TERRAIN & TERRAIN IMPROVEMENTS (ver 1.1): Hosted by EnochF

[Maniac]

I suppose I'll have to start a list on my own.
List of Terrain Types:
Grassland
Plains/Savanne/Steppe(is that English?)
Desert
Glaciers(on top of very high mountains)
Arctic
Hills
Mountains
Altiplano(=Plains on big altitude)
Swamp
Tundra

PS: Forests and Jungles are TI's
Perhaps we should make a difference
between Pine Forest and Deciduous Forest.

[David Sheth]

The use of a different railroad gauge from your neighbor in order to prevent that neighbor from using your lines to attack you has some basis in historical fact. Russia and China use different gauges, so people travelling from one country to the other by train have to ride in specially designed cars that can switch wheels at the border. This wheel switching takes a bit of time, and could possibly be approximated by having to wait for a turn or two when encountering an enemy's railroad system before that system can actually be used.

[ember]

Maybe teh most realistic would be to treat all enemy railroad as road (whatever is within their borders is theirs). The locals arn't going to co-operate much, so you can just take advantage of cleared paths, like roads.
It would slow down blitzes alot.
allied rails act like normal.

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"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[Maniac]

ember: If you give RR a 1/5 Movement Bonus instead of an unlimited MB, rail blitzes are impossible. I would give Maglevs an unlimited MB.

My own post about Pine and Dedicious Forest gave me an idea.
Forest wouldn't be a TI as I suggested earlier but again a terrain type.
If you irrigate Pine Forest, you would get Plains.
If you irrigate Dedicious Forest, you would get Grasslands.
This is to simulate the burn off of forest in Europe to get fertile (Grass)lands. However if you would burn off (pine) forests in Siberia, you would get less fertile lands.

[Ecce Homo]

If SMAC features altitude, Civ 3 probably will. But, please make sure it is specified in meters (optionally in the English system), for us non-Americans' sake.

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The best ideas are those that can be improved.
Ecce Homo

[Maniac]

There should be two kinds of pollution.
1) Industrial Pollution : This should be produced by cities, just like in Civ2, SMAC and probably CTP. Pine and Deciduous Forest, Jungles and Swamps in your territory should decrease Ind Pol.
If there are 8 polluted square, it should begin to trigger global warming, increasing the sea level 100m or so.

2) Nuclear Pollution : Nukes and exploding Nuclear Plants should cause this. If there are a certain amount of tiles polluted, there should come a nuclear winter = - 1/2 trade/square for 10 years. Or how about - 50% Food production for 10 years?
I said 'a certain amount of tiles' because I think 8 tiles are too less. Than 2 nukes should already cause nuclear winter. Is that realistic?

[Maniac]

SMAC is in meters. Civ3 will certainly be (if there is 3D).

[Ecce Homo]

M@ni@c's post about clearing forest made me think of that most of Europe, east Asia and eastern USA was covered by dedicious woods before it was cleared for agriculture.

In Civ 1/2, grasslands dominate the map. In Civ 3, they should be more uncommon.

Has anybody handled the issue of resource depletion? As far as I have understood, mineral deposits are never depleted, but become increasingly scarce, until the industry no longer breaks even. How this should be simulated depends on whether Civ 3 should use "shields" or different trading commodities.

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The best ideas are those that can be improved.
Ecce Homo

[Maniac]

Ecce Homo: That is just why I suggested Forests should be TI's, not Terrain Type. That way civs should first have to burn off or harvest forests before they can irrigate the underlying terrain. Perhaps harvesting a forest should give for one turn a 5 mineral bonus to a nearby city.

About deleted resources: because eath's natural resources become exhausted, humans would be forced to get their minerals from Mars.

