terraforming capabilities should increase

[dovlvn]

Iwould like to raise an issue that came during the more terrain discussion.there is needed more terraforming ability of terrain especially in industrial and modern eras which currentiy in civ 3 there is laughably little change in those eras (unlike smac). it should be possible by mod era to turn desert to forests (and vice versa) and irrigate tundras and mountains. that would increase playability of those eras (in multi player it'll start a new city building in areas where humans wouldnt build) and show the real changing importance and use of terrain and the sudden capacity of desert citys (like phonix or alberqurque) or siberian ones to grow thanks to tech imp.

[WarpStorm]

Have you been to Albequerque? It's still a desert. It's just been irrigated. Shut off the water and it'll dry up in a few weeks. Definitely not terraformed. I can't think of any deserts that have become forests now that I think about or lush tundra farmlands either.

We are not playing a sci-fi game. The level of terraforming you are talking about hasn't been invented yet.

My criteria is if you can pull the plug and the changes stay then it's terraformed.

Yes, in real life you can irrigate tundra, hills, and mountains. In the game, you can make it so that they can be irrigated now (I just checked) using the editor.

If you really want to you can make it so that deserts can be forested in the editor.

[statusperfect]

You forgot one thing warpstorm. Terraforming makes games and maps BOOOOOOOOORING. Everything covered with "the SUPER terrain".

[WarpStorm]

oops, double post.

[WarpStorm]

Good point. It lowers strategy. If every tile can be improved, why does it matter where you settle?

[Melboz99]

Ok, I never figured it out. You have irrigation, but no farming? How does that work? You cant tell me we don't have farms in Illinois!

[WarpStorm]

That's what you are irrigating, your farms. Your not just pouring the water on the ground for no reason.

[Zero]

civ I allowed hills to be irrigated, but u only got 2 food out of it. And you had to mine the hills to get +3 shield. o if you were irrigating hills you had just enough to support one population so it was absoultely pointless

[dovlvn]

Originally posted by statusperfect
You forgot one thing warpstorm. Terraforming makes games and maps BOOOOOOOOORING. Everything covered with "the SUPER terrain".

1 it'll take quite alot of time to terraform everything and not all terrains will be terraformable

2 mod nation turn all areas around them to boring subarbs so this just imitates reality
3 as it is a whole map covered in railroads (which most become by mod time aren't very interesting (the interest is focused in getting to the final victory over your rivals
4 it lowers a bit the pay for bad starting location just like in reality with sufficnt tech even a boiling desert can become attractive real estate

[dovlvn]

[SIZE=1] Originally posted by WarpStorm
. In the game, you can make it so that they can be irrigated now (I just checked) using the editor.

If you really want to you can make it so that deserts can be forested in the editor.

if its possible in the editor it should be made possible in reg game.you cant play much mod games online

[CiverDan]

my problem isnt with no terraforming (except for maybe forest/plains to grassland) its with global warming..but thats for another thread..

Anything else is either unrealistic (changing tundra to anything else would require a temperature change)..or extremely time consuming to complete (mountains to hills, etc...

[dovlvn]

Originally posted by WarpStorm
Have you been to Albequerque? It's still a desert. It's just been irrigated. Shut off the water and it'll dry up in a few weeks. Definitely not terraformed. I can't think of any deserts that have become forests now that I think about or lush tundra farmlands either.

We are not playing a sci-fi game. The level of terraforming you are talking about hasn't been invented yet.

My criteria is if you can pull the plug and the changes stay then it's terraformed.

Yes, in real life you can irrigate tundra, hills, and mountains.

by that definition nor are dutch terraforming terraforming
open the damm and its all flooded a changes require some maintenance

it is today possible to tera form like I proposed its just eco cost are too great

anyway civ3 ends in 2050 and just like it has sci fi spaceship and sdi so it can a 50 year leeway for improvements larger then possible today

[dovlvn]

Originally posted by WarpStorm
Good point. It lowers strategy. If every tile can be improved, why does it matter where you settle?

it matters where you settle a great deal for you'll have to wait between end of major settlement wave (which in most maps is around 200 ad) till such terraforming is possible hundreds of turns and most player want benefits from cities right away not too wait centuries. so place of settlement will still be important but such terraforming will lower a bit the damage from lousy start location

[Cyclotron]

Problems with terraforming:

1) It utterly destroys the Civ3 global warming system. Now, tiles that convert to less productive types aren't important anymore, because you can easily terraform them back. Global warming is no longer an issue at all.

2) It destroys the value of geographic determinism in the modern age. In all modern wars, geography plays an important role. If you can make all your forts on lone mountains around your cities, and level all the hills around your enemy's cities for maximum cavalry use, why even bother with terrain types in this era? Geography would become a non-issue.

3) It's historically false. There is a reason SMAC has this and Civ3 does not.

4) It messes up the resource system. What happens if I turn a mountain with iron into tundra? Now, the resource will be on a terrain not usual to it. That makes resources like gems, which were normally hard to get and needing colonies (plus the trade off: are gems worth some wasted cities around those mountains?), as easy to obtain as wheat. If you decide that resources perish when their terrain is changed (i.e. that elephants can't really live in tundra), then you have introduced an entirely new facet to Civ3: resource destruction.

It's not a bad idea in itself. When you make your own TBS game, condsider it. But to put it into Civ3 would have flown in the face of the base mechanics of the game and completely destroyed or altered many aspects of it. Sorry.

[CiverDan]

IMHO the civ3 system is an upgrade from civ2...I remember civ2 games where I would turn the Himalayas into hills. Add in the Airbase bug, and I would have size 30 cities where Mt. Everest is. Not very realistic.

