why is tundra so useless?

[Daishomei]

That's why I would prefer that tundra and desert tiles actually had some penalty for districts (say -2 housing per neighborhood in desert/tundra and triple maintenance for the district and all buildings)

But some people love deserts and others beets and or half frozen terrain

 

[KrikkitTwo]

But some people love deserts and others beets and or half frozen terrain

Far less than people who live in places fit for human inhabitation.

 

[AppleDumplingHead]

I often can find tundra with +5 or +6 for neighborhoods. Even snow tiles work for neighborhoods. I make my population suffer. I just imagine them living in some large city like Minneapolis. .

Lol poor Minneapolis. It's not even tundra and gets a bad name.

 

[Zuizgond]

Tundra and desert with no river have always been useless and it's intended. Did you seriously work your desert tiles with trading post in civ5? Or is it just for the sake of building improvements on every tile?

 

[bcaiko]

Yeah, the fact that tundra can't be improved AT ALL until the end of the game - that's a bad design decision. It leads to the kind of non-choice that Ed Beach specifically said he wanted to avoid.

I almost always restart. The biggest issue I have with tundra starts that I've seen, is it becomes difficult to get a good farming area with everything adjacent. Beyond that, tundra start also means a vast amount of land to the north or south is nearly useless, making for constant barb incursions from the snowy pole area, as well as greatly limiting the settling area.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. There is one viable strategy for a tundra start: RESTART. Players will almost never settle a major city in tundra either. That's not even the illusion of choice.

 

[blasto]

I think its accurate to say that a starting position like that is definitely the least desirable you can possibly get. The only reason I wouldn't reroll would be if you WANT that serious initial handicap to toughen the game.

 

[Zuizgond]

Yeah, the fact that tundra can't be improved AT ALL until the end of the game - that's a bad design decision. It leads to the kind of non-choice that Ed Beach specifically said he wanted to avoid.



This is exactly what I'm talking about. There is one viable strategy for a tundra start: RESTART. Players will almost never settle a major city in tundra either. That's not even the illusion of choice.

You can still plant a forest a on every tundra tile and then build a sawmill if you like.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Aside from a few good cities most are for resources + districts so sometimes you can make it work. For other times, you settle them late and lumber mill the crap out of them, that is if you're still in a position where it matters.

The only thing I hate about them is the barbs.

 

[nitedemon]

After Petra and Chicen Itza, I feel like we need a similar wonder for tundra , (Potala Palace would have been perfect for this) but then again that might make Russia extra OP.

 

[UWHabs]

Aside from a few good cities most are for resources + districts so sometimes you can make it work. For other times, you settle them late and lumber mill the crap out of them, that is if you're still in a position where it matters.

The only thing I hate about them is the barbs.

One of the biggest flaws is that since we still use a cylindrical map, there's a ton more tundra in-game than in real life, so you can be stuck in just massive stretches of tundra. If it was more globe-like, then the tundra stretches would be smaller and wouldn't appear as daunting. Or even if the map generation tended to make continents that didn't quite stretch from pole to pole (I mean, on earth there's not really any tundra in the southern hemisphere), that would at least have less space for barbs to spawn.

I still wish they could come out with a form of spherical tiling. Even if the pentagons weren't identical sizes, and you made the pentagon tiles as a form of un-passable terrain (ice, mountain, bermuda triangle, etc...), you'd seriously reduce the amount of ice in the world and then it wouldn't matter nearly as much that tundra tiles sucked.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

One of the biggest flaws is that since we still use a cylindrical map, there's a ton more tundra in-game than in real life, so you can be stuck in just massive stretches of tundra. If it was more globe-like, then the tundra stretches would be smaller and wouldn't appear as daunting. Or even if the map generation tended to make continents that didn't quite stretch from pole to pole (I mean, on earth there's not really any tundra in the southern hemisphere), that would at least have less space for barbs to spawn.

I still wish they could come out with a form of spherical tiling. Even if the pentagons weren't identical sizes, and you made the pentagon tiles as a form of un-passable terrain (ice, mountain, bermuda triangle, etc...), you'd seriously reduce the amount of ice in the world and then it wouldn't matter nearly as much that tundra tiles sucked.

