Raising Land (or Lowering it)

[freshman]

Fitz, thanks...I understand about Planet not giving 0 eco - but going from FM to Green does make sense for Morgan if running Wealth in that potentially 50 eco-damage will go to 8 eco-damage which means pops go from 1/2turns down to 1/12turns. It is a little easier for Formers to keep up with - when eco-damage ISN"T 0.

Adal,
the Gaians! That's pretty funny.

Hey - my mistake (I mentioned before that non-endangered squares go washed): in truth only the endangered squares got washed.
What fooled me was that when I raised a square to help out adjacent endangered squares - it actually CAUSED MORE endangered squares - which did get washed - I just assumed that no endangered squares got created from a raise!

Here's my elevation pre-raising, post-raising
Pre-raising:
_____-094__236__10____
880__-190_-310__10__1050
934__814__10B__10*__804
1088_1468_10__-172__408
______922_10___632______

B = base (endangered)
* = where my Formers are raising

Post-raising (base didn't get raised, lake did - but endangered, sea (-310) rose well above, 2 squares which weren't endangered now ARE!):
_____-094__236__10____
880__-190__390__10___1050
934__814__10B_1424__10
1088_1468_10___10___10
______922_10___632______

Is the explaination for this that dirt to make a mountain has to come from surrounding region (conservation of dirt principle)?
The numbers are a little suggestive, sort of:
804->10 loss of 794
10->1424 which is 414 over 1010 (say 1000 dirt comes from thin air - the rest has to come from somewhere)
-310->390 which is 380 over 10 (the basic elev to handle level requirements)
that's 414+380=794! (the extra came from a square)
But that doesn't explain the loss of 408->10 square...hmmm...

I tried to raise the 1424 once more, but got a Treaty-violoation warning - even though the level explaination would not effect anything in his territory.

Anyway - the level 2 1424 square made those potentially drowned squares into simply washed ones when the sea rose 66m.

Hey I did notice that the river was redirected to go through the lowered squares after raising - so beware.

[Fitz]

Okay, to attempt to recreate what happened:

before:

o	c	l2
c(b)	c(f)	c
c	o	c

after:

c	c	L2
c(b)	L2(f)	c
c	c	c

where:
o = ocean shelf
c = coastal
L2 = 1001+
(b) = base
(f) = former

What happens is that if you raise a square from level one to level two, which is what you did, all surrounding squares must be at least level one. Therefore any ocean shelf become coastal (level 1) and all the coastal stay coastal (level 1), and your base does not change elevation. If you had been able to raise the square again, it would have looked like this:

L2	L2	L2
L2(b)	L3(f)	L2
L2	L2	L2

because all the surrounding squares of a level 3 (L3) square must be a minimum of level 2 (L2). Notice that the upper right most would not change elevation. Furthermore, the effect ripples outwards from the raised square. Any squares outside this block of nine, adjacent to the outside squares, must comply to the rule. Therefore, if any were ocean shelf, they would become coastal.

The reason you got a territory warning was this ripple effect. You cannot alter the elevation of a square that is in a Treaty partners territory. If you raise a square high enough, you begin to affect squares 3 and 4 distant from the central square. If one of these distant squares that will have it's elevation affected is in a Treaty partners territory, no dice.

Note that this doesn't apply to a Vendetta. I would hazzard a guess that you are allowed to affect a Pact brothers territory, and aren't allowed to affect a Truce partner's territory, but I don't know for sure.

[freshman]

It was a pact brother which complained.

I do understand the ripple effect and unless my calculations were off, the ripple stopped right before his territory.

I'll double check again.

Question: is sea international? How do you tell whose territory it belongs to?

Any explaination of why some land got lowered during a raise operation?

[johndmuller]

Fitz:

Do you know why the +804 and +408 went to +10
It is not just reshuffling all the level 1's as the +10's didn't change.

It looks like raising the +1468 would have the least wierd effect, although if you were trying to keep the base as a port, it wouldnt work for that (unless you then lowered an adjacent sea tile).

The "conservation of dirt" theory doesn't do very well in a case where one is raising up a mountain as in that case everything goes up and there doesn't seem to be a corresponding sinkhole created somewhere else.

