You focussed in your description mainly on the "negative" transformation into barren land. Do you also suggest the possibility to transform barren into fertile land? I think this could work out similar to terraforming in ES2.

I vote in favor of this idea.

Nice to see in todays trailer that you are going for something in this direction. But I hope it is not just cosmetic and that they way you play and treat the vegetation will affect the fertility of the tiles around them.

The different biomes affact two aspects of the terrain:

1. The appearance of the individual tiles: A forest tile in the taiga will feature different trees than one in the savannah, for example.
2. The distribution of tile types: E.g. a temperate zone might have a lot of grassland and forests, a desert zone would have predominantly rocky or barren terrain.

So while individual tiles do not affect their surrounding tiles like you propose, the biomes as a whole feature different vegetation and "fertility."

I also hope that biomes aren't just treated cosmetically, and I think the vegetation type could be used as something that influences agriculture. I think a way to influence crop yields could be an agricultural style, where you chose a single bonus you can spend influence to swap in and out. So if you had rice paddies as your agricultural style, you would get extra food yields from farms in tropical or savanna biomes, if you had wheat fields, you would get bonus food from farms in mediterranean or grasslands biomes, and if you had three sisters/ maize, you would get bonus food from temperate or badlands biomes. You could also have policies like hunting and gathering, which increases the food gained from hunting the mammoths and elk herds that are present in the game, or free range herding, where you have bonus yields from livestock pastures but they require two tiles, or fences, where pastures take up only one tile but don't get food bonuses. Then there could be irrigation, which gives bonuses to farms next to fresh water regardless of biome, or terrace farms, which lets you build farms on highland terrain. There could also be aquaculture, which gives bonus food from sea tiles adjacent to the land, or fishing villages, which gives bonus food from sea resources. That way biomes aren't just cosmetic and the "vegetation" would have an impact on gameplay.

grug wrote:

I also hope that biomes aren't just treated cosmetically, and I think the vegetation type could be used as something that influences agriculture. I think a way to influence crop yields could be an agricultural style, where you chose a single bonus you can spend influence to swap in and out. So if you had rice paddies as your agricultural style, you would get extra food yields from farms in tropical or savanna biomes, if you had wheat fields, you would get bonus food from farms in mediterranean or grasslands biomes, and if you had three sisters/ maize, you would get bonus food from temperate or badlands biomes. You could also have policies like hunting and gathering, which increases the food gained from hunting the mammoths and elk herds that are present in the game, or free range herding, where you have bonus yields from livestock pastures but they require two tiles, or fences, where pastures take up only one tile but don't get food bonuses. Then there could be irrigation, which gives bonuses to farms next to fresh water regardless of biome, or terrace farms, which lets you build farms on highland terrain. There could also be aquaculture, which gives bonus food from sea tiles adjacent to the land, or fishing villages, which gives bonus food from sea resources. That way biomes aren't just cosmetic and the "vegetation" would have an impact on gameplay.

Biome specific improvements/wonders/buildings would be cool, or bonuses to certain biomes. I guess we'll have to see.

This could cetainly be an interesting addition to the game, however, i believe that we should also be able to understand the effect our actions have on the global climate/fertility(once we have the technology). This could certainly make the game interesting by awarding fame to whoever can discover/prove anthopomorphic climate change.

We're not going to go into such granularity as simulating different crops only growing in certain biomes, aside from the availability of organic luxury resources which will spawn in an appropriate biome.

Oh yeah, certain luxuries and maybe even strategic resources only appearing in certain biomes certainly sounds interesting.