Should farmlands be a terrain type?

[rasakblood]

Short version: Should farmlands even be a terrain type? Could It not be represented by pre existing development and buildings instead? Perhaps even replaced by a "fertile soil" terrain type if we want to keep a way to make the map more interesting and push players and ai towards certain locations.

Longer version: Farmlands seems very out of place in the terrain selection available. Its very existence imply human activity. But that means many places at the start date do not really make sense to have farmlands. Mechanically grasslands or farmlands probably will not make or brake anyone's future game. But it do effect peoples player fantasy and how they feel/think about places. Replacing farmlands with "fertile soil" could keep all the same mechanical uses of farmlands while also allowing places that historically was not extensively farmed until after the start date to be represented in a way that makes more sense.

 

[GenericUsername1444]

Irrespective of how flawed or outdated the system is, I think we're way too far into the development cycle of the game for such a core mechanic to change.

 

[One_Eyed1]

Considering that we won't be able to change vegetation in location through de-forestation or some other type of investment, I think farmlands gives an unfair static buff to those who have it. The same could be said about countries that are within the Mediterranean climate zone or are mostly made up of flatlands, but those actually feel justified by the fact that you cannot throw a bunch of money and workers into the sky to make the winter go away or turn mountains into a field, whereas you can hire people to chop down trees, and start farming.

I think the ideal solution would be to remove farmlands and have a fourth terrain category of "fertility", but I doubt Tinto would want to introduce this change this far into the game's development (but i could see it being a DLC...). In the end it's not that big of a problem that I would consider the system badly designed, but it is worth pointing out

 

[Aquila SPQR]

Yes, if terrain with a lot of peasants and farms can turn into this "farmland" terrain type.

If not, then no.

 

[Austregisel]

I don't know, it doesn't seem wrong to me to give the Europeans, Indians around the Ganges, Egypt and China a lot of farmlands that will always leave them with a high population and high food production

 

[Álvaro Núñez de Lara]

I don't think so. Especially when we have development already. Farmlands at most should be a dynamic modifer that you get in provinces where you have developped a lot of levels of your agricultural RGO, as long as it is on grassland and maybe other conditions such as being near a river or in certain type of climates only.

 

[Daniel the Finlander]

I basically said the same things in another thread. If dynamic terrain was a thing, then sure we could have it, but without that it just seems weird, because now farmland is detached from development and population. It won't go away if everyone dies and the land stops being farmed, and it won't appear when land is colonized and turned into farmland.

Repurposing it into "fertile soil" sort of terrain would be a good alternative to removing it entirely. Putting it in places like Ukraine and some parts of Americas with good potential for agriculture, despite lack of actual settled peasant population.

 

[Conde de Montanelas]

Should farmlands be a terrain type?
Definitely.

Should it be independent from development, local RGO and/or food production, population and climate?
Not really.

Ideally, we would have a location vegetation cover split up in percentages, like 50% woods + 20% forest + 30% grasslands (as an example).
These percentages could then shift according to the usage of the land. If food production and/or an RGO like fruits or wheat increases its output, alongside a significant portion of the location's population devoted to this activity, then those 30% grasslands could slowly start being turned into farmlands. As time goes by, even the woods and the forest could start getting "eaten" away by farmlands, though not so easily as the grasslands.

Inversely, if the same location gets depopulated and/or devastated by one or several negative events, like war(s) or natural disasters (floods, droughts, volcanic eruptions, etc.), and if there already was some percentage of land usage devoted to farmlands, then said farmlands could drop in area, even disappearing completely.
If that location sees a long-term drop in population, then nature could "reclaim" some ground, and the area percentage of woods and forest could increase at the expense of grasslands.

Of course, this kind of split vegetation cover would have an impact on battle calculations, so I doubt it's feasible (likely not). But IMO it'd be more realistic (and very cool).

 

[viola]

It makes sense for Farmland to exist as a terrain type, what doesn't makes sense is that such a terrain type, which is explicitly described as a type of terrain that exists because of human activity, can't be something that can also be destroyed or created by the player and the AI nations, you know, the actual humans who do activity.

