Anything happening on the weather front?

[Gord McLeod]

Alpha Centauri included a fairly detailed weather system that involved no micromanagement at all. It was more of a "meta-weather" issue though, not "today it rains, tomorrow it's sun." Since game turns were a year long, weather amounted to winds, ocean currents and rainfall in various areas, with higher levels of precipitation resulting in more nutrients gained from a given square, and higher elevations giving greater energy due to sunlight. A similar system could be used in Civ3 effectively.

[Alexander's Horse]

At last, Gord gives us a sensible comment

As for strategist, well, he must be a wanker with a name like that

Theben, it well documented that ancient farming practices extended deserts in North Africa and Palestine (and other areas). Its got nothing to do with the frigging re-alignments of the planets

[Shadowstrike]

Something that really bugged me from SMAC was that you could build a city as high as ground would go. I mean, erecting a city on the top of Mt. Everest would take superhuman feats! They should put an elevation cap on cities unitl you acquired the relevent technology.

[Theben]

quote: Originally posted by Alexander's Horse on 08-04-2000 12:19 AM Theben, it well documented that ancient farming practices extended deserts in North Africa and Palestine (and other areas). Its got nothing to do with the frigging re-alignments of the planets

The difference is that when the Europeans used the basically same "frigging" irigation techniques, the climate and land were better suited to recover and the land wasn't salted from seawater irrigation.
W/o the axis shift North Africa would be in much better shape for agriculture than it is today.
As for Gord's comments, isn't that generally considered to be the difference in output from various terrain types?

[Alexander's Horse]

quote: Originally posted by Shadowstrike on 08-04-2000 08:47 AM Something that really bugged me from SMAC was that you could build a city as high as ground would go. I mean, erecting a city on the top of Mt. Everest would take superhuman feats! They should put an elevation cap on cities unitl you acquired the relevent technology.

So true, so true, building cities on mountains should be banned.

[Gord McLeod]

quote: Originally posted by Alexander's Horse on 08-05-2000 07:08 AM So true, so true, building cities on mountains should be banned.

That makes no sense to me, given that very very early in the game you could build underwater bases, a much more challenging problem than simply building them high in the atmosphere. There's really not much stopping you from doing so, at that altitude the air is just thin, not gone.

[Empress]

Actually I think randomized weather events would be good. ie droughts, floods, increased rainfall, unusually warm weather or unusually cold weather, all of which can affect food production.

[Adm.Naismith]

Gord, you are right about the SMAC modelling of climatic condition (I'm not sure we can call this a proper "Weather" model, but my english is far from good, so I pass on it ).

SMAC Climatic condition model is interesting, but should be made less crude on CIV III.
The main change is from main human terraforming (raise/lower land) that doesn't happen easily on history.

Realistic weather change effect should come from extended city growing, large grid of roads, industrialization/pollution, long wars (lot of animals has been killed during wars, farms pillaged, forests burnt, etc.).

About building cities on mountain, we have some real cities quite high on Peru and Tibet. I suppose main limits on city building there are scarce food production on high mountains and difficult/expensive transport. If they are well modelled I see no need to put a game ban.

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

[Wazell]

Well, if Civ3 is going to be better than its predecessors, it will not only have one-year turns, and turns of one month and even shorter are allowed. In that case a good weather model is needed and the game should have some way to determine how fast time goes. In regular game changes of season and other short-time events do not count, but if there's a very bad year for crops in one continent, it's noted and can cause famines to less-developed areas.

If one turn is one month, seasons matter, but it depends on map and other things. If it's WWII scenario in Europe, winter and summer change everywhere same time, in Africa scenario north can have winter when south has summer, because scenario maker has set the equator on its place. In main game there should also be things like little ice-age in Europe 1100-1700 AD, when and where these appear is somewhat random, and it depends on many different factors.

[Shadowstrike]

I think we should bring back the old Civ I random events model with more random events. Those events reall made it seem like you were running a nation.

[Adm.Naismith]

I can't remember the CIV I random model (I played it really ages ago ) so I must refer mainly to SMAC, but about random events I every time underline that:

- they must be related to game developement (as pollution link to massive production) or really random on terrain (as earthquakes), not an AI cheat to hit the human player when he/she's unstoppable

- they must have some way to be counterracted by player actions (if I want to avoid pollution problems I can develop "green" production investing in development, if I want to avoid some silly economic crash but haven't any tool to manage/avoid it I'm in hostage of programmers routines: not very funny not challenging for me)

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

[Shadowstrike]

That's about it Adm. Naismith. Except that players should get an option to turn it up or down (like the barb level).

[Adm.Naismith]

Options are options but I feel that this could simply be related to the level of the game you chose:

easy: no random trouble
medium: some random trouble
hard: plenty of random trouble

If I can't cope with the difficulties, better I chose to be humbly and play easy.

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

[Gord McLeod]

quote: Originally posted by Theben on 08-04-2000 10:54 PM As for Gord's comments, isn't that generally considered to be the difference in output from various terrain types?

I must've missed this one last time I posted; yes, that's part of the rationale behind the different values for terrain types, but those values are fixed, which should not be the case in a weather/climate system. Also in SMAC's system, it makes it possible to accomplish some significant terraforming by raising and lowering terrain to alter wind patterns, which trap moisture against the land creating more rain, and drying other areas out more by denying them rain they used to get.

[Wazell]

Yep, the SMAC system for expressing the amounts of rain, temperature and plants is good, and there are different ocean terrains, too. However this system needs lots of improving to correctly represent Earth's climate. There are very good proposals for this in the list.

Random events are certainly needed, like in first civ. They shouldn't be totally random, though. In civ1 volcano eruption could suddenly happen in every city which was adjacent to mountain square and hadn't temple improvement, killing 1 person. And everyone should remember those numerous times when discovery of gunpowder made all the barracs obsolete and next turn the pirates attacked mercilessly to one city, pillaging it.

Think about it, in Earth we have the Pacific "Ring of Fire", surprisingly surrounding Pacific Ocean, and the most earthquakes and volcano eruptions take place there. In Civ3 the game should place similar areas on the map when creating world, and pre-made maps could have preset activity areas. When in game the player could have some sort of Early Warning System after discovering certain techs. Then, when volcano is about to erupt or quake is about to strike, scientist told you: "Our most wise king, Mount Fuji is feared to erupt near our city of London! Do you want to evacuate the city?". King then starts either mass evacuating (whole city population) or a minor one (rich people) or ignores the warnings. System isn't obviously 100% certain, but gives some control to player. Note that this won't cause too much micromanagement, since this kind of Volcanos and Quakes would be rare occurrences (Thera 1450BC, Vesuvius 79AD, Tambora 1815, Krakatau 1883, Pinatubo 1991) and therefore they add more fun to game.