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

[EnochF]

This took me almost two hours to compile. You guys don't know how good you have it. Anyway, here's the moderately organized summary of the last week and a half of terrain discussion. Enjoy!

THE SYSTEM
Wheathin: Public works system is less hassle than engineers. But “terraforming” is an anachronism in the present. Glaciers-to-grassland should require heavy future tech, maybe weather control. Terraforming must be appropriately scaled. Forest-to-plains and forest-to-grassland should come early, but swamp-to-mountain should come much later.
For TI’s, having an older TI in a square should reduce the cost/build time of upgrade, but should not be a prerequisite. I.e., building a railroad from scratch would take longer and cost more, but would not require a road in the square.
Kris Huysmans: Public works isn’t as fun as using engineers.
Wheathin: At the beginning of the game, yes. But with 30 engineers, the fun is gone.
Theben: All construction costs should vary by government type. Transform terrain should bring up a menu listing possible terrains and transform times/costs.

THE MAP
Kris Huysmans: No 3-D terrain; without 3-D units it’s useless, and 3-D units rule out customization.
Climate modeling issues: more attention to water modeling, climate changes over time, long-term effects of irrigation, effects of deforestation in late game
NotLikeTea: Would like to see gradual climactic change, deserts expanding/receding, swamps forming/drying up.
JT: Altitude should be an aspect of terrain, as in SMAC.
Rathenn: Better resource seed, something more random than Civ II without regular patterns.
EnochF: There’s potential for continental plates, but it would be hell to program.
NotLikeTea: But some geological realism would be nice. Volcanos and faults could be logically placed, and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge might make a nice geographical landmark.
DickK: Dynamic maps, global climactic change, rivers changing course, new resources uncovered, old resources peter out, areas get wetter or dryer, and all this reacts to the human interaction with the environment. Or the whole climate of the planet may change, temperatures rise or fall, humidity increase or decrease. All over the course of the game and very, very slow.
DickK: Also, random maps seem too random. Deserts don’t occur in 1-2 square patches. Mountains should divide forests from plains. Terrain should be 3-D in the SMAC sense.
Theben: I want a round planet. Keep the square/diamond tiles. Less importantly, the computer could generate a tectonic plate map, with volcanic activity, etc. The player won’t see the tectonic map until the proper tech is developed. Windward mountain or hill slopes are forested and receive +1 food and +1 shield.
Harel: Bigger maps, 1000 x 1000.

THE GRAPHICS
Eggman: Avoid terrain types that look alike. Make sure jungles don’t look like forests. In SMAC, “rolling,” “rocky” and “rainy” all tended to blend together.

NEW IMPROVEMENTS
Theben: Important: Build Canals. Upgrade Fortress (from Fort to Keep to Fortress to Castle/Base). Aqueduct as tile improvement: mountains with aqueducts generate +1 food. Naval Base, extends range of ships. Mountain Pass lowers movement cost, allows mounted units to cross a range.
Kris Huysmans: Animal Farm, +1 food, +1 trade when you have discovered… sigh… Fast Food and have a Free Market (as in SMAC social engineering).
Harel: Agriculture improvements. Irrigation (+1 food, +2 for deserts), Fields (+1 food, +2 for plains), Farms (+1 food), Fertilized Crops (+1 food), Industrial Farm (+1 food). Transport improvements: Path (1/2 movement), Road (1/3 movement), Railroad (1/4 movement), Monorail (1/5 movement), no unlimited movement. Add deep-core mines to upgrade mines. Wall TI’s, which can surround a city or a civilization.
Mzilikazi: National parks. Any tiles within your borders can be designated a national park (with an advance, say, Conservation). No roads may be built there or other improvements. There are benefits to the nearest city in gold and happiness. Moving units through national parks would cause unhappiness.
Theben: Those national park rules seem harsh (and unrealistic). Plus, you’d have to have roads there anyway.

NEW TERRAINS
Harel: Lush land, a rich form of plains, found around volcanos or like in the Nile delta. Areas of nutrient-rich soil.

