TERRAIN & TERRAIN IMPROVEMENTS (ver 1.0): Hosted by EnochF

[NotLikeTea]

Even if we do not have real plate tectonics (and I doubt we will), some geological realism would be nice.

If the game has faults and volcanoes, at least place them in a reasonable fashion, along the coasts of continents, or in the middle of oceans (Mid Atlantic Ridge (Hrm.. another landmark?)), for example.

[EnochF]

Wheathin: Finding roads "ugly," it seems to me, is a lousy reason for disallowing any trade boni for roads. I personally think that filling up city radii with roads fairly well simulates urban sprawl, at least visually. It seems inkeeping with the modern era, and it conforms to modern maps, whose emphasis is often on roads. If, however, you are complaining about landscapes cluttered with railroads, I doubt that will be a problem because railroads will have no inherent advantages over roads as far as boosting trade in a square.

More Emphasis on Rivers: I might well expand this to become More Rivers. The way I picture it now, the first step of the map generator would be to generate various interconnected river systems, then generate continents and mountain ranges based on that, then design the rest of the interior terrain: forests, deserts, plains, that sort of thing.

Eggman: If not unlimited movement on railroads, how about unlimited movement on maglevs? This would push all-powerful ground units into the near future, well into the modern age. It would also mean that any enemy civilization you are able to assault with your howitzers would necessarily be a formidable one, probably with nuclear deterrence on its side.

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Couple of things about sea transport and railroads/roads effects:
Sea Transport relative to land transport has to be changed in a couple of ways. As others have mentioned, it should be faster, at least for cargo, than anything on land until MagLevs or Modern Railroads (which are 2-3 times faster than the original 19th century RRs for moving bulk freight). Maybe once you've established a Sea Lane (trade route?) between two points Cargo travel (including passengers) would be 2x or 3x regular sea movement rate?
Also, and more important over the bulk of the period of the game, sea ships or river boats were the ONLY way to ship bulk goods before the railroad. No type of road with animal-drawn wagons on it could ship more than a few tons at a time for a 100 miles or so. Even early ships/boats allows a few men to sail/row/pole 10-50 tons for long distances. This means that Food, Coal, Iron, and similar bulk goods, can only be shipped to a city by water before railroads.
Which takes me to terrain: why not a Head of Navigation icon (small falls) on a river? Any city between the icon and the sea gets benefit of boat/sea transport (trade in bulk goods, food imports, etc) while above that, the river provides only defense. Advances like Canal Building would allow you to 'extend' the Head of Navigation later in the game.
Realistically, railroads and improved (all weather, hard surface) roads should extend the city radius, and allow the city to draw goodies from further away than it could with carts over dirt tracks. Graphically, this would lead to the ugly grid of tracks all around the city. One possibility would be to make the original building of railroads very expensive (they were the first Major Economic Projects that required extensive public and governmental financing- dominated 19th century stock markets) so that grids would be really costly to build. After Concrete/Macadam (improved) roads are developed, instead of a grid you could build a (Public Works) Hinterland or Suburbia improvement on a tile within the city radius. This could use a better-looking graphic to represent an area connected to the city by good roads, light rail, etc and feeding said city with resources. Hinterland could be built anywhere along the railroad/MagLev or navigable river, even outside the 'formal' city radius, and still feed resources to a (selected) city or group of cities.
This would give us the effects of the better transportation, a better choice of graphics, and a way to get more resources from further away without having to build new cities everywhere late in the game.

[NotLikeTea]

What if RR's allowed unlimited movement, but only inside your own borders? It's always seems odd that the Romans would allow my tanks to use their rail system for my invasions

I've captured 20+ cities in CivII in one turn by connecting their RR to mine, and moving in the forces. Blam.

[Ecce Homo]

An alternative to a fixed city radius
Citizens can work on any squares that are two movement points or less away from the city. Production will however be penalized for any square that is further from the city than 1/3 movement points - the double after discovery of Automobile.

[Eggman]

My problem with railroads isn't realism. My problem is that no matter how strong an enemy you are facing, if you can hit the majority or all of their cities using their rail system, it doesn't matter if they have the largest army in the world with a huge nuclear arsenal. All I have to do is build an overwhelming number of howitzers (I need only a minimum of other units - Armor? Who needs armor?) and then blitz them. Spies help a lot. By the time they get a chance to react, they don't exist. Game over, man. And I did it using a completely unbalanced military of all offensive units. My casulties are nil.

The unlimited movement using railroads (or maglevs, depending) while inside your own borders could work. But you would have to deal with the loopole of capturing an enemy city (effectively putting it inside your border) and then getting the infinite movement bonus from those recently captured railroads.

Perhaps movement over railroads could be infinite but combat movement isn't. The armor unit can move 100 squares using the railroad, but if it moves over, say, six (3 times an arbitrary multiplier of 2), it cannot attack (except to occupy cities, which should be free).

