critically missing terrains

[Prince]

I would freak out if there were too many terrain types.

You say that tile-size terraforming never took place, but I've never seen tile-size plateaus either. Swamps could return to the game, although it would actually be 'just another ****ty tile'. I think it should be possible to settle on mountains though...

[Master Zen]

What's the use of new terrain if the AI's gonna chop em down anyways, look what they do to all the forests and jungle...

Resources should be lost with a terrain change, this would disencourage people from chopping things. Chop down the jundge, get no rubber. Period.

Also, IIRC you can't settle on mountains anyway

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

Originally posted by Master Zen
What's the use of new terrain if the AI's gonna chop em down anyways, look what they do to all the forests and jungle...

Resources should be lost with a terrain change, this would disencourage people from chopping things. Chop down the jundge, get no rubber. Period.

Also, IIRC you can't settle on mountains anyway

yeah, its a shame that resources arent lost upon tile change, I gave forests the ability to be mined (think logging camp), and now the AI forests every brown tile and irrigates every green tile. its funny to see rubber with no trees, or wheat in a forest. But I do like that this way at least the world is so deforested. Plus it helps their defense as my attacks get bogged down in forests.

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

Originally posted by Prince
You say that tile-size terraforming never took place, but I've never seen tile-size plateaus either. Swamps could return to the game, although it would actually be 'just another ****ty tile'. I think it should be possible to settle on mountains though...

If I remember my geography class, Tibet is a huge plateau. Also many areas around the himalayas. Those afghan cities are probably are all plateaus if the are thousands of feet above sea level.

[Odin]

Plateau- 1 food, 2 shield
Swamp- 2 food, disease (take disease away from Jungle)
Savanna (open woodlands)- 2 food, 1 shield,

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by Jarvin
About plateaus.
Why not make it kinda like floodplains. Any flat area, surrounded by mountains, and small enough becomes a plateau. How 'bout it?

Good, but there is no need for a size restriction. There are plenty of massive highland plateaus, like Tibet.

[GePap]

Plateaus are not a different type of terrain: they are a feature of elevation. Anything, from forests to plains, can be on top of one.

I do think swamps and glaciers should have stayed and don;t see why they were removed from the game. i think that civ3 should have incorporated elevation like SMAC did, but that certainly won't make a comeback.

[Fosse]

If we increase the cost of everything by a factor of five or ten, then we suddenly have a lot more valid options for terrain values.

So if a warrior costs 100 shields instead of 10, and the highest producer of shields are mined hills (30), we have a lot more options between 0 and the max.

This would make for a more diverse and accurate map.

[brianshapiro]

GePap , i think terrain wasnt included, mainly because at the most you would have two elevations because of world size, and the placement of the elevation would be limited. Also, it would have been harder to implement multiple terrains with elevation.

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by GePap
Plateaus are not a different type of terrain: they are a feature of elevation. Anything, from forests to plains, can be on top of one.

Forests are already on top of tiles. If you mean that plateaus should be elevated plains, that's fine, but that's still different terrain.

[star mouse]

We don't need a lot of new different terrains. All we need are a few that were left out:

* Desert Hills - like normal hills but produce no food and look good in deserts.

* Plains Hills - Like normal hills but yellow instead of green so they look good on the plains.

* Tundra Hills - Like normal hills but look good when placed with tundra.

* Swamps - I would place these next to rivers in either Jungles or Grassland. They work like Jungle. When cleared they become flood plains.

* Desert Mountains - like normal mountains except they look better in deserts.

* Plains Mountains - like normal mountains but look good better in plains.

* Tundra Mountains - like normal mountains but look good better in plains.

All of these could be implemented without adding to the base terrain. The base terrain is the colour of the tile that the terrain feature sits on, and is grasslands green, plains orange, desert yellow or tundra white. There's a graphics file that has all the possible blendings between each of these. Any new terrain created should have a base colour that is green, orange, yellow or white, so that no additional new graphics are required.

[pedrojedi]

Well, so you sugest a basic "climate" (my knowledge in geography has decreased dramatically over a few years) - grasslands, plains, desert and tundra, and a basic "elevation" - sea level and slight variations, hills and mountains. Seems good and functional.

[Wazell]

I agree that having a set of base terrains and adding mountains, forests and hills as layers over them, would be a functional and easy solution. This has been used in many games, at least Warcraft and Heroes of Might and Magic series that I know of.