Bump - for anyone interested

[SerapisIV]

Blue, I've heard some disturbing news, that Elvis is not in the game...Please tell me that the King still lives?

[Akron]

From that workers actions screen, it appears that terraforming is out. That sucks.

[SerapisIV]

Originally posted by Akron
From that workers actions screen, it appears that terraforming is out. That sucks.

I think it's a positive thing, when's the last time you saw a terraformed place? True some cities reclaim a few acres of land through filling in swamp and river space, but if a tile is 200miles x 200miles, I don't think such an endeavor has ever happened on earth, so should not be a Civ option.

[albiedamned]

Originally posted by SerapisIV


I think it's a positive thing, when's the last time you saw a terraformed place? True some cities reclaim a few acres of land through filling in swamp and river space, but if a tile is 200miles x 200miles, I don't think such an endeavor has ever happened on earth, so should not be a Civ option.

I have to disagree. They're doing a pretty good job terraforming the Amazon rain forest.

[SerapisIV]

Originally posted by albiedamned
I have to disagree. They're doing a pretty good job terraforming the Amazon rain forest.

Already in Civ3. Shift-C, clear forrest.

To me terraforming means converting mountains into hills, plains into grasslands, etc.

[albiedamned]

Originally posted by SerapisIV


Already in Civ3. Shift-C, clear forrest.

To me terraforming means converting mountains into hills, plains into grasslands, etc.

Ok, I guess I agree with you then. You should be able to clear forest and jungle. But changing terrain types is not possible. At least, not until we discover the Weather Paradigm.

[Gramphos]

I think it is good that enough amount of engineers no longer can make it possible to live on the poles.

[The Rook]

Isn't much of the Netherlands terrafromed (They build dikes to keep the sea out) or is that not what terraforming means?

[Peterk]

Hey Blue,

I'm dying to know how the game is panning out. Did you manage to take North America away from the pesky French yet??? How about another screengrab.

p.

[Akron]

A few more questions about your game. How rare are strategic resources on your map (at least the ones that you have the techs for)? Would you be able to easily acquire all of them without having to trade? How about luxury resources; how vital are they to your game? How is the distribution of luxury resource? And how does the computer handle the trading of resources (easy or hard to trade, pricing, demands for resources, etc.)?

Thanks for all the valuable info so far, and keeping civing (and find a little time to post here while you're at it )!

[SerapisIV]

Originally posted by The Rook
Isn't much of the Netherlands terrafromed (They build dikes to keep the sea out) or is that not what terraforming means?

Yeah, but the Netherlands is one tile (on a large Civ3 map). Also, there was some land before, not only sea, the best way to reflect a situation like the Netherlands is by making it marsh/swamp and requiring it to be drained (cleared I guess in Civ3 terms). examples like the Netherlands however are few and far between. Another example would be the Aztec capital, Technotichilan (sp bad), which was originally a shallow lake and islands were created in the middle and slowly expanded.

Either way, though these examples are too few and not on the frequent enough on a global scale to require Civ3 workers to be able to do it on any tile anywhere on a Civ map.

[jdd2007]

u can plant forests now? this just gets better + better...

[Shadowstrike]

You could always plant forest. Simply mine a plain or grassland.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by BlueHooHoo
At the office we have higher spec PC's: a 1.2GHz Athlon and a PIII 1.7Ghz. The Pentium3 is also a little slow scrolling (it has XP) the Athlon runs the game very fast (windows 98). I think that the difference may be due to running XP

I haven't finished reading the thread yet but I'd like to point out something. The PIII doesn't go up to 1.7GHz it has to be a P4. The thing about a P4 is it runs existing applications slower than a P3. On the other hand, Athlons have better performance than P4's. As a matter of fact an Athlon 1.5GHz still edges out a P4 2GHz.

That's probably the main reason why the game runs faster on the Athlon.

[SerapisIV]

Originally posted by Shadowstrike
You could always plant forest. Simply mine a plain or grassland.

Now if you do that, you actually will mine the grassland Not sure what they expect to find...Look we've mined the extremely useful sunflower roots!

[Wittlich]

Or, while digging in the grasslands for the new mine, the civilization discovers an ancient archeological site giving the host nation some insight into their earlier existance!

[SerapisIV]

Originally posted by Wittlich
Or, while digging in the grasslands for the new mine, the civilization discovers an ancient archeological site giving the host nation some insight into their earlier existance!

Translation: found their old landfill

[Urban Ranger]

IMO some transformations should be allowed. These are: forests < - > plains, plains < - > grassland, jungle - > plains, and desert - > plains. On the other hand, I don't think one should be allowed to turn mountains into hills, and especially not plains/grassland into hills.

[Pyrodrew]

Terraforming should be allowed. However, since this is a 200milesx200miles area it should be VERY time consuming & expensive. This would make terraforming more rare. Perhaps time/cost can vary depending on what is being terraformed as well.

