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

[Kris Huysmans]

You can then simple destroy the partisans. go with a team of 10 engeniers to the destroyed railroad and build them back in one turn by using a group of enegeniers for every part of the railroad. I used this strategy in civ2 to conquer empires that hadn't railroads.
I found the idea that you can't use railroads in your enemies borders better.

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

[don Don]

Harel said he wants "Near-by tiles effect one another. Mines cause negative impact of near-by farms ( more metal in the land ) but gives a small bonus to near-by mines. Same thing will farms ( if all the near-by area is becoming fertile, that will also effect the specific tile )"

Civ2 already has that, just not for neighboring tiles. Think of this: a tile is 100± miles across—and yet you can't have both mines and irrigation/farms tile improvements at the same time. Stupid!

Harel also said "Instead that the city will be a one-box unit, have city tiles. The tech will decide how many every tile can house…"

Civ2 already has that, too. How? Population isn't linear, it's an arithmetic series. Size 1 city = 10k, size 2 = 30k, … , size n = [Sum of 1 to n]k population. Also consider this: New York City proper has nearly 8 million citizens, and is only 320 square miles. Even the suburban sprawl for 50 mile radius is likely within the one tile of the city proper.

(PS: I'm not picking on you, Harel.)

For some road ideas see <A HREF="http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum28/HTML/000130.html">MOVEMENT, SUPPLY, ETC. (2.0)</A>

[Harel]

Allways ready to defend myself from my picking enemies, don don

If you might have noticed, I suggested that the map will be much bigger, atleast 1000x1000. Then, ofcourse, my ideas are based on that.
In such a scale, every box will be around 20 miles. Heavy industry DOES effect farm lands which are at this distance from a town.
New York city has 8 million people ( 11.5, but never mind ). However, I did say that you have a tile-pop-level. The center of new-york house many sky-scrapers.
The old city of Rome covered huge grounds, with it subarbs it nearly covered the size of the city of new-york. Yet is only housed 1 million people.
Moscow is a huge city, covering enough area even to fill two squares of old civ (!!). Same as Paris. Tokyo and Hiroshima are now bonded, covering a huge metropolitan.

I am not the first to suggest bigger maps and expanding cities. It is only logical. Using the 20 miles box, some cities can even expand to several radi with current housing technology. Not to mention the old cities of lore.

BTW, roads by defintion belong to the terrian improvemnt section. YOU took over something that doesn't belong to you.

[Diodorus Sicilus]

I'm goona keep making this point until I've posted it in every thread, I guess...
Spread of cities, effective improving of tiles, use of resources, is All Tied To Transportation.
Specifically, with early roads/paths, it doesn't matter what kind of irrigation/farms etc you have in the outer tiles of a city radius, none of their products can get to the city! The reason railroads increase Food production in CivII is that railroads allowed a much greater percentage of farm production to get to the cities.
Earlier, river transport was critical to long-distance transportation of food.
Which leads me to say again: city radius should vary with the terrain and transportation available. In the beginning, with only pack animals (oxen, donkeys were domesticated before 4000BC) and dirt paths, the effective city radius is only one tile in all directions UNLESS the city is on a river- then riverboats (2600BC and earlier on the Nile) can extend it a tile or two up and doen the river.
Add improved roads (paved, Roman-style) and the city radius gets out to about what it is in CivII.
Add railroads and the city radius is effectively wherever the railroad connects to. Other threads have posts on Economic Provinces or Regions, and the railroad or river (or an ocean with the ports on it and open-ocean cargo ships like the medieval Cog or Carrack) would be the transportation that ties that together.
Modern Containerized freight, Intercity highways, railroads, allow the "urban sprawl" or effectively multi-tile cities like New York, which effectively includes most of northern New Jersey, western Long Island, and southern Connecticut, or Los Angeles, which effectively spreads from San Diego north to near Santa Barbara. Foreign mega-cities like Paris, Berlin, Mexico City, and Moskva are other examples: modern transportation allows larger city radius and exploitation of resources further away by the city.

[Harel]

Good thinking Diodorus. It's un-doubted that indeed transportion needs to decide the city radi. If, like BR said, borders will be decided by Tech, i think it's possible that the city radius would also be decided by tech.
I think it's even more related with the idea of big maps and big cities.
However, I dont think thats what the idea with railroads in CIV II, cause otherwise roads would have had some food bonus increase, but smaller.
Besides, how can just placing a railroad that sometime didn't even connect to the city increase food automaticly?

