DESIGN: Terrain Values

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by SMIFFGIG
IMO there should be MUCH more terrain, terrain diversity and unique terrain pieces (like the natural wonders mod only with MUCH improved graphics) also remember the places of interest in Alpha Centuri

Those aren't new terrains, though... just specially impressive versions of terrain... implemented using special "terrain improvements". I don't see any reasons to change that, either... unless there are some specifically general forms of terrain that are obviously missing... which might be just flood plain... and is that modelled ok, already?

We have to work on the map generator with better geology and climatology realism focus, before we decide what, if any terrains are missing.

[The Big Mc]

Originally posted by MrBaggins


unless there are some specifically general forms of terrain that are obviously missing... which might be just flood plain... and is that modelled ok, already?

What about a lot of underwater terrain the way CTP does is makes the sea floor flat and boring :d

[MrBaggins]

True, but whats the value of one deep sea tile vs. another?

We already have the major "different" deep sea features... Trenches, volcanos and rifts are obviously different. Apart from that, every deep tile is similar to another, from a game effect viewpoint.

For shallow water, we also already have appropriate variety.

[The Big Mc]

Is it if I make my sea city on top of a mountain I can build directly into it and use it to cut cost on the city


Also the land and shallow water is good eye candy you don’t really have large tracks of land. Underwater you seam to find a nice spot and park it without really taking into the terrain values because there are no penalties or consciences.

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by The Big Mc
Is it if I make my sea city on top of a mountain I can build directly into it and use it to cut cost on the city


Also the land and shallow water is good eye candy you don’t really have large tracks of land. Underwater you seam to find a nice spot and park it without really taking into the terrain values because there are no penalties or consciences.

Sea Cities haven't been well balanced because they occur at a point in the game that doesn't matter.

We should obviously improve the AI, and resilience of the game challenge... however, we have to decide how sea cities should work...

E.G.

Should sea cities require a volcano (I.E. geothermic generation source)?
Should sea cities be impractical without an abundant food source (E.G. squids or whales good)?
Should deep sea food TI's be rebalanced? (TI's, not the underlying tiles base value are currently the key component to a cities production)

We need specifics of implementation... not "deep sea should be more varied."

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by The Big Mc
What about a lot of underwater terrain the way CTP does is makes the sea floor flat and boring :d

To be fair, the sea floor really is very flat and boring, except for the occasional mid ocean ridge.

[SMIFFGIG]

Should sea cities be impractical without an abundant food source (E.G. squids or whales good)?

Too be honest Giant Squid is the most ridiculous trade good in the game and i would be quite happy to see it cut and replaced by something realistic
especially since it can be harvested in times before christ.

Anyway i think this is getting on to realy changin the dynamics of the game

However i do think the terrain should be greatly varied eventually currently its much too uniform and (boring) and the sea floor should be drastically improved, currently it is also very (unrealistically) bland

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by SMIFFGIG

Too be honest Giant Squid is the most ridiculous trade good in the game and i would be quite happy to see it cut and replaced by something realistic
especially since it can be harvested in times before christ.

Anyway i think this is getting on to realy changin the dynamics of the game

However i do think the terrain should be greatly varied eventually currently its much too uniform and (boring) and the sea floor should be drastically improved, currently it is also very (unrealistically) bland

Again, this is all well and good, but we're not a "Civilization Games General/Future" forum... we're a Source code project group. "We" are the designers... not a bunch of fans giving arbitrary ideas to some other designers to consider.

If you have an actual implementation to consider, I'd love to hear it... otherwise, I don't see the value, unless your point is to remove something specifically unrealistic, without any suggestion of replacement.

E.G. Removing Giant Squid as a Trade Good.

[The Big Mc]

Well MrBaggins you can’t eat Giant Squid it is actually a poison

AS for food you remember ctp in space your city would starve unless you made food tanks so something like that. Well I think a sea city would do with becoming modular i.e. you can’t make a tile imp without it connecting to the city or another tile imp the terrain then obstructs you from achieving this so planting your city in a underwater mountain range is not a good idea.

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by The Big Mc
Well MrBaggins you can’t eat Giant Squid it is actually a poison

AS for food you remember ctp in space your city would starve unless you made food tanks so something like that. Well I think a sea city would do with becoming modular i.e. you can’t make a tile imp without it connecting to the city or another tile imp the terrain then obstructs you from achieving this so planting your city in a underwater mountain range is not a good idea.

Thats an interesting point about the giant squid... but I think we need to find a replacement good, for some variety of deep sea resources... Maybe swordfish, tuna shoal or something?

Space cities worked that way for a reason. It stands to reason that space tiles have zero food, because they are the definition of dead terrain... no food in the vacuum of space. There are zero restrictions on construction.

If you had a rift preventing construction, I think that'd be a problem. They already restrict undersea tunnels, and I think thats enough, frankly. With a trench (I.E. very very deep) terrain type, I think that should perhaps prevent underwater TI (or city) construction, due to the extreme depth involved.

[tyrantpimp]

Its my understanding that most of the mineral wealth on the planet is under the sea so it should be easy to compensate or add to trade goods if you look at it like that. Of course modern man is unable to tap most of it but then again the future is yet written.

One ti i would like to see is mine fields and unsersea mines that would be most excellent. Of course it wouldnt be cool unless the AI could use it effectively. But if it did that would be sweeet.

[The Big Mc]

I tried to do that in slic ones I got the tile imp from ctp some where.

[Maquiladora]

Okay well i did some tests yesterday with some of the changes Mr Baggins suggested. The test was build 10 cities as quick as possible, but not using rushbuying or farmers, because it can throw things off.

Default values for grass and plains. In Const.txt i changed UNIT_WORKDAY to 0.005 it was 0.015. 5% is still alot later in the game but just low enough to encourage lowering the workday slider for a lower wages slider instead. Still needs testing though, along with changes to happiness.

The table shows how many turns it took to build 10 cities on each terrain with different settler costs each time.

Grassland Time	Settler Cost	Plains Time

113 Turns	740		84 Turns
85 Turns	600		74 Turns
63 Turns	400		55 Turns

Obviously the grassland cities finished the test with bigger cities and obviously the plains cities still had some time to grow and had more production.

I was worried about changing settler costs too much, afterall the costs werent put that high for no reason. I guess it was probably to help prevent rapid early expansion strategy.

In the default game thats the strategy anyway, all it does is slow it down and as the table shows, higher settler cost increases the gap in good and bad production land.

edit: Another rather big change i made was to give city square 30 Production, instead of default 15.

[MrBaggins]

Exactly what I thought would happen... and it proves part of the supposition.

The other part, which we can't model, til I (or someone else) codes it , is increased initial growth cost for settlers (I.E. 2 city sizes for a settler,) and food upkeep costs.

These should push the equation over, even further, to making grassland (and food in general) more beneficial for city growth, than production.

I'd say that squeezing the relative importance of the city square and surrounding tiles (considering that we'll be dealing with mixed terrain, most of the time) plus changes to the cost of settlers to 600-500 ish... are maybe the beggining of a sweet spot...

[Tamerlin]

As far as I am concerned, the earlier part of the game is often the most interesting one, if you slow it down (higher Settler costs...) I fear it could become rather boring (as in Civ3).

I don't understand why these values should be hardcoded as it seems that they can be changed through SLIC. Whatever the case, I hope these new terrain and unit values will not be incorporated into the original game patch or that if they are they will be optional.