 

[Bisonmask]

No. This suggestion has been made a lot and it's correct every time. If terrain isn't changeable they should just make existing farmland into grassland and give it higher development

There's no reason Ukraine or the American Midwest should be impossible to turn into farmland when that's exactly what happened irl

 

[Braziler]

It shouldn't. I think it would be like having earthworks on the relief map. We already know that soil fertility is associated with climate and hydrography, which are two things we have in the game, so we could have them representing a soil fertility gradient. We could also have a building(s) representing the planted locations. The vegetation map mode should seek to represent the conditions before human intervention, as much as possible. Who knows, maybe vegetation could impact construction time and lose its effect over the course of researching advances.

 

[Ispil]

It's not my favorite thing, but it looks like it can at least be changed via effect despite no graphical change. So in the worst case I can make a decision to "clear up more land for agriculture" on a location-by-location basis that flips the vegetation to farmland. Maybe tie it to a development requirement or something.

A bit clunky, but having it automatically tick over at higher development is not great. For one, there's no guarantee that every location in the game with farmland vegetation will actually meet that minimum. Two, it's not necessarily a function of development itself, but rather a function of what extent that land has been "set aside" to be forested in the first place.

Or I suppose a better approach would be to track how much land per location is forested/wooded and then have a targeted action to "clear out" each individual "parcel" of that land for agricultural use, at the cost of removing it for lumber use.

Could make a whole system out of the nature of land in a location. Might even be able to account for areas where agriculture is harder without particular plough design (something about the Steppe? I can't recall). The resulting "vegetation" of a location is simply whichever one breaks past 50%.

 

[taylor320]

So are people saying that its better to remove historical farmland and change it so something ahistorical because you can't make new farmland? That seems a bit backwards to me

 

[HansFlammenwerfer]

So are people saying that its better to remove historical farmland and change it so something ahistorical because you can't make new farmland? That seems a bit backwards to me

More like make a location modifier to determine "arability" of the land, regardless of whether the land is farmland at 1337 or not. That way, farmlands are not in and of themselves a location, rather, anywhere that is arable can be farmlands. This will put Europe (which is heavy with its farmland distribution) comparable to places like China or America which had high farmland potential, but had not yet been exploited.

 

[taylor320]

More like make a location modifier to determine "arability" of the land, regardless of whether the land is farmland at 1337 or not. That way, farmlands are not in and of themselves a location, rather, anywhere that is arable can be farmlands. This will put Europe (which is heavy with its farmland distribution) comparable to places like China or America which had high farmland potential, but had not yet been exploited.

But farmland is topographically different from grassland or any other terrain type. If you think other regions should get more farmland then make an argument for it in the respective maps threads. I guess i just don't understand people arguing to remove a feature of the game.

 

[taylor320]

maybe. depends on the code technology i hope is ready soon.

Changing it in the game-logic is trivial. Its just that it will not change how it looks in terrain mapmode.

Btw it looks like the team may be working on a way to change terrain that will be reflected on the map.

 

[Ispil]

Btw it looks like the team may be working on a way to change terrain that will be reflected on the map.

If you read more of that thread, they more-or-less admitted defeat on that front. So it won't be in the base game (consequentially), but will be moddable.

 

[HansFlammenwerfer]

But farmland is topographically different from grassland or any other terrain type. If you think other regions should get more farmland then make an argument for it in the respective maps threads. I guess i just don't understand people arguing to remove a feature of the game.

I don't think there should be more farmlands in 1337, however, over time there should be more farmlands.

Since Johan said that terrain cannot change over time, I'm sympathetic to the idea that arability of land should a location modifier and not a terrain type, so that arable land across the world can be turned into "farmland", rather than being strictly worse than Europe because of an engine limitation.

 

[SolSys]

If you read more of that thread, they more-or-less admitted defeat on that front. So it won't be in the base game (consequentially), but will be moddable.

To clarify:
You will be able to mod effects on a location, but the graphical terrain presetation will remain unchanged.

 

[AHumpierRogue]

No, it doesn't make any sense. "farmland" in game should just mechanically be a high-dev rural location on good terrain. Having it be a bespoke thing is just odd as it stands and just comes across as Tinto being a bit confused with their own systems.