Weather improvements

[civer3]

I've been thinking ... Ever since the idea of that trireme, sailboat and frigate.

In the early stages of sea exploration, ships could not travel far from land. They could only travel so far before a message was posted on the screen that said the 'unit lost at sea.'

My suggestion is that the unit should not be considered automatically lost or forbidden from travel on that range. Yet there should be risks in attempting such kinds of travels especially for sea explorations.

In the sea, there should be something like winds blowing so that waves and storms would appear. Tririmes would have less chances of avoiding seastorms than sail boats or frigates. They should also have less chances of survival. Storms from the sea should blow onto the land from time to time. Turn by turn basis. Eg. Hurricanes, typhoons, tsunamis, etc .... and so on.

This should cause settlements on coastal areas to be more open to natural disasters from the seas than inland settlements. Which is true in reality. Islands tend to be more open to this form of disasters. When technology increases, such as Telescope or something equivalent, the player should be able to spot storms at sea from a greater distance and should be able to take precautions. Towns would encouter less damage from hurricanes and so forth. Improvements such as weather satellites and weather stations

No unit should be able to wander completely through a seastorm and emerged from it completely unscathed except a submarine vessel. Units that survive going through a storm at sea should find their movements decreased by a certain number. Different units should have different ranges of spotting storms at seas. Storms at seas should move at a certain speed.

Inland cities will have challenges of a different nature. Tornadoes, perhaps ... Earthquakes and so on ...

Certain areas are more prone towards disasters than others. That's unless your city is founded on the Antartic iceberg. Or until you create The Weather Control Device Wonder.

[Shogun Gunner]

Isn't the scale of civilization make this a bit difficult to implement? I assume that there will be several storms in the 100 year turn increments of the ancient era. Random distribution of events would mean that all port cities or island cities would have to deal with these natural disasters.

It sounds as if you are attempting to put a short timeframe event into a strategic context. It just doesn't fit well.

[MiketheYounger]

Tectonic activity should be ok

Not the normal, routine magnitude 3 quakes, but the big kahuna magnitude 7+ quakes that get talked about for a century or three...

Similar criteriae would apply to volcanoes and Tsunami

[Max Sinister]

Right. Think about the great earthquakes like the one that destroyed Lissabon or San Francisco, 1906.

[civer3]

Weather phenomena

I saw this being done in Civ 2 in one of the scenarios created. It was fantastic! They had tornadoes and lightning storms moving across the land. Hurricanes and tsunamis moving across the oceans. They were being configured as normal military units. Unfortunately, they had one drawback. They had to based on a country or they had to be based on barbarian units which made them vulnerable to bribery^_^. About the 100 year turn logic, remember one thing. It is equally illogical for a unit to take one hundred years to move from one position to another. Sorry if i had to reply this way. Apolyton won't let me post on the thread that i started for some reason.

I was thinking more along the lines of those nasty weather phenomena and earthquakes moving like military units that cannot be bribed. I saw how they did it in Civ 2 in one of the scenarios. It was beautiful. Unfortunately, I just simply bribed those units which were configured as barbarian units or one of those purple countries and set them loose on the enemy. Sorry, i took so long to reply. Apolyton disabled my account from posting to the thread.


Bye .... ^_^

[Earthling7]

They were able to implement weather in SMAC. With the average computer now being 6-7x faster, it should be able to be more complicated. I loved the way the wind affected what grew where in SMAC.

Why not integrate this with pollution? The orange blobs will not be fowling the soil anymore, but something will have to represent pollution. How about a climate change?

[Xorbon]

Normal weather phenomena have no place in Civ because of the time-scale of the game. However, certain natural disasters (and other random events) could fit in the game. Tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, large-scale floods, and massive fires are examples of disasters that could be added to the game. It depends on how they are implemented. For instance, hurricanes should not be represented by a unit that moves from turn to turn across the map! It's best to represent disasters abstractly. Effects of disasters could include population loss, unit damage/death, terrain/city improvement destruction, economic damage, etc.

