Terrain effects-putting together the complete list

[Arralen]

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:

Code:

---

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)

---

[Ballbarian]

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 ) 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.)

[Corwin]

Arralen said:
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.

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.

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

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.
################################################## ##########

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)

[Corwin]

Gandalf Parker said:
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.

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

Any thoughts?

[solops]

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?

[paradoxharbinger]

i think, at the least rivers restrain movement

[Unwise]

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.

[Corwin]

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?