Okay... here's what it looks like so far. The format's still roughly what it was in Version 1.0 of the list, but maybe Yin can nip and tuck it here and there. A few recurring themes have definitely emerged in the last 150 posts, including several detailed systems of terrain. I've done the best I can in getting all the important details, but if somebody notices an error, by all means, reply to this thread and note your corrections. Same with omissions. I might have overlooked a post or two.
THE SYSTEM
wheathin: Public works system is less hassle than engineers. But "terraforming" is an anachronism in the present. Glaciers-to-grassland should require heavy future tech, maybe weather control. Terraforming must be appropriately scaled. Forest-to-plains and forest-to-grassland should come early, but swamp-to-mountain should come much later.
For TI's, having an older TI in a square should reduce the cost/build time of upgrade, but should not be a prerequisite. I.e., building a railroad from scratch would take longer and cost more, but would not require a road in the square.
Kris Huysmans: Public works isn't as fun as using engineers.
Wheathin: At the beginning of the game, yes. But with 30 engineers, the fun is gone.
Theben: All construction costs should vary by government type. Transform terrain should bring up a menu listing possible terrains and transform times/costs.
Scooter: If public works isn't used, nets and fisheries could be built by engineers on a "raft" unit, which could hold one engineer and cost very few shields. No military units could board a raft, and it couldn't venture far from shore.
E: Would like to see city improvements buildable on tiles as in Age of Empires. Very micromanaging in the early stages, but can be automated in late game. That way we see the shapes of cities and city improvements can be pillaged/destroyed. Settlers and engineers should be separate units. Irrigation and mining would be the same.
Jon Miller: CTP-style public works doesn't make sense in military situations: you can't send engineers into enemy territory to build roads, etc. However, settlers and engineers lead to severe micromanagement, so structure an "engineering" AI to react differently in times of peace, war, etc. Alternately, add a build queue to engineers. Engineers and settlers' defense bonuses should improve with technology.
Flavor Dave: About glaciers-to-grassland: it's not the land that changes, it's what the land produces. Grasslands don't really become hills; instead, your engineers work on the grassland so that it produces more building material at the expense of some food. (Perhaps the graphic shouldn't change - just the numbers.)
Theben: I like the automated settler idea. Have a preference for each type of terrain (including specials) and the kind of engineering (irrigation, mining, road building), and a way to prioritize them. Big hassle in the early game, but it would easy micromanagement later on.
cloneodo: Each engineer/terraformer should have its own menu from which you can choose the tiles to be terraformed with checkboxes for farm, road, mine, fortress, etc. Choose a tile with the mouse (or multiple tiles by dragging). Roughly like Sim City zoning controls. Selected tiles would change color (for work in progress). Then click Go and the engineer will automatically perform its tasks. Perhaps another option to copy one engineer's work schedule into another's. Maybe stats in the menu saying number of turns until terraforming is finished.
technophile: Agree, there should be engineer units, especially for military purposes. Engineers could be given a pillaging bonus. I wouldn't trust an AI to run my tile improvements, though, and build queues are still a hassle. A combined system of public works + engineering units would work best. Maybe PW could be "acquired" with bureaucracy or require a "Civil Engineering Academy" city improvement. PW should cost money and become more efficient with tech.
NotLikeTea: "Terraforming" on earth is redundant. Maybe "geologic reconstruction."
mindlace: Cloneodo's suggestion was incredibly cool. I'd use checkboxes. Select a terraforming area, then a box pops up:
_______Farm__'solar'__Mine__Road
Plains__[X]____[X]____[ ]___[ ]
Rocky___[X]____[ ]____[X]___[ ]
dinoman2: I like CTP's public works, but it's frustrating not being able to build outside your base radius. You still need engineers.
Theben: I had an idea similar to Cloneodo's. Have a Preferences screen, similar to SMAC, where you set out priorities for your engineers based on terrain tile, choice of tile improvement, and the order to build them. The AI would check your preferences; if grassland is your #1 priority, it would scan for grassland, then move to the nearest grass tile, etc. If not, it would move down the list. Your preferences could be changed during the game. You could store the AI's build preferences and modify them in a text file.
technophile: Who says we'll never be able to turn mountains into grassland? If there are future techs, I'd like to be able to squeeze blood from mountains and glaciers or other eco-marvels. But not in the first 6000 years of the game.
don Don: I think it would be better to have a scale with many steps of productivity (fractional or decimal outputs) rather than a few integer steps as in Civ and SMAC. I like engineers being distinct from population expansion (settlers), but I disagree with the whole idea of changing land types, with the possible exception of deforestation, resulting in grassland, plains or desert and high production for a while; and reforestation, which might come up later in the game and would cost a lot of gold. Modifying mountains is unrealistic.
THE MAP
Kris Huysmans: No 3-D terrain; without 3-D units it's useless, and 3-D units rule out customization.
Climate modeling issues: more attention to water modeling, climate changes over time, long-term effects of irrigation, effects of deforestation in late game
NotLikeTea: Would like to see gradual climactic change, deserts expanding/receding, swamps forming/drying up.
