City is on fire message?

[MarkJohnson]

I sent my archer from Antium to uncover a piece of fog before I decided what I should do in my city. My archer went two hexes on a plains (hill) rain forest and the tile spontaneous combusted? The tile is on fire and my archer barely alive (was fully healed).

I have never seen this before. I now get a message to keep or free city? Is this a City State somewhere that revolted somewhere on the map that I don't know about? I didn't notice any messages recently.

Here's the screenshot if anyone can make sense of this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3280444518

[Rift]

The two aren't related. Forest Fires are part of the Gathering Storm DLC. The city lost enough loyalty from whoever was nearby you to become a "Free City". After several turns, the Free City can request to join whichever Civ was exerting the most loyalty pressure on it, which in this case was you.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by Rift:

The two aren't related. Forest Fires are part of the Gathering Storm DLC. The city lost enough loyalty from whoever was nearby you to become a "Free City". After several turns, the Free City can request to join whichever Civ was exerting the most loyalty pressure on it, which in this case was you.

Yeah, it seems an odd coincident that the fire and convert city went at the same time as the archer caught on fire.

And it was Tamara to the south of me that converted to me. I am learning the cultural victory from a video, and it must be the culture that flipped the city? I never had this happen before, as I usually play conquest or space race.

Thanks for the help - Mark

[jmerry82]

Flipping cities has very little to do with culture in this game; it works through the loyalty mechanic, which is dominated by population.

As for the fire ...
A fire burns for a few turns, during which the woods/rainforest yield of +1 production or +1 food is lost. Most tile improvements are pillaged, while lumber mills are fully destroyed. Any units on the tile take massive damage. Also, the city that owns the tile loses one population when the fire starts. And then the fire can spread to adjacent tiles - woods to woods or rainforest to rainforest, but never crossing over between the two features. So your little fire won't ever get past two tiles as it can't go onto the woods.

Sounds bad? Well, now we get to the positive aspect. When the fire burns out, the tile gets +1 food permanently. And when the woods or rainforest regrows a few turns after that, the tile gets +1 production permanently and the feature's yield bonus is restored. A fire is +2 yields per tile guaranteed, and it can cover a lot of tiles.

I'm currently playing an Apocalypse mode game, and repeatedly setting a large patch of rainforest on fire with my soothsayers. Axum is going to be such a powerhouse once it has a chance to grow back from size 1...

[MarkJohnson]

That's interesting. I have noticed similar issues with volcanoes. I didn't realize a single forest/rainforest tile could spark a fire. I chop so much in my science and space race games, I guess I never noticed it before.

But the city that flipped was a new city from tamara. It was revolting. I was waiting for it to turn barbarian and instead it flipped over to me. Now I'm not sure if I can keep it from flipping back. Is there an easy way to increase pop, other than food?

[jmerry82]

There are only two ways to grow a city.
- Produce food each turn from worked tiles, trade routes, buildings...
- Produce bursts of food by clearing marsh or rainforest or harvesting food resources.

[Rift]

I have a sceenshot of a game I was playing with a friend of mine from a year or so ago. He was learning how to play, so the difficulty was only on Warlord I think? Hungary was the only one left, and after I launched the satellite to reveal all the terrain, there was a huge chunk of mostly Tundra that was burning, and looked like it had burned multiple times. The yields were pretty crazy... Just imagine St. Basil's being built there with some lumber mills. :D

https://steamcommunity.com/id/RiftZM/screenshots/?appid=289070

[jmerry82]

Sometimes, with sufficiently large patches of woods/rainforest, a fire can loop around and just keep burning in a circle for ages. I once had a game on a big Earth map in which parts of Siberia got up to 30+ food and production - and most of that was from one fire that lasted a ridiculously long time.

Fires you start deliberately with Soothsayers (Apocalypse Mode) can't loop like this; unlike natural fires, they always spread at the first opportunity and thus burn each tile the fire can reach exactly once.