Pontoons

[theTrav]

I would have expected fords to be modeled as shallow water rather than land...

Or have some entirely new tile type with it's own rules

[jlt314]

theTrav, that's what I suggest and Jackard apparently dislikes - a ford could be a narrow shallow water area crossing a river. in the current gameplay, that'd be a natural crossing and fishing point while not hindering rowboats.

um, Jackard, what are the light greenish-yellow passages supposed to be? and I'm still waiting for anything that would be more than just saying "you're wrong" in many colourful letters. the fact that the devs don't have a solution for bridges doesn't make fords a bad or wrong idea.
1. I do suggest artificial fords, which are yet less extensive than dams, as a strategic measure. fording a river would impede large ships, but not rafts or rowboats, thus making massive raids with large ships via waterways less dangerous. access to a river is a natural weak point in a village's defences, because you can not fence (or otherwise wall) the shore without losing the benefits of actually having that river. building a full dam would completely cut off the waterway, being the extreme measure of landscaping.
on the other side, fording a river would either require leaving the place as a public ford, or claiming the ford and building walls and gates to protect it.
2. as a matter of comparison, a stone mansion requires 300 stone and planting 75 plants takes 300 soil. both are features easily completed by a determined player, not to mention by a village population. with a river being about 30 grids wide (that's a very coarse approximation), having a single-tile ford cost 10/10 per grid would sum up to 300/300. this is IMHO too cheap by an order of magnitude, hence the 100/100 cost suggestion. measure your next river and take your time on chipping 10 stone and digging 10 soil, then post the approximate working time on a ford with 10/10 and with 100/100.
3. I have to agree on destruction. scratch that sentence about forcing passage across a ford. if we go with theTrav's and my idea of fords being shallow water, scratch that sentence about carrying rowboats and rafts around fords overland, too. rowboats and rafts pass free, only large ships are impeded.
4. I don't understand your objections to irrigation and channel digging. agreed, it has to be limited to diggin channels through land, otherwise the skill would be used to dig through fords and contradict 3.
5. I'm yet to see an ore-seeker who isn't either bumming rides from fishers or spamming boats.

[Jackard]

theTrav, that's what I suggest and Jackard apparently dislikes

look, do you even know how to read

[vikingdragons]

i am finding myself agreeing with Jackard here, in the fact that you can't read worth a shit. i am not against man-made fords, but you didn't think this through at all. i think we need all sorts of shit, with man-made fords being a big maybe. i would much rather see watergates and drawbridges, imo.

[jlt314]

as already mentioned - the general idea here are options to cross water, including pontoons and fords. theTrav's idea describes those as natural shallow areas. my idea is to add artificial fords to those occuring naturally, including sub-ideas on how rafts, pontoons and fords are supposed to work. Jackard's contribution is quoting me, mincing my posts and producing attempts at generally offensive one-liners, which contribute nothing to the topic.
I'm still waiting for calculation-based improvements on any of suggested numbers and for actual logical reasoning to point out where my suggestions for building artificial fords are supposed to be wrong. those suggestions about destruction and forced passage are wrong (or at least too vulnerable to griefers), so consider them void.

[McGriddles]

Jackard's contribution is quoting me, mincing my posts and producing attempts at generally offensive one-liners, which contribute nothing to the topic.

You seem to misunderstand what Jackard's arguing. He's saying that fords are a great idea, so long as they are NATURALLY OCCURING. Thats it, nothing else needs to be done to them. You don't need to add to them, make it more tedious or complicated.

access to a river is a natural weak point in a village's defences,

wut

because you can not fence (or otherwise wall) the shore without losing the benefits of actually having that river.

Wrong.

building a full dam would completely cut off the waterway...

And completely flood a village that sits next to it. A griefer's dream.

[jlt314]

then people will most probably settle by fords and fortify them. I'd just like to know why artificial fords are supposed to be a bad idea.

while slightly offtopic, I'd like to discuss the question about rivers and defences. IMHO, just claiming a village's ground is a very weak defence, as broken by "criminal acts" skill. with the skills to interact with stuff, steal it and destroy (and maybe attack villagers) available to griefers, a village needs fortification. and here's my point - if you don't build a wall on the shore, anybody can land there and enter. but if you do build a wall, your own villagers need to leave the fortified ground every time they want to fish or travel by boat or otherwise use a river. while far-fetched, it might appear sensible to have rivergates or chain-gates, allowing a complete defence of a settlement.

As of now, the rivers have no directions and no waterflow occurs. therefore you can neither flood a village nor cut it off from water by building a dam upriver. dams would just be complete land-bridges with strategic uses. and just theoretically, we can imagine dropping an entire boulder into the river to make it unpassable for anything except small boats without dams, floods or rivergates involved.
and if someday there are flowing rivers, then building a dam in attack range of a village would surely provoke an attack. and damming a river upstream would surely provoke an attack on the dam with catapults (or other siege engines), explosives or magick (whatever exists in-game).

[Naerymdan]

I just wanted to add my two cents:

I love the ford idea, and here's why:

- Game mechanic respect: this easily places in the landscaping sub-menu which already enables you to modify terrain, so why not water.
- Game/Server engine: Since terrain can be changed to grass/tiles/paved with no problem and shallow water *seems* to be decided at map generation and not controlled by "if river, shallow=1 tile, if lake, shallow=4 tiles", it seems to mean that ALL tiles are stored on server-side and sent dynamically to client, making it easy for simple tile-type switching such as deep water to shallow water. If we look at the graphics shown on the client-side when the loading is slow, the tiles/paved tiles appear at the same time as the rest of the land features, and not with objects like the houses, pallisades and such.
- Work involved compared to other wanted features: That's a great way to implement "bridges" without the art problem, size problem and boating restriction problem.

On the sides of opinions, I agree with quite a high cost in both stamina and possibly material for each deep water tiles being turned to shallow water tiles. It could work like paving: you have 10 stones and 10 soil in your backpack, you shore up 1 square of deep water.

In the same vein as tiled squares, we could have random man-made shallow water tiles decay and turn back to deep water, which would prevent the "every river shored up to shallow water". Possibly make the lakes non shorable.

And finaly, I would venture doing the opposite should be feasible, turning shallow water in deep water by using a pickaxe on the shallow water tile and getting back... soil/clay/boulder for each tile, always very stamina draining and should take time to do the action.

[Jackard]

I'd just like to know why deep and shallow aquaforming is supposed to be a bad idea.

ignoring the potential abuses, the following is actually a good thing for reasons that - as shown earlier - you would not comprehend even were I to explain them to you:

then people will most probably settle by fords and fortify them.

[jlt314]

thanx Naerymdan, that's pretty much what I wanted in this thread - somebody capable of rational thought and not "holier than thou" oneliners.
just to note it down - if there are only natural fords, they form natural chokepoints for infantry (unless swimming) and siege engines (unless rafts and pontoons are implemented). fords would also be natural fishing spots and to a lesser degree traders' crossroads. therefore players will most probably settle at them, claim them and fortify the shores.
if there are advanced landscaping options, as described by Naerymdan, players will modify the landscape, adding to the tactical possibilities, including building fords for infantry and removing shallows to make a shore difficult to land.

P.S. Jackard, do this thread a favor and just lurk. or at least do some of the fancy "as shown earlier". I'm too curious to witness a logical chain in a single line of text and a minced quote, troll or not.