which does NOTHING for game balance. You complain when you start off at the edge of the world in a polar icecap, imagine starting in a huge desert? Nasty. Not even seafood to keep you going. No, I think the loose scattering of desert idea is a lot better for gameplay, and you have flood plains and oases to mitigate their effect anyway.

I am much more interested in realism than gameplay when it comes to the map. I find unequal starting positions interesting and fun. Otherwise, I'd play mirror maps with balanced resources all the time. Ugh, I can't imagine anything more boring.

Also, I have no trouble regenerating a map if I don't like where I start. And you know what? I've even been known to regenerate because my starting position was too good. Maybe I want a game with the Vikings starting exactly at the 'edge of the world in a polar icecap' as you put it

I'd like to see an option in custom game: 'Realistic deserts'.

Would make everyone happy.

 

[Julian Delphiki]

I'd like to see an option in custom game: 'Realistic deserts'.
Would make everyone happy.

No, no, it would not . If have understood custom options correctly:

- Always war = IsHuman is always in war with every AI, not everyone VS. everyone.
- No tech trading = IsHuman is out of the loop, everyone else trades as a little happy Civs family
- Realistic deserts = IsHuman starts on the middle of the real desert, with one 1/1/1 (?) tile, while everyone else starts with stone/marble, extra food & health in FC .

 

[Willowmound]

Heh heh. Right. Maybe a bad idea, then.

 

[ollj]

just whining about an insignificant matter

 

[Willowmound]

just whining about an insignificant matter

Are you? Which matter are you whining about, exactly?

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

I do know that deserts are spread out all over the world and can be cold and have large rivers flowing through them, like the karagumy desert has the syr and amu darya, the atacama desert in south america, which I believe is suppossed to be the dryest or something, I don't know. Anyways, I would just prefer if deserts were more concentrated, maybe not sahara desert scenarios, just more clumped together, not a checkerboard scenario, at least as an option. Plus I wish oasises could be farmed which can make desert cities more valuable as well as adding flood plains, incense only ocurring in desert tiles, etc etc.

 

[Meatbuster]

Has anyone seen this kind of "desert"? Found this on a highlands map...

I think you can build a water mill on it...

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

That's as logical as finding desert in the amazon.

 

[Antilogic]

Typically, those squares are converted to floodplains. I'm surprised it didn't convert that square into a floodplain, but I don't have much experience with the Highlands map type...

I agree that's pretty close for a desert to be to the jungle...if there was at least a hill line, I could accept it. Oh well, we all know it isn't perfect.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

Just a quick point on floodplains, in CIV IV these are ONLY available in desert terrain. I think someone got a bit too obsessed with good old Egypt and Mesopotamia when designing the game, and hence the desert / floodplain connection. While of course the Nile and The Ancient Tigris and Euphrates are perfect example of civilizations flourishing in a desert climate, almost entirely reliant on the vaguries of the annual river flooding for their survival in an otherwise hostile environment, floodplains of course exist in almost all types of climate.

The greatest floodplain in the world is a huge amount of land around the Ganges Delta, (the world's largest delta), which encompasses modern day Bangladesh and Eastern India. The floodplains in China that derive from the annual flooding of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers have driven the developement of the world's most populace civilization, and have also caused countless deaths in times of violent flooding over the millenia. There are many other similar examples, too numerous to mention. None of these examples could by any stretch of the imagination be considered a "desert floodplain".

Maybe floodplains need readressing, so that they do not rely on a desert terrain as their basis, just a high volume river and some relatively flat terrain.

 

[HUSch]

I wish the agriculture trait of C3, to get something of worth from the dessert. Today there are mountains and desserts without. Perhaps you get water enough in many sites in modern time, and can build cities like Vegas in the dessert.

 

[onedreamer]

You can look at this map of Washington State in the Northwestern U.S. and you can see that the areas just to the east of the Cascades get very little rain. Richland, WA for example gets 7in rain a year. The description calls it "near desert conditions". You can also explore that URL and it will give you much more information.

According to the McGraw-Hill Science and Technology Encyclopedia, "No precise definition of a desert exists". I'm amused; I figured there was a specific definition in terms of rainfall somewhere.

Does it have something to do with mountains "blocking" the flow of rains ?

 

[Sparta]

Does it have something to do with mountains "blocking" the flow of rains ?

I believe that the idea is that as the air is forced over the mountain range (west to east for this example in/near the Cascades and/or Rocky Mountains), it naturally is forced to rise in altitude, becomes less dense and cooler, and therefore has less capacity to contain moisture. As such, most of the rain will almost always be produced on the windward (western in this example) side of the mountain range, while the air is 'losing' its capacity for moisture content, with the air moving over and past the mountain range typically having already spent the majority of its moisture content. Therefore the wind on the trailing side of the mountains will not only be low on moisture to start with, having made the ascension up the mountain altitudes, but it will also be descending and warming as well on its path beyond the mountain range, and therefore more likely to pick up more moisture than to actually cloud up and rain. I think that's loosely how it works at least. (So I guess the answer to your question would be "Yeah, kind of." )

On topic, I hate deserts too.

 

[HardCoder]

I think I'll try hacking the XML to allow farming desert for 1 food, mining it for 1 hammer+commerce, and while I'm at it camping ice for 1 food. Desert farming should be tied to something like Construction, and mining to something later on like Engineering.

Of course you won't be able to do much with desert farming until Civil Service, because in general there won't be water there except for the occasional oasis and even more occasional wacky desert tile bordering a river.

Also I wonder about camping forest, in general, for +1 food.