JT: Altitude should be an aspect of terrain, as in SMAC.
Rathenn: Better resource seed, something more random than Civ II without regular patterns.
EnochF: There's potential for continental plates, but it would be hell to program.
NotLikeTea: But some geological realism would be nice. Volcanos and faults could be logically placed, and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge might make a nice geographical landmark.
DickK: Dynamic maps, global climactic change, rivers changing course, new resources uncovered, old resources peter out, areas get wetter or dryer, and all this reacts to the human interaction with the environment. Or the whole climate of the planet may change, temperatures rise or fall, humidity increase or decrease. All over the course of the game and very, very slow.
DickK: Also, random maps seem too random. Deserts don't occur in 1-2 square patches. Mountains should divide forests from plains. Terrain should be 3-D in the SMAC sense.
Theben: I want a round planet. Keep the square/diamond tiles. Less importantly, the computer could base the map on tectonic plates, which would be discernible upon zooming out, with volcanic activity, etc. Windward mountain or hill slopes are forested and receive +1 food and +1 shield. Squares 1-2 tiles east from leeward mountain range should rarely be grassland; use plains or desert instead.
Harel: Bigger maps, 1000 x 1000.
E: Resources should change, appear, peter out, and you should save them up like Age of Empires. Animals should be limited to certain sections of the world, so not everyone has horses or elephants. Agriculture could be similarly limited, certain places favoring wheat, other places rice, olives, etc.
Dr Strangelove: The idea of tiles bearing tradable commodities, as in CTP, is good. But industrial resources (coal, iron, and oil) should have a significant effect on production. Production values of mountains should be scaled down; not all mountains are suitable for mining. "I don't think there are many mines in the Alps." Mountains and hills without a resource should offer smaller boosts to production.
Ember: Avoid SMAC-style terrain. Elevation should not affect trade. No raising land from the ocean. Rockiness and moistness cannot sufficiently model the Earth's terrains.
Theben: Agreed, keep it flat.
M@ni@c: At least disallow raising/lowering.
Ecce Homo: At least use metric measurements for elevation. Incidentally, grassland dominated the map in Civ I and II; it should be rarer in Civ III. More focus on forests, perhaps using Maniac's deciduous/grass, pine/plains idea. Resources are never depleted, merely become very scarce; it should depend on trade commodities. [see Economic thread]
M@ni@c: When resources disappear, you could turn to space (Mars, Moon, asteroids). New victory condition: terraform Mars. [see Space Exploitation thread]
don Don: Treating huge chunks of land (100 sq. mi.) as undifferentiated terrain is silly. Mines and farms can be built within 100 miles of each other. I'd like something more innovative, maybe multiple population units able to work the same tile, with diminishing returns. Name on resource that has been "depleted"; there aren't any.
CivPerson: There should be an option for a large map (100x100) so that the terrain can be more detailed.
Flavor Dave: As for undifferentiated terrain, that's just a result of the kind of game Civ is.
mindlace: I vote for 3D terrain, but finer-grained squares to avoid the rolling hill look of SMAC. Maybe divide each square into a 3x3 grid of varying elevation. Since it's not a barren world, have sprites for trees, jungle, grass. Maybe even a prominent Amazon river.
M@ni@c: If we go with 3D terrain, then terrain should be able to rise more than 1000 meters per square. Otherwise, a genuine Earth map is impossible (Himalayas, Andes).
Jon Miller: Agreed. SMAC featured volcanos the size of France. Mountain ranges aren't that wide. SMAC's system could differentiate between lowlands and highlands, but the actual mountains and hills would work better as independent tiles.
ember: To me, squares represent the resources available, not the elevation. We could add high-altitude plains, but I feel 3D terrain is a devolution, making the interface more complicated without adding any relevant information.
Technophile: I see no need for "high-altitude plains," because altitude affects terrain indirectly, through factors such as vegetation and rainfall, which are already covered. I'm still in favor of 3D terrain, though.
Flavor Dave: Elevated plains might serve to allow defensible cities to grow; you'd get food plus defense.
Metamorph: Let's try something abstract. Let's say the random tile generator first establishes assigns production and food values to various tiles, grouping them together based on numbers rather than "terrain." Then the terrain would be established by the numbers; high food, low production areas would use a grassland graphic; high production, low food would use a mountain graphic. When the user holds the mouse over a tile, you'd see a display window indicating the resources, but the graphic would be a good indicator even without knowing the exact numbers. Engineers working the land could be instructed to boost food or production, not literally remake the land like in Civ; increased food would decrease production and vice versa; the graphic may change with the numbers. Rivers will boost trade and food, possibly changing the graphic from plains to grassland. Thus, you'll see strips of grassland along rivers. Engineers might even tap a water source and "build" rivers. Resources determine appearance, not vice versa.
Diodorus Sicilus: About high plateaus. If you want food from mountains, just add the historical "terracing" TI, as used in the Far East and Incan Empire. You can irrigate with saltwater, but it requires special tech advances; the Israelis have been doing it in the Negev for twenty years now.
