TERRAIN & TERRAIN IMPROVEMENTS (ver 2.0): Hosted by EnochF

[EnochF]

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>

[EnochF]

MILITARY
Wheathin: Terrain should limit military movement. Some units get terrain bonuses for certain terrains, others will find certain terrains impassable. Mounted units, siege weapons can't move on mountains.
Russellw: Armies should be vulnerable while crossing rivers.
Theben: Forts on coasts can incorporate sea defenses or anti-aircraft capability. Important: extreme climate can damage units. Some units (chariots, tank) may not enter swamp or mountain without roads or mountain passes. Other units take damage as they move through swamp or desert or glacier. Some special units would have certain climate immunities (alpine in mountains & tundra, marines in jungle & swamp). Special units would be immune to movement penalties, but would not have road-bonus movement. Some units (explorer, partisan) are immune to all climates.
Alexander's Horse: City squares should not receive defense bonuses for terrain. Cities are built on plains, near rivers or the sea. Fortresses are built in the mountains, but not cities.
Eggman: Cities do receive defense bonuses. Quebec, built on high ground, was nearly impossible to take.
Wheathin: Nukes should not only pollute the city radius, but also destroy all tile improvements on the surrounding 8 squares.
Harel: Artillery, etc., can "bombard" tile improvements.
Diodorus Sicilus: Certain improvements should be attackable with barrage or bombard from the sea or air. Railroads, canals and roads can be bombed; offshore platforms destroyed from the air (or by natural disaster). However, bombing farmland from the air would be ineffective; it requires a ground unit to pillage.
Theben: Give low percentage chance of bombarding TI's until laser targeting.
ember: I don't see why artillery on "high ground" should have a bonus, at least not on the Civ scale. By Civ standard, short-range artillery shouldn't even be able to hit the next square. If it's long range, what difference does an extra hundred meters make?
Gordon the Whale: Close call. Maybe give any unit attacking from high ground an attack modifier.
Theben: Maybe a workable minefield idea. A mined tile is equivalent to a wilderness or mountain type square, except no unit is immune. Could be placed on land or sea with the same basic effect. Can be laid by any engineer or military unit. The civ that laid the minefield takes only half damage. They also cause unhappiness if laid in a city radius.
FinnishGuy: Cool, but they shouldn't cause unhappiness during wartime.
technophile: I think minefields should magnify the effect of bombarding by bombers and artillery; units in minefields can't maneuver to avoid the shelling. Engineers should lay minefields in half the time other military units to do so.

RIVERS
Russellw: Increase trade depending on number of cities upstream. Increase aqueduct, hydro power, sewer system effects for cities on rivers. Armies should be vulnerable while crossing rivers. Borders should tend to conform to rivers.
EnochF: More rivers. Maybe begin random map generator with river systems.
Diodorus Sicilus: Include a "head of navigation" point on a river. Between that point and the sea, cities receive a trade bonus, but above that point only defense. Canal building could push the head of navigation upward later in the game.
Giant Squid: Every TI should belong to a civ, as airbases do in Civ II, i.e. "Babylonian irrigation." Using someone else's TI should be an act of war.
M@ni@c: Rivers should have a 1/0/1 bonus.
NotLikeTea: Maybe rivers could be divided into major and minor. Both would give food and movement bonus and allow irrigation, but only major rivers could be navigable by ocean units and provide a trade bonus. Also, there should be a movement penalty to moving across a river ("fording" it).
Lohrax: I like the idea of major/minor rivers. They could be separated by a "cataract" (below cataract=trade bonus, navigability). Fording a river should incur a movement penalty, but I think also units on rivers should have a defense penalty; and units crossing a bridge (especially a RR) should be practically defenseless; moving armies over rivers has always been a logistical nightmare. Maybe reduce movement rates on bridges; bridges are choke-points.
dinoman2: I want bridges to connect land over water squares. At first, only 1 square could be bridged, eventually 3 squares max.
Theben: I've always assumed all the rivers visible on the map were major rivers and should be navigable by certain sea units. Minor rivers should be practically everywhere; every grassland tile should be assumed to have minor rivers and should be irrigable.
ember: I disagree with defense penalties on rivers. In Civ scale, it will usually be the attacker who's forced to cross the river, while the defender sits on the other side shooting fish in a barrel.
Gordon the Whale: Maybe we could have rivers affect the land like moisture to differentiate between moisture and rainfall. Rivers could be given a "flow rate," high meaning very navigable, low meaning treacherous. Rivers could run downhill or follow the 3D landscape, occasionally pooling into lakes. Swamps, bogs and marshes would be tiles with extremely slow rivers.
Diodorus Sicilus: Rivers are already the major source of irrigation and transportation for the game. Thus, the movement bonus has to be adjusted slightly. Early on, units should move faster on riverboats than on roads (maybe x4 MV), and rivers should extend city radii; riverboats are the only way to move food and bulk goods. The "head of navigation" should be marked on a river. Early ships can go up river to that point, and engineers can extend it using canals. Cities built at the head of navigation get a trade bonus. This would allow "inland port" cities, like London, Philadelphia, Hamburg, etc.

