{The List} Terrain and terrain improvements

[La Diva]

Originally posted by Tall_Walt
You start with 10,000 tiles; 6000 are land. ... conquer half, 3000 tiles. ... If you have to watch the little workers, that's 100,000 to 200,000 pictures of the little pests. almost 28 hours of watching workers . . . .work.

Purely for the sake of argument, many of those conquered tiles will already be improved to some extent by the time they're added to your empire.

Now the real reason for this post: Tall_Walt, you have stated the case for workerless play more compellingly than any other contributor. For me, it raises a lot of questions, like how my civ will grow as large in 5% of the time. But when a single turn in the 18th century can take a full 10 minutes to play, I can understand the savings factor. As long as I can teach AI to improve tiles the way I would, then I'll throw my vote to your side. Finishing a full game in an hour would be awesome.

I agree with whomever said it first: "... if Civ4 doesn't sell to the masses, it dies."

- Viva Civilization!!!

[Kuciwalker]

Tall_Walt, stop it. Don't make 6 or 7 consecutive posts, make one big post.

[Tall_Walt]

Kuciwalker, sorry: I'll reform.

La Diva, ship traffic was very important on the Nile (sail up, drift down), Mississippi barge traffic is still a major shipping avenue, and over 500 miles of canals are maintained in the US, adding to the thousands of miles of very wide rivers. Thousands of miles of canals have been abandoned, just in the US. Being from the US you're probably familiar with the way railroads revolutionized transportation in the late 19th century. Navigation canals revolutionized transportation before railroads were possible, at various levels of technology back to ancient Egypt connecting the Nile to the Red Sea. An article on them is at:
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761555006/Canal_(waterway).html

Also, I was unclear in saying only amphibious units should be able to cross wide rivers. I didn't mean units with landing craft, I means units that could reasonably swim across. So chariots or knights wouldn't be able to cross a larger river, but light infantry or cavalry units could. The heavier units would have to go around, or be transported across in ships. I only suggest this for ship-navigable rivers.

On terrain improvements, while you're right that some conquered territory will subtract from the workload, the AI isn't shy about destroying improvements, adding to the workload. If have the original version of Civ3, try reinstalling it without patches and you'll see why this is such a hot button for me. I doubt we'll see a Civ4 game in an hour, but it really needs to be a lot faster. Since Civ can be replayed over and over, a too long game is a negative, not value as it would be for an RPG or first person shooter.

[Max Sinister]

Originally posted by Tall_Walt
However, here's a way to keep it and make it meaningful. Pollution is dangerous: check out to origin of the word smog. I feel if it exists it should be an amorphous cloud that drifts eastward (the generally prevailing wind direction). Indeed, it turns out a lot of Los Angeles' pollution comes in off the ocean from China! This could be a complicating diplomatic factor, reducing the attitude of downwind countries.

1. Smog: Smoke as thick as fog.
2. "A lot" of LA's pollution from China? It's true that you can find traces of pollution even in the glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica today, it's also true that f.e. half of the air pollution in Germany comes from abroad (but OTOH they also "export" parts of _their_ pollution), and it's true that there aren't many anti-pollution laws in the PR of China, but "a lot" of LA's pollution, several thousand miles away? That's too unbelievable.

[Max Sinister]

Originally posted by Tall_Walt
However, an important point that Civ4 should fix is that less than 20% of coastline is suitable for amphib landing. Only helicopters can land over any coastline.

No problem. Since a tile is 100x100 miles, its coastline will be 100 miles long or longer, too - I bet you could find a place for a beachhead on any 100 miles part of coastline.

[La Diva]

Originally posted by Tall_Walt
So chariots or knights wouldn't be able to cross a larger river, but light infantry or cavalry units could. The heavier units would have to go around, or be transported across in ships. I only suggest this for ship-navigable rivers.

The idea still makes me nervous, depending on how many ship-nav'able rivers would be added. Just let workers (if F'axis keeps them), settlers and their defending units cross. Knights come along well after Construction (and Bridges), so the limitations would be far fewer than I thought you meant. The only truly amphibious unit I know is the Marine.

Ferries should be buildable before other watercraft techs since they don't venture out to sea. But they need to be buildable on-site rather than in a city which may or may not be on that river. Add Build Ferry to the Unit Orders whenever any unit is in a tile next to an otherwise uncrossable river. Take one turn to build, one turn to cross. A ferry icon would remain at that location for 20 turns after the last time it was used. That means as long as you keep using it, it stays in good repair. But if abandoned, it will deteriorate and "wash away" with time.