THE GRAPHICS
Eggman: Avoid terrain types that look alike. Make sure jungles don't look like forests. In SMAC, "rolling," "rocky" and "rainy" all tended to blend together.
E: Extra spaces in the terrain graphics file to give more freedom of customization.
technophile: How difficult would it be to incorporate a rotatable view of the world? This way mountains and valleys would be more prominent, and we wouldn't have to worry about units becoming "invisible." That way, 3D terrain wouldn't interfere with gameplay.
NEW IMPROVEMENTS
Theben: Important: Build Canals. Upgrade Fortress (from Fort to Keep to Fortress to Castle/Base). Land forts extend borders, if borders are used. Feudalistic governments might gain gold from forts, if surrounding tiles are populated. Fortresses might also be a city improvement. Aqueduct as tile improvement: mountains with aqueducts generate +1 food. In addition to Airbases, have Naval Bases (extend range of ships, repairs ships more quickly) and also Coastal Defense and Anti-Aircraft Defense TI's. Mountain Pass lowers movement cost, allows mounted units to cross a range.
Kris Huysmans: Animal Farm, +1 food, +1 trade when you have discovered… sigh… Fast Food and have a Free Market (as in SMAC social engineering).
Harel: Agriculture improvements. Irrigation (+1 food, +2 for deserts), Fields (+1 food, +2 for plains), Farms (+1 food), Fertilized Crops (+1 food), Industrial Farm (+1 food). Transport improvements: Path (1/2 movement), Road (1/3 movement), Railroad (1/4 movement), Monorail (1/5 movement), no unlimited movement. Add deep-core mines to upgrade mines. Wall TI's, which can surround a city or a civilization.
Mzilikazi: National parks. Any tiles within your borders can be designated a national park (with an advance, say, Conservation). No roads may be built there or other improvements. There are benefits to the nearest city in gold and happiness. Moving units through national parks would cause unhappiness.
Theben: Those national park rules seem harsh (and unrealistic). Plus, you'd have to have roads there anyway.
The Ellimist: New military terrains. Military Base (req. Tactics), const. 10 turns. Any land or air units receive +1 morale the first time they pass through. Replaces Airbase.
Naval Yard (req. Amphibious Warfare), const. 20 turns. Any naval units can be completely repaired (increased rate of repair). Can only be built in coastal squares.
Trench (req. Construction). Replaces Fortress. Increases defensive strength of all units by +50%.
Bunker (req. Steel). +50% defense, cumulative with Trench.
Force Field (req. Photonics). +50% defense, cumulative with Trench and Bunker.
Jimmy: Missile Silo, could hold missiles as a city (without unhappiness?) Would survive to retaliate even if the nearest city is nuked. Thus, missile silos would be prime targets of a nuclear strike rather than cities. Better nuclear strategy.
M@ni@c: Forest, Jungle (naturally occurring), Offshore Platform. Irrigation, mine, farm, fortress, airbase, road, railroad as in Civ2. Radar, as in SMAC/CTP. Canals, condensers, solar collectors, wind mills (varies with elevation). Roads = 1/3 mv, railroads = 1/5 mv, highways = 1/10 mv, maglevs = unlimited. Railroads boost minerals 50%, maglevs another 50%. Genetic Farm for another food +1.
ember: Instead of SMAC-style "raising" an ocean square into land, perhaps a Dike improvement to confer grassland bonuses to shoreline ocean tiles.
Communist_99: Trenches increase defense by 100%, reduced to 50% upon discovery of "Chemical Warfare," reduced to 25% after Advanced Flight. Cannot be built in forest, jungle, swamp, mountains, glacier, desert.
Theben: Idea from the City Improvements thread. Have a Supply Depot TI which acts as a supply crawler from SMAC. You build it with public works or engineers, it hauls one of the three resources to a designated city. Max of 3 Supply Depots in one square. Distance, tech level, size of city and connection to city may factor into the final percentage reaching the city. Requires gold/shields to maintain. Won't interfere with enemy advances, like supply crawlers, but can be pillaged. Possible problem: can't help build Wonders.
NEW TERRAINS
Harel: Lush land, a rich form of plains, found around volcanos or like in the Nile delta. Areas of nutrient-rich soil.
Theben: Differentiate between hot/cold desert and forest, based on latitude.
Bulrathi: Should be Arable Land, or perhaps food tiles as in Imperialism. Then you could have high-density large nations like India and China in a small area.
Diodorus Sicilus: The definition of arable land changes with technology. Clearing forests, irrigation, terraces all serve to create arable land. Irrigation made the Fertile Crescent fertile, and hybrid wheat forms made the "plains" (with occasional buffalo tiles) of the U.S. into a bread basket.
M@ni@c: Treat forests and jungles as naturally occurring TI's occurring on grassland, plains, hills (jungles on grass, plains, swamp near equator): no forests in desert, glacier. Treat forests as 1 Food, 2 Minerals (+1 Trade for a road); later on a city improvement (supermarket?) could boost forests to 2/2/2. Jungles would begin as 1/1/0 (1/1/1 w/road), could be boosted with some discovery to 1/3/3. Volcanos should give a 1/1/1 bonus and can appear in any terrain (including ocean).
