A well-balanced, developed set of terrain improvements

[Optimizer]

There are lots of terrain improvements in Civ 4. Some require special resources, other can be built anywhere, given that the technology is right.

As I experiment my way through the XML file, I try to create a good setup of terrain improvements, following these criteria:
* All improvements should be useful at some occasion
* Historical realism
* Few tech-upgrades
* As few additions as possible
Here is my current setup:

General improvements, not requiring resources

FOOD
Pasture: Hill/Grassland. Grass, Plains, Tundra. Animal Husbandry. Costs 400. +1 food.
The Pasture works as a low-grade farm, requiring no water and less construction time.
Field: Grass, Plains, riverside. Agriculture. Costs 700. +2 food. Requires/carries Irrigation.
Fields will require more work, but also yield more.
Factory Farm: Any flatland. Biology. Costs 1500. +3 food. +1 food with Refrigeration. Requires/carries Irrigation. (Irrigation redundant with Combustion.)
The Factory Farms will give you a lot of food in the endgame. This means you will not need so much of your land for farming. Also, you will have overcrowded cities with unhappiness, disease and unemployment, just like in real life.
Windmill: Hill. Engineering. Costs 1200. +2 food. +1 prod with Electricity.
Fishing Boats: Coast. Fishing. Costs 300. +1 food. +1 food with Astronomy.
Lighthouse adds commerce instead of food to offset food yield from Fishing boats. The population growth threshold is increased to offset the extra food production.

PRODUCTION
Workshop: Any flatland. Guilds. Costs 1500. -1 food, +2 prod. +1 prod with Chemistry & Physics, +1 prod with Rail.
Expensive to build, but productive.
Watermill: Riverside. Costs 1500. +1 food, +1 prod. +2 prod with Electricity.
Mine: Hill, Desert. Mining. Costs 600. +2 prod. +1 prod with Steam Power. +1 prod with Rail. Can discover minerals.
Lumber Mill. Forest. Replaceable Parts. Costs 400. +1 prod. +1 prod with River. +1 prod with Rail.
If chopping is weakened, building Lumbermills will be more of an option.
Merchant Ships: Coast. Optics. Costs 700. +1 prod, +1 commerce.
Merchant Ships can give a decent production to coastal cities. Merchant Ships also function as Whaling boats.

COMMERCE
Cottage: Grass, Plains and riverside. Pottery. Costs 500. +1 commerce. +1 with Road. Evolves into Hamlet.
Hamlet: Grass, Plains and riverside. Printing Press. Costs 800. +2 commerce. +1 with Road. Evolves into Village.
You get no commerce bonus from Printing Press, but you can build instant Hamlets!
Village: Any flatland. Combustion. Costs 1200. -1 food, +4 commerce, +1 with Rail. Evolves into Town.
Town: Any land square. Ecology. Costs 1600. -1 food, +6 commerce, +1 with Rail.
You can now build Hamlets, Villages and Towns, given that you have the right tech. Urban sprawl will be fast in the late game.
Camp: Forests, Hills & Tundra. Hunting. Costs 300. +1 commerce. Does not evolve.

RESOURCE-ONLY
Quarry, Plantation, Well, Platform: No change.


The Pasture, Camp, Fishing Boat and Whaling Boat (renamed to Merchant Ship) can now be used both as resource-extractors and regular improvements, just like the Farm and Mine.

[Impaler[WrG]]

I think its an excelent idea to make thouse very limited resorce extracting improvments usable for general terrain

But I see a few problems with your plan so far

Pasture is inferior to field the only other difference being tecnolgy and access to water. Now I assume field is going to upgrade to farm so people will prefer this practicaly all the time if their is water present, pasture will be used ware ever their isn't water.

A possible solution, make the pasture faster to build so players have a quick/lowyield slow/highyield choice on their hands. Early game might see a lot of pasturs followed by a transistion to agriculture. This kind of fits as many anchient people were herdsman.

[Optimizer]

As you said, I changed the cost of Pastures and Fields.