ROADS
Wheathin: Roads are ugly. Don't link them to trade bonuses, or players will build them in the entire city radius.
EnochF: Roads/railroads provide no trade bonus, but superhighways can still be built, providing +1 trade per road square. Encourages road building near developed cities.
Eggman: No unlimited movement on railroads. Too easily misused militarily.
Wheathin: Superhighways encourages ugly road building.
EnochF: Roads in the city radius simulate urban sprawl. What about unlimited movement on maglevs for the late game?
Diodorus Sicilus: Roads and railroads should effectively extend the city radius. Maybe after the development of concrete, things like suburbs or hinterland could be built to extend city radii without the ugliness of roads.
NotLikeTea: Railroads should only provide unlimited movement within your own borders. Not in enemy territory.
Ecce Homo: Citizens can work any square within 2 movement points of a city. Production will be penalized for any square requiring more than 1/3 movement points to reach the city. Double this after automobile.
Eggman: There are loopholes in railroad movement being unlimited within your borders. Perhaps combat movement would be limited, i.e. after six steps, a howitzer can no longer attack. And air units should be able to take advantage of the infinite movement as well.
Wheathin: Suburbs don't reach 200 miles away from a city. Excessive roads ruin the aesthetic experience of the game.
Theben: All civs may use enemy roads, but may not use enemy railroads or better. Noncombat units may use railroads of civs with peaceful relations. All units may use railroads of allies. Rails may be "claimed" by a military unit if at war. Perhaps color-coding would be a good solution. Also, small percentage increase in roaded tiles from all resources; percentage increases are totaled and added to overall production.
Eggman: When a city is captured, along with "partisans" there's a chance that the surrounding railroads are sabotaged. Partisans may also destroy both railroads and roads crossing a river (blow up the bridge).
NotLikeTea: Interesting… maybe give partisans a free pillage on the first turn of automatic creation.
Kris Huysmans: Then you just kill the partisans and bring along 10 engineers. No, you can't use enemy railroads.
Wheathin: How about player-specific railroads? Color code them to the building civ, like Theben said. There can be only one player's rails in a square. Building your own rail would destroy the enemy's rail and change colors.
Harel: Have "support costs" for tiles, with roads being the most expensive, to prevent over-building of roads. Roads cannot be built on mountains until explosives or rivers until bridge building.
Kris Huysmans: Railroads can never be built faster than 2 turns, no matter how many engineers are working. Prevents railroad/howitzer blitzing.
Ecce Homo: Color-coded railroads, but the color changes depending on which unit occupies it. The railroad should be "converted" at the beginning of the next turn.
DaBods: There should be several different kinds of roads. Roads should give a trade bonus. No unlimited movement for railroads.
Theben: Color-coded rails. On the turn that you remove control from the enemy, the railroad (maglev) has no color: no one owns it. At the beginning of the next turn, if your unit is still there (hasn't been destroyed), you gain possession of the railroad. Pressing 'r' would build a road as in Civ II, but 'R' would allow you to plot a road from point A to point B, and the engineer will gradually build where you specify.
Zakalwe: Restrict rail movement to inside your borders; not strictly historical, but solves gameplay problems. Possibly assign a chance for any battle in a RR tile to destroy the RR. Or add "railroad gauges": when a civ builds its first RR, a window appears asking to build w/ standard or unique gauge. Unique gauges would prevent enemy civs using your RR.
Technophile: You shouldn't have to control a RR to use it. To prevent rail blitzing, limit RR movement or implement road blocks. Maglevs could not be used by rivals civs because the power could be turned off. (Discussion of Buster Keaton film "The General," which portrays use of enemy rails and is based on a true story.) Solutions: 1. Road blocks, 2. Limit unlimited rail movement to between cities, 3. Build RR's with inherent "direction" and increase costs for RR's not between cities, 4. It always takes more than 1 turn to build a RR, 5. Disallow attacks while on RR's.
Diodorus Sicilus: "The General" illustrates the difficulty of using enemy rails. A railroad is a system including switches, many trains, signals and communications. A single train might manage, but not an armored rail division. Perhaps give bonuses to pillaging RR's.
M@ni@c: Limit railroad use to civs who have discovered RR's. Or you can "convert" their railroad, as described above, or connect the rails somehow. Or better yet, give RR's a 1/5 mv bonus.
Theben: Some units should be able to use enemy rails. Spies and diplomats, for example. (Spies might have a chance of being caught each square they move on rails).
David Sheth: Different gauges would solve things and has historical merit. (Russia & China used different gauges). But you can design special cars to adapt wheels.
Ember: Perhaps you should just treat enemy RR's as roads.
CivPerson: Unlimited movement on RR only when a unit leaves from a city; otherwise, treat movement as a road.
Flavor Dave: How about unlimited movement on RR within your own borders. We are going to get borders, right? Outside your borders, maybe 1/6 MR.
technophile: Okay, agreed. I agree now RR's should be "owned," but also that using an enemy's RR should provide a road (or path) bonus.

THE SEA
Wheathin: "Ocean roads" for sea transport. Shipping lanes, or ferry routes, which increase sea movement for transports. Perhaps late game TI's would provide instant ocean transport like railroads.
Bridges and tunnels could provide transport across shallow water (one ocean tile).
Eggman: Perhaps increase movement rate of all ships, but increase movement cost when sailing into unexplored territory. Negates the need for shipping lanes.
Diodorus Sicilus: Sea transport was way too slow in Civ II, should be faster. Perhaps sea lanes or trade routes could simulate this, 2 or 3x movement rate.
Bubba: Get rid of nets from Call to Power. They're ugly.
M@ni@c: I'd like the option of undersea tunnels between sea cities (and connecting sea and land).