I think ultra-wide rivers should be fairly rare, 1 or 2 per continent max. Some smaller rivers should have ship nav for 2 or 3 tiles from their mouths, providing they empty into large lakes (4 tiles or more) or an ocean.

AI isn't shy about destroying improvements, adding to the workload.

- ravages of war, I suppose. If any improvements remain, assuming you like the fact they've irrigated everything possible, you're still ahead rather than "adding to the workload" you originally calculated.

If have the original version of Civ3, try reinstalling it without patches and you'll see why this is such a hot button for me.

My version is 1.07f, and I don't remember installing any patches. Maybe I'm still playing in the Dark Ages about this issue. - If you haven't seen a "better way," it can be hard to imagine it.

a too long game is a negative

Agreed. I go through phases of playing, then set it aside for many months before I'm willing to invest that much time again. But the game is rather addictive, so I always come back.

[Tall_Walt]

Originally posted by Max Sinister
1. Smog: Smoke as thick as fog.
2. "A lot" of LA's pollution from China? It's true that you can find traces of pollution even in the glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica today, it's also true that f.e. half of the air pollution in Germany comes from abroad (but OTOH they also "export" parts of _their_ pollution), and it's true that there aren't many anti-pollution laws in the PR of China, but "a lot" of LA's pollution, several thousand miles away? That's too unbelievable.

1. Not the definition, but I should have said the popularization of the word. An extreme smog in 1952 killed 4000 in London:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_1952
I usually wouldn't reference Wiki, but I have it in a paper reference book in my library. Googling could probably provide more references, as for the following.

2. I don't know the exact proportion, but central LA is only 10 miles from the Pacific and the prevailing winds are off the ocean the vast majority of the time. LA had quite clean air from the time pollution controls were added in the '70s until recently, when things got unaccountably worse. It's pretty amazing, but pollution lofts over the Pacific.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/08/01...pollution.enn/

Anyway, if Firaxis thinks pollution should be in the game, perhaps having it drift to neighbors would be a less obnoxious way (in terms of game play) for it to have an effect. I'd be just as happy if it went away, myself.

[Tall_Walt]

La Diva,
I understand CtP has a non-worker improvement model. I haven't played it, but I've heard mixed reviews about it. It might be the closest thing to Civ to see how you like a different approach, though from the comments I've heard, you many find other things to dislike about it.

PS: If you're talking vanilla Civ3--no add ons--I believe the current version is 1.29f, and it's a big improvement, IMO.

[La Diva]

Originally posted by Tall_Walt
... perhaps having [pollution] drift to neighbors would be a less obnoxious way for it to have an effect.

Not cool, IMO. AI civs don't deal with pollution as quickly as I do, so I'd be cleaning up my neighbors' garbage. Booooooo!

[Max Sinister]

Invade 'em ;-) Hey, maybe they could introduce things like the "ecology pact" and the ecologic government (forgot its name) from CtP!
And I still don't believe LA's smog problem is mainly caused by China. I'd rather guess that the 8 million Angelinos every second of whom owns a car house-made that problem, sorry.

[Tall_Walt]

I never said "mainly". Please do not put words in my mouth.

I am perfectly capable of screwing up all by myself. I don't need help.

[Nikolai]

Originally posted by DarkCloud
Well, thank you Nikolai, this work is more than sufficient to do the update- anything else can wait until December.

You have honestly been one of the most diligent list administrators and have taken on many difficult tasks.

Thank you so very much!

Thank you!

[Trifna]

Sorry to add you some more stuff Nikolai, but this is some stuff I got in my thread that had to do with terrain:


I had a thought about a way to make scout/explorer units more useful and desirable in the early game. Have a movement penelty for moving into unexplored squares for regular units.

So a civ would have the following mapsquare statuses.

Unknown: Completely black. Here be dragons. No clue at all.

Unexplored: Squares that have come into the LOS of a unit, but your people have never travelled into the square. You can see something of what's there, but it's not mapped and the first unit to move through there is gonna go slow cause they don't know the best routes, watering holes, etc.

Explored: Been there, done that, got the tshirt and the stupid bumper sticker.

Of course, Fog of War would also be overlayed on this too. And any territory inside a civ's cultural borders would be automatically explored.

So in exploring with a regular unit, movement into an unexplored square would have an extra movement cost. But a scout/explorer unit would be exempt from the penelty. An early horseman with 2 movement might only be able to move at a rate of 1 through unexplored territory. A scout would be able to move at full speed everywhere.

