Topic: Do trees grow on mountains?

I ask because I have conflicting experience about it. On the map "desert torunament", I made a forester close to the mountains and it planted a lot of trees on the mountains, but not one of them grew up, they all died small. eventually i realized I had to move the foresters away from the mountains and my wood production suddenly doubled. But then on "four castles" i had foresters who still had a bit of closeness to mountains and I saw that trees were able to grow there (well, sometimes). So, what's the deal? Can trees grow on the mountains? How can I tell if I should make the foresters away from the mountains, or close to them?

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Should the map editor somehow inform the user about forest-friendliness of the various mountains?

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teppo wrote:

Should the map editor somehow inform the user about forest-friendliness of the various mountains?

This is missing currently not only for mountains. Some terrain types do also not allow growing of trees, or: are not tree-friendly.

The new terrain-affinitys do not satisfy the needs of map makers and players i think. Both couldn't see (or know) if the terrain is good for treegrowing. If they have some experience with all of the terrains (currently 61), one could may make a good map, and a player could see, wich terrain is good for treegrowing. But i think its too hard to figure it out. And the 61 terrains could be used randomly. If a mapmaker chooses one terrain which is treefriendly and covers a map area with this type, afterwards he choose a tree-unfriendly terrain and put only some of them in the same area (maybe because it looks better with the treefriendly terrain). The result while gameplay is surprising...

GunChleoc wrote:

but at the moment, the terrain descriptions always assume that mountains are treeless.

Don't rely on the "is"-value. This value has nothing to do with treegrowing.

I think we have a conflict here between the terrain type and the terrain affinity system, they don't agree.

The conflict is not in the code (i hope), its in our brain. Or better: The values for "is" do not reflect what they are for and causes the misunderstanding. We have talked about this earlier also with SirVer but i couldn't find it

Edit:

The only meaning of "treeless" and the corresponding "is"-value i described here:

-- Type of terrain. Describes the build possibilities while gameplay with following meanings:

-- "green": could contain normal buildings and roads

-- "mountain": could contain mines and roads

-- "dry": only roads possible

-- "water": no buildings, no roads, but swimmable (ships)

-- "acid"/"dead"/"unpassable": no buildings and no roads

If, and which, trees could grow is only made with the terrain affinity values. Those are terrain and tree dependend.

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teppo wrote:

If, and which, trees could grow is only made with the terrain affinity values. Those are terrain and tree dependend.

Sure, but the UI does not have to be that complicated.

The forester will mostly plant suitable trees; it should be enough to make the map maker aware of the growth of the most suitable trees.

I think that will make the ui complicated. I could only tell from my view of it, but while creating a map i try to make a nice map and use f.e. mountain meadow terrain not only for mountains. or use desert terrains also as beach. If i have to pay attention not only about the buildability (Buildings could be build/ only roads could be build/ nothing could be build) or the look and feel of the map and have to pay additional attention for treefriendly terrains, its more difficult.

But this could imho be handled with the terrain menu, if the terrain affintys are shown there (which is currently not the case). The difficulty of makmaking would rise in any way.

I have the vague feeling, that there would have been plans to make the grain/maize/wine/thatch/whatever growth depend on terrain type as well. I have not checked whether those have been changed. Anybody knows better?

Not really, but making it this way would make it both harder for mapmakers and for players. Such a restriction to terraintypes wouldn't be a good thing in my opinion.

There is also another question: Does the placing of water ressource affect growing of plants? Surely not, but why not?

Fight simulator for Widelands:
https://wide-fighter.netlify.app/

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Don't rely on the "is"-value. This value has nothing to do with treegrowing.

I think the value had a correct meaning. But when we changed the affinity system to depend on the parameters temperature, humidity and fertility, the "is" value was not updated/removed.

I have the vague feeling, that there would have been plans to make the grain/maize/wine/thatch/whatever growth depend on terrain type as well. I have not checked whether those have been changed. Anybody knows better?

Not really, but making it this way would make it both harder for mapmakers and for players. Such a restriction to terraintypes wouldn't be a good thing in my opinion.

I think there were plans, but they have not been implemented. I agree that that would make balancing maps really hard.

There is also another question: Does the placing of water ressource affect growing of plants? Surely not, but why not?

AFAIK, it does not. I think it should not (although it was realistic) because that would make balancing harder (give a player more water resources -> unexpectedly, the trees grow better).

By the way, trees are planted at the intersections of the grid, while terrain types are a characteristic of the surface, at least visually. If a tree sits at the boundary betweeen two terrains, by which is it influenced?

I think for each field, the average of the six surrounding triangles is calculated. I think there have been plans to move immovables (or was it bobs?) to triangles.

I think that information should be somewhere in the game. not in-game, as it would be way too stuffy and confusing, but as part of some help dialogue, or on some mannual in this site. Most players won't care, but a player has a right to know the game mechanics if he looks for them. Or at least to know which terrains are better or worse.

Feel free to add the information to the Wiki. I do not know where you find the formulae in the source code. Once we have a decent help system in-game, we can copy the text there.

Should the map editor somehow inform the user about forest-friendliness of the various mountains?

I could imagine the following: For every terrain - tree combination, calculate a probabilty that a tree grows (however this is done in the code). For every terrain, choose the best five (or how many trees a ranger chooses from) trees and calculate their average growth probability. Multiply the result with a normalization constant and show it in the terrain selection. I see two ways of choosing the normalization constant: Either the best available tree has 1.0 (or 100%), or a theoretical perfect tree has 1.0 (or 100%).

These values only make sense in the game (when a ranger is working) and not for the initial trees placed by the mapmaker (if he chooses the wrong tree type on a terrain with a value of 0.9, they all will die). Therefore an additional tool could be implemented: Place suitable trees: The player can choose a density (0.0 <= d <= 1.0). For every field, a random number x is chosen (it should not depend on the coordinates) and a tree is placed if x<d. (If x > d, remove the tree if there is any. If there is another immovable, do nothing.) Which tree? Use exactly the same routine as the ranger does.

What do you think of these two ideas?

"Only few people know how much one has to know in order to know how little one knows." - Werner Heisenberg

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