TILE ISSUES
NotLikeTea: Devolution of tiles: Tile improvements might degrade and disappear if not used. Archaeology as a science could uncover “ancient farms.”
Wheathin: TI’s should not be available on all terrains at the same time or cost. Roads on grassland is easy, but roads in forests, mountains and glaciers are different. Mines on hills before mines on mountains.
Wheathin: Maybe maintenance costs for TI’s, higher costs the further away they are from a city.
Theben: Sources (iron, coal, uranium, oil): maybe a source must exist within your borders before you can utilize it; if you don’t have it, you’ll have to trade. Lack of resources might inhibit research.
Theben: Grasslands, plains and hills can always be irrigated unless adjacent to the leeward side of a mountain range. Desert, tundra and glacier cannot be irrigated unless there’s a river in the square or contains a suitable resource (oasis, hot spring) or a certain level of technology has been reached. Jungles and swamps should have at least 1 production for available wood.
Harel: Mines should only get a bonus if there’s a road connecting it to the city. Nearby tiles should affect one another. E.g., mines harm nearby farms, but increase productivity of nearby mines. Roads cannot be built on mountains until explosives or rivers until bridge building.
Eggman: Less tile improvements are better than more. Keep things simple. Five different farming upgrades may be more realistic, but it adds little to the game, and it would get confusing. (The graphics would have to be pretty distinctive.)
Theben: Irrigation: grassland and plains should always be irrigable, but never desert. If a river is over-irrigated, it might dry up. Transforming desert to plains or grassland should require maintenance over time.

GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES
Widowmaker: The player (or computer) should name geographical locations.
Octopus: Take each civ’s starting positions into account, so that the Nile will be near Egypt or the Andes Mountains near the Incas.
Kmj: Whoever is the first to discover a region gets to name it.
Eggman: Natural Wonders like in SMAC. Sahara Desert, Grand Canyon, the Nile, the Amazon, Everest or the Himalaya, the Marianas Trench, etc., could provide small bonuses.
DickK: Major named features with unique benefits or penalties.

MILITARY:
Wheathin: Terrain should limit military movement. Some units get terrain bonuses for certain terrains, others will find certain terrains impassable. Mounted units, siege weapons can’t move on mountains.
Russellw: Armies should be vulnerable while crossing rivers.
Theben: Forts on coasts can incorporate sea defenses or anti-aircraft capability. Important: extreme climate can damage units. Some units (chariots, tank) may not enter swamp or mountain without roads or mountain passes. Other units take damage as they move through swamp or desert or glacier. Some special units would have certain climate immunities (alpine in mountains & tundra, marines in jungle & swamp). Special units would be immune to movement penalties, but would not have road-bonus movement. Some units (explorer, partisan) are immune to all climates.
Alexander’s Horse: City squares should not receive defense bonuses for terrain. Cities are built on plains, near rivers or the sea. Fortresses are built in the mountains, but not cities.
Eggman: Cities do receive defense bonuses. Quebec, built on high ground, was nearly impossible to take.
Wheathin: Nukes should not only pollute the city radius, but also destroy all tile improvements on the surrounding 8 squares.
Harel: Artillery, etc., can “bombard” tile improvements.
Diodorus Sicilus: Certain improvements should be attackable with barrage or bombard from the sea or air. Railroads, canals and roads can be bombed; offshore platforms destroyed from the air (or by natural disaster). However, bombing farmland from the air would be ineffective; it requires a ground unit to pillage.

RIVERS
Russellw: Increase trade depending on number of cities upstream. Increase aqueduct, hydro power, sewer system effects for cities on rivers. Armies should be vulnerable while crossing rivers. Borders should tend to conform to rivers.
EnochF: More rivers. Maybe begin random map generator with river systems.
Diodorus Sicilus: Include a “head of navigation” point on a river. Between that point and the sea, cities receive a trade bonus, but above that point only defense. Canal building could push the head of navigation upward later in the game.

