[BUG] Outposts make land fertile

Can it be:

you builded an outpost in monster area (with monster lairs).

Then monsters left that area and you looted their lairs.

It apeared that lairs were covering fertile lands ?

I've seen infertile land turn fertile, thought maybe it was the land healing or some shit, but I guess a bug makes more sense.

I've tried to replicate this, but was unsuccessful. I have had this happen before, but it isn't as simple as placing an outpost adjacent to swamps.

Alternately, it would be kind of cool if the placement of outposts terraformed swamps in to plains or forests, giving a chance of that tile becoming suitable for settlement. Perhaps with a tech' or a perk?

I've seen this happen as well, although I also cannot replicate it easily. Outposts are NOT supposed to terraform like this.

Seen it as well.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Happened once on me.  Doesn't necessarily mean the outpost is doing it, since it could be happening out of sight elsewhere, as well.

I've had it where I walked past the spot 3 times with units.....right on top of the very tile....nothing.

Then I build an outpost to collect some resources in the area and POOF....tile turns fertile.

Stupid waste of a pioneer....now I have to queue ANOTHER pioneer....

Some times mine doesn't happen for a long time, maybe even 100 turns, and then I will look over and there is a spot in the middle of my kingdom that can be settled.  

I've had this happen a few times, but I don't know how to replicate it.

Yeah that's odd. Possibly related: note that planting an outpost on a swamp tile, or raising and then lowering land on it, will convert a 'swamp' tile to a 'plain'. Swamps can never be settled, plains sometimes can, so sometimes* you can legitimately open up extra fertile tiles this way, if the underlying plain should have been fertile but the swamp was blocking it.

This is easy to replicate if you have the spell that revives land - cast it on a swamp, note that the swamp is still infertile. Now raise/lower land and see how it sometimes* opens up fertile plains tiles. The way an outpost converts the tile underneath it to plains functions similarly - although this only applies to the actual tile under the outpost building, and it doesn't become settleable until you raze the outpost. Random other tiles within the outpost's ZOC becoming fertile is definitely a bug.

*Tested and confirmed that this (sometimes) works. Very inconsistent, but I have found some swamp tiles that do suddenly become fertile after a raise land, or founding and then razing an outpost on them.

I've had it happen even without an outpost.  Just save/reload the game and poof ... a single 2/4/0 tile is now surrounded by all kinds of good tiles.

At the very least, IF this is suppose to be happening, it should fall within the realm of Random Event, and have a popup informing you of the discovery.

I've seen this before, but I attributed it to the 'fight the environment' part.  Ie, the monsters are blocking you from being able to settle an area, so once they're cleaned out, you can see more fertile lands.  It's happened enough that I'm using that approach now.

On the other hand I've also seen the 'drop an outpost and suddenly land becomes viable', or land randomly becomes viable later.  This means that you can found cities closer than 6 tiles apart sometimes (given that a city is meant to block all settling within 6 tiles due to turning off the ability on those tiles within 6 of it when founded).

can you settle on it once its terraformed..outposts growing into cities would be a nifty feature if the land was worth settling on.

Makes me think of the outposts in "Master of Magic", I always liked those poor bastards since it really halted the expansionist tactics.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I have seen it, even reported it already

Outposts don't become cities, I can snake buildings to connect to an outpost, but it won't let me snake beyond that -- the city won't allow me to attach buildings to an outpost even if I've snaked my city to get the outpost to get encompassed by my city.

Seen it too, build an outpost on plains, and poof some turns later it was cityformed

How do you direct where a building will go when you try to build it?  I've seen it mentioned a few times, but haven't figured it out in game.

Go into the Advanced Options and activate Manual Improvement Placement.

I just saw a new variant on this: there was some land that was visually fertile (i.e., green) but where I wasn't allowed to settle a city.  I think maybe it was because the nearest city was too close.  I captured the outpost whose ZOC it was contained within, and presto! several tiles suddenly became buildable.  Some sort of caching fail, I expect...

Curiously, I've never seen this happen when planting an arcane-monolith-as-outpost.  It was only when I had a pioneer hanging around who didn't end up getting a city (the faction next door settled too quickly near a likely spot), and I turned that pioneer into an outpost.

I see this at the edge of towns (high level with all zoc bonuses), the zoc of the town seems to terraforms the land and make it buildable... but I don't remember outposts doing this.

I've seen this happen when killing ogre lairs (maybe it happens when other lairs are cleared too?) One of the devs said this was by design. I've also seen this from creating outposts. Doesn't bother me really - I actually like the land gets better. Was a big fan of change terrain and transmute in MOM.