CITIES
Harel: Instead of a single city square, have "city tiles." The technology level determines the population a single tile can hold. Huts: 2 pop/tile, Masonry: 4 pop/tile, Concrete: 5 pop/tile, Urban: 8 pop/tile, Skyscraper: 10 pop/tile, Arcology: 15 pop/tile. Eventually, city tiles will become adjacent to one another, and the two adjoining cities will merge to become a megalopolis.
Don Don: A city square is huge. Suburban sprawl in a 50-mile radius is covered in that one city square.
Harel: But if the map were 1000 x 1000, then a city square would be on 20 miles or so. Thus, large cities would be better represented by multiple city tiles.
Diodorus Sicilus: All use of resources comes down to roads. Railroads increase food production because they allow farms to move more of their production to the cities. Therefore, I think the city radius should vary according to terrain and transportation. Cities on rivers should have larger radii in the early game because rivers were the only form of long-distance transportation of food. With railroads, the city radius ultimately amounts to wherever railroads connect to. Urban sprawl can only come with superhighways, ocean ports, railroads, etc. Only with modern transportation do we get modern metropoles such as New York, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, Mexico City and Moscow.
Don Don: We may have to move away from the idea that a "city" in civ is in fact a city, but rather consider it a province with a capital city in the middle. The surrounding tiles represent small cities whose names are relatively unimportant.
EnochF: Agreed, maps should have more tiles, and each tile should be smaller. I like the concept of "city tiles."
Gordon the Whale: Here's an idea that developed in the Economics thread: Villages are the primary method of gathering resources; they are the only place to put non-specialist citizens and exist on the surrounding squares of a city; they gather materials from their own square. Cities contain only specialists, including scientists, entertainers, workers, merchants, etc. Villages contain the agrarian population; if a village is destroyed, the population is also destroyed. Food production from villages should be roughly twice that of previous Civ games, to help sustain the specialists in the city. Villages are built with a public works-like system, possibly auto-built by the AI or queued by the player. Additional suggestions: Villages do not count toward the maximum people allowed in a city (aqueduct limits). Villages aren't included in the population of any one city, but are shared within a region (requires regions). Villages could be divided into two or more types, mining, farming, etc., which act differently (farming village on a forest tile becomes a logging village). Villages may eventually increase beyond size 1, increasing their maximum production, with diminishing returns (size-2 production is not double that of size 1); the second "point" of size may be a different type than the first. When a village reaches a certain size (3 or 4) it becomes a city. Villages must be built adjacent to a city or another village. Maximum distance from a main city is determined by tech level, railroad connectivity, etc. Perhaps allow villagers to enter the city in times of war, temporarily boosting the city population. Villages can't be built in the ocean, but perhaps cities with harbors could have "fishermen" specialists, or perhaps the option to build fishing villages on coastal squares, which harvest only an adjacent ocean square, not its own resources; this could be combined with farming or mining. Maybe building a village could be the only way to build a city until a certain tech advance, perhaps "colonization"; a settled colony becomes its own region, whereas a new village becomes part of an existing region; there would have to be a way to split regions, too, perhaps by building a "provincial capitol."
ember: Clarifications and extensions to the village idea: Villages would generate extra food and resources, but all trade and industry would be internal to the village itself, not added to the adjacent city; cities provide all usable trade and industry. Villages are built w/o resource or shield cost; building a village or moving a villager takes the same time as fortifying a unit. Coastal villages: the icon goes on the square and can be pillaged or bombarded there; oil platforms could be built in ocean squares. There's no need to differentiate village types; simply use existing TI's, like farms and mines. Settlers could start remote villages without being "used up," so villages could be built on nearby islands, without an adjacent village or city; there's still a distance limit, though. Cities themselves wouldn't generate resources, though rivers would still provide a trade bonus. In the beginning, regions could contain only one city; tech advances would allow more flexibility. I also think villages should never grow into cities without some direct intervention; spontaneous cities would be bad.
Theben: I'd also oppose villages growing into cities, a micromanaging nightmare.
technophile: Anybody remember Lords of the Realm? Similar thing, your population was housed in villages outside the main city that could be pillaged by invading armies. I like the idea, and I like multiple workers in one village able to farm and mine and farm again, for diminishing returns. I loathe villages turning into cities, though.
don Don: I favor the idea of special Village TI's for other uses. An inland city could use villages to connect to the ocean, allowing shipbuilding, coastal improvements. Villages could act as supply crawlers (SMAC) if connected to a city by road or rail (roads would provide partial utilization of the resource). They could coexist with airbases, mines, fortresses, etc.
Also, a Suburb TI might be nice, usable only in plains and grassland (requires Automobile). Could coexist with irrigation and farms, would allow an extra worker, which would produce only trade. Villages and Suburbs would allow much larger, more realistic cities.
Theben: One last suggestion. Auto TI building. Instead of engineers working the land, have the citizens who are actually working the land transform it. Place a citizen on a tile. After several turns, if you haven't upgraded the land, the people do it instead, according to your preference list. If you want to do something different from your standard preferences, you could "flag" a tile. Reduces micromanagement quite a bit. Cities might build too quickly, and engineers would be less important. Perhaps citizens could only build irrigation, farms, villages and roads; everything else requires engineers to build.
technophile: I like it. The system could be somewhat weakened if you were to lose tax income as a result of auto-improvement. If an improvement would normally result in 2 trade, it would only provide 1 trade if built by citizens because the other 1 trade would go in their pockets.
ember: I already proposed something like this (see below, in Comprehensive Lists).
don Don: I disagree about roads and irrigation. In general, the populace will only invest the minimum effort to make land useful. They may clear Paths, but not paved roads. That takes effort and organization. Your system really just points to the public works mechanism in CTP; somebody's already suggested separate terraformer units for jobs outside city radii and PW for inside city radii.
technophile: I don't care about the economic aspects of villages. I just figured villages would pop up whenever workers begin to work on a square. They might be represented by a small house or something, nothing that would obscure the terrain underneath. If multiple workers are on the square, the village would grow. When an enemy unit enters the square, villagers will held there under "house arrest," providing no resources to the city; they are also vulnerable to pillage. Pillaging a village may result in a small number of partisans late in the game, depending on tech and government.
ember: Building a village should take one turn of down time. That's about right for any stage of the game. They shouldn't spontaneously become cities.
Theben: I haven't played CTP, but my idea is to allow these things to occur without any player management.