ROADS
Wheathin: Roads are ugly. Don’t link them to trade bonuses, or players will build them in the entire city radius.
EnochF: Roads/railroads provide no trade bonus, but superhighways can still be built, providing +1 trade per road square. Encourages road building near developed cities.
Eggman: No unlimited movement on railroads. Too easily misused militarily.
Wheathin: Superhighways encourages ugly road building.
EnochF: Roads in the city radius simulate urban sprawl. What about unlimited movement on maglevs for the late game?
Diodorus Sicilus: Roads and railroads should effectively extend the city radius. Maybe after the development of concrete, things like suburbs or hinterland could be built to extend city radii without the ugliness of roads.
NotLikeTea: Railroads should only provide unlimited movement within your own borders. Not in enemy territory.
Ecce Homo: Citizens can work any square within 2 movement points of a city. Production will be penalized for any square requiring more than 1/3 movement points to reach the city. Double this after automobile.
Eggman: There are loopholes in railroad movement being unlimited within your borders. Perhaps combat movement would be limited, i.e. after six steps, a howitzer can no longer attack. And air units should be able to take advantage of the infinite movement as well.
Wheathin: Suburbs don’t reach 200 miles away from a city. Excessive roads ruin the aesthetic experience of the game.
Theben: All civs may use enemy roads, but may not use enemy railroads or better. Noncombat units may use railroads of civs with peaceful relations. All units may use railroads of allies. Rails may be “claimed” by a military unit if at war. Perhaps color-coding would be a good solution.
Eggman: When a city is captured, along with “partisans” there’s a chance that the surrounding railroads are sabotaged. Partisans may also destroy both railroads and roads crossing a river (blow up the bridge).
NotLikeTea: Interesting… maybe give partisans a free pillage on the first turn of automatic creation.
Kris Huysmans: Then you just kill the partisans and bring along 10 engineers. No, you can’t use enemy railroads.
Wheathin: How about player-specific railroads? Color code them to the building civ, like Theben said. There can be only one player’s rails in a square. Building your own rail would destroy the enemy’s rail and change colors.
Harel: Have “support costs” for tiles, with roads being the most expensive, to prevent over-building of roads. Roads cannot be built on mountains until explosives or rivers until bridge building.
Kris Huysmans: Railroads can never be built faster than 2 turns, no matter how many engineers are working. Prevents railroad/howitzer blitzing.
Ecce Homo: Color-coded railroads, but the color changes depending on which unit occupies it. The railroad should be “converted” at the beginning of the next turn.
DaBods: There should be several different kinds of roads. Roads should give a trade bonus. No unlimited movement for railroads.
Theben: Color-coded rails. On the turn that you remove control from the enemy, the railroad (maglev) has no color: no one owns it. At the beginning of the next turn, if your unit is still there (hasn’t been destroyed), you gain possession of the railroad.

THE SEA
Wheathin: “Ocean roads” for sea transport. Shipping lanes, or ferry routes, which increase sea movement for transports. Perhaps late game TI’s would provide instant ocean transport like railroads.
Bridges and tunnels could provide transport across shallow water (one ocean tile).
Eggman: Perhaps increase movement rate of all ships, but increase movement cost when sailing into unexplored territory. Negates the need for shipping lanes.
Diodorus Sicilus: Sea transport was way too slow in Civ II, should be faster. Perhaps sea lanes or trade routes could simulate this, 2 or 3x movement rate.
Bubba: Get rid of nets from Call to Power. They’re ugly.

CITIES
Harel: Instead of a single city square, have “city tiles.” The technology level determines the population a single tile can hold. Huts: 2 pop/tile, Masonry: 4 pop/tile, Concrete: 5 pop/tile, Urban: 8 pop/tile, Skyscraper: 10 pop/tile, Arcology: 15 pop/tile. Eventually, city tiles will become adjacent to one another, and the two adjoining cities will merge to become a megalopolis.
Don Don: A city square is huge. Suburban sprawl in a 50-mile radius is covered in that one city square.
Harel: But if the map were 1000 x 1000, then a city square would be on 20 miles or so. Thus, large cities would be better represented by multiple city tiles.
Diodorus Sicilus: All use of resources comes down to roads. Railroads increase food production because they allow farms to move more of their production to the cities. Therefore, I think the city radius should vary according to terrain and transportation. Cities on rivers should have larger radii in the early game because rivers were the only form of long-distance transportation of food. With railroads, the city radius ultimately amounts to wherever railroads connect to. Urban sprawl can only come with superhighways, ocean ports, railroads, etc. Only with modern transportation do we get modern metropoles such as New York, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, Mexico City and Moscow.
Don Don: We may have to move away from the idea that a “city” in civ is in fact a city, but rather consider it a province with a capital city in the middle. The surrounding tiles represent small cities whose names are relatively unimportant.

