An Experiment

[Tatan]

What if a map changed while you were playing on it? Like, say, an Atlantis-style map where all the time water was nibbling away at the land.

I thought this would be really cool (a novelty to play on, at best, but interesting to watch). So I modded Global Warming to change tiles into coast instead of desert, and to trigger it early on I gave +75 unhealthiness to the Palace (don't worry, I also gave it +75 food to prevent starvation).

Changelog v1-0
-Set GLOBAL_WARMING_TERRAIN to TERRAIN_COAST
-Set GLOBAL_WARMING_PROB to 100
-Set GLOBAL_WARMING_UNHEALTH_WEIGH to 100
-Set GLOBAL_WARMING_NUKE_WEIGHT to 100
-Set GLOBAL_WARMING_FOREST to 0
-Set Palace's iHEALTH to -75
-Palace yields +75 food [to compensate for health loss]

Thus, as the game goes on, land tiles randomly turn into water tiles, causing an erosion effect. City tiles are not affected, and from observation it appears that desert and snow tiles are not either. However, every other tile is fair game. For example, I set up a test game with an automated civ.

Turn 0


A nice, healthy Pangea. Plenty of land.


Turn 30


Lakes are starting to appear. Officials are excited about the prospect of new vacation resorts.


Turn 60


Inland seas are beginning to form. There is mild disconcertment among the populace.


Turn 100


The seas are dividing the land into strips, creating many chokepoints. There is worry about outer cities becoming cut off.


Turn 160


The central grasslands have disintegrated. Al Gore is saying, "I told you so."

Turn 200


This is now a tiny islands map.


Anyway. The mod is pretty primitive, I wouldn't be surprised if there are flaws. It's more for coolness points than actual gameplay value. Bring your own life-jacket! :aar:

[spacetyrantxenu]

If there is a way to make it so that seafood resources can appear once enough water tiles coalesce to make it salt water, that might mitigate some of the small cities sizes you're otherwise bound to have, which would make the game more playable. Lots of small cities that grow very slowly are not fun to manage, but this has promise for a fun variant. Could this be Adventure 51 in the making?

One strategy element that leaps out is that if you want to guarantee availability of a resource, you'd better build a city on top of it! Forget elegant dot maps...just settle your bronze, stone, iron, etc., and hope you can get a seafood resource to 'spawn' inside the city's BFC once the land tiles melt away.

[sunrise089]

I assume things like new resources or changing the warming start time would be difficult, but what about the rate of warming? Would lowering the unhealthiness to say 60 make the warming happen at 80% speed, or would it only delay the start of it?

Either way I think this is really cool.

[kjn]

Doesn't FFH have its thawing world mode, where the map gradually turns from snow and tundra to grassland? Might be worth looking at.

[scooter]

One issue is that this fix (+unhealth and +food in capital) does distort food in the capital. By that I mean, say under normal circumstances you have a health cap of 10 and 5 unhealth in a city. You don't get bonus food for that obviously, but you can afford +5 more unhealth before you start losing food. Under this fix, you'd have 80 unhealth (good for -70 food) but +75 food from the palace for a net gain of 5 food. That's pretty significant.

I've got to think there's a way to make a basic formula that gives you +75 food if the capital is at the health cap, and otherwise it gives you the difference between 75 and the amount of unhealthiness.

Another thought - any way to make it so ALL tiles are able to do this? One thing I noticed was that giant desert didn't lose anything - only the good tiles disappeared... Then I remembered if it's based off the global warming mechanics, of course desert tile won't flip. Same with mountains. Seems like it'd be best if all land tiles had an equal chance of sinking.

I like the general idea.

[Tasunke]

I'd like the Idea of Mountains eventually turning into hills, but perhaps stage2 hills no longer being able to sink?

Or simply Peak -> Hill -> Flatland ... and Flatland will thus sink faster by averages.

(might be cool to play this variant in Highlands or Tectonics, with lots of Mountains XD) -> for different land to find later

Would be nice if regular land resources spawned on newly formed Hills/Flatlands.

(might could use something similar to the Hell Terrain mechanic to turn land resources into Sea-Resources when the terrain sinks?)
like Food turns into Fish, Commerce turns into Crabs, and Metals turns into Clams -> with Marble and Stone turning into Whales (only if on ocean instead of coast)

Meanwhile Oil would stay the same. Perhaps add a way to mine Aluminum (and Uranium) from the Ocean floor? XD

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Makes me want to play Alpha Centauri again.

[Tatan]

If there is a way to make it so that seafood resources can appear once enough water tiles coalesce to make it salt water, that might mitigate some of the small cities sizes you're otherwise bound to have, which would make the game more playable. Lots of small cities that grow very slowly are not fun to manage, but this has promise for a fun variant. Could this be Adventure 51 in the making?

One strategy element that leaps out is that if you want to guarantee availability of a resource, you'd better build a city on top of it! Forget elegant dot maps...just settle your bronze, stone, iron, etc., and hope you can get a seafood resource to 'spawn' inside the city's BFC once the land tiles melt away.

Keep in mind, those pictures were taken with an earlier testing version of the mod where I unwittingly gave every city an extra +50 unhealthiness. That has been fixed, but your point still stands. Spawning extra seafood would be a really cool solution, though it might be tricky to implement; I'll look into it!