In the early game scouts would be more useful. This could even be extended to the seas. If variable movement rates for water were implemented a form of this could be applied to water. Perhaps a transport with a scout onboard would gain the movement benifits of the scout.

Another potential aspect of this is in map trading. It could become a lot more useful with the increased informational benifits.

I was also thinking that perhaps map resources would only be revealed in explored spaces. Ie. if nobody's ever been there, no one will know that there's gold there, or oil or saltpeter.

I'm sure there's a lot more that could be done with the idea than I've outlined here.
Bleyn


Also, the more I think of it, the more I like the idea of a "shoals" type water tile that makes it so you can't land there. That would allow the defender to concentrate its forces on the "likely" landing spots.
wrylachlan


terrain becomes important (if your Logistics unit is on a mountain on the plains, it doesn't have to worry as much because it can see any enemy approach - if you know the enemy has nothing but wheeled units, your Logistics unit knows it won't get attacked from the mountains - etc. etc.). Ditto for flanking. Ditto for bombardment across a river.
wrylachlan

[Nikolai]

Thanks. I think I'll wait to inclued it until next update, was it december DC said?

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hey Trifna, that idea is remarkably like one in the CFC forum that I am subscribed to. In it, not ONLY do you get a movement penalty in an unexplored area, but the units operational range (the range a unit can go BEFORE it begins to suffer degraded permormance and/or hp loss) is lowered too! More to the point, said areas are not TRULY explored until the exploration unit has returned to home camp-be it a fortress, outpost or city. Another idea I had, though I'm not sure of its workability, is to have these 'unexplored' areas revert to darkness after the exploration unit has passed through it, but have all such explored regions become clear once the explorer returns. If it could be done effectively, then this could make the game much more interesting, as I could see an explorer coming across some vicious minor nation, deep in an unexplored jungle, who kills the explorer outright. Suddenly where he was standing reverts to darkness, leaving the player with a brief and tantalising glimpse of a dangerous new world, but with no concrete information about it-thus forcing him to send out more expeditions!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Straybow]

It seems like many of these suggestions are forgetting that tiles are huge. It isn't a city with suburbs, one tile can fit city, suburbs, and surrounding countryside. One 100-mile tile of US midwestern "corn belt" would feed a whole country (at nearly 4000 people/mi²). Tiles within the city radius already are villages, towns, and minor cities.

We have one tile improvement that directly effects trade, and some people want to get rid of it? We have one tile improvement that inadequately represents the tremendous increase in resource development in the modern era, and some want to get rid of it? So why bother having any tile improvements at all? They could just make Civ4 a game that plays itself, like MoO3.


Other people want to get rid of the tangible benefits of road and rail, and then introduce new trade and resource tile improvements. That means you'd still be building roads and rail, plus the new things, with double the unit management that posters here whine about, and get nothing more for the effort. What's the point?


/me thinks of calming images (mostly teddy bears)

And to the whiners who think roads and railroads everywhere are ugly: get over it. And play Civ2, for which you can make your own graphics with a simple gif editor.

[frekk]

It's just building the rails everywhere that is a pain in the butt. And yes, they are ugly. I know it is more realistic to have them everywhere, but lets face it, I've got better things to do. Easier to just say something like, ok, connect your city to a rail network (like a trade network) and build yourself a Rail Depot in the city, and get the tile bonus in all the squares. That way you don't actually have to go around building rail in all the squares. Just assume that building the Rail Depot also includes building little branch lines out to the farms and mines. The rails that you connect your cities with are the main trunk lines. Is that really such a massive change? You still get your tile bonuses. You still get your rails. In fact you get them in nice pretty lines. Whats lost, except the big ugly looking black spaghetti all over my beautiful farmland, and all that tediousness with the workers?

I've got no problem with roads or irrigation or mines the way they are.

[Straybow]

And play Civ2, for which you can make your own graphics with a simple gif editor.

[frekk]

How is a graphics editor going to do anything? The only way you can make the rails less ugly is to make them invisible, and then you can't see them. Anyway, the ugliness is the least of the problems:

- current system is too much micromanagement. Graphics editing can't fix that.

- current system makes no differentiation between branch lines, extremely limited for rapid movement of large amounts of material, and trunk lines. Again, graphics editing is no help.

I say the branch lines should be modelled by a city improvement; build a rail depot and branch lines are assumed in all the tiles around the city (tile bonuses apply). The only rails you need to build then are trunk lines - LINES, not spaghetti - connecting your cities. Way less micromanagement, prettier, and far more realistic. Compared to some system like this, there is NO good argument for keeping the current system which is outdated and too much work, other than sentimental attachment to hitting "R" a billion times. Let's face it: building rail in every tile is an essentially brainless activity, you're going to do it anyway, so why not make it easier. There's no strategy to it. "Build rail in every tile," Wow, what a genius plan.

