Adaptation traits are useless.

[dronikal]

1. You can get most useful adaptations from research.
2. There is almost no meaning behind climate. You just get the same effect in different color.
3. Frozen is a highlight due to 1 tome making it useful.

In summery climates need rework with specific bonuses to make them valuable. From there adaptation traits should highlight those characteristics or at least add some more bonuses.

I'm sure people can provide some other arguments or pain points about climate so might as well have a discussion and give some constructing feedback.

[Terrkas]

They do have some uses. You can turn desolate into your climate and you can fight realmtraits like Blizzards on ice or no healing on desolate with it.

[Azunai]

They aren't super powerful, but zhey only cost 1 point now, so i think they aren't a big issue.

For example in the 2nd story map of the empires expansion (oasis map) i found desert adaption a pretty useful trait. Certainly worth a single design point if you customize races (i played the map with a feline race that has desert adaption by default)

[MattStriker]

They're really situational and depend on the realm settings. If you play on a map with X climate dominant, they are quite useful. If you don't...eh.

Except for maybe swamp adaptation because your terraforming spell lets you turn terrain into something every other leader on the map will utterly loathe :P.

[Sifer2]

Yeah until they get around to adding other tomes like the Frost one that transforms your people to love the climate, and a gives similar city spells to modify the climate naturally the others are not nearly as good. I think the upcoming Primal DLC would be a great opportunity for them to do it since were probably going to get new Nature tomes.

[NorthernDruid]

Swamp adaptation has the Herbalist synergy, guaranteeing you a decent set of bonuses for it.

Frost adaptation has synergy with the frost tomes, obviously

Desert adaptation is the main one without any obvious utility, under-the-hood you get a 50% chance (I believe?) of summoning phoenixes with the summon greater animal spell which is pretty sweet but also pretty niche.

Underground Adaptation is it's own niche kinda separate from the others.

Overall the adaptation traits are still a bit undertuned, especially with how overcosted the new terraforming spells are.

[DDkiki]

Originally posted by NorthernDruid:

Swamp adaptation has the Herbalist synergy, guaranteeing you a decent set of bonuses for it.

Frost adaptation has synergy with the frost tomes, obviously

Desert adaptation is the main one without any obvious utility, under-the-hood you get a 50% chance (I believe?) of summoning phoenixes with the summon greater animal spell which is pretty sweet but also pretty niche.

Underground Adaptation is it's own niche kinda separate from the others.

Overall the adaptation traits are still a bit undertuned, especially with how overcosted the new terraforming spells are.

Frost adaptation actually just redundant with ice tomes, you are just wasting 1 trait point for thing you will get anyway.

Underground is terrible because well...underground in this game is terrible.

Swamp is good for ignoring rivers at least.

[Balekai]

Originally posted by DDkiki:

Originally posted by NorthernDruid:

Swamp adaptation has the Herbalist synergy, guaranteeing you a decent set of bonuses for it.

Frost adaptation has synergy with the frost tomes, obviously

Desert adaptation is the main one without any obvious utility, under-the-hood you get a 50% chance (I believe?) of summoning phoenixes with the summon greater animal spell which is pretty sweet but also pretty niche.

Underground Adaptation is it's own niche kinda separate from the others.

Overall the adaptation traits are still a bit undertuned, especially with how overcosted the new terraforming spells are.

Frost adaptation actually just redundant with ice tomes, you are just wasting 1 trait point for thing you will get anyway.

Underground is terrible because well...underground in this game is terrible.

Swamp is good for ignoring rivers at least.

Yep Swamp is the most useful overall because of Swampwalk, Riverwalk, it's difficult terrain property (Artic and Sand cost 6 Move Points, Swamp 8 like Forests).

So it's a great defensive feature in and around your Kingdom's borders, slowing down attacks from roadless directions while speading up your reaction time.

The other two tomes are really only worth it for Maps with the respective Biome dominating the land. Especially if your planned Tome progression will not unlock terraform spells

[DDkiki]

Originally posted by Balekai:

Originally posted by DDkiki:

Frost adaptation actually just redundant with ice tomes, you are just wasting 1 trait point for thing you will get anyway.

Underground is terrible because well...underground in this game is terrible.

Swamp is good for ignoring rivers at least.

Yep Swamp is the most useful overall because of Swampwalk, Riverwalk, it's difficult terrain property (Artic and Sand cost 6 Move Points, Swamp 8 like Forests).

So it's a great defensive feature in and around your Kingdom's borders, slowing down attacks from roadless directions while speading up your reaction time.

The other two tomes are really only worth it for Maps with the respective Biome dominating the land. Especially if your planned Tome progression will not unlock terraform spells

Yeah swamp adaptation + forest walking is a pretty nice movement buff for cheap, if we could disable autobuild of roads in cities it might would've even better.

But i dislike how they made adaptations in general because changing i zone at a time is just annoying, but there are no hexes on global map to spread your terrain like before :C sector system is what killed climate/adaptation in this game.

[Midas]

Adaptations also have a very specific niche use in that the animal summoning spells from nature have different chances of different animals showing up depending on the terrain you use it on. So if you want a lot of a specific kind of animal, having a specific terrain can make that more likely.

[Noin Trongaz]

Originally posted by dronikal:

1. You can get most useful adaptations from research.
2. There is almost no meaning behind climate. You just get the same effect in different color.
3. Frozen is a highlight due to 1 tome making it useful.

In summery climates need rework with specific bonuses to make them valuable. From there adaptation traits should highlight those characteristics or at least add some more bonuses.

I'm sure people can provide some other arguments or pain points about climate so might as well have a discussion and give some constructing feedback.

I personally really like the Underground Adoptation. I made a Dwarf faction and played the last game with the self imposed rule to only have cities underground.
First of all, you always start underground. That makes for a great defensive position, as in most cases you can only get attacked through the Cave Entrance. You can prepare it for eventual invasions by putting the Spell Nullifier further away from it. I guess you can make it even worse by putting a defensive special improvement on that province. If you want to be extra protected you can build an outpost with walls and a watch tower + teleporter on the province above the entrance so the enemy has to siege it first or risk being hit in the back / having reinforcements cut off.

You get tunneling immidiately. Normally you would have to spend Imperium on it. Once you cleared all the earth in your starting area, you normally have a much richer capital than everyone else. In every game I had, my starting location had something like 4 gold, 3 stone, a couple of mana nodes and 1 or 2 strategic resources + a wonder basically next to your capital so you can have all of them by turn 10 without even having to build +1 to max range. If an enemy comes with several stacks while you are outnumbered? Put your strong stack on the cave entrance and they will only be able to fight you 1 stack at the time.

Playing against another human, attacking someone who has a capital underground is a nightmare as you have no idea what to expect, your movement and seeing range is reduced and you can be marching to your doom.

In short, Underground Adaptation is the strongest 1 point trait by far and can be stronger than many 2 or even 3 point traits.