FOOD
Wheathin: Something should be done to free cities from the limitations of their own farmland. Huge cities should no longer operate on the food-from-city-radius principle.
Don Don: When railroads became a viable economic factor, food allocation ceased to be local.
Alexander's Horse: Irrigation should be severely limited, to rivers. Only a tiny percentage of land is irrigated in the world today. Then provide several "upgrades" for farmland tiles.
Bulrathi: Anything that works to produce uneven population and food distribution, like the real world, is good.
Diodorus Sicilus: Variety in food production would add more variety between civilizations. Not just hunter-gatherers vs. farmers, but nomadic herders vs. farmers, farmers w/primitive plows and iron moldboard plows and good harness, modern rice harvesting (more than one harvest per year) vs. primitive grains, industrial agriculture, etc. In other words, more variety of agricultural tech, and more variation based on the terrain a civ starts in.
Theben: Modern cities are larger due to food imports, which many have suggested to get around size limitations for mountain cities. (In Civ II you can use food caravans for this.)

TILE-BASED CITY IMPROVEMENTS
Wheathin: Like harbors and supermarkets. Civ III should have many of these. Or perhaps certain city improvements allow certain tile improvements, i.e. no fisheries without a harbor.
Kris Huysmans: Hates supermarkets and superhighways in Civ II. TI's should provide bonuses without needing a city improvement.
Theben: Environmentalism tech adds +1 trade to wilderness squares (mountain, jungle, swamps, tundra, forests) with roads in them.

POLLUTION
Theben: Important: Pollution within the city radius should cause unhappiness. Nuclear pollution = twice the unhappiness. Nuclear pollution takes longer to clean. Only engineers may clean (not settlers). Fallout may cause pollution downwind of the target. Nuclear pollution may lower population for X number of turns. Nukes should also damage terrain.
Flavor Dave: Add a random feature to pollution, that a polluted river square may "silt up" and become a swamp tile until an engineer "dredges" it. (A special swamp, not a standard swamp.)
M@ni@c: Two kinds of pollution. Industrial: forests, jungles and swamps would decrease industrial pollution. 8 polluted squares should trigger global warming. Nuclear: a certain number of nuclear pollution would trigger nuclear winter: -50% food for ten years? Maybe less than 8 squares would trigger it.

WEATHER
NotLikeTea: Add in random effects, like earthquakes, tidal waves, floods, volcanos, continental drift…
Bird: Natural conditions like those could be random events. Tornados, hurricanes, monsoons, etc., could cause food losses, population decreases, destruction of TI's, etc. Volcanos could crop up on plate edges, but oil/gas resources would also increase there.
DickK: Random climactic/geographical events with minor effects. Famine (loss of food, though irrigation/farmland lessens the effect), Flood (for cities next to rivers, lessened by sewer system, city walls), Epidemic (lessened by hospitals, Cure for Cancer), Mine Failure (decreases production in tile), Bumper Crop (increased food), Gold Strike (iron, silver, uranium, etc.), Oil Strike.
E: Have some tiles be programmable with seasons. Add a flag or an event function that would trigger the change. Some weather would be cool, too.
Flavor Dave: Disasters simply don't fit within the scale of the game, unless you're running a scenario. Tiles are too big , and turns are too long. It would be an interesting option, though. Seasons don't fit, either; each turn is at least a year long anyway.
Theben: A major disaster like an earthquake, flood, fire or riot could affect an entire tile. Rivers change course or dry up, resources appear/disappear. SMAC's "cloud cover for 10 years" is silly, though. Agreed, make it optional.
Ecce Homo: Besides, I'd rather see Civ3 have more detail, thus smaller tiles, more tiles per map.
CivPerson: I like disasters. Maybe you could have squares "on fire," kind of like pollution. The tile couldn't be worked, and it would damage any unit moving in. Later on, have a fire-fighting advance and a fire station city improvement. Later on, have maybe a flamethrower or napalm unit to use fire during warfare.
NotLikeTea: Don't like "burning" squares, but weapons to destroy terrain would be cool. Napalm could reduce the defense bonus of a jungle/forest.
bcr3: Condensed from the General Forum thread "Nature's Wrath": Specific disasters should target specific terrain types. Tornadoes hit grass and plains. Tsunamis hit coastal squares. Landslides hit hills. Volcanic eruptions hit mountains. Earthquakes may be random or determined by a faultline system. Certain disasters might destroy specific city improvements: tsunamis take out harbors and port facilities, floods destroy aqueducts and sewer systems. Divide disasters into major and minor, the latter of which may be preventable. New techs or improvements might prevent or lessen the effects of disasters: Seismology tech could warn of impending earthquakes or allow earthquake-proof building codes, or reveal the faultline map. Disasters could kill off population points depending on their status (major/minor). A player could give an evacuation order which allows a city to be spared population loss (but not city improvements) at the cost of stopping the city's production/trade.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by EnochF (edited September 02, 1999).]</font>

