Is terraforming offensive?

[Quantum]

I just finished my first game on Transcend, a victory thanks to
the hints in this forum! But I was hindered by some terraforming
problems. Sometimes when I tried to raise or lower terrain, I got
a message like "You have signed a Pact with Yang. You must cancel
the pact before commencing with this action", or something like
that. So I have two questions:
1)Is raise/lower terrain considered offensive if it affects the weather
in somebody else's territory, even if the terraforming is done in
your own territory?

2)If so, how can I tell in advance whether the terraforming is going to affect somebody else? Is there some rule that says you can't
raise/lower terrain within x tiles of a pactmate base? In my game
it seemed random whether or not I was allowed to raise/lower terrain.
Sometimes I was denied even if no Pactmate base was nearby, and other
times I was allowed to raise terrain even with a pactmate base
fairly close.
-Quantum

[Blake]

I quite sure that you are only denied raising terrain if it changes the height of a tile in a pact bros territory. Note that raising a 2000+ square to 3000+ has a massive effect, acting several squares away. Even if you are 8 squares away from the nearest base you may be refused. Raising a 0+ -> 1000+ only has a 1 square radius of effect, so can be done quite close to your pact bro's border.

Ironically generally because coastal bases have such a small sea border your pact brother is allowed to raise most of your tidal harnasses out of the sea, I was pissed off when an AI did that to me, that's the sort of dirty trick I'm meant to be doing.

[johndmuller]

Strangely, it lets you do seemingly more aggressive stuff like removing the AI's sea enhancements (useful to get them to abandon working a square that is also in your base's production area) without an adverse reaction.

quote: Originally posted by johndmuller on 04-05-2001 01:00 PM Strangely, it lets you do seemingly more aggressive stuff like removing the AI's sea enhancements (useful to get them to abandon working a square that is also in your base's production area) without an adverse reaction.

Could you explain that in a little more detail? Beacause in my previous game as the hackers, I undertook a monster terraforming project with 30 sea formers and 20 speeder formers to build an atoll filled with tidal harnesses and boreholes. Then came Pact bro Svensgaard with a colony pod, plopping it in the middle of the atoll. Damned pirate

[Lefty Scaevola]

If it ain't inside the lines of your territry any one else can squat on it. An extra territorial rescoure can be used (first come, first serve) by anybody until kiced off by an incompatible unit or expansion of rival territory.

[Sprayber]

I'm undertaking a fungal aplication to my rivals sea border right now. when I'm done Santiago will drown in the fungas. I already sowed some serious fungas that crept of on one of her bases. She should have know that she was squating on my island.

edit: and is so fun to raise mindworms and release them into the wild to wreck havoc. And now I have sea lurks.
[This message has been edited by Sprayber (edited April 05, 2001).]

[Clear Skies]

I hate this message as it always gets on my nerves. The way I see it, there are 2 ways in which terraforming is offensive:
1. Raising land affects rainfall
Since Planet's prevailing winds are east to west, most rainfall is on the east side of any hill. If you raise the land so your enemy's base is on the west side of a hill, he's not exactly gonna grow like heck.
2. Dropping bases into the ocean kinda annoys some people...
I had one game where I just extracted the michael for a bit, dropping enemies' bases into the sea by using super sea cruiser formers to lower the sea square right next to one of their coastal bases. Yang got pretty pissed. That's why it doesn't let you do it.

[Earwicker]

quote: Originally posted by Lefty Scaevola on 04-05-2001 05:08 PM If it ain't inside the lines of your territry any one else can squat on it. An extra territorial rescoure can be used (first come, first serve) by anybody until kiced off by an incompatible unit or expansion of rival territory.

Even if a square is inside another faction's territory, there is a chance you can send a crawler in to take it from them without diplomatic incident. If it's not being used (outside base radius), there will be no warning preventing you -- even if it's inside a base radius but not being worked.

I have a feeling this might cause their opinion of you to deteriorate but heck, what doesn't cause that?!

What I don't understand is why other forms of terraforming don't cause troubles with your mates. I can plant fungus all over pet Morgan's domain without him uttering a sound, but the moment I try to raise the land, he gets all crazy on me. Hmph!

[johndmuller]

I particularly hate the message when it is only a technical insult to the AI's territory, like when I want to raise the terrain to avoid it becoming a sea square (global warming) and the raising will raise a plot in the AI's territory that isn't even in one of its bases' production areas, just its overall faction territory.

