[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Beserk autosettlers, connectors that don't

[Tomasz Wegrzanowski <maniek@xxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Feb 04, 2000 at 09:42:09PM -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski (maniek@xxxxxxxx) wrote:
> > They don't already, because they get used to mpciv[12], where this
> > wasn't possible (and shield on grassland occured much more often IIRC).
> 
> In fact, as someone else pointed out on this mailing list last year,
> the grassland shields in Civ2 are not random at all.  They follow a
> very deterministic pattern:
> 
>    - - O O - - O O
>    O O - - O O - -
>    - - O O - - O O
> 
> where "-" is a normal grassland and "O" is a grassland with shield.
> (Rotate this 45 degrees to match the isometric view of Civ2.)
> 
> This can be exploited in Civ2.  If you are about to transform a swamp or
> jungle tile, you have a choice between forest and grassland.  By looking
> at other grassland tiles in the vicinity you can know in advance whether
> the tile will have a shield on it if you make it a grassland; so you
> might choose to make it a forest instead of a shieldless grassland.
> Then you can make that *other* swamp a grassland because you know it
> will have a shield.  This gives you more production than if you simply
> guess randomly.

IIRC, specials wasn't random either.
It was something like 3 right, 1 up or similar.
This could be also exploited.