[EnochF]

COMPREHENSIVE LISTS
[/b]Diodorus Sicilus[/b]: Complete list of improvements.
Land: Roads, permanent roads, railroads, maglev line; roads extend city radius 1 tile, railroads and maglevs extend radius to regional distances. Farms, factory farms (along with several incremental improvements to farms, advance-based, like moldboard plow, improved grain, crop rotation, artificial fertilizer). Irrigation, canals (canals allow irrigation beyond rivers; irrigation turns desert/plains into grassland for farming purposes). Mines, deep mines, open-pit mines (deep mines require steam, open-pit mines are 20th Century). Fortifications, fortresses (fortresses are 19th Century concrete and steel). Airfield.
Sea: Fishing boats, fishing trawlers, factory ships ("mobile improvements," can be moved to where the fish are, but are useless without fish). Fish farm, aquaculture station (stationary). Offshore platform (useable on resources at sea). Mine belt, mine array, SONAR array, MAD array (mines to damage/destroy ships, SONARs to detect them).
Also wants lots of eye candy in the form of visible improvements. Canals with boats, detailed roads, visible harbors, things like that. Pillaged improvements could be just as visually striking.
Theben: Seems like a lot of those TI's could be advanced techs, granting small percentage gains to overall food/shield/trade production. Fishing boats sound like they should be units (like SMAC's supply crawlers), not TI's. 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.

technophile: Complete road system.
Path (1/2 mv), buildable with "Roads," allows horses/elephants in mountains, swamps, etc., never obsolete. Trade bonus if between two friendly cities.
Road (1/3 mv), can only be built on plains, grass, hills or mountain passes until "Explosives."
Improved Road (1/5 mv), auto-replaces all roads, improved trade, requires "Highway," more difficult to bombard.
Railroad (1/10 mv until "Bessemer steel," then 1/15 or 1/20), improved trade, can be used by any civ.
Maglev (unlimited mv), requires advanced tech, can only be used by controlling civ, improved trade.
Tunnel, buildable in shallow water, allows road, railroad, maglev to be built.
Vacuum Tunnel, can be built anywhere (sea, space, land), acts as maglev.
Trade bonuses for roads only occur between two friendly cities. Perhaps a separate tech "Suburb?" could provide railroad bonuses in every city radius square to simulate sprawl. All civs can use railroads, but "road blocks" can be built (some discussion of the Buster Keaton film "The General"); bombarding the road block also destroys the railroad. In late game, roads (etc.) can be built underground (bonuses against bombarding). Bombarding primitive TI's is difficult (paths are near impossible). Pillage will degrade the TI one level (improved road to road, road to path, farm to irrigation).
mindlace: Cool. Vacuum tunnel should be more expensive the more tiles it covers, and shouldn't allow cross-connections.
technophile: To clarify my Vacuum Tunnel idea: it's a reinforced tube on the ocean floor. Lack of wind resistance makes for rapid transportation. It can extend through water and land; each section must be built by an engineer, and the ends (if not located in cities) must contain their own TI's. Vacuum Tubes would provide unlimited movement, but can only be entered from either end.