Theben: I had suggested forested mountains and forested hills, with +1 food and +1 compared to standard hills/mts, would be found on windward side of ranges.
M@ni@c: Altiplano = high altitude plains. Maybe differentiate between pine and deciduous? How about forests are not TI's as I suggested above, but you have Pine and Deciduous forests; irrigated pine = plains, irrigated deciduous = grassland. How about, during the process of deforestation, give a mineral bonus of 5 to the nearest city? Two new terrains: Polar Hill and Desert Hill.
Monk: There have to be Dunes (hard desert), Savannah and different kinds of forest such as evergreen, rain forest, etc. Those standard forests look silly at the equator. Also, deserts should be difficult to cross.
Gordon the Whale: That would be solved by the LTMV system (see below). A traditional Civ forest would be temperate w/moderate moisture. Near the equator, temperature would be hot. Rain forests would occur in wet areas. Savannah is tough because it's halfway between forest and grass, but not in a transitional zone. I'd say Savannah would be represented by grass.
Giant Squid: New idea, Dangerous Terrain. Give every terrain a danger rating. Forests, grassland, hills, and plains are completely safe. But for example, give deserts a 25% danger rating for heat. If a normal unit enters a desert square, it has a 25% chance of being lost. Some units might have special resistance, say Cameleer, resistance to heat 20%. This would give cameleers a 5% chance of perishing in the desert. Other danger categories are cold, elevation, maybe wild animals. Cameleers would not resist the cold on an Arctic square. Maybe a civ would acquire cultural adaptations depending on its starting terrain: A city has 5 desert squares in its radius; units produced in that city are given a 15% resistance to heat (suggestion: number of squares x 3). This might accurately represent guerrilla warfare: more powerful units would die in perilous terrain which the locals are adept at traversing. A road through such a square would reduce danger by 10%. Oceans squares would have danger ratings, too: Ocean, danger rating for storms 20%, danger rating for giant squid attack 2%. Polar ocean might have danger of icebergs, coastal ocean rocks. If done right, this could eliminate the need for the trireme penalty.
Theben: I suggested something like this a while ago. My idea was inhospitable terrain damages units. Every turn spent in an unhealthy square could take 1-2 points of damage. Elephants would be damaged in mountains, chariots would be damaged in swamps. Chariots and armor can't cross mountains without a pass. Various flags would give units resistance, alpine units in the mountains, marines in the jungle, etc. Explorers and partisans would be immune to all inhospitable terrain.
TILE ISSUES
NotLikeTea: Devolution of tiles: Tile improvements might degrade and disappear if not used. Archaeology as a science could uncover "ancient farms."
Wheathin: TI's should not be available on all terrains at the same time or cost. Roads on grassland is easy, but roads in forests, mountains and glaciers are different. Mines on hills before mines on mountains.
Wheathin: Maybe maintenance costs for TI's, higher costs the further away they are from a city.
Theben: Sources (iron, coal, uranium, oil): maybe a source must exist within your borders before you can utilize it; if you don't have it, you'll have to trade. Lack of resources might inhibit research.
Theben: Grasslands, plains and hills can always be irrigated unless adjacent to the leeward side of a mountain range. Desert, tundra and glacier cannot be irrigated unless there's a river in the square or contains a suitable resource (oasis, hot spring) or a certain level of technology has been reached. Jungles and swamps should have at least 1 production for available wood.
Harel: Mines should only get a bonus if there's a road connecting it to the city. Nearby tiles should affect one another. E.g., mines harm nearby farms, but increase productivity of nearby mines. Roads cannot be built on mountains until explosives or rivers until bridge building.
Eggman: Less tile improvements are better than more. Keep things simple. Five different farming upgrades may be more realistic, but it adds little to the game, and it would get confusing. (The graphics would have to be pretty distinctive.)
Theben: Irrigation: grassland and plains should always be irrigable, but never desert. If a river is over-irrigated, it might dry up. Transforming desert to plains or grassland should require maintenance over time. TIs should cost gold if public works isn't used. Building a TI should extend your borders if: I. It's adjacent to your border, II. It's not within another civ's border (unless contested), III. It can connect to your supply grid [assumes supply system]. During war all borders would be contested.
M@ni@c: Oceans should begin producing 1/0/2. There should be Harbor and Fishery city improvements to boost ocean food by 1. Offshore Platforms could be a TI adding 1 mineral (+1 trade?). Grassland should have special resources.
technophile: I think irrigation and farmland should be separate improvements; farms don't require irrigation. Let's have terraced farms for mountain and hill tiles. Costlier, requiring better tech, but available eventually.
Theben: Incan mountain cities were roughly size 2 or 3 in Civ terms, easily reached with a couple terraced hills.
GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES
Widowmaker: The player (or computer) should name geographical locations.
Octopus: Take each civ's starting positions into account, so that the Nile will be near Egypt or the Andes Mountains near the Incas.
Kmj: Whoever is the first to discover a region gets to name it.
Eggman: Natural Wonders like in SMAC. Sahara Desert, Grand Canyon, the Nile, the Amazon, Everest or the Himalaya, the Marianas Trench, etc., could provide small bonuses.
