Terrain effects-putting together the complete list

[Gandalf Parker]

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.

[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]

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?