Climate, topography & disease improvements

[Par4]

Terrain survival skills, good idea, 400 years of growing cactus in the desert will make you respect sun and yearly rainfalls won't it. Climate zones, another good idea, now I'm in the tundra, the polar, the tundra, the polar, the tundra, the polar, the tundra, the polar, the tundra, the polar,*punch* eskimo says "We don't take that crap in the polar". Crop yields, yet another good idea, I can grow a lot of bananas in the amazon and catch a lot of paranas(sp), don't forget the huge spiders that one bite will kill ya and those camouflaged snakes that crush your bones and swallow you whole then slither away with a big hump in their backs, hmmmm good livin'. Seriously good ideas, and not so many on off switches SMAC had too much and with screwy names. Disease I say should go with the levels and could be turned off, but imagine the gameplay on hardest with most of your people dying off like in real life back in the ancient times. You could make a black death scenario too. If we have real numbers in military a certain number of units could die every turn in a new climate zone depending on logicistics and medical levels, local diseases. So much gameplay added, good thread. Also I think terrain survival skills should be lost if that civ doesn't have contact with that terrain, ie civ starts in desert, moves into temperate, desert cities captured, never regained, after 500 years of living away from the desert are the people still going to have desert skills.

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[Adm.Naismith]

Napoleon, as SMAC teached to us, there isn't easy debug of game options.

IMHO, proposed features (and I was speaking more in general than referring to this specific thread) can't be simple different value of variables.

About multiplayer: yes, lot of micromanagement will take more time to a game, but

1) some features only change rules, not necessary add micromanagement to expert player (OK, you must learn to manage new rules, but that's training in solo mode);

2) board games are multiplayer by itself nature, so the whole bunch of players must start chosing wich set of rules want to play with. Computer games usually change the "difficulty level" concept trying to mimic more rookie or expert AI player, but IMO that's silly.

A game company can barely make an AI engine for every game, just adding here and there some cheat to let us believe that at stronger level AI plays better.

I'll be more happy if they make an AI that can cope with different (increasing) set of rules. It won't happen, but I can hope for

In multiplayer mode there will be no problem because all players must agree to play at the same level. Now (SMAC) they must agree on a wider set of on/off switch, making things unnecessary difficult.

Look, I agree we can't make rules so different from level to level to force Firaxis to build five different games. I'll be more than happy with three level at all, if properly implemented.

MidKnight Lament, please stop to support me or someone will start to suspect we are brothers!

Urban ranger: I agree "survival skill" can be a Civ special (as in SMAC faction bonus), but should also be some minor tech (if they will be implemented on discovery tree) you start with, but you can also acquire (by trade, by research, etc.).

After all, when european people started voyage into far countries (polar cap, Africa, etc.), they usually learned how to adapt their survival equipment and dress to mostly match native ability.

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant
[This message has been edited by Adm.Naismith (edited May 29, 2000).]