DickK: Major named features with unique benefits or penalties.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by EnochF (edited September 02, 1999).]</font>
THE SYSTEM
wheathin: Public works system is less hassle than engineers. But "terraforming" is an anachronism in the present. Glaciers-to-grassland should require heavy future tech, maybe weather control. Terraforming must be appropriately scaled. Forest-to-plains and forest-to-grassland should come early, but swamp-to-mountain should come much later.
For TI's, having an older TI in a square should reduce the cost/build time of upgrade, but should not be a prerequisite. I.e., building a railroad from scratch would take longer and cost more, but would not require a road in the square.
Kris Huysmans: Public works isn't as fun as using engineers.
Wheathin: At the beginning of the game, yes. But with 30 engineers, the fun is gone.
Theben: All construction costs should vary by government type. Transform terrain should bring up a menu listing possible terrains and transform times/costs.
Scooter: If public works isn't used, nets and fisheries could be built by engineers on a "raft" unit, which could hold one engineer and cost very few shields. No military units could board a raft, and it couldn't venture far from shore.
E: Would like to see city improvements buildable on tiles as in Age of Empires. Very micromanaging in the early stages, but can be automated in late game. That way we see the shapes of cities and city improvements can be pillaged/destroyed. Settlers and engineers should be separate units. Irrigation and mining would be the same.
Jon Miller: CTP-style public works doesn't make sense in military situations: you can't send engineers into enemy territory to build roads, etc. However, settlers and engineers lead to severe micromanagement, so structure an "engineering" AI to react differently in times of peace, war, etc. Alternately, add a build queue to engineers. Engineers and settlers' defense bonuses should improve with technology.
Flavor Dave: About glaciers-to-grassland: it's not the land that changes, it's what the land produces. Grasslands don't really become hills; instead, your engineers work on the grassland so that it produces more building material at the expense of some food. (Perhaps the graphic shouldn't change - just the numbers.)
Theben: I like the automated settler idea. Have a preference for each type of terrain (including specials) and the kind of engineering (irrigation, mining, road building), and a way to prioritize them. Big hassle in the early game, but it would easy micromanagement later on.
cloneodo: Each engineer/terraformer should have its own menu from which you can choose the tiles to be terraformed with checkboxes for farm, road, mine, fortress, etc. Choose a tile with the mouse (or multiple tiles by dragging). Roughly like Sim City zoning controls. Selected tiles would change color (for work in progress). Then click Go and the engineer will automatically perform its tasks. Perhaps another option to copy one engineer's work schedule into another's. Maybe stats in the menu saying number of turns until terraforming is finished.
technophile: Agree, there should be engineer units, especially for military purposes. Engineers could be given a pillaging bonus. I wouldn't trust an AI to run my tile improvements, though, and build queues are still a hassle. A combined system of public works + engineering units would work best. Maybe PW could be "acquired" with bureaucracy or require a "Civil Engineering Academy" city improvement. PW should cost money and become more efficient with tech.
NotLikeTea: "Terraforming" on earth is redundant. Maybe "geologic reconstruction."
mindlace: Cloneodo's suggestion was incredibly cool. I'd use checkboxes. Select a terraforming area, then a box pops up:
_______Farm__'solar'__Mine__Road
Plains__[X]____[X]____[ ]___[ ]
Rocky___[X]____[ ]____[X]___[ ]
dinoman2: I like CTP's public works, but it's frustrating not being able to build outside your base radius. You still need engineers.
Theben: I had an idea similar to Cloneodo's. Have a Preferences screen, similar to SMAC, where you set out priorities for your engineers based on terrain tile, choice of tile improvement, and the order to build them. The AI would check your preferences; if grassland is your #1 priority, it would scan for grassland, then move to the nearest grass tile, etc. If not, it would move down the list. Your preferences could be changed during the game. You could store the AI's build preferences and modify them in a text file.
technophile: Who says we'll never be able to turn mountains into grassland? If there are future techs, I'd like to be able to squeeze blood from mountains and glaciers or other eco-marvels. But not in the first 6000 years of the game.
don Don: I think it would be better to have a scale with many steps of productivity (fractional or decimal outputs) rather than a few integer steps as in Civ and SMAC. I like engineers being distinct from population expansion (settlers), but I disagree with the whole idea of changing land types, with the possible exception of deforestation, resulting in grassland, plains or desert and high production for a while; and reforestation, which might come up later in the game and would cost a lot of gold. Modifying mountains is unrealistic.
THE MAP
Kris Huysmans: No 3-D terrain; without 3-D units it's useless, and 3-D units rule out customization.
Climate modeling issues: more attention to water modeling, climate changes over time, long-term effects of irrigation, effects of deforestation in late game
NotLikeTea: Would like to see gradual climactic change, deserts expanding/receding, swamps forming/drying up.
JT: Altitude should be an aspect of terrain, as in SMAC.
Rathenn: Better resource seed, something more random than Civ II without regular patterns.
EnochF: There's potential for continental plates, but it would be hell to program.
