building channels

Bartemans · October 10, 2000, 15:04

Hello,

I am playing Civ:CTP again, just for the fun and also for preparation to Civ:CTP II. However, there's one thing that bothers me a bit:

Why isn't it possible to build channels inside your empire? It has many advantages, which we all know.
It's then possible to quickly move naval units and also building naval units in non-coastal cities would be possible.

Since CTPII will have a lot of naval aspects (I too saw the trailermovie), it seems logical to build channels. I would propose an engineer, espescially for building channels. This makes it harder to build channels while there's a war going on.

Anyone agree on this?

Please respond.

Bye.

http://home.hccnet.nl/stolte.1

Pintello · October 10, 2000, 17:07

Hi Bartemans,

I agree with you. Canals should really be in the game. I have long wanted them, even going back to Civ 2.

I think that they can be done with the current public works system though, no special unit needed. Make a certain technology required for them and then make them extremely expensive in PW points. Say something like 10,000 PW points for one segment of canal. You can also limit them to just 2 or 3 segments long, though I don't know how that would work.

I think ships should be able to use the canals, like they do the Panama canal or the Suez Canal, but I don't think you should make is so that an inland city with a canal attached can build ocean going vessels.

I think instead canals should be used to bridge small sections of land masses to make it possible to sail though them without the need of a city. I also think that canals should be able to be used to connect inland water areas with the wider ocean. Especially if the inland bodies of water occupy more than just a couple of terrain squares.

Regards,
Timothy Pintello

Bartemans · October 10, 2000, 18:36

Hello,

Pintello: You say EXACTLY what I think!
(without the need of a city,the inland sea and the ocean and so on)

However, I think an engineer with a lot of costs per tile would do the job. The you must go to the place.

And then: Rotterdam is not directly on the Northsea, but thanks to the "Nieuwe Waterweg" (New waterway), Rotterdam became the largest seaport in the world. Also ships are build (also for the Royal Dutch Navy), so in reality it is possible.

But Dutch civil engineers can do more than is possible in any CIV game

Bye,

Bart Stolte

http://home.hccnet.nl/stolte.1

samurai · October 10, 2000, 20:38

hehe, guess its time for me to talk about the norwegian naval engineers that actually works in the north sea.And is a lot better than the dutchmen in oil-platform technology.

I think channals is a great idea.I am sick and tired of looking after a tile that can bring to large oceans together.
I think the best solution would be to hava some sort of engineer at the place.Making it harder to build when its war seems like a good idea. What I would like to add is that if ships are attaced in the cannals,they should have reduced fighting abilities.
And to use them, you have to control them.Something wich will be easy to decide with the new border system in ctp2.
This way it will be possible to transport ships through continents,but much more dangerous

WesW · October 11, 2000, 00:21

How about having a canal as a tile improvement? I think this would be the ideal. As far as how to do it, I don't know.

bongo · October 11, 2000, 04:48

Great idea, I would really love to see canals. As pintello wrote, its probably possible within the public works system. Most ships should be able to use them. Maybe there should be 2 or 3 sizes of canals for different sizes of ships. A battleship needs a much larger(and more expensive) canal than a longship.

As for limiting the length of canals, just double the cost of each new canal-segment. (no.1 cost 10000PW, no cost 20000PW, no3 cost 40000PW) That way, you could build canals of any length if you just had the PW to pay for it. This means that a 7 tile canal would cost 127000PW. A bit expensive, but if you had a very prodictive megacity in the heart of a continent it could be worth doing.

BTW I've always wanted to navigate rivers as well

samurai · October 11, 2000, 11:23

Good to see that some norwegian friends suggest some good ideas.Doubling the PW every tile of the canals would reduce the building of canals.
And of course, canaling a mountain, what would be the cost of that?

Pintello · October 11, 2000, 11:24

Hi All,

I retract my statement about not letting cities linked to the ocean by canals build ships. I did not know that there are actually some "port cities" that are built this way. My bad.

Makes me want to see Rotterdam though. I think it would be cool to see a "land locked" city acting as a port.

I also think that Bongo's idea of doubling the cost of the canal terrain improvement for each segment is a great idea. It addresses the issue of long canals while allowing for special cases. One special case that I can think of, beyond the inland megacity mentioned by Bongo, is that occationally you will have really large bodies of water in a map that is seperated from the greater ocean by 2 or 3, possibly more, tiles. The American/Canadian Great Lakes and the St. Lawerence Sea Way comes to mind. This idea would allow you to build "port cities" on these bodies of water and then let their ships get out to the greater ocean. Nothing is more annoying than building some early cities on what you think is the ocean, only to find out as you explore more that it is just a huge inland sea.