Lightning storms, basement flooding, the Henderson's house burning down, Little Timmy getting trapped in a well: these are disasters that wouldn't fit into the scope of the game.

[patcon]

Originally posted by Xorbon

Lightning storms

The Tampa Bay Lightning stormed in 2004 and they won the STANLEY CUP!!!! (The championship of the National Hockey League.)

basement flooding

Not a problem here in sunny Tampa, Florida, where we may not have basements, but I did eat lunch outside on the porch today in shorts and a tee shirt.

the Henderson's house burning down

Never did like them anyway, bunch of a**holes. The only decent thing they ever did was take care of a sasquatch they hit with their car.

Little Timmy getting trapped in a well

Is that what Lassie was barking so much about in the middle of the night? I feel so bad about having the vet put her down for waking me up so often. Come to think of it, she was barking quite a bit the night of the fire over at the Henderson's. Maybe I should have checked out that orange glow from across the street instead of just throwing a shoe at the b**ch and telling her to shut up and let me sleep. (I'm referring to the dog, not my loving wife.)

[Max Sinister]

Disasters are a good idea, but you should be able to foresee them, if possible, if you've got the tech you need. (Sad example: There would've been time enough to evacuate people in Asia when the tsunami broke out, but they had a proper warning system for disasters like that.) If Civ4 expanded into the future, they could even introduce weather and earthquake control! (Did they have something like that in SMAC?)

[Xorbon]

I don't support the addition of any weird future techs, but city improvements, techs, and/or government ordinances are a good idea if disasters are added to Civ 4. Some examples:

- city walls could eliminate damage caused by flooding (like in Civ 1)

- the 'Civil Defense' improvement could reduce or eliminate damage caused by certain didasters, like tsunamis or hurricanes

- the radio tech could reduce the amount of population killed by certain disasters

etc.

[civer3]

Originally posted by Xorbon
Normal weather phenomena have no place in Civ because of the time-scale of the game. However, certain natural disasters (and other random events) could fit in the game. Tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, large-scale floods, and massive fires are examples of disasters that could be added to the game. It depends on how they are implemented. For instance, hurricanes should not be represented by a unit that moves from turn to turn across the map! It's best to represent disasters abstractly. Effects of disasters could include population loss, unit damage/death, terrain/city improvement destruction, economic damage, etc.

Lightning storms, basement flooding, the Henderson's house burning down, Little Timmy getting trapped in a well: these are disasters that wouldn't fit into the scope of the game.

I saw it being done in Civ 2. I think that was the only way it could have been done was to include it in as a type of unit. For Civ 4, my hope is that the designers would classify these effects (natural disasters) as special units (not as in normal combat mode, of course. You can't do combat with a tsunami or a hurricane in the normal sense!) that move across the land. Lightning storms could be represented as ... the player would see it on Civ 4 as the weather changing. Clouds gather, etc ... thunderstorm approaching, ... and so on ..... If the player doesn't like it, than he or she should be given the option of turning these disasters off.

[realpolitic]

Although the 9.0 had dramatic satelite photosof changes, I doubt the terrain changes in Banda Aceh etc. amounted to anywhere near 1 tile worth of change.

[Proteus_MST]

I don´t like storms rsaging across the world map.
As it was already mentioned, the timescale of Civ is too large for this.

But random natural desasters whose effects can be altered with city improvements and technological developments are a good idea.

The same could apply to ships on the ocean.
You could have dice roll if a storm happens this turn to a ship on the ocean and another dice roll for the strength of the storm.
Wether a ship survives the storm could be affected by
1. the strength of the storm (the biggest, but also rarest storms could even damage/kill a modern battleship)
2. certain technologies you possess
3. the size and technology of the ship

But instead of simply killing the ship you could have the storms affect its HP, i.e. for example the storm produces a damage of 20, which kills a single Trireme which has only 10 HP, but lets a mighty battleship which has 100 HP survive with 80% of his Hitpoints.
(of course this only works if Hitpoints are implemented in Civ 4 )

[Max Sinister]

I'm against catastrophies in the normal game, but in scenarios where one turn equals one month, one week or even one day they could fit in...