In general, the territorial actions at sea are much looser and interesting things can be done (like changing the terraforming out from under the AI's workers to get them to abandon a tile). In some game versions, a land base has at least some authority over immediately adjacent sea tiles, but in some of the first game versions it was first come first served.

[Fitz]

The quickest explanation I can think of is that freshman made a mistake and thought he was looking at a certain square, but was actually looking at another.

If you still have the game, you can double check it so long as their elevation hasn't changed for another reason.

Another is that sea levels rose right before the terraforming took affect, dragging those squares down, then they were re-raised. This is unlikely given that other squares that were un-affected by the raising stayed at the same level, instead of decreasing by some amount.

I can't think of another reason off hand. There should be one though.

[freshman]

I'll post a pre-terraform-raise game save tomorrow if you guys want to take a look - I'd really like this mystery cleared up if you guys can help out I'd be grateful.

2 issues
1) what caused the treaty complaint on a subsequent raise?
2) what caused 2 squares to sink?

Unfortunately, my save is at home...Also it is a OCC game...

[Blake]

Originally posted by freshman
2) what caused 2 squares to sink?

Rivers, prehaps? When changing the terrain rivers do some rather whacky stuff, I dont think they even need to flow through a square to alter it's elevation.


The only time your allowed to raise another factions land is when they are at vendetta with you (naturally [hah!], this constraint does not apply to the AI, thankfully it only rarely raises terrain), you are however allowed to connect two landmasses, which may result in borders being changed. Also if you really need to raise some terrain you can fool the checks.

####|       
#12#|      # = land (<999), | = neighbours land.
####|

Normally, you would not be allowed to raise tile 2 twice, as the ripple effect would cause your pact bro to complain. However if you start raising 2 with one former, then use more than twice as many formers to raise tile 1 twice (to 2000+), former #2 happily continues to raise terrain, and raises the tile to 2000+, thus raising a big strip of pact bros land. Good for stealing sea from the pirates, or when you REALLY need to stop those boreholes from getting sunk.

[freshman]

Blake,
Yeah - the river got rerouted to the newly created endangered squares, but I thought that was a Post-calculation taken into acount after elevation changes. It may actually in fact be the cause - but by what formula I don't know.
The 4 of us ought to be able to figure this out!

Hey - by the way I reloaded and tried surviving the sea rise without a pressure dome (sold it before the rise) - and discovered that half the population was killed, but that an automatic pressure dome was indeed created during the wash cycle - even though I was producing something else. So that confirms what others have said. I don't know what the minimal population needed is to survive...

This terrain lifting/washing/auto-pressure-doming phenomena certainly has been the most interesting aspects of my very first OCC game.

[Blake]

Rivers usually reduce land to 10, because they must always flow downhill or be level, this means they usually carve a height 10 valley where they flow, VERY dangerous in terms of global warming, because the entire length of rivers can get washed.

[Earwicker]

Originally posted by Adalbertus
Really, it have been the Gaians - once, and the other were University. Therefore I think the other factions do play a role in warming. But even if you share tech for Tree Farms and Centauri Preserves - will the AI build them?

I have commonly seen the Drones be responsible for rising sea levels. That's usually sufficient cause for me (running a high planet rating) to absorb their faction in the name of Planet.

[freshman]

So I found an older save that I brought up to speed again with my terraforming. When level up fininshes on the following turn, the river gets re-routed to newly created 10m land which was previously higher. Blake believes this is because of the river. My question is what are the simplest algorithm estimates as to how this works - because raising the land didn't affect any squares where the OLD river ran - it should have been unaffected - guess not. You kind of have to see it to believe it.

It did come from a Mac save so I'm not sure if you guys will be able to see it - we'll see.

My next challenge is to save all my tidal harnesses from being lifted out of the sea because the council voted in a Solar Shade overwhelingly. -ugg

When I have some time I'll run some more tests with raising land near or on a river. Wierd stuff.

[Fitz]

I'll have to see how the river runs, but your point is well taken Blake. If it is technically allowed to run to a square of the same elevation level, but the actuall elevation number must be higher or = for it to happen, I can see that they might be reduced to height 10.

I will download the attachment from home if I get a chance this weekend and examine it under a immaginary microscope.