It'sLikeThat: The kind of thing I was referring to in my prior post was UNterraforming and/or fungusing a square in the hope that the AI would move its production unit to another square in the base thus freeing it up for you to produce it with a base production unit or a crawler. This isn't a great approach as it doesn't always work (i.e. if the AI doesn't have any other available squares to produce) and since you've degraded the square you have to waste a unit "holding" it during the time it takes to reenhance the square to make sure that it is you who reaps the benefits when it is terraformed. If a "friendly" opponent moves in next to me, I usually try to stake out the production from as many of the available squares as possible, either directly or with crawlers before their base gets big enough to use them all up; there's usually a price to pay, either in lowered production if you use a crawler instead of direct production or in opportunity costs w/r what else you could have done. There's another kind of annoying thing here too; if you are (directly) producing from a square that another faction could also produce from, you can sometimes lose that square if you build a colony pod or somehow trigger an automatic reallocation of the base and aren't paying close enough attention - the next thing you know, the other faction is producing from there instead of you. As for your specific example, did you have a base of your own in the area too or were you planning to crawler all the production - in the latter case, you could still do that on the sea squares providing that the opponent doesn't start producing from them first; on the land squares too if they aren't in anyone else's land territory. Another method to get someone to lose control of a square without having to have a vendetta with them might be (I have not tried this) to release native live on such a square and hope to have a chance to grab the square before the opponent did after the native life moved on.

[Iskandar Reza]

quote: Originally posted by Earwicker on 04-09-2001 02:29 PM ..... What I don't understand is why other forms of terraforming don't cause troubles with your mates. I can plant fungus all over pet Morgan's domain without him uttering a sound, but the moment I try to raise the land, he gets all crazy on me. Hmph!

which brings me to a question: could you detonate a fungal payload or tectonic payload in your pact-mates area with no incident? or is that an act of war?


--------------------------
Wars going on across the sea
Street soldiers killing the elderly
Whatever happened to unity?
It's like that, it's just the way it is.

[Blake]

detonating Tetonic and fungal payloads is an act of war.
But get this - you can bombard your pactbro's terrain improvements - and it isn't an act of war. The exception is if one of there own artillary units is in range of your unit, then it can engage in a duel, and you get a warning.

[Chowlett]

quote: Originally posted by SMAC Fanatic on 04-07-2001 04:06 PM I hate this message as it always gets on my nerves. The way I see it, there are 2 ways in which terraforming is offensive: 1. Raising land affects rainfall Since Planet's prevailing winds are east to west, most rainfall is on the east side of any hill. If you raise the land so your enemy's base is on the west side of a hill, he's not exactly gonna grow like heck.

Just to nit-pick, it's the other way round. The west is wet due to westerly winds.

[Yxklyx]

On Earth though, the westerly winds (winds from the west) generally create wet areas on the eastern slopes and dry areas on the western slopes.

[big_canuk]

Originally posted by Yxklyx
On Earth though, the westerly winds (winds from the west) generally create wet areas on the eastern slopes and dry areas on the western slopes.

I think this is not quite right. As mountains force moisture laden air up, the moisture forms clouds and falls out as rain. This happens on the windward side, in the case of a westerly wind, on the west side. Then the dry air goes over the peak and down the east side, where it is, therefore, typically drier. For an example look at the Canadian Rockies. (or if you must, the American ones. )

[Sikander]

Originally posted by big_canuk
I think this is not quite right. As mountains force moisture laden air up, the moisture forms clouds and falls out as rain. This happens on the windward side, in the case of a westerly wind, on the west side. Then the dry air goes over the peak and down the east side, where it is, therefore, typically drier. For an example look at the Canadian Rockies. (or if you must, the American ones. )

This seems like how it should work, but there is a lot more to it. I live in the Rockies, and at least here in Colorado it is drier on the Western Slope than on the Eastern Slope. Part of the reason may be that the Rockies are not the first mountains that moisture from the Pacific encounters. There is the Coast Range, and the Sierra Nevadas before Pacific moisture gets a crack at the Rockies. I think part of our weather pattern locally includes Gulf Moisture which get's trapped against the Eastern Side of the Rockies, giving us more rain than the Western Slope. Any meteorologists out there?

[Yxklyx]

No expert here but I do know that one of the driest places on Earth (in northern Chile) is west of the Andes and that there are lush forested areas just east of the Andes in Argentina - while just east of these forests the land is dry. I suppose there could be other smaller mountain ranges at work here though. The way I always saw it is that wind itself is a drying force and mountains block the wind so areas blocked from the wind would not be as dry.