Gordon the Whale: New terrain system and subsequent discussion.
Rockiness, Moisture and Elevation as in SMAC aren't enough. But change it to Landform, Temperature, Moisture, and Vegetation, then add rivers and special resources, and it might be adequate. Landform combines Elevation and Rockiness in a way; it determines base minerals and suitability for farming; 3 levels: Plains, Hill, Mountain. Temperature and moisture help determine food output and also help the map generator determine Vegetation; 3 levels of temp: Hot, Temperate, Cold; 3 levels of moisture: Arid, Moderate, Wet. 3 levels of vegetation: Scrublands, Grass, Forest. Forests can't grow on Hot or Arid squares; Scrublands wouldn't be placed on Temperate Moist Plains. Landforms could be generated first, maybe on a tectonic model, for more realistic worlds. There would be more land types without getting confusing (Forest, Forested Hills, Forested Mountains, Cold Forest, etc.) Terraforming is more reasonable: you can't change a mountain to a plain, but you can deforest/reforest it. Use separate landforms for oceans; 3 levels: Continental Shelf, Offshore Deeps, Abyssal Trench; ocean vegatations: Nothing, Coral Reef, Kelp Forest (more Nothing in oceans than on land). Moisture in oceans is a placeholder for determining vegetation, or just in case global warming happens. Pulled off badly, it would lead to flavorless, SMAC-type maps. Also, there may be too many graphics involved. Then you've got the "border tiles"…
The old terrains expressed in the LTMV system:
Ocean = offshore deeps / any / any / nothing
Desert = plains / hot / dry / scrublands
Plains = plains / temperate / moderate / grass
Grassland = plains / temperate / wet / grass
Forest = plains / temperate / moderate / forest
Jungle = plains / hot / moist / forest
Swamp = plains / any / moist / grass
Hill = hill / any / any / grass
Mountain = mountain / any / any / scrublands
Tundra = plains / cold / any / grass
Glacier = plains / cold / any / scrublands
M@ni@c: Cool! In the beginning, there should be a lot more forests, to simulate the world before human deforestation. That should be easy in this system. How would this simulate high-altitude plains, though?
technophile: Agreed, the pros outweigh the cons. Customization would be harder, but also more impressive. Imagine terrains for Mars or Hell… Borders between terrains would be tough to manage; maybe an algorithm could be designed to "mesh" or morph any two given terrains together. Maybe moisture and temperature could determine the disease factor of a region.
Theben: Great job! Maybe graphics could overlap for certain LTMV combinations, but not too few or the map will turn out ugly.
Gordon the Whale: High-altitude plains aren't addressed, but I imagine they would behave much like low plains. That way, you could set each tile on a 3D map like SMAC, or perhaps with tiles made of small 3D grids, such as mindlace suggested. technophile: I like the terrain/disease correlation. Theben: Overlapping graphics might make the map ambiguous; I want to know whether I'm settling on plains or grassland. Differences could be subtle, a matter of shading. Incidentally, I'm reconsidering whether Grassland should be considered a "wet" square. A plains / temperate / wet / grass should be a marsh of some sort.
How about:
Plains = plains / temperate / dry / grass
Grassland = plains / temperate / moderate / grass
Other stuff:
Plains: The basic square. Chances of a mineral resource: 1/10 (either an "extra shield" or a more complicated resource system). Max food without a farm: 2.
Hills: Higher chance of resources: 1/4, seeded individually rather than by square, so a square may possess more than one resource. Some hills might have "large deposits," the equivalent of two of the game resource. Max food without a farm: 1.
Mountains: The most resource heavy: 1/2 or 1/3. Can also have large deposits. Max food without a farm: 0. All mountain grass squares get -1 food penalty.
Temperature: -1 food per square for cold regions, no mod for moderate, +1 for hot.
Moisture: Same as temperature, except an unfarmed wet square would function as dry (-1 food), and wet plains would require a special kind of farm (you really can't farm a swamp, and since moisture represents rainfall, you can't "drain" the square). The special farm gives a +1 bonus. Wet mountains don't suffer the penalty because they're self-draining.
Vegetation: The heat bonus doesn't apply for squares with scrublands, though the moisture bonus does (to simulate deserts with some vegetation; in the game, moist scrublands will be rare, though, unless caused by pollution or nuclear warfare). Grass produces 1 food plus inherent resources. Forest produces 1 food plus 2 shields/wood; forests cannot be farmed. Climate bonuses that apply to food for plains, also apply to shields/wood for forests, including the "wet plains" penalty.
Farms: This assumes a TI called a farm. All tiles have a set amount of max food they can produce, and farms allow the player to access it. A square may provide 5 food, but a citizen can only produce 2 food, 3 with a farm; later tech improvements may boost this to the full 5. Maybe you could even plant specific crops: rice could add 3 food, but only on wet squares. Wheat could add +2, not available on cold or dry squares. Maize could be +1 on anything but cold or wet. Potatoes +1 anywhere. These could become available with tech advances or random events or be distributed among civilizations at the beginning, determined by location; you could even trade them with other civs. Then later on come cash crops like tobacco, cotton, sugar, indigo. Greenhouses could eliminate the cold penalty, et cetera. To harvest everything properly, maybe start the game with a free terraformer unit (not called a terraformer, obviously).
Farm: Unlimited food production on plains, 2 food on hills, cannot be built in mountains.
Terraced Farm: Allow 3 food in hills, and 2 (or 1) in mountains. (Remember mountain grass gets -1 food). Can only be built in hills and mountains, requires a tech advance (earthworks, terraced farming, engineering, maybe).
Drained Farm: Acts as a farm, eliminates wet plains penalty. Makes wet squares the most valuable. Requires a new tech advance. A possible line of advances: aqueducts, sewers, irrigation, drained farms, canals, dikes, dams, etc.
M@ni@c: Okay, but high-alt plains might look odd between mountain ranges. You should be able to irrigate high-alt plains without rivers; same with wet tiles.
Gordon the Whale: Maybe the elevation of plains could be the average of its surrounding tiles. I figured irrigation would only serve to eliminate penalties for dry climate.
ember: Good point. Modern farmlands in Canada are rarely irrigated. Irrigation could effectively upgrade a square's moisture rating. Implementing farms and crop rotation would be the biggest harvest boosters.
Theben: Agreed, irrigation should increase moisture, and farms boost food production.
don Don: Ooh, let's add another layer of complexity. There's a difference between rainfall and drainage. The Bosque del Apache in New Mexico is a swamp with low rainfall. There's a rain forest in Washington and British Columbia that's "moderate" temperature because of drainage. [I'm not sure, but I sense a modicum of sarcasm…]
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.
Gordon the Whale: Don Don: Adding that fifth dimension would be hellish. Maybe make it something rivers do. If rivers run downhill as in SMAC, they might pool together to become lakes. Maybe give rivers a "flow rate." Swamps, bogs and marshes would be tiles with very slow rivers… 3D terrain on a sub-grid level is a good thing. It could be done with sprites, with better tile continuity.
High-altitude plains would look nice and more realistic, but they wouldn't have to do anything.
Changing these landforms should be much more difficult; it was implausible enough in SMAC. Raising/lowering is even worse. Realistically, only vegetation could be changed, and in Civ scale, changing forest to grass should be a hundred-year project. Moisture and temperature may change with pollution or nuclear war, but landform? Not even a nuke could knock down the Rockies…
mindlace: To add 3D and LVTM. Each square consists of a 3x3 grid; each point on the grid has an individual Z or altitude value fo rendering purposes.

