Before I Die....

[Recurve]

The one thing I want to do before I die is build the "Great Canal". If I don't, I simply won't pass over to the other side!

[Sabre2th]

What?

[Recurve]

Then I'm going to sail a little ship down it.

[Sabre2th]

I'm sorry, but you lost me. I'm very, very confused as it is. Please don't add to it.

[One More Turn!]

Whether or not I am getting the point of your post, canals would certainly be a useful addition to Civ. It just takes too long to go all of the way around huge land masses.

Is this something that would be technology driven, or wonder driven?

[Col Bigspear]

Its a new wonder, it lets you connect 2 oceans and places a large canal on the map, much like the "great wall" wonder is supposed to do

[One More Turn!]

You can place it anywhere? Any limits on number of tiles or anything? Can I connect the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans through Africa, for instance?

[Col Bigspear]

I would imagine it would be limited to a certain ammount of tiles, but I was only going off what I have heard in these forums and on the civfanatics forum.

[DarkCloud]

Hopefully the canal would not be allowed to be longer than 4 squares... otherwise there is the problem about reality in Civilization.

[One More Turn!]

I agree that a limitation on the length of the canal is in order, but if we are being realistic, shouldn't there be more than one canal allowed? It would be great if the wonder would allow you to build canals with your engineer units, that way if you wanted to spend the resources building a canal across Africa, you could.

[Recurve]

Ideally there'd be 2-3 canal wonders available, each allowing you to build 1 canal of up to 5 squares in length.

But I'm expecting just one, which I fully intend to build. I can just picture it now, a floatilla of imperial vessels moored either side, deterring lesser nations from access. In English tradition, I will be master of the waves.

[Sabre2th]

Maybe the Great Canal will be a minor wonder, so that each civilization can build it once.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by DarkCloud
Hopefully the canal would not be allowed to be longer than 4 squares... otherwise there is the problem about reality in Civilization.

The way round that is to restrict movement through canals to one tile per turn. Therefore making it longer would be a bit pointless, if it takes as long as going the long way round.

In addition, an another option is make each extra tile distance increase the build cost by 25% or something.

[meriadoc]

Canals would be a wonderful thing to have in the game, not only to make it easier to get around large land masses but also to add to the reality. But, just like in real life, they should be incredibly expensive to build and take a lot of time and resources. That should limit how many are built. Also, there needs to be a size factor. Some of todays biggest ships (aircraft carriers, supertankers) can't fit through the two major canals (Panama, Suez). Maybe Civ3, if it includes canals at all, could place limits on what vessels can go through them.

[Rhuarc]

Canals sound like a really cool idea, but I think that the best route to go would be have it kind of like a Feat of Wonder, or a mini wonder. Each civ would then have the opportunity to build a canal. Limits should be placed on the size, and what about where on the map they go? They should have to be located withink your national borders, or perhaps you could create an agreement with another civ (through the improved diplomacy) to allow one end to be in their territory. Let me know wat you think!