I'd have to say the terrain improvment Civ3 needs most is CANALS.

[Coxy]

I want pipelines that are slightly quick to build than irrigation but can be mined on without removing the pipeline, primarily for irrigating inland cities that are nowhere near rivers.

Hmm, I suppose you could not allow them to cross mountains/hills until the advent of Steam Power, but you're close to Electricity then, anyway. I suppose they'd still be useful for a far-flung city in desert or something.

[bongo]

My guess is that the reason we don't have canals yet is that they will favour humans too much. AI's simply cannot use them as efficent as humans can.

Apart from that I'm in favour of canal building. Maybe have them in two sizes, small canals for small ships, available early and large canals for large ships, available in the industrial age. They should of course be expensive and limited in length.

[Trifna]

There never was any limit to lenght in reality, but it's just impossible on certain fields (mountains, etc.) and costs incredibly high, high enough to not put it everywhere...

[FNBrown]

I would really like to see canals, too, but I think they'd be very difficult to implement in a logical manner for the AI. Right now, if you turn your workers loose on "automatic", you get railroads all over the darned place - that's not at all realistic. I fear the same thing would happen with canals.

The AI needs to learn that the strategic use of railroads is to connect cities. Running railroads out to other parts of the map should either not happen at all, or, at least, should be a very, very low priority.

[lateralis]

I think one of the key things about canals should be that it can be the ONLY imrovement on that tile. Once you canal a tile, no irrigation, no mining, no railroad. I think that would make it a bit easier to avoid the AI putting them everywhere. Plus if worked, it should provide commerce ONLY. No food, no shields. this way most people would avoid working those tiles until they had really large cities. IE, post industrial. as said, they should only be on certain terrain types: dessert, plains, grassland, tundra? :hmm: but hills and moutains are obviously out. This way, deciding between food/shields from a mined or irrigated tile vs. lotso commerce from a canal tile is a neccessary concern. should one canal their only shielded grassland? I think these would add another fun strategic aspect to gameplay.

lateralis

[Jawa Jocky]

If you change specialist to dentist they do root canals

Ah the return of the canals. The planetbusters in AC made canals very quickly.

[Brizey]

The Romans made effective canals. The famous pictures of arched auqaducts were essentially canal bridges--most of the aqueduct was not necessarily raised.

Canals like the Erie canal are a whole different deal as compared to the Suez or Panama. I would say that there could be two different types of canals. One would allow irrigation through impassible hills and mountains, and would occur before electricity. Maybe enigneering. Effectively this would create a river through a hill or mountain square.

The second would be the stategic type like Panama or Suez. They would consume a worker, and be available with Sanitation and Industrialization. The would effectively make a single land tile act as a coastal tile for the owner civilization and ROP civs. The tile would generate no food, no shields, but would generate four or five commerce to represent the revenue potential. the tricky part is dealing with military action. For example, it would be seriously difficult to destroy the Panama canal. It could be made temporarily unusable, but total destruction would require either several nukes or a gazillion conventional bombs.

[Strakorfsky]

You Know.....

Canals sound very interesting indeed, but they could possible make aqueducts not needed.

Example: You make a canal to a small lake, from a city two tiles away. It will grow to a pop of 12. You could simply keep branchign them out to other cities for the same advantage.

I know the obviouse limitation on this is time. I agree that canals should take a massive amount of time but with an industrious nation using about ten workers, anything is possible.

Canals should give no bonus except for ship movement and ability to grow if connected with freshwater. If they did, one could simpley make them everywhere, creating a very unhistoricly correct game.

Canals being able to connect cities might be an interesting aspect. An inland city making a harbor and being able to make sea units. But the problem with that is it defeats the point of strategicly locating cities by the coast. Also, if the inland city was to make a harbor, ir should be connected to the ocean in some way.

Rivers were undermade in CIv3. I mean, rivers let the vikings sail down into Russia to trade, conquer, and pillage the local villages there. America's push into Germany during WWII relied on engineer's making bridges for tanks to cross. And many ancient civilizations relied on rivers as a way to transport goods up and down them.

Well, I guess the Firaxis didn't seem to take rivers seriously. But I do support canals and bridges.

-Ron

[Mad Bomber]

I love the Idea of canal building, and I have been asking for it for quite a while now (since CIV2 multiplayer) I would also second the idea for suspension bridges, although they should be limited to one or two tiles. I would like to add one idea that is similar, Rivers need to be of varying width as well as length. There is a difference between the Thames, Volga, Mississippi, Ohio and Patomac rivers. Also there should be a few ships capable of river navagation (canoe, Steamboat, canal boat, ect.) Also the way that rivers are generated in the map is unrealistic, more attention needs to be placed on devising a realistic model of a river system with major rivers and tributaries.

[bongo]

If you want to have suspension bridges(or causeways) only allow them on coastal squares. Give the no bonus other than movement.

Having navigable rivers is more important than canals. I feel that rivers are much underrated in the game. Historically they were(still are) important for both trade and defence.

[Trifna]

I agree with bongo, all the river thing should be put in a better way to represent their importance.