FOOD
Wheathin: Something should be done to free cities from the limitations of their own farmland. Huge cities should no longer operate on the food-from-city-radius principle.
Don Don: When railroads became a viable economic factor, food allocation ceased to be local.
Alexander’s Horse: Irrigation should be severely limited, to rivers. Only a tiny percentage of land is irrigated in the world today. Then provide several “upgrades” for farmland tiles.

TILE-BASED CITY IMPROVEMENTS
Wheathin: Like harbors and supermarkets. Civ III should have many of these. Or perhaps certain city improvements allow certain tile improvements, i.e. no fisheries without a harbor.
Kris Huysmans: Hates supermarkets and superhighways in Civ II. TI’s should provide bonuses without needing a city improvement.
Theben: Environmentalism tech adds +1 trade to wilderness squares (mountain, jungle, swamps, tundra, forests) with roads in them.

POLLUTION
Theben: Important: Pollution within the city radius should cause unhappiness. Nuclear pollution = twice the unhappiness. Nuclear pollution takes longer to clean. Only engineers may clean (not settlers). Fallout may cause pollution downwind of the target. Nuclear pollution may lower population for X number of turns. Nukes should also damage terrain.

WEATHER
NotLikeTea: Add in random effects, like earthquakes, tidal waves, floods, volcanos, continental drift…
Bird: Natural conditions like those could be random events. Tornados, hurricanes, monsoons, etc., could cause food losses, population decreases, destruction of TI’s, etc. Volcanos could crop up on plate edges, but oil/gas resources would also increase there.
DickK: Random climactic/geographical events with minor effects. Famine (loss of food, though irrigation/farmland lessens the effect), Flood (for cities next to rivers, lessened by sewer system, city walls), Epidemic (lessened by hospitals, Cure for Cancer), Mine Failure (decreases production in tile), Bumper Crop (increased food), Gold Strike (iron, silver, uranium, etc.), Oil Strike.

COMPREHENSIVE LISTS
Diodorus Sicilus: Complete list of improvements. Land: Roads, permanent roads, railroads, maglev line; roads extend city radius 1 tile, railroads and maglevs extend radius to regional distances. Farms, factory farms (along with several incremental improvements to farms, advance-based, like moldboard plow, improved grain, crop rotation, artificial fertilizer). Irrigation, canals (canals allow irrigation beyond rivers; irrigation turns desert/plains into grassland for farming purposes). Mines, deep mines, open-pit mines (deep mines require steam, open-pit mines are 20th Century). Fortifications, fortresses (fortresses are 19th Century concrete and steel). Airfield.
Sea: Fishing boats, fishing trawlers, factory ships (“mobile improvements,” can be moved to where the fish are, but are useless without fish). Fish farm, aquaculture station (stationary). Offshore platform (useable on resources at sea). Mine belt, mine array, SONAR array, MAD array (mines to damage/destroy ships, SONARs to detect them).
Also wants lots of eye candy in the form of visible improvements. Canals with boats, detailed roads, visible harbors, things like that. Pillaged improvements could be just as visually striking.
Theben: Seems like a lot of those TI’s could be advanced techs, granting small percentage gains to overall food/shield/trade production. Fishing boats sound like they should be units (like SMAC’s supply crawlers), not TI’s. Irrigation: grassland and plains should always be irrigable, but never desert. If a river is over-irrigated, it might dry up. Transforming desert to plains or grassland should require maintenance over time.

OTHER STUFF
Theben: An improved, simplified zoom-out feature which cuts down on needless detail like altitude.

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by EnochF (edited July 01, 1999).]</font>

[yin26]

EnochF,

Great work! You posted this in time for me to include it in the list...

[Theben]

yin, when are you sending the list? And has everyone moved to FIRAXIS to post? Seems quieter here.
EnochF, There are a couple extra things I'd have liked included from my posts, but still a great summary!

