Wild improvements took over my city

from Elemental Forums

I know terrain improvements joining adjacent cities and eating precious city tile space has been discussed at length. But I just had it happen to me in a rather obnoxious way, so I thought I'd offer my thoughts.

Here's a shot of what happened:

My borders had included the two shards and gold mine there in the middle. They were wild, not in city limits. The refugee camp was in his zone, but not built. So after taking Iyuezeat (Kraxis's capital), I blithely built the refugee camp which immediately linked to the new city, and by proxy linked the other three existing wild improvement. Sure, losing 16 tiles is annoying, but even more annoying is this:

Suddenly my capital's existing tiles are within 5 tiles of Iyuezeat and I can't build any further.

You can see where this might be a problem. I've had similar proxy linking trouble with resources that show up after research. They get plopped next to a city but also next to existing improvements I snaked around. If I dare build on it, all those exiting resources it touches are linked.

 

So what to do? Perhaps simply offer a prompt when building. "Do you want this to be joined to <CityName>? Yes / No"

Perhaps offer as an unlimited use "upgrade" the ability to join it to a city or remove it from said city. Cost some nominal amount of materials and take a turn or two to prevent instant, free defense on it.

I tried to wrap my brain around a way to mod this in, but I'm not sure it's possible at this point. 

 

elemental
5,136 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

1.07 made wild improvements no longer take city tiles (when connected to a city). So you are reacting for no reason. Well except maybe the being within 5 tiles of your other city, that would be a minor annoyance.

Edit 2: that also means its now ALMOST ALWAYS in your favor to have resources linked to the city so that they are protected from wandering monsters etc.

 

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Did it? I must have missed that in the changelog. Admittedly, this happened under 1.06.

 

I didn't think I was "reacting" so much as pointing out a surely unintended consequence and offering some constructive feedback on options.  :grin:

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting NStriker, reply 2
Did it? I must have missed that in the changelog. Admittedly, this happened under 1.06.

 

I didn't think I was "reacting" so much as pointing out a surely unintended consequence and offering some constructive feedback on options. 
End of NStriker's quote
Yeah it changed in 1.7. Was a sweet change, I have a city with like 6 things linked up in it and still 37 tiles left to build with!

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting dragoaskani, reply 3
Yeah it changed in 1.7. Was a sweet change, I have a city with like 6 things linked up in it and still 37 tiles left to build with!
End of dragoaskani's quote

 

Well that's cool. It was annoying to lose tiles, but that wasn't my primary concern. My main point was that it didn't give me a choice and completely blocked off my capital from expanding. And as far as I can tell, you can't demolish that type of improvement once built, so I was stymied on expansion.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting NStriker, reply 4

Quoting dragoaskani, reply 3Yeah it changed in 1.7. Was a sweet change, I have a city with like 6 things linked up in it and still 37 tiles left to build with!
 

Well that's cool. It was annoying to lose tiles, but that wasn't my primary concern. My main point was that it didn't give me a choice and completely blocked off my capital from expanding. And as far as I can tell, you can't demolish that type of improvement once built, so I was stymied on expansion.
End of NStriker's quote
You can demolish it, but you can't break the cities lines, so you woulds to start at that gold mine and work your way back towards the city until you got rid of the Refuge in that example you posted.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting dragoaskani, reply 5
You can demolish it, but you can't break the cities lines, so you woulds to start at that gold mine and work your way back towards the city until you got rid of the Refuge in that example you posted.
End of dragoaskani's quote

 

Hmm. You're right. That mostly worked. I was able to blow out that whole line and rebuild. Expensive, but doable.

 

Oddly some other improvement don't want to go. On the south side of Iyuezeat, there are two mines and a shard the AI built into the city. Trying to destroy one in particular isn't working. It asks me if I want to, I say yes, I get the "demolish" noise, and then... Nothing. It's still there. And you can't try to demolish again.

 

For that matter, one of the mines has a shard stacked on it. Probably an old 1.06 bug and I ought to restart a new 1.07 map.

 

Thanks for  the help in working around it, dragoaskani. Still think it would be awesome if you were given a choice from the get go, though. Just another nicety the UI could stand to have.