Professionally, this bugs me about Civ3.

[Argos65987]

I thought the world age setting worked more like the older the planet, the terrain would be less homogeneous. So maybe it's not less mountains you are seeing, but less mountain ranges?

[Tassadar500]

It's less mountain ranges and less mountains.

[Last Conformist]

It doesn't make any sense either way. Certainly not both!

[Whoha]

Bizarre, I thought it was just fairly uniform terrain on the one hand(young), fairly diverse terrain on the other.

[Tassadar500]

Nope, it has to do with only mountains, AFAIK.

[Kuciwalker]

Hmm... IIRC it's all terrain that clumps more.

[Tassadar500]

Really? I never knew that.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Kucinich
Hmm... IIRC it's all terrain that clumps more.

yeah I read that somewhere.

You will find huge mountain ranges and such.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Am not sure about the actual changes, but my impression was not that there were less mountains with age, just that terrain became more varied. Thus only the smaller areas that were under continual tectonic upheaval would have large mountains, whereas those that formed early and were stable for billennia would have subsided somewhat due to erosion or to buoyancy effects.

Besides, I know that, for a planet like Earth where it is believed earlier in its history was the more tectonically active time, the later you get the more the core has cooled and the less mountain-building you should get. Of course on this planet 5 Billion years has not been enough to slow that rate dramatically, but the idea is the same, even if the exact times involved are a bit less accurate.

Take it from a (former) Geophysicist!

[Arnelos]

Realism is definately not a strong point. Hell their model for "global warming" is laughable, especially when nukes cause it rather than causing nuclear winter.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Imagine the huge quantities of fossil fuels, plastics and chemicals that go into the atmosphere if you exploded a nuke in a populated area.....



Where there's a will, there's an explanation.

[Odin]

That age thing bugs me too. The modern form of plate tectonics appeared at the end of the Archean Eon (2.5 billion years ago). Most of our continental crust formed between 3 and 2 billion years ago. before 3 million years ago the earth was a true water world, being dominated by subduction zone island arcs (like japan) and Hawaii-type island chains.

[hewhocaves]

The age = mountians is a holdover from the initial version of Civ, i believe. I think, back in the deep recesses of Sid's mind he was thinking of the Disney movie "Fantasia", especially the dinosaur equence in "rite of Spring". Most of us have probably sent his, especially the older people. Very early on in the movement, there is a visual of dozens of volcanoes evrupting at once, as if the whole world was a mountian range. I think because of that and a lot of other childhood visuals in both books and film that we have ingrained in our heads that the distant past was all volcanoes and mountians. Which it really wasn't. There's no real evidence that say in the Devonian or the Late Triassic that there were massive mountian ranges that dwarfed the himilayas, nor was the terrain any more or less diverse. (i suppose an exception might be made for desertification in Pangea)

I will say that when I design my own maps, I do keep a keen eye out for the geology. you can expect to find grasslands on the wet sides of mountains and plains/desert on the dry side. Stuff like that.

[Last Conformist]

The AC climate model also had its failings (how freaking much water was bound at the poles, really?[/i], but it was alot more interesting.

[MrWhereItsAt]

The windward side of Mountains being rainier was a nice touch in AC. Prevailing currents increasing/decreasing sailing times and limited weather patterns influencing battlefield conditions could be an interesting couple of inclusions for Civ4, and could be tied into global warming/pollution ideas too.