{The List} Terrain and terrain improvements

[Bleyn]

In some ways I think the solution to that issue isn't so much in changing pollution, but in changing the way cities grow and shrink. Among other things, we all know that in a modern country with decent food supplies, storage technologies and transportation, the Civ food model doesn't work. A modern city does not depend solely on the local food sources.

If the resource model had a representation of this in the modern era, so that the growth and supply of connected cities was less dependant on local food supply, pollution wouldn't be a big of a problem in that respect. Growth in modern times should become more dependant on the total civ food supply than on local supply. More like the food model in MOO2.

Terrain could still play a role in city growth in such a model however. There could be an upper limit to the population that a city could support based on the surrounding terrain if not directly on the amount of local food production. A city all in grasslands would have an upper limit much higher than a city all in tundra or with lots of mountains. Again, MOO2 is a good example of what I mean.

Pollution could still have an impact, but it could be more of an overall civ level impact, along with possibly generating local unhappiness.

[Spiffor]

In Civ4, I wish it would be possible that every tile doesn't end up covered with road and railroad.

Seeing the map covered with roads gives headaches to some people (that's the reason my girlfriend doesn't play Civ ), and it wastes strategic potential, as an individual road or rail is not something to be really protected when there are so many of them. Individual roads or railroads, in current system, have very little strategical value, there is very little stake associated with them.

To change this, three ideas:

1. Have public works cost something. Gold, food, shields, whatever floats your boat (I prefer gold though, because there is no clutter like a "public works reserve" à la CtP). Such a system can be implemented either in a CTP-ish system or in a Civish system (featuring workers): the key is that each individual public work costs something when performed.

2. Have roads and railroads stop being useful for production and commerce. Several levels of irrigation and mining could do the job for production. And I strongly believe the commerce model of Civ1 should be overhauled, with commerce coming, say, from your population, your city improvements, and the intensity of your connection with the rest of the world, rather than simply from how many roads there are.

3. Give a little movement bonuses to other infrastructures. For example, moving in irrigated fields could cost 1/2 moves. This way, roads would still be good as major axes of communication, but there would be no incentive to build them on each and every square (or hexa )

[Brent]

Generating a Map

On a random map, give significant chances both for landmasses to be close enough for a primitive ship to safely reach the other, and for landmasses that you won't see until you start exploring the deep oceans.

In choosing options for your map, be able to set percentages and numbers of tiles of a particular terrain. You could have 50 to 90 % water, 0 to 100 volcanoes, and 40 to 100 % of your land as grassland.

Pregame, be able to chronologically guide the formation of your planet.

Based on the current world customization system, give five degrees of options for setting each landform characteristic.

Terrain Types

Plateau

Distinguish between saltwater and freshwater, and have them give different resources, saltwater producing salt.

Terrain Graphics

Include more than one set of terrain graphics.

[Bleyn]

Speaking of salt and fresh water, one thing that currently annoys me is not being able to build harbors in cities next to the large inland lakes. You know where you have two to four squares or so of shallow (coastal) water tiles that are landlocked. You can put ships on them, you can't get a harbor built. Its silly because in RL a lake that large is going to have appreciable shipping and fisheries on them.

The Great Lakes in the US and Canada are a prime example of this. There is a lot of shipping that moves on those lakes, and a good amount of fishing going on also. And they've had military significance at times also. One or two of the naval battles during the War of 1812 were fought on the Great Lakes. And a fair amount of the US submarine fleet during WW2 was actually built in shipyards on the Great Lakes.

Being able to gain more resources from those bodies of water in the late game would be very nice. Of course, it would also be nice to see navigable rivers, along with the possiblity of constructing canals.

[lajzar]

Terrain improvements
For food (and others, this is n example), you should have multiple levels of improvement a la CTP. However, certain terrain types will not allow irrigation, and advanced improvements won't give teh same bonus across different terrains. An example data file might be:

grasslands - 1 2 4
plains - 1 2 3
desert - 0 1 2

basically, irrigation can't be built in desert, farms can, but produce less food, and superfarms get an extra bonus in grasslands. Similar paths could be done for mining.

National parks can be implemented as another terrain improvement. The same could be done for suburban sprawl.

Get rid of the terrain improvement function of settlers/workers, and have public works as in CTP.

No infinite movement for rails, at least in the default game.

A combat engineer unit to build improvements in hostile areas is a possibility, but I don't like the idea of building stuff in areas that are hostile. The defender should have a significant advantage.

As with everything else, this should be written with the modder in mind.