Of course, if ground units should be able to move infinite squares, airplanes should be able to move an infinite number of squares to redeploy (not attack).

[DickK]

Some of these are dupes of other's comments so just take them as votes for "what they said".

Generally I want to see more dynamic game that better portrays the historic rise and fall of civilizations over time. Evolution and revolution. Terrain and climate have had major influence on the civs over time and that should be reflected in Civ3, much more than in Civ2. On the other hand, if it something serves no useful purpose in making Civ3 a better, more fun game then it shouldn't be included. Things I think are important:

· Dynamic maps - changes in the map during the game, rivers change course, new special resources found, old specials "peter out", gradually wetter/dryer areas, changes due to influence of play.
· Evolution in climate - whole planet (or at least regions) shifts to wetter, drier, warmer, colder, gradual change over hundreds of years.

- Geologically reasonable maps. Civ2 (and most others) map generation routines suffer from too little realism and too much random terrain. Compare the Earth maps to anything that the map generator will produce. Desert just doesn't occur in little 1-2 square patches all over the map for instance. Mountains should generally occur in chains defining a plate boundary. Most mountain chains will form boundaries between terrain types--forest on one side, plains on the other; desert on one side and jungle on the other. Sure exceptions exist in the real world and some randomness should be present, but not to the degree currently present. It also seems incapable of producing really large continents that don't snake and twist all over the map. Sure, that should be one result, but all the time?

· Include major (named) terrain features with unique benefits or penalties, like those in SMAC. Examples: Volcanoes, Canyon, an exceptional mountain range, Ice / glacier.

· 3 dimensional maps in the sense implemented in SMAC so that altitude matters

Climate/geographic "random" events. There should be a mix of favorable and unfavorable events. Most of the disasters should be preventable or lessened by something that the player can do, but decided not to do. Not intended to be exhaustive, sample:
· Famine. Ranges from a single turn to several consecutive with loss of food production in the effected area from 1 unit per square to all food production lost. Also causes increased unhappiness. Impact lessened in a square if irrigated or farmland. Further lessened if supermarket present (implied ability to efficiently move food among cities.)
· Flood. Impact similar to fire, but only if city is built on or adjacent to a river, ocean or lake square. Impact lessened by engineering advance, city walls improvement, sewers improvement.
· Epidemic. Decreases population in affected area which could span multiple civilizations. Range from minor to severe. Chances increased by city size. Chances and impact lessened by hospital improvement, medicine and sanitation advances. Eliminate with Cure for Cancer (or equivalent)?
· Mine/oil well failure. Opposite of a strike, an existing special resource becomes exhausted and/or produces at a much decreased rate.
· Bumper crop. Opposite of famine--one to several turns of increased food production in one or more cities, or an entire area. Increased chances if aqueduct, irrigation, and/or farmland present.
· Gold/silver/coal/iron/uranium strike. Random event in which a hill or mountain within a city radius acquires one of the special resources. Chances increased by the presence of mine or settler/engineer in the process of making a mine in square.
· Oil discovery. Random event where the oil special resource is added to any non-mountain square within a city radius. Increased chance for discovery in any square adjacent to a pre-existing oil resource.

[wheathin]

Enoch: while suburbs do expand, they rarely stretch for 200 miles from the core of the city, which is what the city-radius represents. It is not just the greater metro area, it is all the surrounding tens and hundreds of miles of forests, farms, mountains, etc... and those certainly don't have the kinds of highways you find in the city.

But, more importantly, they can be abstracted out. It shouldn't be necessary to cover the map with ugly road tiles... it ruins the aestheic experience of the game.

wheathin

[Theben]

I figured I'd better chime in before this got too full to keep up.
My Terrain/TI wish List:
(* means very important to me)

* A round planet.

* Keep the square/diamond tiles. I know there have been discussions on hexes and other tile markers, but I think squares are best. I don't remember who said it, but he pointed out that we all have the 1-9 keypad on our 'puters, and from a player's standpoint ease of use is paramount. Now this would be difficult with a round world, but I have 2 ideas. One is to have 2 roughly circular maps made with standard squares laid flat, each representing 1 hemisphere. When you move off of one you will appear on the other. The other would be akin to a "strobe-globe", where each tile is laid on the surface of the sphere. The result would be that no tile would be on the exact same plane (except the one on the other side of the globe). Centering on the moving unit it would appear that the unit is on a flat surface with the rest of the world bending away slightly from the center. Personally I don't know if this will be feasible, or even work, but I thought I'd try anyway.

All roads add a % bonus to all goods from worked tiles. Basic roads about +20%, advanced roads, railroads, future ?, get higher bonus. The % decimal bonuses are added together when the total city output is figured in the city interface.

No raised land like SMAC, it was a pain; keep the civ2/CtP tiles.

During world generation, have the computer generate a tectonic plate map. The computer will then base mountain ranges, volcanic activity, windward & leeward climates, etc. on tihs. Also have the terrain based on the hot forest, hot desert, cold forest, cold desert latitudes. The player will not get to see tectonic map until appropriate tech is developed, and maybe not even then (by then the player should be able to figure it out by himself w/o the programmers adding yet another map screen).

