Upgrade the capital land ?

[Blaccraw]

Hello there !

As you see, the idea is in the title.

I just thought it would be cool that our capital is not surrounded by forest, or if we could upgrade plains to farmlands.

It just seems annoying to me that my capital, one of the most cilized countries in the world, is literraly surrounded by trees. The said upgrade could be justified in multiple ways : remove the forests to create farms, agriculture and irrigation systems, to have a better view of the region to see the ennemies coming... That decision could be taken by a player in only one place during the game, so it does not become abusive. It could depend on the level of civilization and other stuff..

I don't have particular ideas for hills / mountains.

For example, Syracusae was blessed thanks to the fertilty of the land which surroundered the city. It would be cool to upgrade it to better stick to the reality.

Then, to feed and hydrate the capital city, it could become interesting to divert rivers, as the Egyptians had been doing , since 3000 BC with the Nile.

It is just a suggestion ! What do you think about this idea ? I also thought that changing the watercourse to irrigate the capital could serve to build better ports, which seem to have taken a big importance in the next update.

Thanks for reading !

 

[Samitte]

Hello there !

As you see, the idea is in the title.

I just thought it would be cool that our capital is not surrounded by forest, or if we could upgrade plains to farmlands.

It just seems annoying to me that my capital, one of the most cilized countries in the world, is literraly surrounded by trees. The said upgrade could be justified in multiple ways : remove the forests to create farms, agriculture and irrigation systems, to have a better view of the region to see the ennemies coming... That decision could be taken by a player in only one place during the game, so it does not become abusive. It could depend on the level of civilization and other stuff..

I don't have particular ideas for hills / mountains.

For example, Syracusae was blessed thanks to the fertilty of the land which surroundered the city. It would be cool to upgrade it to better stick to the reality.

Then, to feed and hydrate the capital city, it could become interesting to divert rivers, as the Egyptians had been doing , since 3000 BC with the Nile.

It is just a suggestion ! What do you think about this idea ? I also thought that changing the watercourse to irrigate the capital could serve to build better ports, which seem to have taken a big importance in the next update.

Thanks for reading !

One of the Devs replied to a similar topic on reddit:

We actually had a conversation about terrain all the way back in 1.3, when we started working on missions for the patch.

Changing terrain made a lot of sense for missions (either as rewards, or as requirements, based on how things would've turned out), but we got pushback from 3D art, who felt like it'd ruin immersion if we changed how terrain were defined, but not what it'd look like on the map.

And they were right, of course, it'd be weird if we went "Ey! You drained the swamp!", and then there's still a swamp right there on the map. Making dynamic terrain on the map is a whole other can of worms, and a gigantic undertaking in itself.

So that's sort of how that conversation ended.

 

[LSF]

One of the Devs replied to a similar topic on reddit:

No need of changing the terrain. Just add a flag to the province if it was improved, like in Common Universalis mod for EU4. It is not the exactly same thing, but it is feasible in an easier way. Though I dont think TS would be satisfied with that.

Also... I hate the reason behind the impossibility. I know some people care about it, but I dont give a shit to graphics. IMHO the map could be plain without any details but rivers and roads, and with different opaque colors differentiating the terrain in that specific map mode. If different terrains meant just different colors then the changing of terrain would be no issue. The 1st thing I do in all PDS games is taking a mod to simplify graphics even though my machine can run the game smoothly. Unfortunately such mods for I:R cant show the roads and are ironman incompatible...

 

[IsaacCAT]

No need of changing the terrain. Just add a flag to the province if it was improved, like in Common Universalis mod for EU4. It is not the exactly same thing, but it is feasible in an easier way. Though I dont think TS would be satisfied with that.

Also... I hate the reason behind the impossibility. I know some people care about it, but I dont give a shit to graphics. IMHO the map could be plain without any details but rivers and roads, and with different opaque colors differentiating the terrain in that specific map mode. If different terrains meant just different colors then the changing of terrain would be no issue. The 1st thing I do in all PDS games is taking a mod to simplify graphics even though my machine can run the game smoothly. Unfortunately such mods for I:R cant show the roads and are ironman incompatible...

I understand your motivation, but for me the I:R map beauty was the thing that made me come back to play the game at the beginning when it was ... well... lacking.

Please, do not downgrade graphics to implement this. I like your idea of the flag.

 

[Ketchup & friends]

One of the Devs replied to a similar topic on reddit:

Have @Snow Crystal and the other devs discussed implementing the proposals you and @Iosue Yu made? (terrain-specific improvements)
if not, one of you 2 should post it at SPQR.

 

[cristofolmc]

One of the Devs replied to a similar topic on reddit:

Thats really strange. They can add fires, volcano explosions, storms, sprawling cities, forts and monuments but cant remove a forest?

 

[Bovrick]

Thats really strange. They can add fires, volcano explosions, storms, sprawling cities, forts and monuments but cant remove a forest?

My first guess is that the visuals of the Terrain aren't really linked to the Territories? Fires/City sprawl appear to be their own routine of adding objects onto the map (and obviously caused a bit of pain to unpick the hardcoded cultures to allow for dominant culture to change building types), Monuments/Volcanos/Forts seem like something put in place that are related to Territories but not necessarily Terrain.

No idea if any of that is right, mind you, but from stuff we've heard before it does feel like a lot of the map wasn't intended to be that mutable in-game

 

[crownsteler]

The trees (and rocks) you see on the map are not objects positioned by coordinates, but are generated based on pixel intensity on a terrain map file. Volcanos, fires, forts, etc are instead generated based on a set of coordinates for each territory. So these latter ones can be toggled on and off based on conditions, but the former cannot as the game doesn't know which trees belong to what territory.