Major Release 14SEP10 - World Topography

GM Stormcrow wrote: [...] Many cities have had their underlying terrain changed, to bring them into line with the new resource type distribution. [...] This change should not affect anything else - your terrain combat defense bonuses and your resource distribution are the same as they were.

I guess it makes sense and it's somewhat nice for the defender (if they settled it for the defensive bonus, that is)... although, I can only assume it's going to get a bit weird for the attackers.
I mean, an attacker that won't have a clue what terrain bonuses they're going to get there unless they attack first with a probe army (since a city might have, say, plains bonuses yet be listed as woods on the map, which totally changes the ranged/cavalry expected bonus spread around, from one extreme to the other).

But if that's the case, and the city tile type changed to accommodate the resource distributions, the next double question is (as per the previous example, at around map location 85|60):
80|60 and 81|55 are Light Woods with 5/5/5/5/5 (no idea exactly what to expect, plains I suppose)
83|57 is Light Woods with 3/5/5/5/7 (you'd expect "Fertile Ground")
91|55 is Light Woods with 5/5/3/7/5 (you'd expect "Rocky Outcrop")
and only 90|62 is "proper" Light Woods with 7/3/5/5/5.
a) what's up with all the odd resources on those NON-colonized squares then, is "Light Woods" the new wildcard terrain type ?
b) and is that why some cities with 3/5/5/5/7 resources got changed to "light woods" from whatever plains-type they were before ?

P.S. I see "Fertile Ground" squares (not directly near cities nor with sov on them) which are supposed to be 3/5/5/5/7 according to the table in the first post that are equally odd, for instance:
-4|3 and 17|-5 are 5/5/3/7/5 
3|-1 is 5/5/7/3/5
16|-4, 7|-5 and 11|-6 are 5/5/5/5/5

Edited by Akita - 15 Sep 2010 at 02:25

Zangi wrote: I'd love to be in the magical Elven Forest area.  So I can wage proper war with the tree-hugging hippies.

Akita wrote: I guess it makes sense and it's somewhat nice for the defender (if they settled it for the defensive bonus, that is)... although, I can only assume it's going to get a bit weird for the attackers. I mean, an attacker that won't have a clue what terrain bonuses they're going to get there unless they attack first with a probe army (since a city might have, say, plains bonuses yet be listed as woods on the map, which totally changes the ranged/cavalry expected bonus spread around, from one extreme to the other).

That's actually a *very* good point, Akita - and one that I'd overlooked entirely.

The other option (which is probably preferable at this point) is to return the underlying city terrain description back to what it was and also leave the resource distribution as it is. This means that we have resource anomalies compared to the unsettled squares, but that's of less impact than having an unexpected combat terrain type.

In fact I think that's the only sensible option here.

Best,

SC

WildBill wrote: I hate to say it but the map looks like crap.   Secondly, you said squares within 5 squares of your cities wouldn't change, which they have.   I settled my last city with plans on it for soveriegn squares, its still a small city so I never claimed any of the squares yet.  Of the 5 squares I was planning on using only 1 is left and the others are now all useless for the plans I had.  Maybe a heads up that only the squares directly around the city would have been in order so I could have claimed the squares before you went ahead with the map change would have been nice.   And again the map looks terrible to me, all I see is a big green clump around my cities where there use to be mountains and hills.

Hi WildBill,

We will, over time, be providing more (new) icon variation and flow between the tiles, so they should look more naturalistic than they currently do.

Regarding your second point, I think this may have been a misunderstanding, and perhaps we weren't clear enough.

What we originally said was:

GM Stormcrow wrote: We've even written the algorithm so that it won't touch the 5 squares around any currently settled square...

... and by this we meant your city square and the squares N, S, E & W of it, to make up the "5 squares".

Best,

SC

But, spell range kinda doodles all over that friend thing. 
And it can just as easily be used as an attack tool to switch up someone's sovereign square...  or potential sovereign square...