-River Update-

Finally, after many attempts, rivers are built into the game.

Map generation using Perlin Noise generates values for altitude, temperature and humidity for each square.
These values are then used to compose the various biomes.

For the creation of rivers, the created map is now searched for suitable elevation values to set a source for a river.

Now all squares around this source are checked for their elevation values. The square whose elevation value is the lowest then becomes the next river square. This continues until the river reaches either the ocean or a lowland. In the case of the lowland, a lake is formed there.

Rivers can be navigated by small sailing ships and small gunboats.
These, of course, can move on the ocean, allowing the (slow) transport of goods between cities on the ocean and cities adjacent to a river.

Unlike the old DOS/Amiga game "Colonization", land units cannot use the rivers as roads.
They can move on the river squares, but only quite slowly due to the rough terrain.

Early in the game, rivers can play an important role, as the player starts the game with two small sailing ships that can sail along rivers.

One of the most important points in the game is to build a city next to a hill or mountain square early on to have access to stones and iron ore. Without iron, there are no tools to build roads or fields, and no weapon production in the game.

So it is a good idea to explore the rivers early on to see if there are any hills or mountains near river sources.

Furthermore, I was bothered by the fact that there was far too much fertile grassland on previous maps. Now there is a new terrain type, the "prairie". Also grassland, but the soil is not as fertile and a bit drier.

The prairie is the link between grassland and dryland.
Does not lend itself as well to growing wheat, but allows for a higher yield for tobacco.

*** Settle the World - Changelog ***

An Amiga game by Christian Wiegel (TheoTheoderich)

Created 2022 for the BlitzBasic-Jam.

04.12.2022

Added:

- River courses and river graphics

- River tiles yields + 1 harvest for grain, sugar and tobacco.

- Rivers are visible on the map during map generation and also on the standard worldmap.

- Rivers are now pathfinding compatible.

- Small ships can move on rivers.

- Cities located next to a river can build docks and shipyards.

- Small ships can enter cities which are located next to a river.

- Increased Movement costs for land units moving on a river.

- Roads can be build on river tiles.

- New terrain type -prairie-. Not very fertile, but suitable for growing tobacco.

- Warning message when entering expert mode for map generation.

- Warning message when leaving the city, if no production target is set for a city, but carpenters are at work.

- Warning message when leaving the city, if the city does not produce enough food and the stock is low.

- Button for ships to unload units.

- Ships on automatic movement will stop if there is near danger (Kraken or foreign privateers).

- Some cliffs graphics for the coastline.

- If a city starved to death and was destroyed you can now find an abandoned city there.

- Extra graphics and animations will be turned off if you are low on Chip-Mem on gamestart.

- Sound: Soldiers and Armies marching into a city.

Changed:

- Every Presets can be played with up to four players.

- Requirements for Warehouses changed from 2 Workers to 6 Settlers.

- Requirements for Warehouses-Expansion changed from 2 Aristocrats to 2 Workers.

- Seegulls will choose sea animals as targets if there are no ships, and will not both select the same ship (which looked annoying).

- Roads, Rivers, plowed fields and some other graphics are now blitted to the game with only 4 bitplanes instead of 5 bitplanes,

  to speed up the game rendering a little bit.

Bugfixes:

- Comma key did not select the previous music title.

- Button to exit the city-help screen was not working.

- A hardened pioneer became a normal colonist after founding a city, instead of turning into a routed hardened pioneer.

- KillUnit statement was mixed with function commands.

- A bug sometimes prevented the player from selecting the next unit using the circly button or num-5.

- Dump cargo infobox was not shown.

- Dumping cargo crashed the game when unit movepoints were 0.

- Animation for dumped cargo does not disapears after collecting the cargo crates.

- The cargoholds of the selected ship on gamestart was not visible most of the time.

- Game crashes if a city was build was build close to the worldborders left/right.

- Game crashes if cliffs where set out of worldborders.

- City and player names were too long, corrupting the save file.

- Destroyed cities...fixed some bugs.

- Tons of other bugs....