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

[CivPerson]

In a regular game (w/earth) have an option of a large map (say: 100X100) so that the terrain can have more detail. Of course it would lead to a longer game, and that is why I would like to see it as an option.

I like the CIV games because of the learning value comes with it, like history. How about expanding the learning area by associating land squares with actual city names. This would help people become more aware of geography. Since a square can cover several real cities, have mutiple names for that square.

[Flavor Dave]

dondon--I don't see your complaint about undifferentiated terrain. That just seems a natural result of the kind of game civ is. You can always play on maps and *pretend* that you're not playing on the whole earth, but just a portion of it (flat world option.) I mean, maybe this isn't the whole world, but just 1/10 of it, right? Then the undifferentiated terrain makes sense.

"ember: If you give RR a 1/5 Movement Bonus instead of an unlimited MB"

Here's my suggestion--unlimited RR movement WITHIN your borders (we're gonna get borders, right?). And then 1/6 (twice as good as roads, so this makes more sense to me) outside your borders. This will go a long way to solving the strategy funnel problem of the howie blitz. Combined with some changes to how bombers work, you could really get to use the whole military.

[mindlace]

EnochF: cloneodo's Engineer suggestion (7/17) was incredibly cool. It would take a lot of the micromanagement out of terraforming. I'd do the checkbox by terrain type, though- after you've selected the terraforming area the pop-up box looks like this:
_______Farm__'solar'__Mine__Road
Plains__[X]____[X]____[ ]___[ ]
Rocky___[X]____[ ]____[X]___[ ]

etcetera...

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Fortification should be something like outposts in MOOII: If you build a fortification and then settle inside it you should have a city wall.
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I vote for 3d terrain, but i think it should be finer-grained than the squares so that you don't get the 'softly rolling hills' look like SMAC- each game square is devided into, say, a 3x3 grid, and this is deformed by the 3d engine. The 3d engine would represent altitude and moisture ala SMAC.
Since it's not a barren world, have sprites for the flora- trees, grassland, jungle. It'd be cool if the jungle could stick up more than a forest- I know it wouldn't be 'realistic' but I'd love to see a prominent Amazon...

[mindlace]

tecnophile's road imprivements are awesome. Vaccuum Tunnel should be more expensive with each square of added length, and not allow cross-connections.

[ember]

Flavor dave, That is basically what I wanted to say, but forgot to profread it. It makes sense to me that you don't get unlimited mp on their RR.

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

[Maniac]

Is that RR discussion finally over???? Good idea about Railroads Ecce Homo or whoever suggested it. Then I can rebegin to post my ideas. Let's come back on terrain types. I took a look on the CTP site.
Two new Terrain types : Polar Hill (on Antarctica there are also minerals) and Desert Hill (same reason as Antarctica)

[Maniac]

Oh, it was Flavor Dave. Sorry

[loinburger]

I haven't dealt with graphics programming at all, particularly 3D graphics. How difficult would it be to program in a rotateable view in the game? This would allow mountains and valleys to be more promiment, as units otherwise concealed by these terrain features would become visible by rotating your viewpoint. This would allow for 3D terrain that didn't interfere with gameplay but still provided for some nice eye candy.

And by the way, I concede the point on railroads and now feel that they should be "owned", but agree with Ember's suggestion that RR's provide a road (or Path) bonus for an attacking army if not yet taken over by that army. This would stop a defender from erecting a wall of railroads to slow down his opponent, which was my primary concern from the start. There, nuff said, I won't touch on railroads again (unless someone brings it up...)
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by technophile (edited July 21, 1999).]</font>

[Maniac]

I don't know where you guys got that idea, but I never pushed the wrong direction because I didn't see the unit well.
Is it so hard to push on "T" = Terrain survey.
Then you can see the place where the unit stood without city, unit or whatelse icons before it.

Another note about 3D terrain. If 3D is included in Civ3, terrain must certainly be able to rise more than 1000 meters per square. Due to that rule, it is impossible to make an earth map with SMAC (Andes, Himalaya = impossible).
If Firaxis can't do that, I don't want 3D in Civ3!

[Jon Miller]

I like 3d but I have a big problem with smac style terrain

that is, that it looks incredibally big for a civ square a smac volcano was bigger than france and even nurmal mountains would rais straight for two squares without going down

really they are few mountain ranges that wide and mountain rainges go up and down

I thing something like smacs terrain would work (more flatter looking) as the base of the land but not the mountains and hills themselves

by base I am meaning that they would be able to show a difference between lowlands and high lands

then maybe they could use squares for the mountains and hills themselves so that the himalyas don't look like one mountain

the square terrain can be 3d too

Jon Miller

[Lohrax]

I like the idea of major/minor rivers. The delineation between them could be a cataract (which would provide a production bonus). Below the cataract=trade bonus, deep-draft navigability.

Assigning a movement penalty to moving onto a river tile and then handing out subsequent bonuses is a good idea, but I think units should suffer a significant defensive penalty for being on a river. Having a river at your back tends to wreak havoc with tactical maneouverability, and sitting on boats chugging away in the water simply presents the enemy with nice slow-moving targets. To take it a little further, units on a road/railroad on a river tile should be ridiculously defenseless - there's not much a tank can do when it's chained to a flatbed in a switching yard waiting its turn to go over the bridge, chained to a flatbed crossing the bridge, or chained to a flatbed on the other side of the bridge waiting to be unloaded and assembled. Moving armies across rivers has always been a logistical nightmare and it always will be.

I think bridging needs to be given some more thought. While they provide additional transportation capabilities, bridges are chokepoints. Anybody who has lived in the SF Bay Area can attest to that - UUGGHHH! I would say that any transportation TI that crosses a river has its effectiveness reduced from normal. If RR is 1/5, then perhaps it changes to 1/4 to cross a river.

[dinoman2]

I like the idea of bridges being able to connect land squares across water as well. At first, you could only build bridges across 1 square of water, and as technology improved, the number of squares would improve. But it shouldn't be more than about 3 squares max.

Also, I like ctp's public works, but it is frustrating that you can't build anything outside of your base radius. So, I think you should have the public works, but then you could also have engineers and settlers, so you could build roads outside of bases, or prepare an area for a base.

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"Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will"
-Mikhail Bakunin

[Maniac]

Instead of bridges I would like underwater tunnels, so sea bases can also have a good transport net. In SMAC that was impossible.

[Theben]

I always assumed the rivers on the map were the major rivers, and that they should be navigable by older sea units. Minor rivers are so numerous that they'd be in almost every square, and thus aren't needed. All grassland tiles should be assumed to have minor rivers. This is one reason I say that grassland tiles should always be able to be irigated.

[Theben]

mindlace: Check out my 7/7 post for auto-engineers, which is similar to what cloneodo's idea is (I think). To spell it out, in a PREFERENCE screen, similar to SMAC, you'd assign an order of priority to your engineers based on 1) terrain tile and 2) what to do to the tile & in what order. 1st the AI (your engineer) would check to see what tiles are in the area it is meant to modify. If grassland is #1 on your list to modify, it would scan for grassland, then move to the closest grassland if there's one present. If not, it'd move down the list until there was no tiles left to modify (at which point it would un-auto itself). Once there, it would check to see what you want done to the tile, and in what order. You clicked roads as #1 priority in the preference screen, so it builds a road. Then irrigation as #2. Nothing else is chosen (or available due to lack of tech), so it goes back to step #1, searching for more grassland. This setting could be changed during the game, and would stay from one game to the next until changed (or reset to default). You should also be able to change the AI's preferences in a .txt file, for scenarios and modpacks.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Theben (edited July 23, 1999).]</font>