settling on a borehole

[bvanevery]

Details settling on a borehole

settling on a borehole

Someone told me that settling on a borehole was supposed to get me a bunch of minerals and energy.  Well, it's lame!  Unless Borehole Complex boreholes work differently than regular boreholes.

[Hierophant]

Wow, that is really disappointing. What determines what the base square gets anyway? I know settling on a resource will give you a bonus... (except natural boreholes clearly)

[bvanevery]

Well there's the #RESOURCEINFO section of alphax.txt, but it doesn't explain why the borehole works differently than a regular resource special.  I guess strictly speaking, it is not a resource special.  It's a terrain improvement.

Hm, what if that person was really telling me about a cheat or exploit?  Like start the borehole construction, settle a city, then when the borehole completes you'll get a bonus?  That would be lame though.

[EmpathCrawler]

Free heating for life, though.

[Hierophant]

Interesting. I looked at #RESOURCEINFO but there seems to be no info on base squares. Or did I miss something?

[Nexii]

I feel like the base should fall inside

[bvanevery]

Or did I miss something?

Code: [Select]

Base Square,      2, 1, 1, 0,

[Hierophant]

Yeah but... what I wanted to know was, how do resources affect base square value. That only applies to bases without resources on their square.

[bvanevery]

It's a little confusing.  I have empirically determined that settling on top of a sea minerals bonus is a good idea.  You get the max minerals that way.  The same is not true on land.

Settling on top of a land nutrient bonus is a good idea, if it's on Flat terrain.  If it's on Rolling terrain, you're going to waste that mineral.  Generally I settle my land cities on Flat terrain.

Settling on top of an Energy bonus is never controversial.  It's always a benefit.  Although, the same idea of not wasting a Rolling mineral would apply.

If a mineral bonus is in Flat Arid or Flat Moist terrain, building a forest on top of it, is more effective than building a mine on top of it.  You get the same minerals in total, and the forest will give you some energy.  I forget when you get food or not, but you'll get 1 food with the forest.

[Hierophant]

Very interesting. So settling on top of a land mineral resource is wasteful?

[bvanevery]

I haven't tried it for awhile but I think so.  The max mineral yield from a mineral special is 7, if it's on Rocky terrain and and has a road cut through it.  Of course you can't settle on Rocky terrain.  On Rolling terrain, you can get 5 out of it, and you can probably get 1 food.  On Flat terrain, you can get 4 out of it.  If the terrain isn't rainy, you'd be better off with a forest than a mine, as you'd get the same number of minerals.  In the Rolling and Flat cases, I can't remember what kinds of yields yet get when building a city on top of it.

[bvanevery]

Very interesting. So settling on top of a land mineral resource is wasteful?

Now I'm pretty sure it's always wasteful.  Here's my screenshot of settling a mineral that's on flat terrain.  Rolling terrain would presumably give the same result, and not get to the max mineral value.

Details suboptimal mineral on flat terrain

suboptimal mineral on flat terrain

[Hierophant]

Thank you for trying these out! It's interesting information. Not always useful since it's better to settle in the middle of a resource wheel (or whatever you wanna call that pattern), but good to know.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I feel like the base should fall inside

🤣🤣🤣🤣
You made my day, man. 10 points for correct answer!

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Here is the info for base tile yield if anyone interested.

The base tile yield is defined there:

#RESOURCEINFO
Base Square,      2, 1, 1, 0,

On top of that base tile may use bonus resources this way:
nutrient: doubles base tile nutrient yield
mineral: +2 minerals
energy: +2 energy

Everything else is ignored.