[yin26]

Theben,

Once the list is released (in a week or so), I and the TMs are going to double our efforts here to make it easier for you guys to post. So, Apolyton will continue to be the place where many, many people post ideas for Civ3. Keep posting!

[Theben]

Tectonic map:
Player's should be able to figure out the tectonic map just by zooming out and looking at world, w/o programmers needing to make yet another map. Use hot forest, hot desert, cold forest, cold desert map based on latitudes (bio science/geologist types should know what I mean). Squares 1-2 distant east from leeward mountain range should rarely be grassland; plains and desert instead (at least drier), depending on size of MT range.

Fort/keep/castle:
May also be a city improvement. TI such as this (also naval/air bases, coastal/AA def) cost $ to maintain. Feudal govts. may generate $ from fort/keep/castle, if area around is populated. Fort, etc. also extends borders, supply (forgot to mention before). In both cases must connect to supply 1st.

Naval base:
Also repairs naval units quicker; may combine with other bases (fort/airbase) as well as with coastal def/AA def.

Bombing TI's: Give low % chance of success until laser-targeting.

Roads: Small % increase in roaded tiles from all resources, % increases totaled then added to overall production. Better % as roads improve.

[Theben]

Double post
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Theben (edited July 01, 1999).]</font>

[EnochF]

Theben: Name them, by all means. I'll find a place to list any suggestions I might have missed the first time around. In the process of categorizing the stuff people say, I probably ended up dropping a few points here and there.

That goes for everybody! If you made a suggestion and you don't see it in the summary, don't be afraid to complain about it!

[Scooter]

I did not see this in the summary, so forgive me if it's there.

I like the ocean tile improvements in CTP. Nets and fisheries. If these are included in Civ3, then we'd have to rehash the settler/engineer built improvements. If the ability to have settlers build farms/raods/mines as in CivII is included, then we could have a "raft" unit so they could also place nets in sea tiles. The raft would have a very low shield cost and could hold one settler/engineer, no military units could board a raft. Then they could build nets and fisheries on sea tiles located near the coast.

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"BEEFCAKE, BEEFCAKE!!!

-E. Cartman

Thanks Enoch, great summary!

[Ekmek]

I'd prefer to see the concept of city improvements to be buildable and visible like Age of Empires. Very micromanaging at the beginning but in the old days the focus was the city state as time goes on local leaders can be autoomated (or different personalites similar to player AIs could have random local leaders elected etc.) this way we can see the sapes of the cities and city improvement can be destroyed (their picture does not need to be that big) this way the shape will be different then filling in a square and roads built around and other cities can roll through parts of cities. It might seem to detailed or tedious but an automated function is possible. (they should be built like AOE so you can attack the works i progress). Also settlers and engineers should be different things there are those that build cities and those that live in them. A settler team of people and engineers woul be better.


Now to stick closer to terrain:

DISASTERS:A natural disaster feature (optional) would be nice.

SEASONS: Have some tiles be programmable with seasons. Just like the tile editor have a flag that would activate any changes depending on time of the year. simulating the russian feature would be nice. Weather would be cool too.

ANIMALS: some animals like horses and elephants came from certain parts of the world, have them be a resource to add cultural character to civs and make it so native americans don't have horsemem (until the europeans show up). Same story with the elephant, they weren't in europe so the english don't have an elephant during the middle ages.

RESOURCES: I'm all for the resources thing aleady mentioned and make it like AOE too, you need to store and you can use it all up too.

IRRIGATION and MINING: with my city improvemnts idea they would fit in that category instead of being some thing on the outskirts of a city.

AGRICULTURE: Rice vs. wheat vs olives. Asian populations were much larger and more community oriented because of the rice harvest, produced greater yields of food and required more community effort (and a higher liklihood of being authoritarian). Wheat in north europe was different and led to a differnt type of farming. In the mediterrean food harvesting was different too (thats why the rommans never pushed to far into north-east europe or russia besides the pesky barbarians) agriculture in certain areas should yield harvesting technology in that area, and you need to borrow or learn from other civs if you want to break out (i.e. thanksgiving ring a bell? or you can try to occupy and develop from scratch).