I think Bongo's idea of different size canals for different size ships is a good idea too. You can have different technologies for each one too. A good historical example of this would be the early American canal system for transporting goods by boat before the rail road system took over. Also I think China's Grand Canal system may quailify as well. Later much larger canals such as the Panama Canal and the Suez Canals were build for the purpose of moving very large ships between different bodies of water.

I will also put in my vote for navigatable rivers as well.

Regards,
Timothy Pintello
[This message has been edited by Pintello (edited October 11, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Pintello (edited October 11, 2000).]

bongo · October 11, 2000, 15:44

Like roads and railroads , certain technologies would allow canals to be built in different terrain. Building them in rough terrain should of course be more expensive than elsewere. If a canal built on grassland cost 10000 a mountain-canal could cost 30000.

Does anyone know when the first canals were built? I can't remember ever reading about ancient canals. Also, is 10000PW a reasonable price? If canals enter the game early that price would effectively stop almost anyone from building them until much later in the game, or at least stop all development throughout the empire for a very long time.

It may be to late now, unless canals already are a part of ctp2 I don't think we will see them until the first patch, if at all :-(

Anyway, I really hope they will appear cause it's a really good idea :-D

samurai · October 11, 2000, 16:45

I think somewhere between 7000-10000 would be a nice price for a canal.In history I don`t think anyone builded canals until somewhere after 1000 a.d. maybe there has been someone, but not of any importance.

lev · October 12, 2000, 00:40

I remember discovering I could build canals in good ol' Civ I, by building a couple cities right next to each other to span a two-square isthmus.

Couldn't do that in Civ II, CtP or Smac - oh well.

Chaos · October 12, 2000, 00:48

I think it should be a tile improvement. you should have a city close by for defense. this would also mean that other countries couldn't use the canal without your permission or without going to war over it. you could charge people to go thru it as well.

since the canal would be a tile improvement of the city when the city falls so does control of the canal.

Bali · October 12, 2000, 03:12

I would love to see channels and navigable rivers in ctp2 or at least in patch.

There could be 2 types of channels:

1) Small channels would be navigable only by smaller naval vessels, which could navigate channels, rivers and go along the coast. These channels would also give same tile improvement effect as river. Only there should be some limitation that channel has to form a line, be it straigth or curved, not many small channels next to one another.

2) Big channels would be available later in game and would be used by ocean-going vessels to cross a land bridge, like Panama or Suez.

Tilemacho · October 12, 2000, 07:50

Well...Persians did build a canal near Thessalonica in 450bc when they were trying to invade Greece. I am not sure how long it was mabe 300-500 meters but it was defenatly a canal to let ships move faster toward Athens...

I also like the idea and think that Activision could make that easily via the PW system.

The True Demosthenes · October 12, 2000, 08:10

As long as it took a realistic time to construct, and cost a hefty amount, dependent upon the terrain being terraformed, this could prove an invaluable tool.

What about the destruction of said canals? Perhaps somehow enabling an aggressor to refill the waterway. And maybe not allowing fisheries etc to built in the canal, so as to stop moving water tiles within range of a city for purely growth intentions and not transport purposes.

Whilst we’re on the subject, what about reclaiming land from the ocean? Obviously making it swamplike at first, then allowing it to be ‘upgraded’, but that’s certainly another avenue to look into.

Slax · October 12, 2000, 09:30

How will a ship in a canal look? Will it just be a water tile, or will it have walls? It must be large enough inside the tile to contain a ship image.

Is there a limit to the size of ship which can travel in a canal?

Can a ship in a canal be involved in combat? With what limitations?

DarthVeda · October 12, 2000, 09:53

Game goes gold in less than a month and you're still asking for features... you really don't know activision do you?

Locutus · October 12, 2000, 16:00

quote:

Originally posted by Bartemans on 10-10-2000 06:36 PM
And then: Rotterdam is not directly on the Northsea, but thanks to the "Nieuwe Waterweg" (New waterway), Rotterdam became the largest seaport in the world.

Forget about Rotterdam, Antwerp is an even better example! It's much further away from the sea, but it's still an important port. Of course, by far not as important as Rotterdam

And DarthVeda, there's nothing wrong with playing around with some idea's. It might not make it into the actual game, but you never know about patches or sequels. Who knows, maybe will even be possible to implement something like this in SLIC (though in that case I doubt the AI could be taught to make use of it).

samurai · October 13, 2000, 10:50

I haven`t seen any from switzerland here yet, but I guess that their answer to this debate would be something like:"Our country is in between Austria,Germany,France,Italy and Lichenstein, and still we got a Port city."
I think its Bern.

I agree,there is nothing wrong in playing with the idea of canals.Who knows, maybe this gives activision the idea of constructing Call to Power "super 2000 millenium audition" III.