NotLikeTea: But some geological realism would be nice. Volcanos and faults could be logically placed, and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge might make a nice geographical landmark.
DickK: Dynamic maps, global climactic change, rivers changing course, new resources uncovered, old resources peter out, areas get wetter or dryer, and all this reacts to the human interaction with the environment. Or the whole climate of the planet may change, temperatures rise or fall, humidity increase or decrease. All over the course of the game and very, very slow.
DickK: Also, random maps seem too random. Deserts don't occur in 1-2 square patches. Mountains should divide forests from plains. Terrain should be 3-D in the SMAC sense.
Theben: I want a round planet. Keep the square/diamond tiles. Less importantly, the computer could base the map on tectonic plates, which would be discernible upon zooming out, with volcanic activity, etc. Windward mountain or hill slopes are forested and receive +1 food and +1 shield. Squares 1-2 tiles east from leeward mountain range should rarely be grassland; use plains or desert instead.
Harel: Bigger maps, 1000 x 1000.
E: Resources should change, appear, peter out, and you should save them up like Age of Empires. Animals should be limited to certain sections of the world, so not everyone has horses or elephants. Agriculture could be similarly limited, certain places favoring wheat, other places rice, olives, etc.
Dr Strangelove: The idea of tiles bearing tradable commodities, as in CTP, is good. But industrial resources (coal, iron, and oil) should have a significant effect on production. Production values of mountains should be scaled down; not all mountains are suitable for mining. "I don't think there are many mines in the Alps." Mountains and hills without a resource should offer smaller boosts to production.
Ember: Avoid SMAC-style terrain. Elevation should not affect trade. No raising land from the ocean. Rockiness and moistness cannot sufficiently model the Earth's terrains.
Theben: Agreed, keep it flat.
M@ni@c: At least disallow raising/lowering.
Ecce Homo: At least use metric measurements for elevation. Incidentally, grassland dominated the map in Civ I and II; it should be rarer in Civ III. More focus on forests, perhaps using Maniac's deciduous/grass, pine/plains idea. Resources are never depleted, merely become very scarce; it should depend on trade commodities. [see Economic thread]
M@ni@c: When resources disappear, you could turn to space (Mars, Moon, asteroids). New victory condition: terraform Mars. [see Space Exploitation thread]
don Don: Treating huge chunks of land (100 sq. mi.) as undifferentiated terrain is silly. Mines and farms can be built within 100 miles of each other. I'd like something more innovative, maybe multiple population units able to work the same tile, with diminishing returns. Name on resource that has been "depleted"; there aren't any.
CivPerson: There should be an option for a large map (100x100) so that the terrain can be more detailed.
Flavor Dave: As for undifferentiated terrain, that's just a result of the kind of game Civ is.
mindlace: I vote for 3D terrain, but finer-grained squares to avoid the rolling hill look of SMAC. Maybe divide each square into a 3x3 grid of varying elevation. Since it's not a barren world, have sprites for trees, jungle, grass. Maybe even a prominent Amazon river.
M@ni@c: If we go with 3D terrain, then terrain should be able to rise more than 1000 meters per square. Otherwise, a genuine Earth map is impossible (Himalayas, Andes).
Jon Miller: Agreed. SMAC featured volcanos the size of France. Mountain ranges aren't that wide. SMAC's system could differentiate between lowlands and highlands, but the actual mountains and hills would work better as independent tiles.
ember: To me, squares represent the resources available, not the elevation. We could add high-altitude plains, but I feel 3D terrain is a devolution, making the interface more complicated without adding any relevant information.
Technophile: I see no need for "high-altitude plains," because altitude affects terrain indirectly, through factors such as vegetation and rainfall, which are already covered. I'm still in favor of 3D terrain, though.
Flavor Dave: Elevated plains might serve to allow defensible cities to grow; you'd get food plus defense.
Metamorph: Let's try something abstract. Let's say the random tile generator first establishes assigns production and food values to various tiles, grouping them together based on numbers rather than "terrain." Then the terrain would be established by the numbers; high food, low production areas would use a grassland graphic; high production, low food would use a mountain graphic. When the user holds the mouse over a tile, you'd see a display window indicating the resources, but the graphic would be a good indicator even without knowing the exact numbers. Engineers working the land could be instructed to boost food or production, not literally remake the land like in Civ; increased food would decrease production and vice versa; the graphic may change with the numbers. Rivers will boost trade and food, possibly changing the graphic from plains to grassland. Thus, you'll see strips of grassland along rivers. Engineers might even tap a water source and "build" rivers. Resources determine appearance, not vice versa.
Diodorus Sicilus: About high plateaus. If you want food from mountains, just add the historical "terracing" TI, as used in the Far East and Incan Empire. You can irrigate with saltwater, but it requires special tech advances; the Israelis have been doing it in the Negev for twenty years now.
THE GRAPHICS
Eggman: Avoid terrain types that look alike. Make sure jungles don't look like forests. In SMAC, "rolling," "rocky" and "rainy" all tended to blend together.