[cumi]

Originally posted by Stefu
Agreementos with the 'harsher environment' idea, but if it's implemented, better make sure that the player is guaranteed at least a stretch of 'nice' environment, with room for 4-5 cities - otherwise it'll easily get really friggin' annoying.

Yes, but if you are not producing anything (except gold) in the city, pollution should be also not produced.

[AroSch]

Not sure, if this allready was written here. This is a little idea about forests.

How about choping down forests will bring a little shield bonus, still only one time (like civ3). BUT in neighbouring terrain fields it will bring a lower food yield of land (becouse of higher errosion). And planting forests could give a food bonus back. This way it could be a good idea planting some forests instad of grasland mines. So the Land will not longer have no forests in industrial or modern era. Just a little tough.

[Bleyn]

Its an interesting idea. However, I'm not sure how accessible it would make the game for the casual gamer. Hardcore gamers probably wouldn't mind spending the time understanding complex interactions between the terrain in adjacent squares to decide what to do in terraforming.

But I could easily see novice or casual gamers getting very frustrated by it. Think about it this way. Casual gamer, installs game and starts playing without bothering to give the treeware manual or the Civilopedia more than a cursory inspection. After all, they've played Civ before... So thirty or fifity or so turns into a game they start trying to boost the food production of a city. They start out by doing what most people would do, the faster work of irrigating the grasslands or plains that surround the city. Then they decide to take it one step further and cut down a couple forests. They could use the quick shield boost, and they don't want to have to think about that city again for a while once they've finished irrigating all they plan to. Now imagine their dismay when they notice that the food production in the adjacent squares has dropped for no discernible reason! There's no pollution. They know the squares were producing more a few turns ago.

I know I would be annoyed. And yes many of these players might just turn on worker automation and never realize or care what is happening. But if they do, it could easily turn them off the game. And while we would all love a game that appeals to the hardcore gamer, it is the legion of casual gamers that also buy and play the game that keep companies like Firaxis afloat to continue producing good games and supporting our hardcore gaming habit. So turning them off of Civ would be a bad thing.

If we could just figure out how to get all those casual gamers to continue giving money to companies like Firaxis without actually buying a game that they actually need to be able to play and like

[lajzar]

C+P from a new thread I started. Thw directory needs fixing, as it no longer points to this thread. Had to search hard to find this.

[basic terrain types]
Peaks (really high mountains)
Mountain
Hill
grass
plains
desert
tundra
glacier

Jungle, forest, and swamp are 'improvements' in this model, similar to SMAC forest and fungus.

Some terraforming should be allowed. With really advanced technology, it should be possible to terraform a mountain into a hill. However, the system should remember the original terrain. While a mountain can be transformed into a hill, and a hill into plains, a tile that was originally a mountain cannot be levelled into plains.

[Sea terrains]
Coast
Seas
Oceans
Iceburgs
Ice Cap
Shallows

Coast, sea, and oceans are as per civ3. Iceburgs represent a shipping hazard, and ice caps are impassable except for subs. Shallows represent about 1/5 of all coast tiles, and possibly other areas (such as the Dogger Bank in the North Sea). The following special rules apply to shallows:

Certain large ships (carriers, dreadnoughts, battleships) cannot enter shallows.

Most units can only unload from a transport if the transport is in a shallows tile or if unloading into a friendly city.

Marines (including any unit with this flag) can unload from a transport into hostile cities or from normal coast tiles.

In addition, Oceans may have a trade wind (direction) flag. Any sail ship moving in the same direction (or with a 45 degree angle) gets a movement bonus. Note sure how easy this would be for the system to randomly generate maps so this feature would appear to mesh with reality.

[Natural]
Forest (plains/grass/hill only)
Jungle (grass only)
Swamp (grass only)
Nature Park

Forest, swamp, and jungle replace the traditional separate terrain types. This isn't a gameplay change, as these terrain types couldn't have farms or mines anyway. It is more a change in the internal logic used. The Nature Park corresponds to national parks. It appears around late industrial times (Yellowstone was the world's first iirc), and provides a trade bonus and a pollution bonus.

[Industrial]
Mines
Deep Mines
Mega Mines
Oil Rigs

Lots of industry, and pollution as a consequential side effect of that. Oil rigs do the same for the sea.

[Food]
Irrigation
Farm
Genetic Farm
Fishing Nets
Fishery
Sea Farm

Irrigation is ancient farming. Probably needs a better name. Farms refers to late medieval crop rotation techniques through to modern farms. Genetic farm refers to genetic engineering. It provides increased food and some pollution. Fisheries etc do the same for sea tiles.

