Growth 4–5 Underground?

[freek_o_nature]

Does anything happen? Since it seems there've been some recent changes around different terrain types and their interactions—e.g., some units with terrain recruitment have had their availability in different layers changed, and some of these changes may yet be reverted as bugs—I'm curious about whether any underground terrains react (or are supposed to react) in any way to various other effects, e.g., the Gift of Nature's Blessing global, which increases Growth in each province by its local Dominion score. Overground, this can result in a lot of plains and seas turning into forests and kelp forests, respectively, but are equivalent underground terrains (caves and cave forests) supposed to react to effects like this? If not, is there much of anything they will react to? E.g., does a terrestrial cave province that's connected to an aquatic cave province count as coastal for Lost Land?

[anaris]

I have no hard data but several bits of text suggest that Cave Forests work the same as forests for various purposes

[Loggy]

A little bit of reverse engineering suggests no.

[freek_o_nature]

Originally posted by Loggy:

A little bit of reverse engineering suggests no.

Sorry, I overthink things: no, nothing happens with Growth 5 underground, or no, cave forests and forests aren't mechanically identical? Thanks for the investigating! As far as the original question goes, it's fine either way, I'm just curious about how this mechanic works now.

[Loggy]

Sorry, I should have been more clear. "Cave forests" and "forests" are not identical: the cave forest has both "is a cave" and "is a forest" combined. Various things in the game care about one or the other or check for specific combinations of these parts.

When I dug this a couple of weeks ago, having "is a cave" is one of the criteria that prevents terrain changes from growth/death in either direction.

[crawlers]

Loggy, is there a place where you put all this stuff you discovered specifically in dom6? I am yet to find a dom6 wiki.

[freek_o_nature]

Originally posted by Loggy:

When I dug this a couple of weeks ago, having "is a cave" is one of the criteria that prevents terrain changes from growth/death in either direction.

That is precisely the information I was looking for. Thanks a million! You're one of the best parts of this whole game. ^_^ This stuff you dig up and collect for us all is just crazy valuable, and I really appreciate you sharing this bit of info. If you start a page for your Dominions 6 investigations, please let us know! Thanks again. :)

EDIT: Actually, is it possible that this is what's been going on with coastal and other terrain-based recruitment? That these terrains with tags like "is a forest" and "is a highland" were overpowering or not counting the "is a cave" tag, making units that are recruitable in forests, highlands, etc., recruitable underground when they never should've been? This might explain why Tartaloak (highland recruit) were recruitable in crystal caves on release, but Basajaunak and Basandereak (forest recruit) weren't recruitable in cave forests: cave forests existed in Dominions 5 and were correctly differentiated by the "is a cave" tag, but crystal caves are new and may not have had the "is a cave" tag included correctly.

[Loggy]

Originally posted by crawlers:

Loggy, is there a place where you put all this stuff you discovered specifically in dom6? I am yet to find a dom6 wiki.

At the moment it's scattered all over. I started a thread in the beta forum (of which a bunch of stuff has changed since I did it originally). I'm really waiting for a dom6 branch of Illwiki to throw things together, and to try to do a better job of organising stuff this time around.

(I believe Pencils is aware of the docuwiki side of what needs doing to make a dom6 flavour, just real life and finding time is a challenge)

Originally posted by freek_o_nature:

That is precisely the information I was looking for. Thanks a million! You're one of the best parts of this whole game. ^_^ This stuff you dig up and collect for us all is just crazy valuable, and I really appreciate you sharing this bit of info. If you start a page for your Dominions 6 investigations, please let us know! Thanks again. :)

Thank you, it means a lot :)

I don't know how much dom6 I will find it in me to do. In many ways a lot of things are still the same or are subtly different, and going back and checking mechanics in painstaking detail is less interesting than going and digging them up the first time.

Originally posted by freek_o_nature:

EDIT: Actually, is it possible that this is what's been going on with coastal and other terrain-based recruitment?

Very possible, but I don't really have a good understanding of how recruitment in general actually works as (besides what goes on with Ind's apparently random but not-so-random poptypes) it's much easier just to pop open the game and have a look than try to work through a bunch of disassembled stuff.

The "cave subtypes" are exactly how "multi terrains" worked in dom5, just the UI sees "is a cave plus is a forest" and come up with "cave forest" etc instead. Or in more technical terms...

0x1014 "Flooded Crystal Cave (low income, excellent resources, many more magic sites)" - sea+highland+cave
0x1004 "Flooded Cave (low income)" - sea+cave
0x1080 "Cave Forest (high income, low resources, more magic sites)" - forest+cave
0x1010 "Crystal Cave (low income, excellent resources, many more magic sites)" highland+cave
0x1020 "Drip Cave (excellent resources)" swamp+cave

Also maybe of interest, the nexus might use the 3rd now but the other two are I don't think used. I don't know if vast works or if infernal waste has a different appearance or anything though

0x200000000 ", Vast (armies will not clash, cannot be owned)" (this is a "modifier" like rivers are)
0x400000000 "Infernal Waste (void of life)"
0x800000000 "Void (very low income, many magic sites)"

There is also an inferno.map and inferno.d6m in /data suggesting that maybe at one point that Illwinter were planning on having an actual inferno map instead of the abstracted version, but that was never present even in the very first beta build we had.