E: Extra spaces in the terrain graphics file to give more freedom of customization.
technophile: How difficult would it be to incorporate a rotatable view of the world? This way mountains and valleys would be more prominent, and we wouldn't have to worry about units becoming "invisible." That way, 3D terrain wouldn't interfere with gameplay.
NEW IMPROVEMENTS
Theben: Important: Build Canals. Upgrade Fortress (from Fort to Keep to Fortress to Castle/Base). Land forts extend borders, if borders are used. Feudalistic governments might gain gold from forts, if surrounding tiles are populated. Fortresses might also be a city improvement. Aqueduct as tile improvement: mountains with aqueducts generate +1 food. In addition to Airbases, have Naval Bases (extend range of ships, repairs ships more quickly) and also Coastal Defense and Anti-Aircraft Defense TI's. Mountain Pass lowers movement cost, allows mounted units to cross a range.
Kris Huysmans: Animal Farm, +1 food, +1 trade when you have discovered… sigh… Fast Food and have a Free Market (as in SMAC social engineering).
Harel: Agriculture improvements. Irrigation (+1 food, +2 for deserts), Fields (+1 food, +2 for plains), Farms (+1 food), Fertilized Crops (+1 food), Industrial Farm (+1 food). Transport improvements: Path (1/2 movement), Road (1/3 movement), Railroad (1/4 movement), Monorail (1/5 movement), no unlimited movement. Add deep-core mines to upgrade mines. Wall TI's, which can surround a city or a civilization.
Mzilikazi: National parks. Any tiles within your borders can be designated a national park (with an advance, say, Conservation). No roads may be built there or other improvements. There are benefits to the nearest city in gold and happiness. Moving units through national parks would cause unhappiness.
Theben: Those national park rules seem harsh (and unrealistic). Plus, you'd have to have roads there anyway.
The Ellimist: New military terrains. Military Base (req. Tactics), const. 10 turns. Any land or air units receive +1 morale the first time they pass through. Replaces Airbase.
Naval Yard (req. Amphibious Warfare), const. 20 turns. Any naval units can be completely repaired (increased rate of repair). Can only be built in coastal squares.
Trench (req. Construction). Replaces Fortress. Increases defensive strength of all units by +50%.
Bunker (req. Steel). +50% defense, cumulative with Trench.
Force Field (req. Photonics). +50% defense, cumulative with Trench and Bunker.
Jimmy: Missile Silo, could hold missiles as a city (without unhappiness?) Would survive to retaliate even if the nearest city is nuked. Thus, missile silos would be prime targets of a nuclear strike rather than cities. Better nuclear strategy.
M@ni@c: Forest, Jungle (naturally occurring), Offshore Platform. Irrigation, mine, farm, fortress, airbase, road, railroad as in Civ2. Radar, as in SMAC/CTP. Canals, condensers, solar collectors, wind mills (varies with elevation). Roads = 1/3 mv, railroads = 1/5 mv, highways = 1/10 mv, maglevs = unlimited. Railroads boost minerals 50%, maglevs another 50%. Genetic Farm for another food +1.
ember: Instead of SMAC-style "raising" an ocean square into land, perhaps a Dike improvement to confer grassland bonuses to shoreline ocean tiles.
Communist_99: Trenches increase defense by 100%, reduced to 50% upon discovery of "Chemical Warfare," reduced to 25% after Advanced Flight. Cannot be built in forest, jungle, swamp, mountains, glacier, desert.
Theben: Idea from the City Improvements thread. Have a Supply Depot TI which acts as a supply crawler from SMAC. You build it with public works or engineers, it hauls one of the three resources to a designated city. Max of 3 Supply Depots in one square. Distance, tech level, size of city and connection to city may factor into the final percentage reaching the city. Requires gold/shields to maintain. Won't interfere with enemy advances, like supply crawlers, but can be pillaged. Possible problem: can't help build Wonders.
NEW TERRAINS
Harel: Lush land, a rich form of plains, found around volcanos or like in the Nile delta. Areas of nutrient-rich soil.
Theben: Differentiate between hot/cold desert and forest, based on latitude.
Bulrathi: Should be Arable Land, or perhaps food tiles as in Imperialism. Then you could have high-density large nations like India and China in a small area.
Diodorus Sicilus: The definition of arable land changes with technology. Clearing forests, irrigation, terraces all serve to create arable land. Irrigation made the Fertile Crescent fertile, and hybrid wheat forms made the "plains" (with occasional buffalo tiles) of the U.S. into a bread basket.
M@ni@c: Treat forests and jungles as naturally occurring TI's occurring on grassland, plains, hills (jungles on grass, plains, swamp near equator): no forests in desert, glacier. Treat forests as 1 Food, 2 Minerals (+1 Trade for a road); later on a city improvement (supermarket?) could boost forests to 2/2/2. Jungles would begin as 1/1/0 (1/1/1 w/road), could be boosted with some discovery to 1/3/3. Volcanos should give a 1/1/1 bonus and can appear in any terrain (including ocean).
Theben: I had suggested forested mountains and forested hills, with +1 food and +1 compared to standard hills/mts, would be found on windward side of ranges.
