Once again: Hidden Specials

ramses II. · November 11, 2002, 02:44

As you know, grasland covers hidden specials fields.
If the pattern matches and there's a shield on the field, it's a special field. Otherwise not.

Scouse Gits · November 11, 2002, 05:02

Hidden specials can also be found from grassland tiles with no shield.

----------------------------

SG(2)

Scouse Gits · November 11, 2002, 05:37

Your best indicator for hidden specials is the fact that every hut has a special two squares away either to the NE or SW - if you can't see one it has to be a hidden.

SG[1]

p.s. yes that does mean keeping track of exactly where those early huts lay...

Straybow · November 11, 2002, 11:23

¤–¤–¤–¤–¤ *** First, take a look at a region with lots of grasslands. The shields
¤–¤–¤–¤–¤ *** are in this very simple pattern. You can go "three up, one right"
–¤–¤–¤–¤– *** and stay on the shields, but you can't go "three right, one down"
–¤–¤–¤–¤– *** and have three in a row on shield grass (try it, you'll see).
¤–¤–¤–¤–¤ *** *** It might work out that the only hidden specials you've seen
¤–¤–¤–¤–¤ *** on the game you experimented with were all on shield grass.

I contributed a free tutorial to one of the Succession games a while back. I'm currently negotiating a deal with PBS for a documentary version entitled "Crouching Buffalo, Hidden Specials"

Meanwhile, catch the previews in the old thread The Sticky Mouse Senate starting on post # 259:
Sticky Mouse Senate (259) (note shield & plain grass in same pattern)
Sticky Mouse Senate (272) and the two following posts

rah · November 11, 2002, 11:47

Yeah, many moons ago, I thought that the grassland had to have a shield on it for it to be a possible.

But much to my surprise. I mined a grassland river square once to boost production and was quite pleased when it turn into a silk. Now if I have settlers momentarily idle, i'll check a few out to see if i get lucky.

RAH

La Fayette · November 12, 2002, 13:41

I would advise anyone to read the posts mentioned by Straybow: the pictures make it very clear to understand.

(BTW Straybow, who or what is PBS?)

rah · November 12, 2002, 14:52

PBS=Public Broadcasting Service.

RAH

Straybow · November 13, 2002, 15:13

Once upon a time I had a website, but it was on geocities and their in-house javascript page editor has a habit of crashing users' browsers (various makes and versions).

So that one was abandoned in place (as engineers like to say).

I signed up with another provider, worked on preparing a new site, then the provider decided they were no longer going to offer the free sites, or even cheap-ish sites to compete with some other hosts, but instead concentrate on business sites only.

One of these days I'll get around to signing up with a decent host service, then my brilliance will be on display for all to see

La Fayette · November 13, 2002, 19:34

Quote:

Originally posted by Straybow
, then my brilliance will be on display for all to see

(La Fayette, saying thank you to Apolyton for providing the opportunity to read lessons in canalbuilding and grasslandmining)

ramses II. · November 14, 2002, 02:11

I always use to mine some unshielded grassland - sometimes I'm very astonished to get a special far away from the next special pattern

Marquis de Sodaq · November 16, 2002, 14:13

Quote:

Originally posted by ramses II.
sometimes I'm very astonished to get a special far away from the next special pattern

Because you've hit upon the start of the next special pattern in that direction!

Caesar the Great · November 21, 2002, 23:11

whats happened to the game we used to all know and love.....

rah · November 22, 2002, 10:16

We've just gotten to know it better. But we still love it.

ramses II. · November 25, 2002, 03:16

And there are still some questions left - can you predict the type of a hidden special ?
You can mine a field (silk, pheasant) - or you can transform it and then mine (wine, coal).
I'm sometimes very surprised to get a special far away from the next pattern

samson · November 25, 2002, 10:25

Quote:

Originally posted by ramses II.
And there are still some questions left - can you predict the type of a hidden special ?

Yes.
If I know the location and type of 3 specials in one pattern, I can predict the location and type of every special on the map.

Elephant · November 25, 2002, 18:31

Quote:

Originally posted by ramses II.
And there are still some questions left - can you predict the type of a hidden special ?
You can mine a field (silk, pheasant) - or you can transform it and then mine (wine, coal).
I'm sometimes very surprised to get a special far away from the next pattern

Go into MapEditor and create a single large continent will all Plains. You will see the relationship of the Specials to each other, and their relationship to Huts as well. There are two Special "classes", call them Whale-class and Fish-class, because they correspond to what is "underneath" the land when you paint it in the Editor. Wheat corresponds to Whales, and Buffalo corresponds to Fish. There is no way you can change that once you have started a game, but you can "mine" Buffalo into Pheasant or Wheat into Silk. Someone did a nice one-page chart a while back that shows what can be made into what with how much Settler/Engineer effort. I just use a three column page.

Another thing to try in MapEditor is changing the Resource Seed. With your Plains continent, type S and put in a number greater than 1. Watch what happens to the arrangement of the Specials and Huts. The same pattern is followed, just shifted over on the map. But for each multiple of 16 the grouping of Specials changes. Using the "classes" and the Resource Seeds you should be able to set up a test map to mimic any random map you are facing. I think other people have said they need at least three Specials or two Specials and a Hut to know exactly which pattern is being used. No more wandering for Huts...

ramses II. · November 26, 2002, 02:34

Thank you, folks!
Thank you, Apolyton - where the civ experts meet.

Straybow · November 26, 2002, 04:24

Look at the terrain specs in rules.txt which shows the two separate groupings of specials. I never thought of them as "fish" and "whales" groups but rather "Pheasant/Buffalo" and "Silk" groups because of the conversions possible with Settlers.

"Fish" or "Pheasant/Buffalo" group:
Game, Oasis, Buffalo, Pheasant (also Coal, Peat, Gems, Ivory, Gold, Fish)

"Whale" or "Silk" group:
Furs, Oil, Wheat, Silk (also Wine, Spice, Fruit, Oil, Iron, Whale)

In the first group mining makes Pheasant, and unless the food is desperately needed I'll get around to changing it to Buffalo for an extra shield and an arrow.

It takes [edit] 10/2 turns for an Engr to mine hidden Silk, 20/2 turns to transform hidden Wine + 10/2 more to mine. For the extra effort you get 1 additional shield and arrow, which is worthwhile. If you already have Silk or Wheat you have to transform to grass first (20/2 turns), then 20/2 turns with no special bonus while transforming to Wine. Not worth it.

It is definitely worth transforming Iron to Wine, Glacier Oil to Furs, Coal to Buffalo, and Game to Oasis. Trade is king. In many cases Desert Oil is in the midst of more desert, in which case Wheat is better.

Elephant · November 26, 2002, 13:48

The other thing to remember is that some Specials you cannot go back to, such as Mountain (Gold!), Jungle (Gems), and Swamp (Spice). But it is nice to know what they will turn into and how long it will take. I love the Wheat/Silk pair - extra food early to get going, more shields and trade for later. The only thing that makes it better is for a river to run through it. Too bad they did not put canal-building into CIV2!

I gather what you are referring to as "Game" is Musk Ox (on Tundra)?

Elephant · November 26, 2002, 18:18

Here's my terrain conversion/upgrade chart. It's based on something I saw once that Nethog got from Gastrifitis. The original had movement costs and defense bonuses, but I do not know where to get it anymore. Didn't like the arrangement of boxes, either. It won't display correctly (it uses tabs), so I'm making it a downloadable:

Download TERRAIN.ZIP (MSWord6/WordPad format)