one square:

OOO
OOO
OOO

Landform is the average of Z. I'd recommend 3 more landform types: Shelf, Basin and Trench for underwater terrain.
Temperature and Moisture are computed on a rendered-square basis, meaning vegetation graphics vary within a tile. As a tangent, I suggest a moisture value of "underwater." Rivers would follow a path of subsquares.
Advantages: Natural looking terrain. Vegetation sprites could be simple: 1 tree = a forest subsquare. River navigation is simple: 2 subsquares wide = navigable by boat. Underwater vegetation is simple. Hot shelf terrain could support kelp, hot basins fish.
Mines can be built anywhere w/hills or mountain form. Farms, though, would require a square to be "leveled."
Roads would level out the rendering squares they crossed.

N/S   E/W  NW/SE  NE/SW
O|O   OOO   \OO    OO/
O|O   ---   O\O    O/O
O|O   OOO   OO\    /OO

Rivers would look similar.

ember
First off comes form. Form cannot be altered during the course of the game. Forms: Deep Ocean, Ocean Shelf, Glacier, Mountain, Flat, Hills, Major River. Navigable rivers could not be in hills, so to keep it simple, it will be a separate landform. Flat terrain provides a food bonus; hills and mountains have a defensive bonus and allow mines.
Next comes vegetation. Vegetation can only exist in Flat, Hills and Major River squares. Vegetation types: Plains, Grassland, Taiga (Evergreen), Boreal Forest, Rain Forest, Tundra, Desert, Swamp.
Important combinations: Hill + Grassland = Plateau; River + Grassland = Flood Plain (the most fertile combination); Flat + Grassland = (no irrigation required); Taiga + Hills = Shield, like Canadian Shield or Siberia (best terrain for production); Swamp + Hills = Freshwater Lake.
Engineers cannot change landform, but can change vegitation. Allowable changes: Grassland <-> Boreal Forest; Taiga <-> Plains; Swamp <-> Grassland; Jungle <-> Plains.
Irrigated deserts act as plains. Irrigated plains act as grassland. Tundra can't be altered to anything else. Nothing can be built on Deep Ocean or Glacier.
Economic TI's are auto-built by engineers within cities. A "terraformer" type unit is fortified in each city; while it's there, it can automatically build farms, mines and change the vegitation in friendly squares. You can modify your priorities for auto-building. The terraformer need not be in a square to modify it: it can modify surrounding friendly squares or any square connected to it by roads, or even in the same region, perhaps depending on tech level. Engineers outside of cities follow rules similar to normal Civ, but cannot build mines or farms (roads and military TI's are OK).
Military TI's: Bases act as fortress + airbase. Coastal Bases can have ships enter as well. Units can be "deployed" to Bases.
Forts act as a scout unit and stop the first enemy unit to step on it. Defense bonus. Sonar could act as a Fort in the ocean shelf.
Economic TI's: Farms can be built on any plains, grassland or desert.
Irrigation can be built on desert and plains, improving the terrain to the next stage.
Mines can be built on any hills or mountains; Farms can also be built if it's a grassland or plains square.
Fisheries can only be built in Ocean Shelf, which usually extends only one square from land.
Transport TI's: Paths MV/2; Roads MV/4 + trade bonus. Highways MV/8. Railroads MV/8, longer to build, enemy units use as a Path. Tunnels connect two land squares under an Ocean Shelf tile. Land units can cross water. Canal connect two ocean squares over one land tile, can connect a city to the ocean if 1 square away (can produce ships, build harbor, etc.) When a unit enters a tunnel or canal, it uses a full MP and goes directly to the other side; units cannot "rest" in a tunnel or canal; neither can be pillaged by sea units. To build a tunnel, you must put an engineer on either side and instruct both to build.
Theben: Nice, but I must insist a desert cannot be irrigated without a river in it or modern irrigation techniques. Forests shouldn't take 100 years to build.

OTHER STUFF
Theben: An improved, simplified zoom-out feature which cuts down on needless detail like altitude.

[Krusty]

How come units can walk on poles and survive in huge deserts.
You could have a sort of land trireme effect for these things.

[Theben]

Check out my 1st post under "military".

------------------
"God is like an imaginary friend for adults."-Katz

[Victor Galis]

I don't know how much coverage was given to the issue in this list, but here is the summary of the fortifications debate over at firaxis.com, back in summer:

"I think that Civ 3 should have multiple level and types of fortifications (for cities and outside.)

Inside cities, have levels based on tech and amount of work put in. (more advanced= higher bonus) These are examples:
a) Wooden palisade. (z.B. Small bonus vs. archers, medium bonus vs. melee units, high bonus vs. cavalry. No bonus vs. tanks and artillery.)
b) Small stone walls.
c) Castle fortifications (w/ towers, moat, etc.)
d) Trenches
e) Sandbag walls
f) Barbed wire fence.
g) Mine field.