I assume things like new resources or changing the warming start time would be difficult, but what about the rate of warming? Would lowering the unhealthiness to say 60 make the warming happen at 80% speed, or would it only delay the start of it?

Either way I think this is really cool.

Thanks!
I'm not sure what effect that would have exactly, but I *think* less initial unhealthiness from the palace would slow the rate of GW down and not affect the start date. I used this thread for reference when changing the GW weight values (it's on 3.17's mechanics, but 3.19 didn't touch global warming AFAIK).

Doesn't FFH have its thawing world mode, where the map gradually turns from snow and tundra to grassland? Might be worth looking at.

Oh, yeah, I forgot FFH had that setting! I think the way it works there though IIRC is that the game already knows every tiles' "true" value at the start, and just changes it back at some pre-determined point. Still, it's worth looking in to.

One issue is that this fix (+unhealth and +food in capital) does distort food in the capital. By that I mean, say under normal circumstances you have a health cap of 10 and 5 unhealth in a city. You don't get bonus food for that obviously, but you can afford +5 more unhealth before you start losing food. Under this fix, you'd have 80 unhealth (good for -70 food) but +75 food from the palace for a net gain of 5 food. That's pretty significant.

I've got to think there's a way to make a basic formula that gives you +75 food if the capital is at the health cap, and otherwise it gives you the difference between 75 and the amount of unhealthiness.

Another thought - any way to make it so ALL tiles are able to do this? One thing I noticed was that giant desert didn't lose anything - only the good tiles disappeared... Then I remembered if it's based off the global warming mechanics, of course desert tile won't flip. Same with mountains. Seems like it'd be best if all land tiles had an equal chance of sinking.

I like the general idea.

To answer the easy question first... global warming only affects "valid" tiles--land tiles with a base tile yield. So normally peaks, snow, and deserts are not affected. Snow tiles would be the easiest to fix; +1 production to make them equal to a citizen. Same thing for desert tiles, although there would also need to be a -1 hammer modifier on floodplains and desert hills. Peaks, on the other hand, can't as easily be affected by GW. Even with a tile yield, peaks are still technically water tiles in the XML (presumably for the domination land count) and thus are not considered by the game to be a valid GW target. However, I don't consider this a problem, because it makes sense that mountains wouldn't flood.

As for the unhealth/food disparity, you are right that a simple formula should fix it. Unfortunately, I have no idea how I would implement it; my coding credentials mostly consist of tweaking variables and creating errors.

I'd like the Idea of Mountains eventually turning into hills, but perhaps stage2 hills no longer being able to sink?

Or simply Peak -> Hill -> Flatland ... and Flatland will thus sink faster by averages.

(might be cool to play this variant in Highlands or Tectonics, with lots of Mountains XD) -> for different land to find later

Would be nice if regular land resources spawned on newly formed Hills/Flatlands.

(might could use something similar to the Hell Terrain mechanic to turn land resources into Sea-Resources when the terrain sinks?)
like Food turns into Fish, Commerce turns into Crabs, and Metals turns into Clams -> with Marble and Stone turning into Whales (only if on ocean instead of coast)

Meanwhile Oil would stay the same. Perhaps add a way to mine Aluminum (and Uranium) from the Ocean floor? XD

As cool as a peak->hill->flatland sequence would be, right now such fine tuning is impossible, as the Global Warming mechanisms are pretty blunt. I would have to locate the place where the game defines "valid" GW target tiles and change it to just flatlands, and then create two entirely new mechanics to do the same for peaks and hills.

I don't know exactly how the hell terrain mechanics work in FFH, but it does bear some looking in to for changing the resources. I like the concept of food->fish (and so on), though I also like spacetyrantxenu's idea of spawning entirely new resources upon submergence; perhaps I can implement both!

Makes me want to play Alpha Centauri again.

Go for it, man!



Another idea I have been kicking around are bridges, to make the sudden severance of land routes between cities less painful. I thought maybe I could make forts work here, like making canals for land units over stretches of water; theoretically, I would only have to enable forts to be built on the coast and then give workboats the ability to do so. Presuming I could make it work, is there any interest in that?

[T-hawk]

Spawning extra seafood would be a really cool solution, though it might be tricky to implement; I'll look into it!

Could you tap into the mechanic where mines can pop resources? I guess you'd need an improvement that could go on water tiles. Or else let farms pop seafood; it'll look silly until that tile sinks but you get the desired effect.

Or maybe use the Random Events mechanism, are there any existing events that spawn a resource?

I thought maybe I could make forts work here, like making canals for land units over stretches of water; theoretically, I would only have to enable forts to be built on the coast and then give workboats the ability to do so. Presuming I could make it work, is there any interest in that?

I don't think that works, a fort on a water tile won't enable a land unit to move into it. Maybe you could solve this just by making over-water transport easy, like a boat that costs 20 hammers with no combat strength, 10 cargo capacity, and can't enter ocean. Or add airlift capability to say the harbor.

[regoarrarr]

There's a variant of Diplomacy that does this - after certain years, the coastal squares turn into water, and any units that are in them at that time are "sunk". It's pretty fun.

http://www.maproom.co.uk/maps/deluge/deluge.html