Sources in the game (iron, coal, uranium, wood, oil, others). To keep it simple if the player has the resource anywhere in his empire and/or claimed borders you can utilize it in all your cities (this may be transport dependent; i.e. no connecting roads or ship access=no can use in those cities), if not must trade for or conquer land. Lack of these resources may inhibit your tech research. Random events may cause such sources to be used up or discovered in your borders.

*People get unhappy when pollution is in/near city radius. Nuclear pollution=x2 unhappiness.

*Nuke pollution takes longer to clean. Only engineers(or better) may clean. Fallout may cause nuke pollution downwind of detonation point. Nuclear pollution & fallout can lower population & population growth for x# of turns. Nukes should damage terrain.

*All tile construction costs $$, which varies per govt. type and freedom levels.

*New functions: Build canal, upgrade forts(fort, keep, fortress, castle), upgrade coastal/AA defenses, Transform terrain gives you a possible list of things to terraform to with approx. times.

No 'zoom-out' like SMAC that shows the rises in land (thus where land is in black squares). Need a better zoom-out like civI which was easy to read

Some tile changes would require maintenance costs (castles, AA batteries)

*Forts on a coast can be built with sea defenses. Tile improvement: AA def. Can also be built into forts & upgraded.

Weather conditions for random events & in random combat events (I'll explain later).

*Grasslands,plains, hills, can ALWAYS be irrigated UNLESS they are adjacent (and maybe for a couple extra tiles distant) to the leeward side of a mountain range. River squares can always be irrigated. Desert, tundra, cannot be irrigated unless there is a river in the tile square, contains a resource suitable for irrigation (oasis), or the civ has advanced enough tech & infrastructure to pump in water.

Aqueduct as tile improvement: Mountain squares w/ aqueduct TI's generate +1 food.

+1 shield from jungles/swamp (they DO have trees, after all)

*TI: Naval base. Extends range of ships (if used). Ship units may move into, only on islands or coastline (naturally). Improved repair rates for ships. Land, air, and sea bases may be built on same tile.

Environmentalism tech adds +1 trade to wilderness squares (mountain, jungle, swamps, tundra)/forests with roads in them.

Windward Mountain/hill slopes are forested; +1 food and +1 shield. New TI's: Mountain side, mountain pass (no move/damage penalty if move from one particular direction to another)

*Extreme climates damage units. I went over this more throughly in another thread, but the gist is this; Some units (chariots, tanks, etc.) may not enter (swamp, mountain w/o roads/passes). Other units take damage as they move through (bogged down, disease, exposure,etc.) Some special units would be immune in specific terrain (alpine in mountains, tundra, marines in jungle/swamp). The special units would also be immune to movement penalties, but would not get a road multiplier. Some immune to all climates (partisan, explorer). Bases, cities protect against extreme climates.

*While all civs may use enemy roads, they may not use enemy railroads or better(maglevs). Non- combat units may use peaceful rr's; all units may use allied. Rails may be captured. The last civ's combat unit to move through owns, if at war. Perhaps color-code rails to civs for easy identification?

**FIN**

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Theben (edited June 17, 1999).]</font>

[Alexander's Horse]

I don't think the city square should produce anything. Reason? I find it really annoying having to site my city on a particular square when the less suitable one next to it would give a better city radius.

Also should cities get defence bonuses from the terrain? I think not. Most cities are built on plains, near rivers or the sea. Can't think of many in the ancient or modern period which actually gained defence advantages from their location (as opposed to castles or forts, which are a very different story).

I had a long lunch today so perhaps that's why I can't think of any............................


"I drink therefore I am."
Australian proverb.

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Alexander's Horse (edited June 17, 1999).]</font>

[Kris Huysmans]

New terrain improvement:

Animal farm = +1 food and +1 trade when you have discoverd "Fast Food" and have a Free Market SE choice.

[EnochF]

Animal farm?

All suggestions are equal. But some suggestions are less equal than others.

[Kris Huysmans]

I mean a pig farm or a chicken farm or something. And the pigs are more equal then the chickens.

[Eggman]

Another solution for the infinite railroad assault: sabotage the railroads. When a city is captured, there could be an automatic chance that the railroads leading to other cities are instantly destroyed (by partisans or retreating troops). That should slow them down and is realistic to boot.

As a corollary to that idea, if the railroad crosses a river, there should be a chance that the partisans destroy both the railroad AND the road. Blow up the bridge, if you will. That will really slow them down.

And cities do gain defensive bonuses from their terrain in real life. The city of Quebec was almost impossible to take because it was built on the high ground. The only time it was ever captured was because the British general duped the French commander to bring his troops outside of the walls.

[NotLikeTea]

Interesting.. maybe partisans should be allowed to pillage for no movement cost on their first turn of automatic creation?