{The List} Terrain and terrain improvements

[The Mad Monk]

Regarding the infinate move rail debate:

I would prefer to not have it, and instead have a better move rate than regualar roads.

Over and above the strategic implications, this would allow room for additional transport techs -- as it is, ultimate high-speed transport becomes a reality in the early industrial era, and artificial reasons are needed for the development of paved roads, superhighways, and mag-lev trains.

Without infinate move, each of those can have their own, separate advanced move rate -- and have their own restrictions for use.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Tripledoc
Boris Godunov:

How can the player capture workers of other civilizations with your method? Also how does one build airfields, fortresses and most importantly roads outside the city radius? Sometimes it is also neccesary to build irrigation outside the radius to bring water to a city.

I agree that managing to many workers can be tedious, especially when it comes to pollution. One method to alleviate that would perhaps be the ability build superworkers, or engineers later in the game. They cost more to support and more shields to build but can improve tiles much faster.

Another solution would be to make the workers more 'intelligent' when automated.

I addressed all those in my initial posts on the subject. There would still be engineer units for building airfields, fortresses and such. I suppose they could still be captured, but honestly the addition of the capture worker function wouldn't be as important. Enslavement can be handled differently, imo.

You would have free reign to build improvements outside of city radii--I never said you couldn't. But I think it should cost a lot more to build something the further away it is from one of your cities, which would be realistic. But I would also favor a limit as to how far away from away from your borders you can improve tiles, since empires don't have infinite reach, after all. And technologies/wonders/city improvements could increase that limit of distance.

[Boris Godunov]

I'll add my voice to those who oppose infinite rail movement. It's a game-killer, as far as I'm concerned, because once you have rails, you can pretty much clean up over opponents.

[Tripledoc]

The way railroad movement is handled in other wargames is the following:

Units can only move from city to city. (or to an HQ)
There is a finite number of rail movements per turn.
Units remain inactive at destination until next turn.

The finite number of railmovements can be overrided by expending an 'offensive' which costs a set amount of resources and time to 'build'.

[Skanky Burns]

If you can move your people to a distant land without them being killed by others on that land, then I don't see why your people would be prevented from improving the land there. While I see it as realistic for such improvements outside your border to be more expensive, I don't see any justification in banning them altogether.

Infinite rail movement has to go, on the other hand.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
If you can move your people to a distant land without them being killed by others on that land, then I don't see why your people would be prevented from improving the land there. While I see it as realistic for such improvements outside your border to be more expensive, I don't see any justification in banning them altogether.

How would your empire be able to utilize such things that are over such a large distance? It wouldn't make sense to make such improvements, because there'd be no point to improving such distant lands unless you had some means of using it. Why irrigate a tile halfway around the world that is nowhere near your territory? Keep in mind that tile improvements are meant to represent a largescale change of the landscape of that area into farming/mines/whatever. If you're ancient China, you're not going to send thousands of people and expend the resources to go build that kind of stuff in a place where you have no presence.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Tripledoc
The way railroad movement is handled in other wargames is the following:

Units can only move from city to city. (or to an HQ)
There is a finite number of rail movements per turn.
Units remain inactive at destination until next turn.

The finite number of railmovements can be overrided by expending an 'offensive' which costs a set amount of resources and time to 'build'.

I think you may see something like this in Civ4, and I wouldn't be adverse to it, nor to the suggestion of say 1/5 mp or 1/10th mp or whatnot, nor to simply keeping it the same. It certainly *does* alleviate the "drudgery" of moving workers to be able to move them wherever instantly (once you've RR the entire continent, as most players do in longer and meaningful games) and clean up pollution or whatever.
The idea of turning Railroads into shorter distance airports, or perhaps just continental transport (which for a pangea would be the same thing) is interesting. Would you have to build a "railroad depot" or would it come with the city once Steam Engine or whatever was discovered? (Or perhaps a 'small wonder' would accomplish this in every city?)

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

I would personally be happy if they do any-or all-of the following things:

1) Bring back the civ1 system of deducting 1mp for every city a unit passes through when travelling via rail-but extend it to moving into forts, outposts and airbases as well!

2) Give a limit to the number of units which can pass through a RR square at any one time-i.e. a stack limit. This stack limit could also apply to other terrain types-like mountains hills and rivers.

3) Introduce a move-combat-move phase for each turn. i.e. have each player move its units, then have all combats resolved-by theatre-then allow a follow-up movement phase. This will allow players to respond to invasions IF they are within range of the invading force (think Harold at the Battle of Stamford Bridge still being able to get his forces back down to Hastings to meet William-in Civ3, such a tactic is currently impossible, but shouldn't be!)

