Starting production bonus

[Nelphine]

Except you still get land tiles. Then if shores/oceans are better at producing food, a human might think 'hey, I can build cities and buy amp towers'. Right now, those cities would fail, so it can't happen. With more food production, those cities wouldn't fail. We need to make sure humans don't ever try to build there. Food on shores/ocean/tundra therefore can't happen.

[Arnuz]

What land tiles? The coordinate 0 one isn't accessible.

[Nelphine]

Oh I see what youre suggesting. If that was doable then that would answer my concern yes.

[Arnuz]

Row 0 inaccessible
Row 1 sometimes there's land
Row 2 the map gen removes land
...
... (map)
... (south pole: symmetric)

Do the same as coord 2 on coord 1. Shouldn't be too hard as that's already happening, on 2 places, so hopefully there's even a procedure for that... With parameters... One can hope

So... Seravy I've answered your points specifically for coasts, thoughts?

[Seravy]

...since you are so persistent, I'm willing to try Tiny map generation with 0 food shores and see if that works out or not. You are right, if the intention is to have unproductive water tiles, even the 1/2 food is unnecessary.

So, generating 6 maps, in the worst case scenario - Dry, Normal, Tiny.
No freezing - some of them did take a while to generate though.

Meaning, we can have 0 food shores if we want that.

I rather keep the gold bonus though - seas are used for trade like roads, which is why they have it. You can't connect cities with roads through ocean in this game, that's the replacement.

[Arnuz]

Aren't oceans just there to create the separation? Then no economy bonus is needed either. If road substitution was the motivation then all the inland cities connected by road would have to inherit the economy bonus.

This reductio ad absurdum seems definitive to me by now but, if it isn't, then let's try it out and see what actually happens. If 0 food coasts make starting on an island (compared with starting on a continent) worse than now, it would show what I maintain - that now it's half bad with half food for coasts. If nothing changes then you're right. We can all just generate some maps, reveal them and post our observations. But, while you're doing that, I'd ask you if it is possible to make it a parameter (0, 1, 1.5, 2) out of curiosity and for testing my hypothesis with the same effort. (or make different exp. patches if that's simpler? whatever is simpler for you)

BTW you haven't answered my point about the game designer's intention with giving coasts some food. Why else might that be, than considering coasts a valid source of resources? So, if you're intentionally changing the game approach on this particular aspect: is there a reason, considering that as a consequence you raise the impact of starting on an island? I'm probably dumb but I haven't yet understood the reason behind this choice. It can't be balance because AIs and humans end up on the same map... Is it to keep the high randomness of the starting position? As I've said I have come around to agree on the importance of randomness but aren't terrains, ores and gems enough for that?

Is it to balance the island start? After your fantastic work on ship use AI I find that starting on an island is detrimental from a strategic point of view because AIs can load their throngs of summons on triremes and come knocking from year 3... So if anything islands now need to be helped, not delayed.

[Seravy]

Have you even though about how good 1 whole food is in this game?
That's better than most of the land tiles! (better than desert, forest, swamp, tundra, hills, maybe mountain, worse than grassland and river only)
Why should shores be significantly better than land?

(No, don't answer it!)
If your intention is to make shores equal to land, 1/2 food does that already and we don't need a change. 1/2 food and a gold bonus is already as good as an average land tile and coastal cities even get a merchant's guild and the ability to produce ships on top of that. They are so good, building on coast actually has a fairly large positive modifier in the AI choices. I fail to see the need to make them better. Obviously, this only applies to "normal" coastal cities, that 2 tile island with all shores and oceans around it isn't and shouldn't be a good place for a city, obviously. Because, well, they represent 2 tiles of land from the landmass while other cities get 10-16 tiles. Lands are, by definition, the playable area. When you pick a landmass setting you do so with the intention of playing on a map that can support more, or less total population. So 2 tiles should be much worse than 10 tiles.


More importantly, I rejected raising the food over and over again and I'm quite angry at this point. If you don't drop the subject, I'll seriously drop the food to zero even if that makes the game worse. No, I know better, I'll make shores produce negative food! Salt is bad for growing crops, so nearby ocean makes lands worse than they normally are! <insert evil overlord laugh here>

(Yes, I'm a bit frustrated because there are far too many unsolved problems right now...and this isn't one of them.)

[Nelphine]

Random question, but doesn't a city have up to 21 tiles? With up to 12 shared with other cities?

[Seravy]

Yes, I miscounted. It's 21.

[Arnuz]

Yes, I've thought about the quality of 1 food and I sincerely believe that it'd make the game better (variance due to starting island size is what I still consider the bad kind of randomness while I've come around to agreeing with you on the other sources of randomness). Why? To make island starts not suck so much as they do now. Not the 2 tiles one, which would still suck (9 pop 0 prod is exactly as worthless as 5 pop 0 prod), but the 10-12 tiles one out of 21. No, coasts are not already equal to land: on average, a decently chosen land city spot gives you the equivalent of 1 food per tile: gems ores and rivers happen, while the sea economy bonus is counted only for 1 tile - the one adjacent to the city - so the only resource that all coastal tiles give to cities is that half food. Rivers even override the economy of that one tile too when they're there (unless the river mouth happens, then they add up, which gives further basis to my view on design intent now that I think of it).

Still, as I've already said, I really don't mind at all accepting choices just because: the mod is yours, I'm not trying to be funny. Absolutely no need for frustrations or to get angry and I sincerely apologise if I've inadvertently caused that. I have no idea how that happens with me, others on the forum have much more direct requests at times and I keep expressing my admiration for this mod. Even in this particular case, I'd totally missed that your 0 food proposal was a threat, all I'm trying to do is just to understand. So far I've not, and I'm sorry for this as well, despite carefully reading all the related posts. And if you answer I don't want to explain myself that's just it I would accept even that without any hard feeling...