EXTRA SPACES: If anything if Firaxis doesn't want to incorporate a lot of the other terrain ideas give us extra spaces so we can, customizing is what made Civ2 great!


I like a lot of the other ideas like naming places, terrain of differnt altitudes. This thread has a lot of orginial and hard work!

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"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."
- Dr. Johnson, from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

[EnochF]

Er, I'm a little unclear about what exactly your "agriculture" suggestion is.

About the new system of city improvements... that probably belongs in the city improvements thread, but maybe I'm not quite understanding you. I've heard about the idea of "visible wonders," where a wonder would appear in a tile in the city radius when it was built. That makes sense to me because a single city will very rarely build enough wonders of the world to fill up its entire city radius. With city improvements, however, the problem of overcrowding appears quite early. How will you visually portray a city with a palace, barracks, marketplace, temple, courthouse, granary, library, city walls, aqueduct, bank, cathedral, university, harbor, coliseum, sewer system, stock exchange, police station, factory, mass transit, power plant, manufacturing plant, superhighways, coastal fortress, port facility, research lab, recycling center, SAM battery, airport, offshore platform and SDI? Or even half those things? And let's say the city also has a wonder or two, some roads and irrigation nearby.

[Scooter]

-=Moving thread up=-

[Jon Miller]

I originally posted this in the units section but since it talks about terrain improvement too I thought I would post it here

topic: settlers (or the like)

there should be settlers like in civ that improve the terrain

the biggest reason for this instead of public works is that public works does not make sense in military situations

One thing I hated in call to power is that I could not send a settler to build forts, railroads, roads, and airports when fighting in enemy territory

I always in civ send settlers or engineers for an attacking army

of course you should be able to build stuff in enemies land whenever you want (that is the reason they have that limitation there) but you should also sometimes be able to and that distinction can only be had with a unit

also if one civilization is invading another the defending civilization should not be able to improve at their own leasure, no, the invader should be able to destroy the improvers

this of course leaves the tiring mircomanagement of improving during peace with settlers

this can be solved, as I see it, in either of the following ways (maybe both):

have a competent auto ai with a lot of choices to choose from like farm and road only or road only between cities or improve only in a certain city radius or improve only within the bounds I set (which would then be set by clicking certain points that have a line connecting then and ending when you click the original point), of course this would be devided into different sections such as what improvements do I make and a lot of choices (multiple ones can be picked such as: mine mountains, mine hills, irrigate plains, road plains) and then a seperate section of where do I make them and a lot of choices (such as the bounds choice or the city radius choice or the road between cities choice) and finally there would be a third section with special choices like as soon as a foreign unit moves within seeing radius alert and then when such a thing occured you would get a message at the beginning of your turn asking if you want the unit to cancel action or continue on auto

long paragraph

an alternate idea (or maybe both should be included) would be to give each settler a building queue that would show you the order of their jobs, where their jobs are to be done (the location numbers and maybe if you click on that entree it shows a picture of that square and moves your cursor there), and what they (the settler) are going to do there

as I mentioned previously in the units thread, the time it takes to do an improvement project should be a factor of the size of that unit but this idea would only work if my size idea was accepted

settlers should be able to be protected by small armed attachments that are hooked with the unit, modern settler type units would have guns with them providing some defense, their unit in actual combat would have a large subtraction because of its type (if my size idea is used)

canals and terrain changing as well as bridges and tunnels should be possible, maybe not as drastic of height changing as smac though

thanks for reading,

Jon Miller

Each terrain improvement should belong to a civ, the same way airbases do in Civ2. So that if you click on a square, it will say "Babylonian Irrigation" or something like that. Using someone elses improvement is an act of war (or at least hurts relations), and you can only use ones you've "captured" (by being the last one to put a unit on it.)

