Terrain effects-putting together the complete list
 

Does anybody knows the exact numbers behind modififiers for gold, resources and magic site chances for different types of terrain?

1. Ideally I would like to put together some small table, where each line would like like, for example:

"Farmlands - gold x2, resources x 0.5 , magic chance -20%. (the numbers I used are more or less off the wall).

I would like to do it for all terrain types.

Farmland -
Waste -
Forest -
Mountain -
Border Mountain -
Ocean -
Deep Ocean -


2. Also I would like to confirm how these modifiers are calculated, when terrain is of mixed type, like Mountain/Forest/Farmland province. Are modifieres for resources/gold simply multiplied? What about magic site chances - is only the best modifier used?


3. Finally, just to confirm it, let me list of what I remember about different types of terrain most suited for particular types of magic, and tell me if there is somethingelse that I haven't mentioned.

Waste - good for Death magic
Mountain - good for Earth Magic, Fire(secondary)
Forest - good for Nature
Coastal privinces - good for Water magic
Occean and Deep Ocean 0 good for Water, Nature(secondary)

What else?

Thanks!

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

Plains - Good for Astral. IIRC.

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

bump to the top

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

I think swamp gives battle penalties to units without swamp survival.

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

Aren't there provinces with no terrain type? Or is that a plains?

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

Yes plains has no terrain bit to assign to it in making maps and such. Its considered to be the default if no other terrain is set.

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

Swamp does give penalties to units without swamp survival. -1 att/def IIRC.

Provinces without terrain types are plains.

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

Swamp also gives +2 encumbrance to those who aren't used to swamps.

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

I wanted to post note along the lines of "No hijacking this thread please! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif ", but than I reilized that I wrote myself the topic which said "complete list of terrain effect", so nevermind that.

Personally I am mostly iterested in magic, resources and money modifiers for different terrains, as well as the chances to find specific schools of magic on specific types of terrain.

Does anybody know the answer to these questions?

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

Bump

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.

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

Those are not the same as the randomly distributed sites. Those sites are pre-placed by the map generator and are visible on the map by little icons:

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Decimal Bitmap (3byte?) 2^x Terrain
Number 321098765432109876543210

8192 000000000010000000000000 ="firesite" (vulcano)
16384 000000000100000000000000 ="airsite" (?)
32768 000000001000000000000000 ="watersite" (lake)
65536 000000010000000000000000 ="earthsite" (?)
131072 000000100000000000000000 ="astralsite" (?)
262144 000001000000000000000000 ="deathsite" (house)
524288 000010000000000000000000 ="naturesite" (?)
1048576 000100000000000000000000 ="bloodsite" (????)
2097152 001000000000000000000000 ="priestsite" (menhirs)
</pre><hr />

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

My impression is that they are randomly distributed sites, but random within a certain set of site types. I have not tested this, but it would appear to insure that the given province will contain at least one site out of the specified theme or grouping. I think I understand what you were saying though.

On a side note (for anyone interested) the bit math is really simple.
If you have terrain of plains (0) and want to flag it as containing a fire site (because you named it "The burning Plains"), then:
#terrain prvnbr 8192
0 + 8192 = 8192
To make that same province "nostart",
0 + 8192 + 512 = 8704

You can easily "decompile" it by simply looking at the list of values (that Gandalf kindly posted above http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif ) and finding the largest value that will go into your terrain value and subtract it. Rinse and repeat until you have your complete list of terrain flags.

Pulled this terrain value from a random map:
524418
- "naturesite" 524288
= 130
- "forest" 128
= "large" 2

So the given province is a large forest province containing a random nature site.

(Sorry Corwin, I guess all of this really doesn't help you in your quest for modifiers.)

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

But that exactly what I was asking about. In your example the net result is that forest provinces are more likely to have forest sites than mountain ones.

I never meant that there is a dice bonus. I simply want to put together the list of all terrain types and the most likely magic site types that they can contain. Like forest for nature, waste for death, mountain for earth, etc.


Thanks Arralan. But I saw that post earlier however, before I started this thread.

It explains mechanics nicely, but it doesn't give exact numbers. (or rather Kristoffer wrote some but said that he is not sure of exact values, and that the values that he wrote are just a guess)


And I really would like to know the exact values. To know, for example, which province should I search first - swamp or mountain. (I always thought mountain tend to have the most sites, but in Kris's list it has lower chance than waste/swamp)

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

Interesting. Now all we need to know is what are actual magic site chance modifieres for all these terrain types.

Any thoughts?

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

To have a TEC would be a huge help. Right now I mostly just stumble around and ignore terrain because there are so few clues as to what terrain effects are and how significant they are.

BTW, do rivers do anything at all?

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

i think, at the least rivers restrain movement

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

What rivers are you talking about? You can assign a province the "fresh water" attribute, but I don't think it has any influence on movement.

The rivers in Jason Lutes' maps constrain movement because some provinces are set up not to be adjacent across the graphic of a river, but that's due to the design of the map, not the province properties.

Re: Terrain effects-putting together the complete
 

Oh, and BTW - it looks like in Dominions there are 3 types of magic sites - "common"/"uncommom"/"rare" (plus "unique" flag), according tio the new table that QM sent me yesterday.

Kristoffer's post only mention two types - normal ("Common") and "Rare" magic sites. He said that "rare" site, if randomly chosen, gets re-rolled one more time.

What about "uncommon" sites?