[Solver]

Thanks for the list .

[adaMada]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


I haven't finished reading the thread yet but I'd like to point out something. The PIII doesn't go up to 1.7GHz it has to be a P4. The thing about a P4 is it runs existing applications slower than a P3. On the other hand, Athlons have better performance than P4's. As a matter of fact an Athlon 1.5GHz still edges out a P4 2GHz.

That's probably the main reason why the game runs faster on the Athlon.

Not trying to add to the cluter, but in case anyone cares (like if you have a Pentium 4)...

Yes, P4s are slower at running programs than Athlons. BUT P4s are supposed to be FASTER when it comes to Multimedia -- that's why intel's advertising is focused that way. I haven't had a chance to play with a Pentium 4 personally, but if those claims really are true, then some parts of Civ 3 might run faster on the P4... also, Intel's talking about developing a new technology soon that'll allow a single Pentium 4 processor to act like a dual processor (though I don't know how it's comming along or if it'll be upgradable, just read something about that sometime ago)...

Ok, sorry to go so far off topic, but just wanted to add what I'm hearing about the P4 and say that, for those who have a P4, it's not that bad .

-- adaMada

[ajbera]

We appreciate everything you've given us so far, Blue. I commend you. But, I (and several others) have a specific request: editor screenshots. Our appetites have been whetted by the sneak peaks we've been provided at Civ3.com, and given how many things I want to change for a more personally satisfying playing experience, I'm eager to know how much I can fiddle with. Of particular interest to me are the unit and wonder editors.

Thanks again.

[adaMada]

well, Blue, if I were you I'd run away and hide for a little while and not answer any more questions , but if you want to keep answering, my newest personal-curiosity question is this:

ok, I've heard all this stuff about how airplanes will work and that they'll be based in cities and you can't move them around like a regular unit and etc. My question is, though, how is this implemented? Is it like you 'assign' each airplane an action, and it just does it until you tell it otherwise (kind of like Fortify in Civ 2)? This would seem much more realistic, and would seem to make air-craft carriers much better implemented (if they're in the game), because in a real air-craft carrier the planes don't stay on the ground nicely until the enemy has finished it's 'turn' . Is it like you can set planes and groups of planes on missions? CAN you set multiple planes to do the same thing? Also, something I just thought of that stems from this (I guess that makes two questions :-D) -- can you take groups of units w/o putting them into an army and assign them all the same command? So they fight independently, but all are given the same instructions? To me, this would seem to be a HUGE time saver...

Sorry if I'm asking questions that have been answered already in other places -- I haven't been keeping up with this nearly as well as I should have -- but these are the things that are eating on my mind right now.
-- adaMada

[Inverse Icarus]

[El hidalgo]

Thank you very much, Blue! I thought the part about disease was very interesting. I think it's safe to assume, given Firaxis' commitment to making the game very open to modification, that it can be abstracted and applied to other terrains besides jungle and flood plains. That opens up some very interesting mod and scenario ideas. You could use it in a Medieval scenario to simulate the black plague, for example (which of course didn't strike only in jungles and floodplains). I all these little details! Draft, forced labor, disease... The one disappointment this thread has turned up was the unlimited movement rates for railroads. I just hope that can be changed.

By the way, if you post any more I wouldn't consider it spoiling at all. I think of it as being more like hors d'oeuvres to whet the appetite. If you are still taking requests , I'd be interested to know if the earth maps are the only ones included, and how rivers work. Do they provide any movement bonus? Can ships travel on them? Also, any new terrain types? You say there are snow-capped mountains in Greenland; does this mean there are different mountain types, maybe with different production capabilities and attributes?

Thanks again; I appreciate all the info you've given us!

[Executor]

Originally posted by BlueHooHoo
... but using a nuke has a tremendous negative effect on world opinion, same as Civ2 I suppose.

Did using nukes really affect the opinion of other civs in Civ2? I can't remember that ever happening to me. But that might be because I was always at war withe everybody anyway.

[Fintilgin]

I suppose if you wanted to get the Huge Earth map without using cheat codes you could just load it up with the map editor and post the pics from there.

Cool info, BTW. Thank ye kindly. I'm counting the seconds `till Tuesday.

Joe

[CobraA1]

Originally posted by Executor


Did using nukes really affect the opinion of other civs in Civ2? I can't remember that ever happening to me. But that might be because I was always at war withe everybody anyway.

Nukes created polluted tiles. Polluted tiles, if not cleaned, led to global warming. Global warming changed most of your tiles to a drier, less useful form.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by El hidalgo
... I'd be interested to know ... how rivers work. ...

According to the Prima strategy guide, crossing a river costs 1/3 MP AFTER Engineering is discovered. No mention of movement penalties for rivers before Engineering.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The one disappointment this thread has turned up was the unlimited movement rates for railroads.

IIRC, you can change this with the editor, easily.

Blue, thanks for all the work.