[Dr Strangelove]

With respect to special resources, I'd like to see the best of Civ:CTP combined with the best of Civ II. The idea of certain tiles bearing tradable commodities is good, you can use something like CTP's trade system so that it doesn't take you 30+ turns to establish a trade route to that country you just discovered half way around the world. On the other hand industrial resources like coal, iron, and oil should have a significant effect on prodution of the owning city. I'd like to see the production values of mountains less emphasized than in CTP. In reality metal resources are not present in usable form in every mountain. I don't think that anyone has found significant mineral deposits in the Himalaya's. The Andes range has some significant deposits in the area of Bolivia and adjacent parts of Peru and Chile. I don't think there are many mines in the Alps. So special resouces placed in hills and mountains should be used to represnt coal and iron and special resouces in deserts and tundra should represent oil. These resources should have a very significant effect on production, especially if a city has access through trade or location to iron plus coal or oil. Non resouce bearing hills and mountains should offer a lesser boost to production.

[Flavor Dave]

"But “terraforming” is an anachronism in the present. Glaciers-to-grassland should require heavy future tech, maybe weather control."

I agree that the idea of glaciers becoming grasslands is unrealistic. But I've always conceived this not as the LAND changing, just what it PRODUCES. The grasslands don't really become hills which you can mine. Instead, your engineers work intensively on the grassland so that it produces less food, but much more material for building stuff.

[Flavor Dave]

"But “terraforming” is an anachronism in the present. Glaciers-to-grassland should require heavy future tech, maybe weather control."

I agree that the idea of glaciers becoming grasslands is unrealistic. But I've always conceived this not as the LAND changing, just what it PRODUCES. The grasslands don't really become hills which you can mine. Instead, your engineers work intensively on the grassland so that it produces less food, but much more material for building stuff.

"DISASTERS:A natural disaster feature (optional) would be nice."

This doesn't really fit with the scale of the game, unless you're running a scenario. But as an option, I guess it would be OK, as long as Firaxis doesn't spend too much time programming it.

"SEASONS: Have some tiles be programmable with seasons. Just like the tile editor
have a flag that would activate any changes depending on time of the year."

Again, doesn't fit with the scale unless you're running scenarios.

[Flavor Dave]

Think about how much area one tile covers. I don't think natural disasters impact that kind of area, except Krakatoa. If you make this event too rare, then you're putting too much luck into the game. If it's too common, it's unrealistic for there to be that many disasters that affect a whole tile.

Not to mention how long the game turns are 10 years or more.

[Theben]

True, but a one time disaster can have important effects. Just think back to civI, floods in a city that damage structures, fires, riots, earthquakes (which could affect more than one tile!). I don't like the "cloud cover" over my city for 10 turns in SMAC though.
You could also have flooded irrigation, rivers changing course or drying up, resources used up or discovered, etc. But if you don't want it, don't turn on the option. Like I said, pure strategists should be able to enjoy the game, too. There are enough of them.

[Ecce Homo]

I agree that we should have natural disasters.

"Think about how much area one tile covers."

I hope that Civ 3 will be more detailed, with more tiles on the maps (ie smaller tiles). Do you fear for too much microm'ment? That could be decreased by CTP's trade system, Public Works and improved Goto orders for military units.

[EnochF]

Yeah. And, as improbable as this may sound, I agree with Harel's idea from the summary that maps should be much bigger, that tiles should comprise smaller areas, and that cities can be made of "city tiles." I just think that would be an incredible system for the late game.

[Theben]

I thought of an idea for settler/engineers which seems to jive with part of Jon M's ideas:

Auto settler: Have a preference list for EACH type of terrain, including specials. The list will include irrigation, mining, road building, etc. In addition, you can add a priority to which tiles the settler will go to 1st to terraform. An auto settler will look at your list and do to the tiles exactly what you specify. It'd be a pain to set up at 1st, but afterwards I think it would greatly ease micromanagement. You should also be able to set the AI's preferences in the ??.txt to make them more challenging, and for scenarios.

Roads tra cities:
'r' still creates a road, 'R' would allow you to plot a path from point A to point B, between which the settler will faithfully build the road/rr/maglev you specify.

Jon M, an alert that woke up EVERY unit in a certain radius of the enemy would be useful (no penalty to settlers if they continue terraforming). Good call.

Building TI's should cost $ or production if "public works" isn't used.

The building of TI's on a tile should extend your border to include that tile if:
-It is adjacent to your border
-It is not within another civ's border (unless border is contested)
-It can connect to your supply grid
Having shifting borders is okay, but one shouldn't be able to move a border next to another city by dropping your own city next to it. During war borders are meaningless so they would all be contested (tip o' the tentacle to the Squid Kid ).

