When do forests turn ancient?

[Behcio]

I'm playing as Ljosalfar right now and I FoL. I love seeing those forests turn into ancient ones But thing is, do they always improve over time? I mean, I had few mines built on normal forests and these trees turned ancient after some time. Does the same apply to farms? I still haven't been a witness of a forest turning ancient when a farm is built on it.

And another thing - too bad you can't cast bloom on a tile that already has an improvement, I'll need to rebuild all the mines, cottages and farms that were built on empty tiles :/

 

[Taels]

I've seen forests with farms become ancient forests, but it's random and could take time. It takes a very long time for all forests in the Ljosalfar kingdom to become ancient forests.

And I totally agree about bloom.

 

[Cornishman]

Bloom and improvements adds a huge layer of micro-management. Is the AI able to recognise the benifit of this when an Elf Civ with FoL. As unless a plot is next to a river it is always worth adding a forest. I personally Forest the lot +1 Hammer, and in time +1 Food. Yes please.

Also (yes I know it's been said before but) to broaden the appeal of FoL would it be possible for FoL civs to be able to build improvements on forests?

 

[Mesix]

The AI doesn't even know to build improvements in forests when playing as an elven civ. You will see some improvements in forests from the AI, but that is just because they built it there. The AI reads the value of the tile as -1 production (same as when a human mouses over) when an improvement is built instead of the proper advantage that elves have.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

It is certainly possible to allow FoL civs to cast bloom under improvements, if you make the spell work through python instead of XML.

I made it so that the 2 elven civs could do so, and tried to make it so that other civs running guardian of nature and controlling my new FoL specific wonder. I think I made a mistake in that code though, so I reverted back to only letting the elves do it. I may put that back though.