Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

I have found this thread fascinating, as I did not know some of this stuff previously. I took the liberty of creating a page up on the Wiki for the info presented thus far.

For those more knowledgeable than I, please fill in the tables with the appropriate data, and when you finish with your economic compilation Corwin, please post it up there as well.

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

Sure, I'll do it.

But the additional info seems to be slow in coming - I still don't know answers to several of my questions.

I guess it's because a lot of people have "gut feelings" about terrain, but fewer know hard facts for sure.

Still I hope such person would step forward and will be kind enough to share his knowledge. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

Not yet. Right now, I'm making an excel spreadsheet that lists where I found the site, the type of site it is, the name of the site, and the effects of the site. Hopefully, when it gets large enough for the data to be meaningful, it'll give us some kind of idea what terrain has the best chance of giving an Astral site, for example.

Of course, it'll take time to compile it all, but I'm putting them in as I go and it's at around 100 entries right now.

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

You do know that there is a spreadsheet such as this already for Dom2, right? Does Dom3 add bunch of new magic sites?

Also while some usefull information can certainly be gained from such experimental aproach that you use, there is one potential problem with it. There are three categories of sites - "rare" , "common" and "unique", and the game mechanic treats them very differently. If you are just collecting data from within the game by observing different magic sites in different terrains, it's not possible to reliably distinguish these sites(unless you collect statistic from huge number of games).

Not saying its a useless approach by any means - it is not. Just pointing to an possible issue with it.

EDIT: Oh, and some site effects are hard to notice, because they are not always listed. For example some sites burn undeads without saying so in the description. And IIRC some sites affect the scales despite the fact that they don't say so.

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

I didn't know there was a spreadsheet already. Do you have a link to it?

I don't think it's going to turn out that I'll find all the sites and distinguish the effects. I'm thinking it'd be more useful for site searching. Like, say I want more fire gems, so I take a look at the spreadsheet and filter it and whatnot and see that, statistically, Wastelands give the best chance at fire sites so I'd begin to expand towards wastelands. Plus it should provide some useful information besides that. I think it'd be somewhat useful and it only takes a minute to fill in the blanks on the spreadsheet so I'll see what happens.

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

I don't have the link, but I have the spreadsheet itself. I can send it to you if you PM me your email address.

(Just checked - it has 433 sites in it, so it can save you some time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif )

What it doesn't have is unique/rare/common attribute. It also doesn't include the terrain, other than surface/underwater flag.

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

Thanks! I sent you a PM.

I'll take a look at it and see what it's all about. I probably still continue my own though, if for nothing other than for my own benefit. I'll post it up when it hits a big number anyway in case anyone is interested.

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

You are welcome. I've sent you the file.

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

This is from Dom2 - but there's no reason to assume values have changed
You can see from this that terrain does not give preference to sites of a specific path (who came up with that, anyway?), but that the sites themselves are individually restricted to some terrains. From this could result a 'preference' of e.g. nature sites in woods, simply from the fact that most sites which can appear in forests may be nature sites. That does not mean, though, that there's any 'dice bonus' for nature sites in forests.

################################################## #########

MAGIC SITE FREQUENCY
Kristoffer O posted 03 April, 2004 10:46

Not sure of the exact numbers.
(I'm not sure of the specifics. Waste might be 30, swamp and mountain 20. 'just a guess.)
I guess it works like this:

Magic: (site freq) + 30
Waste: (site freq) + 20
Swamp: (site freq) + 20
Mountain: (site freq) + 10
Forest: (site freq) + 10
Farm: (site freq) - 20

Only the most beneficial counts.

If site: Check what site. Random.
If site not possible: Reroll.
If site unique and already in the game: Reroll.
If site possible and rare: Reroll once.

Many nature sites are common but restricted to forests etc.

Unique sites are also rare or common. Inkpot end is unique and common. Crown of Darkness is rare.

No blood under water IIRC. Not sure about unholy.
################################################## ##########

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

The method is probably the same, but the terrains have expanded. Here is the new terrain chart and you can see that there are some important changes pertaining to magic sites.

"small" 1
"large" 2
"sea" 4
"somewater" 8
"mountain" 16
"swamp" 32
"waste" 64
"forest" 128
"farm" 256
"nostart" 512
"manysites" 1024
"deep" 2048
"cave" 4096
"firesite" 8192
"airsite" 16384
"watersite" 32768
"earthsite" 65536
"astralsite" 131072
"deathsite" 262144
"naturesite" 524288
"bloodsite" 1048576
"priestsite" 2097152
"edgemount" 4194304

The numbers are something called "bit math" in programming. It means that a province can be assigned more than one of these settings. So a province could be a large, no start, forest farm, earth site province.