NEW VICTORY CONDITION : TERRAFORM MARS.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by M@ni@c (edited July 19, 1999).]</font>

[Theben]

Beaten to the punch, but I'll say that any military unit should be able to capture a square of rr. And the quick destruction of rr's in retreat (or for whatever reason) is a good idea. Now if there are small units, from single persons to small groups of individuals (explorers, leaders, spies if still used as units *shudder* but not diplomats) they should be able to ride enemy rails as they could blend into the population easily. However, there should be a small % chance each square they move that they will be caught (by local authorities not on game map).

Maniac,
I consider SMAC-style raised terrain an interesting idea that failed in use. It made it difficult to see where units were, what TI's were on the tile that was tilted away from you on the map. Also it's not very realistic; considering the vast scale we're operating with the tiles should all look "flat" to our view. When tallying the pros & cons, in the end the flat tiles win me over.
Regarding your complaint, I did suggest new tiles: forested mountains & forested hills. They'd have +1 food & +1 production each, and would be found on the windward side of mountain ranges (west slope, like SMAC rainfall). I think your major concern is a lack of different terrain tiles.

[don Don]

I really hate the way Civ/SMAC treats huge hunks of land (~100 mile square tiles) as undifferentiated terrain. I also hate the way you can only have one type of terrain improvement, like as if farms and mines and forests (Civ) or mines and solar collectors and forests (SMAC) can't coexist within a tile!

In reality the populace improves the land they need to use. They break new ground for farms in the midst of forests, hills, swamps, or whatever. They mine wherever they discover minerals worth the digging. It does take government initiative or incentive to prospect and mine away from population centers, and in that case people working there are unlikely to engage in agriculture worth notice on the scale of this game.

I'd want to see something a little more innovative for handling terrain use and improvement. Allow more than one pop unit to use a tile, with some kind of diminishing returns depending on terrain. For hills only one pop unit could farm at the highest productivity, but for a fertile grassland several could. Then Civ3 could actually use a linear population scale for the city size… but maybe I'm asking too much.

[don Don]

Ecce: can you name a resource that has been depleted (excluding and animal species)? The answer is, "No." There are places where individual mines or veins are depleted to the point of zero net economical value, but that point drops with technology. Oil fields that were considered depleted thirty years ago when Paul Erlich et alia started whining about the sky falling are now producing again, despite low crude oil prices.

[CivPerson]

I like the idea of natural disasters. What if, like pollution, you had sqares that where on fire. Have that sqaure usless to a city and inflict damage on any unit that goes on that square. Have a Tech Advance of Figherfighting which would allow a city to build a Firestation to protect that city from that disiaster, like the SDI deffense does with nukes. In the same way create a new military unit, say Flamethrower, to inflict squares with fire, perhaps the same way an engineer builds roads. How about Napalm bombs down the road to create fire in multiple squares? To be realistic about this, the fire should not continue longer than a couple of turns, but afterwards no improvemnts should be left on the square.

[CivPerson]

Allow units to have unlimited movement from the RR only when they leave from a city; otherwise, the RR is treated like a road. This will keep other Civs from having full advantage of your RR. Unless they link up to it with their own RR.

-- I like the idea of colored owned RR. --

[NotLikeTea]

I'm not sure about a "burning" square, but weapons to destroy terrain would be cool. Napalm and various defoliants were important in Vietnam to remove cover, and reduce defensive bonuses.

On another topic, I've been thinking of rivers. What is CivIII divided rivers into minor and major? Minor rivers would combine and form major rivers. Both river types would give a food bonus, and would be allowable sources of irrigation, but only Major rivers would be navagable by sea units and would provide trade bonuses.

Speaking of navigation, the current system of reduced movement costs for rivers is a bit odd. What is a unit moving ONTO a river square gets a movement penalty of maybe 2 movement points, instead of the usual 1 (fording rivers, preparing rafts, etc. Maybe a bigger penalty of major rivers since thet're harder to cross?), but moving along a river from one river square to another would give the traditional movement bonus. Would allow rivers to act both as aids to movement, and as useful barriers for defence.