Topic: Amazonian trees

One does not cut a rubber tree or cocoa tree, when harvesting cocoa or rubber, yet amazonians do exactly that. I know that Widelands does not have to be realistic, but it still hurts my eyes to some extent.

I think it would fit better into the storyline, if the cocoa trees would stay around farmer, and similarly there would be a permanent orchard of rubber tree around a rubber collector. The trees would only go away if player (or enemy of a different tribe) sends woocutters to do the job. The net results would be that there are even more trees on map in amazonian territory, which fits the story well.

If done like that, should the farmer and a rubber collector plant his thing, or should there be a rare tree planter nearby, who knows to plant rubber/cocoa trees into working area of respective collectors?

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hessenfarmer wrote:

Well first of all they are different things. It would be relatively easy to make the cocoa trees lasting longer letting them be harvested multiple times, without any major changes in the mechanics and without the need of any additional buildings / graphics. They can just be returned to a state one or 2 steps previous of being harvestable. If we add a chance of 10 or 20 % to die in this process we might end with something that would please your eyes. Of course the phase to grow and mature actual fruit needs to be extended a bit in this case and the farmer needs to harvest more often then plant, but as said this is relatively easy to do.

so +1 for the cocoa trees.

Thanks for the quick reply.

What I had in mind, that cocoa trees would become trees instead of being tree-looking cropfields, and therefore a cocoa farm would behave more like a "cocoa harvester". I fully agree that the time constants would need ajusting, to keep it in balance. Starting a cocoa farm would become more difficult, as somebody else would need to plant those trees. What you said is not bad either.

Other thing is the rubber tree. It has the same handling as the ironwood and balsa tree.

I know, coding is needed. However, I also think that we should keep these discussions separate: What would be good improvements, and for which improvements we can find a volunteer to actually do them.

so If we let them live longer soon there will be no space for ironwood and balsa around the rare tree plantation. Only chance would be to have them as a separate farm and not declaring them a tree.

Could they still be trees? Ones that are planted only if a "rubber gatherer" is nearby? If one wants enough of balsa and ironwood, just make sure that rubber gatherers are nowhere near that rare tree planter.

which would make the gardening center stil less useless. or let rubber being handled like liana meaning the trees can be cut by normal woodcutters can be cut by normal woodcutters if in the mature state making woodcutters and rubber collectors compete for them. If at all I would go for the last solution.

Liana is a good description of this. However, I think that the rubber tree should be a tree of its own.

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OIPUN wrote:

I am fine with the fact that cocoa tree is grown on a farm.

The tribe is amazing already, but could still be improved. In my opinion.

As for the rubber tree, the liana cutter analogy seems to me more realistic. But again, I don’t see a need to make the tree live any longer than any other tree in the game does.

There are lots of trees in Amazon. Or so I am told, never seen the place.. This change would add the amount of trees on map when settled by Amazonians.

Having the rubber tree and cocoa tree still be trees has the advantage that is is possible to use woodcutter to clear them away, if the space is needed for other purpose.

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OIPUN wrote:

This isn’t directly related to the topic discussed but it could be related, if there were any changes in rare trees made. I don’t understand why do we have all rare trees four times in the game. It doesn’t look nice in the encyclopedia. Also the icons in encyclopedia have size that can be a little bit confusing (pole looks smaller, sampling bigger, …) .

that is a workaround to make them grow in each of our 4 worlds while still keeping separate fertiity for the terrains of this world (worlds are summer, winter, blackland and desert)

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hessenfarmer wrote:

Well, to be precise we have multiple types of trees with each of them having multiple subtypes. Amazons have "rare trees" (rubber, ironwood, balsa) and normal trees (eg. alder, oak, and so on). For the other tribes all of them are trees. This differentiation was made as amazon rare cutters only cut rare trees, while amazon normal cutters only cut normal trees, while other tribes cut all of them.

I know, but that is not really the point.

Additionally we have the cocoa which for now is handled like a field for the other tribes. making them real trees would lead to various effects in gameplay and especially in AI.

You are right, I did not think of AI but of course, that should be addressed, too, which makes this a larger change than what I originally thought.

So I am happy to try to make them behave like they should (being harvestable multiple times)

Thanks!

.. but making them trees that can be cut by normal amazon woodcutter would have to much imoplications imho. Maybe we can make them cuttable by the other tribes.

We are still speaking of cocoa, I suppose? It would be nice if foreign tribes could cut those, to avoid them doubling as barricades.

see above currently neither of them can be cut by normal amazon cutters only rare tree cutters can cut rubber trees

I omitted the differentiation between woodcutter and rare tree cutter for clarity. If the rubber would be collected without felling the tree, then cutting the tree should be altered somehow, to avoid the rubber trees go away without reason. If latex is gathered without felling, then what happens after the tree is cut? Log would seem natural outcome.

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