Also, you can already edit the graphics in civ3. It doesn't help. Its not the graphics that are the problem.

[Straybow]

If "ugly" is the issue, the graphics are indeed the problem. If "mindless" is the issue, don't play any games as they all have mindless yet necessary actions. Occam's razor.

"Branch" and "trunk" lines are below the hundred-mile scale of Civ tiles. This is a large scale strategic map, not a tactical map.

There is strategy to building rail. If you don't rail every tile (and I generally don't) you have to choose tiles. Tiles that gain production might or might not be railed if you are trying to limit pollution. Strategic issues (where might I need troops in a hurry?) determine rail building in other tiles.

[frekk]

Scale is irrelevant in civ. If it isn't then the official scale of a tile is TEN miles to a side, 100 SQUARE miles. Not 100 miles to a side. You can say that on a map of size X representing area Y that it is whatever scale you like, and not everyone plays an Earth map. Some play a map of an area like Greece or perhaps the meditteranean. You can easily verify the 10 mile 'official' figure on the 'land mass' figure given on F11, though. I reject the notion of scale as an argument. Scale in civ is too variable to balance an argument on it.

What you're talking about is a level of micromanagement not suitable for a game with mass appeal, and thus the majority of ppl playing the game end up putting rail in every tile. I suspect very few people play the way you do. What I'm saying is that micromanagement can be reduced without sacrificing any realism. The strategy becomes one of connecting cities and building rail for strategic purposes; not "reducing pollution" which is a really unrealistic way to look at rail. If anything, rail decreases pollution where it is built as transportation of resources by road burns more fuel. It's counter-intuitive and micromanagement heavy to look at rail like that.

[wrylachlan]

The whole size of tiles think is bogus. How far can an early catapult throw? 200 yards? ABC - put catapults in tiles A & C and have both of them attack tile B. That would seem to indicate that tile B is less that 400 yards on a side. But wait, Canons can fire much farther, and you can do the same thing with them, so that means tiles are bigger. And 1 tile fits a city the size of Mexico city which is much larger than 10 miles on a side. So how big is a tile.

Bottom line, it is as big or as small as makes the game work. Civ is a boardgame! A really advanced boardgame with an AI, but a boardgame still. And nobody asks how big a tile is in chess - for the same reason: it doesn't matter.

And as for rails being ugly. They are. But if that were the only reason to hate them, I'd live with it. The problem is that when you create an incentive to place rr on every tile, people will do that. And that is very bad for strategic combat. Bombing RR is never a big consideration since there is just too much of it to make a strategic difference. Every now and again I'll bomb out a strategic resource, but if you found a way to incentivize it such that there was just a single line between cities, you'd have much richer tactical combat.

[frekk]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
The whole size of tiles think is bogus. How far can an early catapult throw? 200 yards? ABC - put catapults in tiles A & C and have both of them attack tile B. That would seem to indicate that tile B is less that 400 yards on a side. But wait, Canons can fire much farther, and you can do the same thing with them, so that means tiles are bigger. And 1 tile fits a city the size of Mexico city which is much larger than 10 miles on a side. So how big is a tile.

Bottom line, it is as big or as small as makes the game work. Civ is a boardgame! A really advanced boardgame with an AI, but a boardgame still. And nobody asks how big a tile is in chess - for the same reason: it doesn't matter.

Well put.

The problem is that when you create an incentive to place rr on every tile, people will do that.

What do you think of the depot idea I outlined above? That way you still get the effects of the tile bonus, you just don't have to put rail in every square to get it.

[Trifna]

There isn't a point to have railroads all over the place in the real world. What we call "railroad" in civ is in fact advanced movement infrastructure in the real world. THIS is something we put all over the country. Puting railroads everywhere costs more, while in ORDINARY situations, only those between two cities are used. More is just a waste of money.

To have this, one would need to get "railroad" separated from "advanced roads/highways". With a cost to infrastructure and economic advantages (trade...) to get cities connected, everything seems globally solved. As simple as Firaxis' Civ... perhaps.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by frekk
What do you think of the depot idea I outlined above? That way you still get the effects of the tile bonus, you just don't have to put rail in every square to get it.

I think the depots are unnecessary. Its much simpler to tie the bonus to completing the connection between cities. i.e. when you finish connecting city A to City B, both cities see a commerce bonus.