[CiverDan]

BTW, what does this topic have to due w/PTW specifically anymore?

Lets move it to the general discussion

[statusperfect]

Originally posted by dovlvn
1 it'll take quite alot of time to terraform everything and not all terrains will be terraformable
2 mod nation turn all areas around them to boring subarbs so this just imitates reality
3 as it is a whole map covered in railroads (which most become by mod time aren't very interesting (the interest is focused in getting to the final victory over your rivals
4 it lowers a bit the pay for bad starting location just like in reality with sufficnt tech even a boiling desert can become attractive real estate

1. It still messes up the global warming.

2. Take a look at a map over of Russia. Noone lives in tundra... still we make people live in such places in Civ3.

3. I don't like the railroads either.

4. Bad start location? You SHOULD pay . That's the nature of the game.

[aahz_capone]

I agree that terraforming, at least the smac type, should be left out, but on a smaller scale, like removing hills (not mountains) is possible today and was possible in civ2 (unless I'm dreaming again). Those engineers are cool.

Still, I agree many railroads look buttugly, but the industrial world looks but ugly, so I can live with that. Or I just modify the railroads to make 'em look thinner, helps a damned lot! But the refirgeration/farm thing was cool. all You're bigass cities surounded buy hightech farms looks very neat.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by CiverDan
my problem isnt with no terraforming (except for maybe forest/plains to grassland) its with global warming..but thats for another thread..

Anything else is either unrealistic (changing tundra to anything else would require a temperature change)..or extremely time consuming to complete (mountains to hills, etc...

Yep this is exactly how I see it. Terraforming is too theoretical to implement. Then again, so is global warming as it is currently implemented. We simply don't know the effects on the planet if we terraformed or if we used a bunch of nukes. I'm hoping the reason Firaxis didn't include terraforming is due to this reason and not because the AI couldn't perform an admirable job using it. It's too bad they also didn't find a better penalty for using nukes than global warming. For God's sake, implement the SMAC UN so that we can effectively disable nukes!

[Athitis]

What about having ur workers digging rivers and turning lowering hills like one suggested before? This looks credible to me.....

[AlecTrevylan00]

but the ancient Egyptians drained Farla or something, the swamps, created a lake in what had been swamps+deserts, and created thousands of thousands of square miles of extremely fertile land

[Cyclotron]

Yes, that's irrigation.

[Ozymandias]

Would it be possible to have workers add RESOURCES as "improvements"?

Consider a historical "real-world" scenario which begins without horses in the Americas:

How about if a Civ with horses, colonizing the New World, has the ability to further "irrigate" already irrigated terrain -- with the result being a horse resource?

It seems a reasonable way to model history, and let the Iroquis get their UUs ...

-Oz

[Quasar1011]

In Civ 2, terraforming was also possible by using the editor. In some of my scenarios, I made a ship- the terraformer- that could change ocean tiles into swamps. Then, engineers could drain the swamp. I usually assigner the terraformer to the technology of architecture, which was available just after the time of the automobile. This obviously is a late-game feature. I'd like to see this ability in the Civ3 editor too.

[Skeeve]

Terraforming could have worked in civ 3, but it would have had to be balanced very carefully.

Yes, it would reduce the penalty for polluting, but if you make it tough to terraform you are paying a penalty anyway by needing scores of workers to do the job.

Secondly, it would have to be a late-game ability. Perhaps deep into the Modern Era.

Third, any major changes would take either a horde of workers or dozens of turns.
For example:

Tundra --> Desert --> Plains --> Grassland could conceivably take 120 turns for 1 worker - thus if you tried to get it all done at once, you'd need 120 workers - now that's a lot of workers! (or slaves).

Industrial civs, however, might have an unfair advantage if they could accomplish terraforming sooner.

Something to think about for Civ 4?

[Cyclotron]

I'm willing to give you guys the benefit of the doubt. I don't think terraforming could be added without screwing up the existing game. If I assume that a terraforming system could be implemented problem-free, I would still have a question: why? What is the reason for including the means to convert terrains? Does it add to the game, or is it just another thing you are able to do? Would the very ability of terraforming take away geographical/environmental determinism?

[Skeeve]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
I'm willing to give you guys the benefit of the doubt. I don't think terraforming could be added without screwing up the existing game. If I assume that a terraforming system could be implemented problem-free, I would still have a question: why? What is the reason for including the means to convert terrains? Does it add to the game, or is it just another thing you are able to do? Would the very ability of terraforming take away geographical/environmental determinism?

"Why?" is a great question. In fact, even as I write this response I am having trouble answering. I think there may be a pretty deep reason, but I'm not sure how to articulate it. But, I do know that it probably has something to do with the reason why we all like Civilization type games in the first place. Something about the power to do stuff - change or create worlds - that makes playing these games so fun.

I guess terraforming is just another extension of that feeling of power.

As for geographical/environmental determinism, I don't think terraforming will take too much away if it is awarded very near the end of the technology tree.
One will still have to be diligent about city placement and "land-wise" matters for the vast majority of the game. When terraforming comes, it's just icing on the cake.

- Skeeve

[Amadan]

One bit of terraforming that will work (but isn't really intended): allow hills to be forested.

Change the editor to allow hills to be forested, plant forests on a hill, then chop down the forest. You now have grassland, not hills.

(When I noticed this, I removed the 'Plant Forest' flag in the editor and changed it back to the way it was originally.)

[Traelin]

No no no no to Civ2-style terraforming. I could agree with the foresting of hills, but that's it.

And if global warming continues with its silly "terraforming", then tundra should change too. The only thing I've ever seen is forests being removed from tundra. Assuming that desertification would occur on such a global scale, tundra would be some of the first terrains that would change.