Transforming land issue

What would you like to see in Freeciv? Do you have a good idea what should be improved or how?
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adamo
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Transforming land issue

Post by adamo »

Transforming land is a fantastic option - but only to some limited degree. If unlimited, you can transform almost anything to anything*, which makes the game nonsense (and boring, because it would give you too much boost!).

What I suggest is the reasonable limitation: only one land transform per tile could be done. You can transform, for example, jungle to swamp (or re-transform swamp back to jungle), but you cannot transform further already transformed tile. For example: you can transform jungle=>swamp on tile X or swamp=>grassland on tile Y, but double transforming (jungle=>swamp=>grannsland) shouldn't be possible.

Why? Because unlimited transformations gives you too much power, and it's unrelated to the climate areas (see Koppen Climate Classification) you're in. In real life, you can make some minor changes (artificial islands, etc.), but you cannot transform tundra to desert.

How to code? Very easily. Just mark all the (initial) tiles on the map as "original" and allow transforming them to their variables (plains to grasslands etc). The main issue is occuring global warming/nuclear winter - some of the tiles would have to change their original description.

I hope I'm clear here: I'm not against land terraforming, but for limiting it to a reasonable degree.

(*) - right now is actually partially limited, as you couldn't transform deep ocean.
cazfi
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Re: Transforming land issue

Post by cazfi »

Yes, something along those lines should be fairly doable. Please open a Feature ticket, so we don't forget this: https://www.hostedredmine.com/projects/ ... issues/new
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Corbeau
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Re: Transforming land issue

Post by Corbeau »

Actually, this depends on the ruleset. In the one we're playing now, swamp can be irrigated to grassland, and I assume jungle can be irrigated into swamp.
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drdogbot7
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Re: Transforming land issue

Post by drdogbot7 »

I don't think this is a problem. Transforming land is so time consuming that it naturally limits how much you can do. Theoretically, you could convert a glacier to a grassland (glacier->tundra->desert->plains->grassland), but it would take 96 turns.
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Alien Valkyrie
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Re: Transforming land issue

Post by Alien Valkyrie »

drdogbot7 wrote:I don't think this is a problem. Transforming land is so time consuming that it naturally limits how much you can do. Theoretically, you could convert a glacier to a grassland (glacier->tundra->desert->plains->grassland), but it would take 96 turns.
With a single worker (which can't convert glacier anyways). Using a team of engineers, it can actually be done rather quickly.
~ AVL
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VladimirSlavik
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Re: Transforming land issue

Post by VladimirSlavik »

I like to play on a far longer time scale, and routinely put a great number of veteran engineers on a tile to transform it within a turn. So yes, it is well within the current ruleset possibilities to transform on a massive scale. I like the idea of not being able to convert everything to anything - the "maximized" landscape absolutely lacks character as it's either grassland or hills sprinkled with bonus tiles. Of course, the catch is that "terrain" in civ merges humidity, altitude and roughness all together.

Granted, in a "normal" game this is probably not much of a problem - transforming is a really expensive action with just one unit.

Offtopic - on a tangentially related note, do engineers work faster because of faster movement? Any naval worker unit would have many more moves and work still far faster, making ocean transforming a cheap denial strategy.
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Alien Valkyrie
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Re: Transforming land issue

Post by Alien Valkyrie »

VladimirSlavik wrote:Offtopic - on a tangentially related note, do engineers work faster because of faster movement? Any naval worker unit would have many more moves and work still far faster, making ocean transforming a cheap denial strategy.
Yes, the movement points determine how fast a unit can perform terrain improvements and transformations. However, at least from 2.6 onwards (not sure if 2.5 already support it), you can define custom veteran levels for each unit, allowing you to give your unit a penalty by setting its initial veteran power factor to something below 100%. For example, by setting it to 20%, you could have a unit with a move rate of 5, but a work rate that equals that of a worker.
Do remember that the veteran power factor also affects combat strength, making your unit much more vulnerable.
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pungtryne
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Re: Transforming land issue

Post by pungtryne »

I don't believe this to be a problem for normal games. And most are actually doable in real life. But tundra to desert, or glacier to grassland, these transformations are probably a bit too much. Though, jungle to swamp, then to grassland is totally realistic. It happens all over the world that tropical forrests are burnt to make land. If one likes to play long, you almost get unlimited resources the longer towards the end, which makes it no problem to transform everything, in economical terms.
adamo
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Re: Transforming land issue

Post by adamo »

Ok, I've got an idea; the problem we're talking about can be solved in an easy way. We just need a trigger/counter to restrict the number of engineers, making 'transform ation' (O) possible on a tile at the time.

In other words, this is to decide, how many units can make 'transform' action on a tile at the turn.

Possible cases:
=> when counter is set to ZERO - transforming is not possible at all one (zero engineers can transform the tile at the time),
=> when it's set to ONE - only one unit can transform a tile at the time,
=> when it's set to TWO - it means two units can transform the tile,
=> THREE means three units,
=> ... and so on;

=> by default, the counter should be set to MINUS ONE (a special case), which means there is 'no restriction' (even dozens or hundreds - up to 256 I guess?- units can simultanously transform a tile), as it is now.
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