Movement penalty for Desert terrain?

[zulu9812]

In PTW, you can set which terrain has movement penalties (e.g. 3 for jungle) and which units can ignore movement penalties for specified terrain (e.g. Keshik ignore mountains). Now, I'm thinking of giving Desert a move penalty of 2. The reason for this is that horses would have trouble coping in the heat. I've also added a couple of camel units (1 for Horseman & 1 for Knight) for the eastern civs (e.g. Arabia and Egypt) which would ignore this move penalty. And tanks, mech inf. and modern armour are also immune, since desert is ideal tank country. What do people think?

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

You know, Zulu, you must be a MIND-READER . Ever since I heard about the "Ignore Movement Cost" function, I've been salivating over what changes I might make in order to make movement more "realistic" (a purely subjective notion, I realise). Like you I had thought of increasing the movement costs for both Desert and Tundra to either 2 or 3, to reflect the difficulties of maintaining supply lines in these sort of terrains (unless you really used to them!) Then I'd allow Cossaks and Russian Infantry to ignore Tundra movement costs, and allow the Keshik and Arab Units to ignore desert movement! (To explain the Keshik idea, Ghengis Khan suprised the few remaining defenders of Samarkand by heading out INTO the desert, going around the city, and coming at it from the rear , meanwhile, another Mongol force was keeping the bulk of the Samarkand army busy via a frontal assault-which lured the army out from the protection of the city!! Absolutely ingenious!)
Anyway, also like you said, I would make modern motor units ignore desert movement costs, but I'm still in two minds over the Tundra movement issue (remember that it was a winter campaign which partially cost Hitler the war on the Eastern Front!)
Anyway, GREAT IDEA Zulu-if I don't say so myself .

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Pap1723]

Good idea!

I would agree with the Russian Infantry and the Cossasks ignoring the movement penalty.

I would also think you could make a Generic Ski Infantry that works well in Mountains and tundra.

Pap

[Willem]

Another thing I've done is give those non-horse 2 move units, like the Samurai, an override for Forest squares.

[Saint Marcus]

And tanks, mech inf. and modern armour are also immune, since desert is ideal tank country.

not tanks. The German Afrika Korps had serious troubles in the North African deserts because of the sand.

[sabrewolf]

yeah... tanks have great trouble in sandy, salty and gravely deserts. but you could make some sort of armored jeeps (see "dune 2" for what i mean) as extremely fast, desert-movement-cost-ignoring units

but otherwise: great idea!

also, the ski-infantry sounds nice. wasn't there something like that in civ2? it had the "all terrain as road"-flag set.

[Willem]

Originally posted by sabrewolf


also, the ski-infantry sounds nice. wasn't there something like that in civ2? it had the "all terrain as road"-flag set.

Yes, it was called an Alpine unit I believe. I'm hoping someone gets around to doing a new one now that we can override the terrain penalties. To bad Firaxis didn't think of it.

[Sheik]

That's an interesting idea zulu and I believe that if it were done properly it could really increase the realism.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by Willem
Yes, it was called an Alpine unit I believe. I'm hoping someone gets around to doing a new one now that we can override the terrain penalties. To bad Firaxis didn't think of it.

they did think of it from the beginning or as of one of the first patches: "treat all terrain as road".

[Willem]

Originally posted by sabrewolf


they did think of it from the beginning or as of one of the first patches: "treat all terrain as road".

Yes, but they don't have a unit of a guy on skis. I miss him.

[annoyed]

I was hoping to make mountains impassable and create valleys using some resource icons, but cannot be done. I would have to futz around with wheeled and none -wheeled units which does not seem to be practicable.

[Ozymandias]

Originally posted by annoyed
I was hoping to make mountains impassable and create valleys using some resource icons, but cannot be done. I would have to futz around with wheeled and none -wheeled units which does not seem to be practicable.

On a real Earth map (Tet's, modified) I am indeed making those mountains which have historically been all-but-complete barriers to military units impassable. I'm using one-tile-access hills to simulate the St. Bernard Pass etc. My overall goal is to see how closely I can get to Civ3 terrain reproducing historical military "funnels".

If it's any help, as I mentioned elsewhere, if you edit any terrain to have 0 commerce added for roads then roads cannot be built in that tile type. No roads / railroads and high movement costs definitely make mountains much more imposing barriers.

-Oz

[Willem]

Originally posted by Ozymandias


On a real Earth map (Tet's, modified) I am indeed making those mountains which have historically been all-but-complete barriers to military units impassable. I'm using one-tile-access hills to simulate the St. Bernard Pass etc. My overall goal is to see how closely I can get to Civ3 terrain reproducing historical military "funnels".

If it's any help, as I mentioned elsewhere, if you edit any terrain to have 0 commerce added for roads then roads cannot be built in that tile type. No roads / railroads and high movement costs definitely make mountains much more imposing barriers.

-Oz

An easier way would be to give most of your units the Wheeled flag, so you have to build a road before they can cross the mountains and jungles.

[Ozymandias]

Originally posted by Willem


An easier way would be to give most of your units the Wheeled flag, so you have to build a road before they can cross the mountains and jungles.

Hi Willem,

I'm playing with using the Wheeled flag for other uses -- everything's still experimental at this stage.

Basically, across the board, I'm taking a step back from the Civ flag labels and just looking at what they do.

A quick example -- for my purposes, that the "Religious" trait limits anarchy (which, BTW, given the number and violence of internecine religious wars ESPECIALLY during revolutions, strikes me as ridiculous) might, just by itself, be extraordinarily important. So -- again, as an example -- what happens if no Improvements are flagged as "Religious" and the "Religious" attribute is used to simulate a society which is relatively very stable over time? (Although -- as an aside -- IF it works, I think I have an extraordinary approach to modding both religion-religion AND religion-secular strife at the same time ... stay tuned ...)

Insofar as the Mountains question goes, my main thrust is to avoid entire armies decamping into Central Asia via a Trans-Himalayan Railroad. More to the point, for example, even though they are now crossed by roads and railroads, the Pyrenees have ALWAYS represented a formidable military obstacle and thereby cultural frontier. So, on the map I'm experimenting with now, the Pyrenees are three tiles across with one way around, at Barcelona.

Of course, I'm also reevaluating what "Mountains" and "Hills" are in game turns -- so places where one might "reasonably" expect mountains (the St. Bernard pass) will be hills -- one tile wide passages which should be very easy to defend. Likewise resources normally found on Mountains are now on Hills, etc. (BTW, if you look at a combined elevation and resource atlas, you'll find -- again, an example -- iron in what would be Plains tiles; etc.)

All The Best,

Oz

[mrtn]

The_Aussie_Lurker: "Then I'd allow Cossaks and Russian Infantry to ignore Tundra movement costs"

The Cossaks were from the Ukraine. Ukraine does NOT have any tundra, though they produce Schampanjskoje, ukrainian fizzy wine. The infantry idea is good though.