The game's understanding of geography

[johnmcd]

Geographical confluences are (to the best of my knowledge) unrecognised by the game. I'd love to see the major river systems drive trade or the great mountain chains block culture.

We see a little of individual tiles making a difference (must be on the coast for a harbour or a river for a levee) and in the case of the Space Elevator the position on the planet make a difference but the beauty of some spots seems completely overlooked. You build cities for collections of individual elements, but those units are never allowed to equal more than the some of their parts.

I feel it's a great shame, you never get to see the rise of a Cape Town or Rio nor the impassable barrier of a Sahara or Himalaya. Civ tells some wonderful narratives over the course of a game, but the huge power of geography which shaped so much of man's experience is never really part of it.

I know people love the 'Garland Craters' et al of SMAC, I do too, but it feels like something altogether more emergent should be possible now. A game that recognises it's Euphrates and Mediterraneans would be much richer.

[Ming]

I'd love to see the major river systems drive trade or the great mountain chains block culture.

Actually, rivers do drive trade... you can connect cities by rivers without roads and share resources within your empire, and they also open up trade with other civs while also helping the spread of religion

[rah]

Yeah, if I start on a river, you can bet I'll try to settle the entire river, but yes, john, it could be a bigger part of the game.

[The Priest]

I agree. Its hard to get exceptional cities in CIV. You can get powerful ones of course, but their strength is the amalgum of lots of tiles, and lots of buildings and therefore is a bit averaged out.

Resources do of course give some added features to some cities - the coastal city with three food reources, the city with four spices etc. but even so you don't get the small mountain city which is an industrial powerhouse, or the huge city, or the fabulously wealthy city. You see the problem in some of the real world maps etc. which can't manage to cope with Europe. There is no way that geographically small european states can ever become so powerful.

Resources could be made far more powerful double or triple the bonuses would make them define the cities they are worked by. Or there could be some way of investing in a city, building up its popluation, trade or production, so that they were not just a function of the total number of tiles they work.

I guess the problem is balance.

[snoopy369]

The problem with 'geographical strength' is it's hard to do in a way that doesn't harm the gameplay. You want to have a game that gives equal chance, roughly, for each person to win; you already have some things preventing this (starting locations etc.), which is fine, but ultimately if you started adding more of these imbalances, it will do harm to the gameplay.

For SP only that might not be so bad - and could easily be modded in - but for MP (which cIV was designed for, despite Krill's objections) it is a very, very bad idea.

[DirtyMartini]

I think the idea of making regional geography more important is what may have led to the decision to make moutains impassable.

I agree that it would be nice if deserts and mountains made for better cultural barrier (or something) so that civs would follow more logical expansion patterns and have more logical boders comprised of mountain ranges, rivers, deserts, etc. Maybe if you play on bigger than normal maps, the desert is big enough to be a barrier. On standard maps, there usually aren't very many tiles that don't end up in some city radius eventually. There certainly aren't big swaths of unoccupied land.

[Krill]

1. catapults are useless for attacking/overpowered on defense due to retreat and overpowered effect of walls/castle to bombardment ability
2. settler costs in later eras mean that you cannot build anymore cities in modern or future because the settlers just cost too much. (don't know about industrial because never played it)
3. Spies. MP has been reduced to banning them because there is no way to kill them (pure RNG if they die on any given turn).

3 complaints from MP (though the first one needs alterihng anyway for SP)

[Krill]

You were saying snoop?

[snoopy369]

I did not claim it was designed perfectly for MP, but it was designed with MP in mind...

You must admit it is better at MP than previous iterations, however. Particularly functionally; you can argue with the rules and balance all you want, but the game was functionally built with MP at the forefront.

Now if only they wouldn't have used GameSpy as the matchmaker, and instead spent more time making TCP/IP work properly...

[Krill]

[q=Snoop]Particularly functionally; you can argue with the rules and balance all you want, but the game was functionally built with MP at the forefront.

Now if only they wouldn't have used GameSpy as the matchmaker, and instead spent more time making TCP/IP work properly... [/q]

I think those two sentances are contradictory...

[rah]

Originally posted by DirtyMartini
I think the idea of making regional geography more important is what may have led to the decision to make moutains impassable.

I agree that it would be nice if deserts and mountains made for better cultural barrier (or something) so that civs would follow more logical expansion patterns and have more logical boders comprised of mountain ranges, rivers, deserts, etc. Maybe if you play on bigger than normal maps, the desert is big enough to be a barrier. On standard maps, there usually aren't very many tiles that don't end up in some city radius eventually. There certainly aren't big swaths of unoccupied land.

Large swaths of unoccupied land.

I have never seen any land that the AI won't settle evenutally.

[johnmcd]

Originally posted by Ming


Actually, rivers do drive trade... you can connect cities by rivers without roads and share resources within your empire, and they also open up trade with other civs while also helping the spread of religion

Yeah, you know what I mean though...

[Supr49er]

Originally posted by rah


Large swaths of unoccupied land.

I have never seen any land that the AI won't settle evenutally.

Very true. I have seen a 1-square snow tile settled before.

[commando007]

what i think could be interesting for map generation in the first place is if the terain creation was driven by simulated geological forces. if the map was divided into continental plates, then continental drift was simulated, folowed by errosion and so on, you would get a better more realistic map. then it's just a matter of placing civs in logical positions.

[Yaga]

Originally posted by commando007
what i think could be interesting for map generation in the first place is if the terain creation was driven by simulated geological forces. if the map was divided into continental plates, then continental drift was simulated, folowed by errosion and so on, you would get a better more realistic map. then it's just a matter of placing civs in logical positions.

Oh yeah! As much as I enjoy the general worldbuilding that's available, I would love to see some more 'real' geography. One-tile deserts wedged between grassland and a lake just seem out of place. Also, the *huge* swaths of some resources bundled together, and then *maybe* one silver, or two wheat, elsewhere.

Its got to the point where I'll regularly go into the WB and 'fix' the map.

The other thing I'd love to see is a resource option for "scarce" -- especially for strategic resources. Imagine a game where the number of copper == 1/2 the number of civs, or oil == 1/4 the number of civs. 12 civs and only 3 horse? Balance their distributions, certainly, but it always chuffs me later in the game when I see coal, oil, and uranium in just about every Civ.