Tactic or Exploit/Bug?

[cryptc]

Found an unexpected feature last night with terraforming and dremers...

A portal + warrior appeared near one of my cities and I decided to clean the tainted land to remove its regen, so I cast 'clean the land' on the hex, and it turned into water, killing the gate instantly (and the warrior disappeared the next turn).

First I thought I'd misclicked and cast lower land instead, but testing that on other gates later showed that you can't cast that on land they are one... then as I cleaned up the rest of the contaminated lands I suddenly understood why it happened...

The land in question was land I'd earlier raised with 'raise the land', and when I cast clean the land on it, it reverted back to it's original state (water).

Since lower land isn't supposed to work on these, I suspect this is more of an exploit than a tactic... just thought I'd mention it...

 

[unmerged(469337)]

I dont find it an exploit, blame the dremers for not checking for stable grounds.
Clean land also returns volcanoes that errupted in water back to water.
But that brings up new tactic for war, turn the land under the unit back to water and then shoot the ship down

 

[cryptc]

Actually, both times I did it, the unit on top of the water did not embark, and when I ended turn it vanished instead of turning into a boat...

 

[unmerged(469337)]

maybe the dremers dont swim never saw one of them on water

 

[unmerged(532595)]

"Usual" units on water simply "disembark" on land, if they happens to "fall" in water after lower lands. But they never "embark" into ships to me.

Didn't try it on dremers. Maybe they really drown?

 

[Darkwing88]

"Usual" units on water simply "disembark" on land, if they happens to "fall" in water after lower lands. But they never "embark" into ships to me.

Didn't try it on dremers. Maybe they really drown?

It looks like dremers cant swim because they down own any harbors.

 

[cryptc]

Did this a couple more time, and once the dremer actually appeared on land next to where I had lowered the gate into the sea... so... random?

 

[Dalwin]

Clean Land takes the hex back to its original state, not previous state, so if it started the game as water, this is as it should be. The same tactic works against you as well. If you raise land to increase the territory that one of your cities can develop and that land then becomes corrupted, you cannot clean it without turning it back into water and losing whatever building was there. This is potentially very inconvenient if that building was part of a chain leading to more advanced buildings.

The thing I don't like is that I cannot tell if volcanic terrain is original or was raised due to a catclysm. Unless you saw the volcanoes rise, it is a gamble to cast clean land on such a space knowing that it may or may not work.