[wrylachlan]

I think its useful to really frame what a change to RR is trying to accomplish. For me its a few things:
1)Get rid of the ugly mess
2)Make RR more tactical in terms of a useful target for bombing/artillary.
3)Get rid of the cheesiness of being able to pull troops from all across your empire for a lightning raid. And vice versa being able to pull troops from all over your empire to defend against an attack.

I think that removing the tile bonus and transfering it to a percentage bonus for linkage does an effective job of taking care of 1 and 2.

3, hoever is a different sort of problem. As long as rails provide inifinite movement, there is no particularly strong incentive to place troops strategically along your borders in a balanced way - you can always get them where they need to be. In fact, its often a good idea to keep all attackers well back from the front lines, in case there is an attack, then they can be used for counterattack.

How do we make it so that you can't just move all of your troops from one front to another on a single turn, but still allow timely reinforcement, etc.

My Suggestion of the easiest way to do this is a 1 turn embarking/disembarking penalty.

[frekk]

It's an idea. But how does it work in the game?

There are problems with each of the ways it could work.

The big problem is entraining and detraining. How is the computer to distinguish between a unit moving by rail, and one that for instance merely wishes to cross a track? Either you have to load and unload all the units manually, or a Modern Armour trying to cross a 2-tile-wide space of track has to stop when normally it could move 9 tiles if there are roads. Manual loading and unloading has a high MM overhead, not to mention ppl would start to simply "float" a huge force on the rail by loading it up (and not unloading it).

I agree that the depot idea is probably unnecessary.

It's probably easier just to say: a city connected by track to any other city or cities, gets the tile bonus in all of its squares in the radius, as if it had rail in all the tiles.

[patcon]

I confess. I am a "rail every tile" addict. And not just tiles within a city radius. I mean every tile in my territory, as soon as possible.

First I build roads everywhere. Why? So that when a new resource becomes discoverable, it is automatically available. I don't have to scour the map to find where aluminum has appeared and then build a road to that tile.

Then I build railroads everywhere (except for volcanos, of course). Why? So that when pollution pops up I can move my workers immediately to that tile and clean it up in one turn. I hate pollution. Those ugly orange tiles make me nuts. I guess if pollution is removed from the game I could probably break the RR addiction, but I still will put roads everywhere for the resources.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Tell me though, Patcon, if roads and rail cost you-for example-1 gpt per 4 tiles (on a standard map), would you still build them on EVERY TILE?? Also, if they move away from a mobile worker unit towards more of 'national labour force' approach, would you still feel it neccessary to build RR's on all tiles? I am VERY interested in knowing how both you and others would change their game tactics given the above putative changes!

Yours.
Aussie_Lurker.

[patcon]

if roads and rail cost you-for example-1 gpt per 4 tiles (on a standard map)

Cost means nothing to me. I usually play monarch/regent and switch to democracy asap, so I am usually swimming in gold by the middle game. By nature I am a peaceful builder and only fight when provoked (or if I want a resource that's in your territory) and I'm not happy unless my cities have every available improvement.

The real issues are resource availability, pollution clean-up, and unit mobility.

As long as I need a road to a resource tile to be able to use that resource, I will build roads in all likely tiles asap. I may be peaceful, but I am impatient. If I discover the tech which reveals aluminum, I want that aluminum NOW. I refuse to wait several turns for my worker drones to build a road to that tile so I can build better units. I may be peaceful, but my motto is "Peace - through being able to kick the crap out of anyone who pisses me off." I get SOOOO annoyed when I'm the Celts, discover iron working and find that iron is within my reach but will take 20 turns before I can get the road built that will let me build my Gallic Swordsmen.

As long as I need to send swarms of workers to clean up pollution, I will build RRs asap. I hate that ugly orange crap.

As long as the AI insists on stopping on my roads and railroads - cutting my supply lines for resources and forcing my peacefully-moving forces to waste turns getting off the road and then back on again,I will build roads and railroads everywhere asap. I find it bad enough when they camp out on roads I've built through unclaimed land, but when they block roads when trespassing in my territory and refuse to get out of the way, my dark side overpowers my peaceful nature.

Also, "idle hands are the devil's workshop" and I can't stand the thought of my workers sitting around doing nothing, so if I've got nothing better for them to do - "let 'em build roads". I know I could build forts, but ...

if they move away from a mobile worker unit towards more of 'national labour force' approach

I hope they don't. I hate the 'NLF' idea - CIV is a unit-based game. But even if they go that way, I'd still want to have roads everywhere for the reasons outlined above.