I have been thinking of canals just like land units can use the tunnels underseas.And if the tunnels are destroyd with the units inside. Sorry mate,**** happends.
I mean, what chanses will a battleship in a canal have if they are beeing attaced by tanks?

wheathin · October 14, 2000, 00:40

Canals would be great. There could be several levels of public works canals.
1. Ancient Canal - allows units up to Caravels to traverse. 2000 PW.
2. Rennaissance-pre-Industrial canal - allows units up to Destroyers to traverse 5000 PW
3. Industrial-Modern canal - allows all ships to traverse 20,000 PW

To prevent these from being too unbalancing, I propose that players be limited to building only one square in a row. Remember, even the Panama Canal has a lake in the middle of it. A single square allows cities located just inland to get sea access.

The Canal would be the only improvement in the square, like a farm or fort or listening post, although there could also be a road. Like any tile imp, the canal could be pillaged or destroyed - a juicy target for hit-and-run attacks!

Location of a canal adjacent to a city would allow the city to build naval units.

Canals would cost different amounts depending on terrain. Grassland, plains, and deserts cost minimum. Forests, Tundra, Jungles, and Swamps cost more (although most players will prefer to clear the land themselves prior to construction to save PW), Hills cost substantially more. No canals in mountains or glaciers.

Chris Horscroft · October 18, 2000, 19:25

Like the canal idea - and have wanted realistic canals since the original civ.

Historically, I think the Greeks built canals - or at least carried ships across narrow land masses and rebuilt them on the other side fairly early on. I know that the same approach was used by the New Zealanders to put steamships on one of their inland lakes, and also by the colonial powers to put gunboats on Lake Victoria.

I'd suggest that it be impossible to build canal through most terrain types. Plains and grassland only. If you want to put a canal through a mountain range, you'd have to terraform it first. Simply increasing the cost to canal a mountain would be difficult to balance (and we still can't or don't put try to build canals across mountain ranges now).

Length of canal must be greater than one square. Cities would do the same job in that case. I'd suggest a maximum length of three squares - which may be arbitrary, but at least would seem to reflect reality. And since you'd navigate rivers, in most cases all you would have to do is find a river running close to a sea, and connect it to ocean via a canal - again, this is fairly realistic.

Using a tile improvement and the standard publi works system must involve less tweaking to the game, and I aggree that canals should only be navigable to the owner (and allies) - so the border system would seem important to canals.

Maybe the designers could (finally!) look at implementing some sort of canal/land reclamation tile improvement for the next version - after all, the Dutch and the English (in East Anglia) have been doing the real thing since at least the middle ages.

John Amram · October 20, 2000, 06:33

Great idea. I particularly like the idea of a canal becoming a source of revenue and major strategic asset; as the owner of the canal, 5/10 gold every time a foreign vessel uses it could easily justify the high cost of building it. It would also make the game a very interesting one, as I certainly would be trying to gain control over a foreign canal...especially when the geograpghy of the map is mainly 'continent' as opposed to 'ocean'.

GO FOR IT!

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Dida · October 21, 2000, 13:34

quote:

Originally posted by samurai on 10-11-2000 04:45 PM
I think somewhere between 7000-10000 would be a nice price for a canal.In history I don`t think anyone builded canals until somewhere after 1000 a.d. maybe there has been someone, but not of any importance.

China's Grand Canal was built in the 600's a.d. It's still the longest manmade water way in the world.

red_jon · October 21, 2000, 13:47

Canals should only let non-military trading ships through (maybe transports too).
After all, I can hardly see a battleship going down an English canal! (i.e. it wouldn't fit).

Canals should also go obsolete with the discovery of the motorway/highway/autobahn (whatever you want to call them) as the ones in England aren't really used anymore (I don't know about the rest of the world).

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...And if the British Commonwealth and its people live for a thousand years, man will still say "this was their finest hour"- Winston Churchill.

Dida · October 22, 2000, 14:49

quote:

Originally posted by red_jon on 10-21-2000 01:47 PM
Canals should only let non-military trading ships through (maybe transports too).
After all, I can hardly see a battleship going down an English canal! (i.e. it wouldn't fit).

Canals should also go obsolete with the discovery of the motorway/highway/autobahn (whatever you want to call them) as the ones in England aren't really used anymore (I don't know about the rest of the world).

They're going to widen the Grant Canel in China, so its battleship might go deep into the inland.

Chris Horscroft · October 22, 2000, 18:11

Canals for non-military vessels only?

NO! Suez and Panama are more of a model for CTP canals than the local networks that carried coal barges in the early years of the industrial revolution. Battleships should pass thru canals, and canals should NOT go obsolete (IMHO)

TheBirdMan · October 23, 2000, 04:32

I would like the canals to be similar to other terrain improvements.

Lowest (smallest) should allow ships size small, then medium and biggest (broad cannals) ships size large.

By that, cannals obsolute themselfes if not "upgraded" as the size of ships grows during the game.

I also would like, if tririmes (as a matter of fact, all ships size small) could use the rivers.