[Tieom]

I gotta say "ugh" to the additional railway bonuses. Why not just give in to rail spam completely and have rails give food bonuses to farms, too?

I don't know if the AI would take advantage of the new improvements, either.

[Optimizer]

Originally posted by Tieom
I don't know if the AI would take advantage of the new improvements, either.

The only really new improvement is the Factory Farm. (The Field is based on the Farm, and the Merchant Ship is a renamed Whaling boat.) I have seen the AI build these improvements, but I might need to playtest more.

There is nothing unrealistic about a developed rail network in built-up areas. I have increased the construction time so that it takes plenty of time to build up anyway.

[Tieom]

Originally posted by Optimizer

The only really new improvement is the Factory Farm. (The Field is based on the Farm, and the Merchant Ship is a renamed Whaling boat.) I have seen the AI build these improvements, but I might need to playtest more.

Well, that sounds promising, at least.

There is nothing unrealistic about a developed rail network in built-up areas. I have increased the construction time so that it takes plenty of time to build up anyway.

I suppose so. But having finally ditched the "Must... railroad... every... tile!" that's been around since, well, Civ 1, it seems like a shame to basically bring it back. It would be like modding corruption back in.

[Impaler[WrG]]

As an additional bonus for Pasture how about +1 food with Medicine. This would represent modern practice of giving anti-biotics to animals which keeps them healthier and fatter.

This would also give us a reason to not simply plow under (literaly) all thouse pastures in the late game.

The railroad bonus on mines wasn't your doing Optimizer but perhaps you should consider removing it as it dose encourage rail spaming. Perhaps move the bonus to an Apropriate tecnology (or even a new Tecnology I was thinking of a Tech called "High Explosives" that would be realy handy in Mining and warefare, ofcorse Chemistry is the next closest thing)

Also I would make Merchant/Whale ships purely Comerce oriented perhaps +2 and enable OilRigs renamed to "Platform" on Oceans as a Production oriented improvment giving +1 hammer.

[ghen]

Request: can you post the original cost for improvement builds so I know what 400/700/1200 whatever means in worker turns?

I don't like roads/railroads adding anything to a tile in anything but limited circumstances.. Also I think only the town should remove a food point as villages were still good at making everyone in the village do their fair share of the work. I assume that you use the negative food point here as a factor of laziness and corruption.

All in all, I think this would make a great mod. definitely fleshing out the workers and making a civ build more of them just because you'll be changing tiles more often than normal (normal = almost never in most of my games)

[Squie]

Are you going to post the mod for downloading?
It sounds really impressive, and I want to try it out

[Optimizer]

I will post it, but I need to make some offsets for balancing first.

Maybe I should allow the Field and Factory Farm to extract Livestock, too?

[Squie]

Do you still have watermills in the game?

[Optimizer]

Yes, the watermills are there. Thanks for remembering me...

[Yaga]

I've been looking into doing some terrain modding -- was this mod ever made available?

[frekk]

Originally posted by Tieom


Well, that sounds promising, at least.



I suppose so. But having finally ditched the "Must... railroad... every... tile!" that's been around since, well, Civ 1, it seems like a shame to basically bring it back. It would be like modding corruption back in.

Frankly, as soon as I get rails, I plaster the map with them. The roads are so ugly I need to cover them up. And anyway, because the rails now have limited movement, it is best to do this to get the most efficient route you can regardless of where things are travelling to and from.

I don't see that rail and road sprawl are gone at all. If you've got the workers it doesn't make sense not to do it; the AI does it, and with good reason. If it's not in every tile, on long trips, your units will be making all kinds of detours, potentially adding quite a few turns to their trip, especially on really big maps.

The only way I'd ever stop is if (a) there was a maintenance cost and (b)rails had unlimited movement restored (so detours of 1 tile here and there had no impact).

Getting rid of the tile bonuses for roads and rails was insufficient to deal with sprawl. Unless other changes are made, there's no reason to avoid giving tile bonuses. One thing that might actually make a difference in terms of sprawl is to have them give a bonus and a penalty of some sort. Like -1 food, +1 production, or something.