Outside cities fortifications would fall into two categories: Fortresses and walls:

Walls, (like Great Wall of China), effectiveness would depend on whether adjacent squares also have a wall of the same type. Examples of walls include: Stone Wall, trenches, mine field, etc. Most would require a unit behind them to be effective, though they would impede enemy movement (at least cavalry units) anyways. Mine fields could do damage without actual defenders, but would also hurt your units. (Also, would be used up after a couple units passed through.)

Fortresses would be 1 by 1 defenses and act as small cities. Their food and resource production, would go to unit repair and unit maintenance. They could also build specialized improvements (extra moat, towers, upgrades, training ground etc.), but not normal city improvements (like marketplace, bank, etc.) They would cost resources and maybe money to build in addition to engineer time. Over time, as they grow they could develop into small cities. Of course provide a defense bonus. Irrelevant of being surrounded or anything like that

Examples of this include The Great Wall of China, Hadrian’s Wall, Maginot line, Siegfried line, etc. I think this will make the game easier to play defensively (especially if the Computer is programmed not to always throw all its armies at one city.)

This would also add more strategic complexity. Now you would not just throw your units at a city, you would try to bypass the defenses and make an attack from the flank, like Germany did in France in WWI and WWII."

[Sava]

A lot of the ideas here are great, here are some of mine.

1. 3D world needed. Cmon this is a no brainer. Different elevations are a factor in the real world.

2. Commodity based system. Food/weapons/tools similar to Colonization only expanded. A civilization with access to lots of metal is going to have a greater advantage during the industrial revolution. Why are third world countries so far behind? They don't have natural resources with which to build.

3. Evolution of Civs. The Egyptian culture has evolved since 4000BC.

4. Creation of New Civs. When American culture started to take form, they broke off of the English. And because of the abundancy of natural resources, the United States became a super power.

5. Claiming territory. You don't need to build cities to claim an area for your civilization... Look at the discovery of the New World.

6. Expansion and density. As a Civ's expansion slows down, it becomes more dense. Europeans stopped expanding around 1850. Yet European population has risen considerably since then. More of an emphasis on overcrowding and density should be placed on civ advances.

7. Food. The land around the midwest can grow more food than the land around New York. Then why isn't Topeka, Kansas a huge metropolis? Because farming communities export food to large cities. If food were a commodity like in Colonization, then it would be possible to have a 10 million person city on an island that isn't so big.

8. Military evolution. Weapons should be produced and equipped in armies. And weapon technologies shouldn't be limited in research. As invention of the repeating rifle, and automatic rifle, shifted power in our world, it didn't stay a secret for long. The Iraqis never "researched" the automatic weapon, yet they have tons of them.

9. Global communities. Many of the civilian advances in technology haven't been limited by government control. Celluler phones, computer hardware, the television. These communities have been made up of different companies from different countries. Companies sometimes know no boundary. Sony, Honda, Nokia are all foreign to those living in the US.

10. Corporation. Sure, you can discover the corporation, but I never see any companies in civ games. The US government doesn't build its own weapons. The American arms corporations do. Colt makes the M-16. Lockhead-Martin and Boeing manufacture jets. How about creating companies with random names to do certain things in Civ 3?

11. Terrain Improvements. Roads and rail exist to make transportation from one place to another, faster. Simple right? Make it that simple in Civ 3. Railroads increase trade because things get there faster. Roads and rail should not give any production bonuses to cities.

12. Trade. Trade should not be something acquired through your terrain. Trade should not even be a commodity. Trade does not determine a country's scientific output. Trade routes should be the focus in Civ3. Having automated routes transporting commodities (weapons, tools, food) should be incorporated in Civ3. It should take x amount of turns to get x units of food to New York from Washington if they are connected by Rail, and x amount of turns if they are connected by roads. But if turns are going to be in increments of 20 years, then x amount of a commodity should be transported if a city has roads. The number x getting higher as you connect the cities with different and more advanced types of transportation. IT DOESN'T TAKE 20 YEARS TO TRANSPORT GOODS FROM ONE PLACE TO ANOTHER, NOT EVEN IN THE DARK AGES.

13. Unit movement. It took only months to reach North America from Europe with unpowered sailing ships. And once key routes were mapped, it took even less time. Sure, just a band of warriors walking in the wilderness takes time. But not 20 years. Alexander the Great didn't live 400 years. He conquered most of the known world in less than 50 years. Just think about that when you guys are writing code for Civ 3.

14. Summary of what would make a great Civ 3.
Replay system.
Globe based world.
3D environment (elevations and such)
Real world physics (techtonic plates, rivers, weather)
Commodity based system. (Colonization, expand on its ideas)
Realistic military system. (Build weapons to equip armies, terrain is important, fix military technology gap)
Global community idea (more open communication between civs, trading etc.)
Smaller tiles, more of them in the map. (a city of 10k people takes up less space than a city of 12million people)
In the future, population density is going to be a big challenge as space on this planet runs out. Incorporate that into Civ3.

As for aliens and space travel. There is probably life out there somewhere, but advanced civilizations have probably come and gone millions of years before us and they will millions of years after us. They are too far away to reach. And the laws of physics will never allow faster than light travel. Don't ruin Civ 3 by making it a fantasy game about aliens. Although I would like to see colonization of our Solar system. But think of it as this era's New World. Those colonies are going to be independant and not controlled from Earth.