Bad tiles vs barbs vs world setup are decoupled concepts overall though. You can address any of them without changing the other, if that's what design demands. You could make barbs not spawn in tundra and hand-wave that as "it's not hospitable for disorganized people in large numbers", or boost bad tiles so everything is workable (I don't want to see this personally, but you could do it). Making it a globe would make the issue less glaring, but it would remain an issue wrt barbs and bad tiles.

As for how continents spawn I wish they were more variable in non-competitive map formats, with maps designed for competitive pvp being more fair.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Yeah, the fact that tundra can't be improved AT ALL until the end of the game - that's a bad design decision. It leads to the kind of non-choice that Ed Beach specifically said he wanted to avoid.



This is exactly what I'm talking about. There is one viable strategy for a tundra start: RESTART. Players will almost never settle a major city in tundra either. That's not even the illusion of choice.

That's as it should be (except for Russia) and for all non-Russian players, the game shouldn't place you in/near Tundra.

(and the map should probably make less Tundra)

Tundra should be settled for strategic/luxury resources/adjacent IZ bonuses and that's it.

 

[Woka]

Tundra starts mean plenty of faith and an easy religious victory.

 

[Victoria]

And settling on the edge of tundra is better than settling on the coast as far as useable land is concerned. That water is just pointless apart from considering ones naval.

 

[Disgustipated]

Far less than people who live in places fit for human inhabitation.

I wish this was the case. Traffic here can be really bad. Nothing compared to California, but still bad.

Yeah I live in the desert. I think its beautiful in a way. Or at least the parts that have a little bit of water. Or the red sandstone. Can't get enough of it. Although you could say I live near a river. But despite the Civ6 mechanics, desert next to a river doesn't become floodplains And yes I know about the effects the Hoover Dam had on "flooding", but even before the Dam we never had fertile land, the Native Americans here struggled. Some like the Anasazi vanished completely, and we still don't know exactly what became of them. The Southern Paiute here weren't exactly thriving when the Spanish encountered them.

 

[Arqane]

As I played through more, tundra became a whole lot better for most civs, even to the point that I'll often intentionally settle near tundra. There are generally a lot of advantages to grouping your districts into about 1/4 of your city, and the mostly empty tundra makes that a lot easier. Russia obviously loves them. Japan also does extremely well on tundra (easy to clump 2-3 cities' districts there, plus the easy potential for +24 holy sites there, which also means a single tile with +24 research as long as you get the GP). Apart from Brazil, England, and Norway, that mostly call for different specific tiles, most civs do well with overlapping tundra.

Now, starting a game completely on tundra with no other tiles at all is killer, even for Russia. You only really need 3 tiles per city to farm to cover virtually any city for the entire game, but sometimes you won't even get those 3. Then again, I'd still rather have tundra starts than coastal starts with too many water tiles and no hills. Those really, really suck.

 

[jaegybomb]

I often spend a turn moving anyway. It's not that hard to move a couple tiles and get some non tundra land in use even with the worst starts.

 

[shadowplay]

If you're playing as India, you can build stepwells on tundra. Feels like something that will be patched out.

 

[Pnothy]

Back in the days of civ2, tundra would become better with the effects of global warming kicking in. Maybe nice to put in a mod. Otherwise, tundra needs to be useless because it is tundra. Part of the game is competing for nice spots, which is only possible if there are also bad spots. I didn't play civVI very much yet, but I did get the impression that strategic resources are often located in otherwise harsh terrain, making it strategically worthwhile to settle there. Also, trade routes give the flexibility to effectively settle harsh locations, as was already mentioned.

But I agree: as a starting location tundra is just bad. Although I still like the random start from a role playing perspective: "you were born here, deal with it".

 

[whyidie]

Crap spots are so much easier to work with in CIv6. I've had multiple rolls where the best I could do were two cities where the majority of tiles weren't tundra. Was able to build some pretty decent tundra cities just relying on trade routes and districts.