Anyway, if these ideas were implemented, then I would have NO objection-AT ALL-to the concept of infinite RR movement.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[snoopy369]

Aussie, your two first ideas sound reasonable (not sure i'd personally go for them over the other suggestions here, but not unreasonable certainly and i'd happily play with them added). Your third suggestion unfortunately i have to say isn't really in the realm of possible for Civ. To risk sounding dogmatic, Civ is a simpler game than that. For "The Great Battles of Caesar" or whatnot, that suggestion would be brilliant, but Civ is not that advanced of a military game, and shouldn't be. I don't want to have several move phases, and to have to go around the circle three times each turn. You ever played a PBEM? Imagine a PBEM with three moves per 'turn' ... It's just not worth the added complication to add what's fundamentally not that important of a feature. I'd guess they go to RTS (or at least simultaneous play) before they go to move-turn-move.

But an amusing and interesting idea nonetheless -- for perhaps a different, military-based strategy game, one that I personally would probably quite enjoy.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Even if they just had a movement phase for all players followed by combat resolution-that would be sufficient for me. Its just that, when you consider the turn lengths, it seems ridiculous that a player can't move his units in to 'retaliate' against an invading force. Of course, gameplay would still be maintained-in that you could still have a 'suprise' attack if none of your units are within range!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[DarkCloud]

here's a thread with more info (if you haven't already used it)
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=106007 Terrain Improvement? ... Skanky Burns

Good work so far!

[Odin]

My idea:

"doubling up" workers on tiles, this would let you get large cities without the 'expanding city" thing in CtP2.

My public works system would be the worker/CtP PW combo system many here advocate. In addition, there are improvement upgrades in the late middle ages and in modern times that let you double-up and triple-up workers, rerspectively.

An example. you have an ancient farm on a plain grassland tile. you get 2+1=3 food. After you discover Invention, a worker "updates" the farm so you can put 2 workers on it, 2+2=4 food. This would lead to interesting stratagies in the later game, will you double up your mines at the expense of leaving a city in a 0-growth or starving situation to build units or city improvements faster? Or will you sacrifice production for prodigious population growth?

Finally, I would like nets and fisheries available for costal squares.

[Odin]

I would like forests to be an overlay tile that adds +1 sheilds, not a terrain. if you cut down a forest it will stowly grow back (100 turns?). about terrain names with forest:

Grassland + Forest = Temperate Forest, Tropical Rain Forest

Plains + Forest = Chapparal/Mediterrainean scrub, Monsoon Forest

Hills + Forest = Upland Forests

Mountains + Forests = Montane Forests, Cloud Forests

Tundra + Forest = Taiga

Coast + Forests = Mangrove Swamps, Kelp Beds, Coral Reefs


BTW: The trade bonus for roads and RRs must GO!!!

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by Odin
I would like forests to be an overlay tile that adds +1 sheilds, not a terrain. if you cut down a forest it will stowly grow back (100 turns?). about terrain names with forest:

Grassland + Forest = Temperate Forest, Tropical Rain Forest

Plains + Forest = Chapparal/Mediterrainean scrub, Monsoon Forest

Hills + Forest = Upland Forests

Mountains + Forests = Montane Forests, Cloud Forests

Tundra + Forest = Taiga

Coast + Forests = Mangrove Swamps, Kelp Beds, Coral Reefs


BTW: The trade bonus for roads and RRs must GO!!!

Even Better would be to abstract out the terrain into three attributes:
Elevation - sea level, hills, mountains, plateau, etc. (defaults to sea level)
Climate - arctic, temperate, tropical
Covering - grasslands, scrub, trees, marsh, etc. (Defaults to desert=no covering)

In this system Tundra would be arctic, scrub either on sea level or a plateau.

Jungle would be tropical trees on sea level or hills.

etc. etc.

[Odin]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
Even Better would be to abstract out the terrain into three attributes:
Elevation - sea level, hills, mountains, plateau, etc. (defaults to sea level)
Climate - arctic, temperate, tropical
Covering - grasslands, scrub, trees, marsh, etc. (Defaults to desert=no covering)

In this system Tundra would be arctic, scrub either on sea level or a plateau.

Jungle would be tropical trees on sea level or hills.

etc. etc.

I think altitude is redundant in most situations. Mountains already represent areas too high for much human habitation. Altitude would, however be important in generating the map because higher areas at the same latatude would be cooler (think of Tibet), but I dont think it would have much impact in-game. A forest on a plateau is still a forest.

I just had an idea, montane forests would give extra gold from tourists comming to see the gorillas.