Paying for Terraforming

[Shadowstrike]

After reading an article on cleaning up Depleted Uranium and the expense tied with the clean up process for a school project, it was wondering if Civ3 could implement a similar idea, forcing nations to pay for terraforming. This would prevent the impossibility of leveling mountain ranges in a dozen years or similar unralistic phenomenon. Is this a good idea? Could it be implemented without increasing micromanagement?

[optimus2861]

Why wouldn't it work? Just keep it simple like in SMAC, where the raise/lower terrain options tell you right up front: "This will cost you XX credits, proceed?"

I guess the question becomes what terraforming options to keep free, and what ones become user-pay, so to speak. And if the current point in the game should have any bearing on the equation. I.e. a farmer plowed and irrigated his fields in 2000 BC because he had to do it in order to survive, there was little if any compensation involved for his effort. Today, farmers are businessmen like anyone else and expect to be paid for what they do. Thus the cost to plow and irrigate that field becomes important.

So here's my $.02 worth: the basic terraforming options, which I'll consider irrigation, roads, planting and removing forests, mining, and fortresses are always free. Farmland, railroads, airbases, and change-terrain options become user-pay, with farmland and railroad being relatively inexpensive, airbases always costing a fixed amount (but only able to build on flat land), and change-terrain being dependent on the terrain -- i.e. grassland to plains would be affordable, mountains to hills would be a significant investment. Railroad would also have a dependence on terrain -- with flat land the cheapest, hills and forests a little more, and mountains more still. Fortresses ... hmm, maybe there should be a cost if they're being built in hills/mountains. Any additional terraforming that Firaxis includes (ie radar stations?) would probably fall in with airbases or railroads.

- Ian Merrithew

[Shadowstrike]

The basic idea is to make civs pay for their tile improvements. Irrgation and roads should have a small cost (to represent the costs of mass irrigation projects, and road building ones), while industrial factories should have a proportionally larger cost.

[Henrik]

Government should play a part too, it would seem stupid if I had to pay my settler for irrigating when ruling as a despot.

[joseph1944]

We can remove small mountain now. I live about a mile or two from a quarry now, and you should see how much of this mountain has been removed. Just think for a moment, if all gravel in northern Calif. was to be removed from our quarry how much of this mountain would be left today. However Napa is surrounded by small mountain (1330 to 4044 ft.) so I guess it is not that big of a deal.

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[This message has been edited by joseph1944 (edited February 10, 2001).]

[loinburger]

Why would you want to terraform Earth? It's already got an Earthlike environment.

[Ralf]

Terraforming ala SMAC shouldnt be allowed at all. Only Civ-2 style transformation should be allowed (whether you have to pay for it, or not), but unlike Civ-2; Mountains should never be allowed to be transformed to hills - the very thought is ridicules.

[Shadowstrike]

Well, you see, there are areas that are unsuitable for habitation..... and with a little work and a lot of money.... you get the idea.

[Chaos Warrior]

what he wants to say, technophile - it's ONLY Earthlike, not Orionlike

[Roman]

I am happy to accept essentially whatever Firaxis gives us with regard to this. I am sure it will be reasonable.

[Theben]

quote: Originally posted by joseph1944 on 02-10-2001 05:48 PM We can remove small mountain now. I live about a mile or two from a quarry now, and you should see how much of this mountain has been removed. Just think for a moment, if all gravel in northern Calif. was to be removed from our quarry how much of this mountain would be left today. However Napa is surrounded by small mountain (1330 to 4044 ft.) so I guess it is not that big of a deal.

I am aware that today's construction crews are capable of removing the caps off of mountains, leaving flat land that is easier to settle on. However, 1) that only happens to a few mountains at a time, and 2) it's still a mountain, just with a flat top. As far as the game is concerned the tile would remain a mountain. The only things that you might want to add would be the high cost of doing so (although this would be negated as the purpose is to get to all the coal inside), a +1 growth to the tile (easier to settle), and the tile would be automatically polluted (a LOT of runoff into valleys and rivers; in some cases rivers have been destroyed). But the tile itself would remain a mountain tile.

In fact most tiles shouldn't be able to be terraformed. Hills should stay hills, and you can't build real hills w/o a HUGE effort. Glacier stays glacier. Desert is just barely possible to transform and that's with a huge cost, mostly in water resources. And while it's possible to raise land out of the ocean, I don't think an entire tile's worth can be raised. Even planting a forest is a great undertaking, and shouldn't be allowed before the modern era (it wasn't important until Environmentalism took root). However changing forests and plains to grassland should be much easier.

[Grumbold]

A more hands-free option would be to allot resources (or institute ordinances/policies) to encourage tile improvements then leave it to the cities themselves to actually decide what and where. Deforestation would occur naturally, irrigation and farmland would spring up slowly as the cities needed more and more agricultural land. Your influence would be needed more to put trees back (to reduce erosion and pollution) and shift rivers. Only engineering projects like dams, road and rail networks should be fully in the hands of the government. Mountain moving on the scale of a Civ tile is still impractical even if it is theoretically possible. All we undertake is a little basic sculpting. Large dam projects are the ones that most radically alter the terrain today. Civers are unlikely to want to turn productive tiles into lakes

[DarkCloud]

Paying for the terraform is a good idea- how about we say
1500 gold pieces for a mountain to hills
1500 gold pieces for a hill to plains
etc?

[Zealot]

Paying for terraforming is something that can't be avoided. Everything has a cost. And that cost should vary with the technology available and the government efficiency.

Terraform planet Earth is something that should have huge environmental consequences. Though glaciers and mountains are barriers to "our" civilization expansion, they shouldn't be allowed to be terraformed until deep technological advances are made on the environment field.