Here is my idea. You can put farm at a distance of one box out of the city. The city may expand, but you can only put farmers just one step away.
Placing roads in a box near the city allow you to place farmers all around that box. It's not carrying: putting one other road near the old road won't allow further, deeper expand.
Railroads allow double radius: you can place a railroad, gain the surrounding area and then place ANOTHER railroad by it, giving you further away distance.
Monorails would allow a three time the distance, allowing you a big farming radi.

[don Don]

Harel:
Hmmm, if by "old civ" you mean civ1, those tiles were about 230 x 290 miles based on the map being ice-cap to ice-cap. That's 66k sq mi, maybe bigger than the State of New York! A Civ2 large map is more distorted from 1:1 ratio, but each tile would be about 12.5k sq mi at the equator. No city is even close to that big, not even the metroplexes (some stretch well over 100 miles, but aren't very wide).

"BTW, roads by defintion belong to the terrian improvemnt section. YOU took over something that doesn't belong to you."

No, it's movement! Mine, all mine!

[don Don]

Diodorus Sicilus:
I think we have to move away from the thinking that a "city" in Civ2 et al. is a city, but rather a province with a capital in the middle. The population is for the whole region, and maybe only 25% or less is in the "city." Most states in America are sorta like this, and many smaller countries, too: one big city, nothing else even close in size or economic importance.

Harel:
Shortly after RR became a truly viable economic factor food allocation ceased to be a local matter. Cattle were driven from Texas to Kansas City, and then shipped by RR to Chicago meatpackers, and the meat shipped all over the US. OK, for tomatos it was still local because tomatos don't ship well.

[Theben]

(in old man voice) Me'n don Don were here arguin' 'bout all them civ3-type things long a'fore you whippersnappers came along, before it was even a twinkle in BR's eye. So, young feller, by definition ALL topics are OURS.

[Ecce Homo]

Wow, this topic is booming...

Wheathin wrote:

Each player builds their own railroads, and they would be color-coded to the civ.

This could be made even simpler. Railroads are colour-coded, and the colour changes when an enemy unit enters it - just like the Airbases in Civ 2. (Of course it cannot move for free).

Or, the railroads should be "converted" on the next turn.

Or, they could only be used by the civ that owns the nearest city.

Unconventional units should always be able to use all railroads.

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

[EnochF]

No kidding. I'm going to have to write a summary of 50 posts the day after the topic started! Yeesh.

[Bubba]

Get rid of the nets from CTP they are extremely ugly late in the game.

[EnochF]

Honestly, this is childish. Railroads are ugly, nets are ugly.

Instead of getting rid of them, wouldn't a better solution be simply to make prettier nets and prettier railroads?

[Alexander's Horse]

Re: more restrictions/greater gradation of terrain modification for farming. I think irrigation should be more confined. Only small areas of farmland, on a global basis, are irrigated even today. Irrigation should be strictly linked to rivers (because there is irrigation in some mountanous regions as well). Progression should be "farmland" replace "irrigation", which would be the next step only in hexes with rivers running through. "Farmland" could be further developed to specialise in crops (more food) or pasture (more trade/gold). This could possibly be linked to terrain type (most crops are grown on plains). Irrigated land would combine the best features of crops and pasture (big food plus big bucks and trade). The modern upgrade could "agro-industry", possibly retaining the diversification to crops and pasture but with higher yields for each (little factory silos could be the graphic).

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

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

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

[Eggman]

I would like to stress that all things being equal, less tile improvements are better than more tile improvements. There may be a good reason to make the Civ2 model (or even the CTP model) more complex in this regard in some circumstances *when it adds something to the game* (for example, a mine upgrade and listening posts are fine by me). However, though five different farming improvements may be more realistic, it would drive me batty trying to keep them organized and it adds nothing to the game.

Also, if you have multiple improvements for the same thing (say farming), make them upgrades of each other. In Civ2, first the square had irrigation, then it had farmland. If the square was pillaged, the farmland HAD to be ripped up first. Farmland couldn't exist without irrigation. That is a much better system than having 3 separate improvements, any of which can be on the square in any ole combination. It is much easier to keep track of things using the upgrade method than the separate improvement method.

[wheathin]

How about player-specific railroads? Each player builds their own railroads, and they would be color-coded to the civ. There can only be one player's RR in any square, although occupying an enemy square would not cause the destruction of their RR - you'd have to pillage. Also, building your own RR would automatically destroy the existing RR, maybe with a bonus for your won construction as you use the existing rails and trackbeds.

At the least, it would be like conquering civs that don't have RR tech at all. Now, there just has to be some reason why you can't lay 2000 miles of RR in one turn and blitz an opponent...

wheathin