Border Mountain vs. Normal Moutain Provinces
 

I know the auto map generator doesn't produce normal mountain provinces unless you uncheck "impassable mountains".

My question is - would there be a noticeable benefit by manually marking a small percentage (say 1/4) of all Border Mountain provinces to normal Mountains after the "impassable moutains" map is generated? I understand that there are a number of fortress types that are not available because of this?

Also I assume that besides the movement and fortress construction Border Mountain provinces are the same as normal provinces?

Re: Border Mountain vs. Normal Moutain Provinces
 

Border mountains are mountains for the purpose of magic site determination and resources, perhaps also population. They just don't hinder movement.

If you go in and edit the map file after generation, you can mix proper mountains and border mountains as much as you like. What you do want to do beforehand, though, is copy the #defaultmapzoom command value out of the file, because the map editor currently overwrites it on save. That is fixed for the next version, but 3.06 screws it up and map icons will look wrong without the correct defaultzoom.

Re: Border Mountain vs. Normal Moutain Provinces
 

What about fortress construction? Is it true that some nations are missing out on specialized fortresses when normal mountains are not present? If so, it is a significant difference?

Re: Border Mountain vs. Normal Moutain Provinces
 

I'm the wrong person to ask that question. I have not looked much at all into the fortress construction issue, so I have no idea. Generally, I would never make a map that only had full mountains or border mountains, I would always mix them up.

Re: Border Mountain vs. Normal Moutain Provinces
 

Yes some nations are missing out because of this. For example:
Agartha, all ages = Cave Fort
Ulm MA = Peg-Castle (700 defense for 1000 gold)
Niefelheim and Jotunheim = Mountain Citadel (800 defense and 1200).

And there are probably more.

The main issue is that you don't really want to build, for example, a Ramparts when you should get a Mountain Citadel with Niefelheim when building in a "mountain" region; just because the map randomizer marked the province "border mountains".

Re: Border Mountain vs. Normal Moutain Provinces
 

I edit my provinces for this. Many "border mount" provinces dont have enough mountains in them to be getting mountain names or bonuses. And some have so many mountains that they deserve the full mountains designation.

Interesting note... You can flag a province as both border mountain and mountain. It shows up on the map with two mountain symbols and seems to get some double benefits.

Re: Border Mountain vs. Normal Moutain Provinces
 

I think I might write a little perl script to replace border mountains with normal mountains. You could choose what proportion to replace. Then you could use the map generator to produce a map with border mountains (and hence nice impassable bits), and then use the script to fix it. Would that be good?

Re: Border Mountain vs. Normal Moutain Provinces
 

Hmmm... Then I think I might replace about 1/3 of all the border mountain provinces with normal mountains.

Re: Border Mountain vs. Normal Moutain Provinces
 

The only problem I foresee with having some fraction of the border mountains turned into proper mountains is that the players would have no way of knowing what kind of mountain it was until they tried to move through it/build a fort there.

Re: Border Mountain vs. Normal Moutain Provinces
 

If you mouse-over the terrain icon, it will tell you what kind of terrain it is. So border mountains and proper mountains can be told apart even from distance.