Terrains

[Vincent]

I have some trouble with the terrains: I want to make an other fertile terrain, and I have replaced the jungle by savanna, as fertile as grassland. The problem is no settler wants to build a city on the savanna. Do the settlers build cities only on grasslands and plains, whatever we change the other terrain types ?

[ottok]

hmm? hey this is funy.
it civ2-civ ANY PLACES can make city
(it yuo chasnge also "jungles" rescoures better??)

[Vincent]

No, no, I mean the computer driven settlers don't want to build a city on an other terrain than grassland and plain, whatever I modify the ressources of other terrains.

hmmmm...I've never really looked at this before. How much of the rules.txt have you changed (well, the individual terrain part)? This is strange, but it does makes sense because I've never seen the computer build a city on anything other than a plain or a grassland. Keep screwing around with it and tell us what you find.

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[Mercator]

I also discovered this while making my own maps with custom terrains.
The MapEditor can analyze a map, checking the amount of land/sea bodies, the amount of land and the amount of fertile land.
No matter how you change the rules.txt, it will always count fertile lands as the plains and grassland 'slots'.
I am quite certain that the way the AI handles terrains is hard-coded into Civ2. So, no matter how fertile you make, say, glacier, the AI will avoid it.

Hey, now I think about that... This way you could keep the AI from building cities in a scenario:
One problem I've come across with a lot of scenarios (especially MicroProse ones) is that the AI starts building annoying little cities. Especially, when the city.txt isn't changed you get kinda stupid citynames.
When you would switch grassland and glacier for instance (and the map doesn't have much glacier) you can probably solve this minor problem.

[Vincent]

Even when modifying the comment Jun to Grs, the AI don't want to settle, so it seems we have to do with only 2 settlable (?) terrains, the 2nd and 3rd ones.

My idea was to create a savanna terrain, that is changed to desert by settlers when gvt * 3, and to create dead cities. That works well except that no city is created on this terrain ...
So I'm thinking to replace the plain by the savanna.

I saw some strange settlers behaviours: the automated settlers transform the savanna to desert even in despotism mode, and can irrigate a terrain when not connected to water. Also if we say "irrigate when gvt *1, and mine when gvt *3, settlers only irrigate whatever the gvt. Oh well ...

[Kestrel]

Even where the terrain is defined as un-irrigatable in the Rules.Txt

For example :

Dunes, 2,1, 0,0,0, no, 0, 5, 6, no, 0, 5, 3, Drt, no, ; Drt

I have seen the AI irrigate the terrain (and they were not in a Democracy either).

It appears that some of these rules may indeed be hardcoded in the Civ2 Program and independent of the Rules.txt as you say.