Hills can only be irrigated once you have the terrace farming technology, and until you have desalination technology, you should only be able to irrigate from a fresh water source. It should never be possible to irrigate a mountain.

Hydroponics should be a city improvement, as they dont take up vast areas of land to run. Think Algae vats and mushroom farms.

[Transport]
Undersea tunnel
Tracks
(Roman) Road
Highway

Provides 2/3, 1/3, and 1/5 normal move costs, respectively. Undersea tunnels provide 1/5 move cost, but if pillaged, all land units in connected tiles drown.

Rail depots are a city improvement that provides transport facilities similar to Civ2 airports.

[Miscellaneous]
Suburb
Outpost
Radar Station
Sonar Buoy
Fort - Castle - Bunker
Airfield

Suburbs increase the maximum population of the city. They also cause an increase in pollution (longer commutes).

Outposts and radar stations provide increased vision. Sonar buoys do the same in the sea. Radar and sonar also detects stealth units.

Forts provide a defensive bonus. Any land unit with an attack factor fortified in a fort should have a zoc as in civ2. Forts are subdivided by era, with increasing defensive bonuses.

Airfields provide a landing site for aircraft.

[Pollution]
pollution
radiation
zerg creep
undead blight
fungus

Yeah, I want the system to be flexible enough to allow any of these. Only nukes or malfunctionaing reactors should produce radiation. Not sure how the others could be defined, but I'd love to see them implemented.

[Xorbon]

On the topic of pollution, my idea involves 3 types: (normal) pollution, radiation, and air pollution.

Normal Pollution would be similar to the pollution we have now. Certain city and/or tile improvements would increase the odds of new pollution appearing in a random tile around the city. The affected tile would have its productivity cut in half (rounded down?). Any cities with a polluted tile in it's radius would suffer adverse effects, including increased unhappiness and reduced health (possibly among other things). Global warming would not be caused by normal pollution.

Radiation would come from nuclear weapons and accidents at nuclear plants. Affected tiles would become unworkable. It would take workers several times longer to clean up radiation than normal pollution. Additional effects would be similar to those associated with normal pollution, except they would be more severe.

Air pollution would cause no visible pollution on the map. Instead, it would contribute to effects such as global warming, reduced health, etc. It would be produced by population and certain city imrovements. Optionally, it could also decrease food production in the city (in a manner similar to corruption/waste - only not as severe) depending on the amount of air pollution in the city. Forests and jungles could decrease the effects of air pollution.

[Kramsib]

FROM THE SPANISH COMMUNITY LIST

MAP AND TERRAIN.

1. Terraform options.
2. Channels, straits, … (We refer to those square vortex which are passable both, naval units and terrain units, like in Civilization II ).
3. Multimap (like Civilization II Test Of Time).
4. “Add” button for creating new terrain types in the editor.
5. “Add” button for creating new square improvements.
6. Place names. It would be good to have the option to put the place names in game (and obviously when editing an scenario).
7. Sailable rivers, fords, bridges, cliffs, … for localised scenarios in reduced areas.

[Xorbon]

I don't have a problem with anything on that list except terraforming. It's just not realistic. Besides, I like having to deal with crappy terrain. In Civ2, you'd end up with all the terrain being converted to plains, grassland, and hills. One word for that: lame.

However, that said, I think that a modder should have the option of adding terraforming to his/her own mods and scenarios. I just don't want it in the 'epic' game.

[Fosse]

Agreed on terraforming. Removes strategy, homogenizes the landscape, and is unrealistic.

[lajzar]

I don't mind terraforming, as long as it is controlled.

In civ2, terraforming appeared sometime around the late medieval in tech levels. Boo. Unrealistic.

Anything more complex than affecting vegetation shouldn't be possible until modern times. Hydrographic changes (desert-plains, shallows-grass) would require modern technology, and anything requiring geological changes (levelling mountains etc) or serious climactic change (glacier to tundra) should require future tech.

In addition, each tile should always remember its original terrain type, and it should only be possibel to ever shift it to a limited number of terrain types.

Forex, mountains could be terraformed to hills (with future tech), but that hill will 'remember' it was originally a mountain, and cannot be further terraformed into grasslands.

[Kramsib]

As far as I am concerned, Israel has been able to terraform desertic land.

Otherwise, we want terraforming not necessarily for the standard game but an important option for Sci - Fi scenarios.

On the other hand, although terraforming can sound unrealistic, it helps to recover balance in the game when pollution is destroying too many tiles.

Perhaps terraforming should be in the game as an extremely expensive option, so it only can be used when the negative effects of pollution make terraforming profitable.