M@ni@c: Altiplano = high altitude plains. Maybe differentiate between pine and deciduous? How about forests are not TI's as I suggested above, but you have Pine and Deciduous forests; irrigated pine = plains, irrigated deciduous = grassland. How about, during the process of deforestation, give a mineral bonus of 5 to the nearest city? Two new terrains: Polar Hill and Desert Hill.
Monk: There have to be Dunes (hard desert), Savannah and different kinds of forest such as evergreen, rain forest, etc. Those standard forests look silly at the equator. Also, deserts should be difficult to cross.
Gordon the Whale: That would be solved by the LTMV system (see below). A traditional Civ forest would be temperate w/moderate moisture. Near the equator, temperature would be hot. Rain forests would occur in wet areas. Savannah is tough because it's halfway between forest and grass, but not in a transitional zone. I'd say Savannah would be represented by grass.
Giant Squid: New idea, Dangerous Terrain. Give every terrain a danger rating. Forests, grassland, hills, and plains are completely safe. But for example, give deserts a 25% danger rating for heat. If a normal unit enters a desert square, it has a 25% chance of being lost. Some units might have special resistance, say Cameleer, resistance to heat 20%. This would give cameleers a 5% chance of perishing in the desert. Other danger categories are cold, elevation, maybe wild animals. Cameleers would not resist the cold on an Arctic square. Maybe a civ would acquire cultural adaptations depending on its starting terrain: A city has 5 desert squares in its radius; units produced in that city are given a 15% resistance to heat (suggestion: number of squares x 3). This might accurately represent guerrilla warfare: more powerful units would die in perilous terrain which the locals are adept at traversing. A road through such a square would reduce danger by 10%. Oceans squares would have danger ratings, too: Ocean, danger rating for storms 20%, danger rating for giant squid attack 2%. Polar ocean might have danger of icebergs, coastal ocean rocks. If done right, this could eliminate the need for the trireme penalty.
Theben: I suggested something like this a while ago. My idea was inhospitable terrain damages units. Every turn spent in an unhealthy square could take 1-2 points of damage. Elephants would be damaged in mountains, chariots would be damaged in swamps. Chariots and armor can't cross mountains without a pass. Various flags would give units resistance, alpine units in the mountains, marines in the jungle, etc. Explorers and partisans would be immune to all inhospitable terrain.
TILE ISSUES
NotLikeTea: Devolution of tiles: Tile improvements might degrade and disappear if not used. Archaeology as a science could uncover "ancient farms."
Wheathin: TI's should not be available on all terrains at the same time or cost. Roads on grassland is easy, but roads in forests, mountains and glaciers are different. Mines on hills before mines on mountains.
Wheathin: Maybe maintenance costs for TI's, higher costs the further away they are from a city.
Theben: Sources (iron, coal, uranium, oil): maybe a source must exist within your borders before you can utilize it; if you don't have it, you'll have to trade. Lack of resources might inhibit research.
Theben: Grasslands, plains and hills can always be irrigated unless adjacent to the leeward side of a mountain range. Desert, tundra and glacier cannot be irrigated unless there's a river in the square or contains a suitable resource (oasis, hot spring) or a certain level of technology has been reached. Jungles and swamps should have at least 1 production for available wood.
Harel: Mines should only get a bonus if there's a road connecting it to the city. Nearby tiles should affect one another. E.g., mines harm nearby farms, but increase productivity of nearby mines. Roads cannot be built on mountains until explosives or rivers until bridge building.
Eggman: Less tile improvements are better than more. Keep things simple. Five different farming upgrades may be more realistic, but it adds little to the game, and it would get confusing. (The graphics would have to be pretty distinctive.)
Theben: Irrigation: grassland and plains should always be irrigable, but never desert. If a river is over-irrigated, it might dry up. Transforming desert to plains or grassland should require maintenance over time. TIs should cost gold if public works isn't used. Building a TI should extend your borders if: I. It's adjacent to your border, II. It's not within another civ's border (unless contested), III. It can connect to your supply grid [assumes supply system]. During war all borders would be contested.
M@ni@c: Oceans should begin producing 1/0/2. There should be Harbor and Fishery city improvements to boost ocean food by 1. Offshore Platforms could be a TI adding 1 mineral (+1 trade?). Grassland should have special resources.
technophile: I think irrigation and farmland should be separate improvements; farms don't require irrigation. Let's have terraced farms for mountain and hill tiles. Costlier, requiring better tech, but available eventually.
Theben: Incan mountain cities were roughly size 2 or 3 in Civ terms, easily reached with a couple terraced hills.
GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES
Widowmaker: The player (or computer) should name geographical locations.
Octopus: Take each civ's starting positions into account, so that the Nile will be near Egypt or the Andes Mountains near the Incas.
Kmj: Whoever is the first to discover a region gets to name it.
Eggman: Natural Wonders like in SMAC. Sahara Desert, Grand Canyon, the Nile, the Amazon, Everest or the Himalaya, the Marianas Trench, etc., could provide small bonuses.
DickK: Major named features with unique benefits or penalties.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by EnochF (edited September 02, 1999).]</font>
Comment