Flav Dave,
A list of tiles you can change the current tile into would solve that problem. The list would expand as you gained tech.
"Disasters" does fit into the game, "seasons" don't, unless it's a scenario. But either way it should be optional for strategy purists.

Strangelove,
Check out my suggestions for resource tiles at top & also in the "economics" thread.

[Flavor Dave]

One thing that concerns me is that Firaxis might adopt the flashier ideas. I am concerned that if too much is added to the game, it will turn into vaporware. Also, that the flashier new ideas will be implemented instead of the more solid, but more useful ones, in order to make the programming manageable. It's not that I dislike alot of these ideas, esp. as options. It's about priorities. Of course, I say this as a non-programmer;-)

Having said that, about the idea of rivers changing--that is both realistic, and fits with the scale of the game. I propose adding to the pollution random feature, that a river square that is worked has some (small) chance of silting up, becoming swamp until an engineer/settler dredges it. It would have to be a special kind of swamp to make sure that it is distinguished from other swamp tiles.

[Bulrathi]

There should be Arable land, or Food Tiles like Imperialism. There you could have high density large nations (like India and China) in a small land area because of the large amount of Arable land (and food grown there).
While large land masses with little Arable land will have a relatively smaller population. (Such as Australia, Africa (Relatively speaking)).

[Diodorus Sicilus]

What constitutes 'arable land' depends on the Civ and the Tech it has available. Tile improvements like Terraces (turning steep hills into cropland), Irrigation (turning desert/plains into the equivalent of good grasslands), or clearing forests into another tile type all provide 'arable land'. The tile improvements and what effect they have on your civ should depend on Tech Advances - and need. You're not going to waste the time and money terracing hills if you've got lots of flat cropland already. You're not going to bother clearing forests for crops if you don't have the Iron Plow (or whatever they decide to label the Tech) to break up heavy forest soils for farming.
The whole question of exploitng the terrain should be more closely tied to Tech Advances in the new game. For one thing, there are serious changes in agriculture and the value of certain land for agriculture dependant on tech. Best cases I can think of are the early development of Irrigation that made the Fertile Crescent fertile, and the development of hybrid wheat forms in the 19th century that made the US Great Plains into a bread basket where before they had been 'merely' plains tiles with buffalo icons!

[Bulrathi]

What I want to see is uneven population and food distribution like the 'real world'. Anything that works to make this happen is good.

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Bulrathi: I thoroughly agree, more variety in civilizations is my theme, and variety in food production is one basic step.
That means the game has to model the differences not only between hunter-gatherers and farmers, but between nomadic herders and farmers, farmers with primitive plows and iron moldboard plows and good harness, modern forms of rice with multiple harvests per year versus primitive grains, Industrial Agriculture, etc, etc. This, I think, requires both more variety in Tech advances related to food production, more variety of civilization types (I've posted before on 'nomadic civs', so no more here), and more variation based on the terrain and climate the civ starts or grows in.

MILITARY IMPROVEMENTS

Military Base- requires Tactics. Construction: 10 turns. Any land or air units run through it get a +1 morale modifier. Replaces Airbase.
Naval Yard- requires Amphibious Warfare. Any naval units run through it get completely repaired. Can only be built in coastal squares. Construction: 20 turns.
Trench- requires Construction. Replaces Fortress. Increases defensive strength of all units in trench by +50%.
Bunker- requires Steel. Increases defensive strength of all units in stack by +50%. Cumulative with Trench.
Force Field- requires Photonics. Increases defensive strength of all units in stack by +50%. Cumulative with Trench and Bunker.

[Jimmy]

And the "missile silo" terrain improvement, where you could put your missiles (cruise missiles as well as nuclear). It would allow the player to put missiles someplace else than the city so if a city were nuked, you would not automatically lose all the missiles, and would be able to retaliate. Of course, "missile silos" would become prime targets for a nuclear attack: try to take out all the enemies' nukes to prevent him/her from retaliating. It would add more strategy.

Um yeah. That too.