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Old June 16, 1999, 13:31   #1
Ecce Homo
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EnochF, thanks for starting this thread. I am going to insert a summary of the terrain suggeswtions from the OTHER thread (which is endless work to summarize).
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Old June 16, 1999, 13:36   #2
Kris Huysmans
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<h4>No 3d terrain !</h4>
I found the model of smac a good model. But a 3d terrain needs 3d units. And because this is a hell for scenariobuilders I think 2d(graphic) terrain is the best. But areas may well have an altitude.

<h4>A complet climat model</h4>
<h5>The water model</h5>
When you make a new mountain then the sealevel rises a little. So when you make much mountains then there will be a flood in the lower parts.
Also ice caps smelting must rise the sea level dramatically.
<h5>historic evolution</h5>
The climat has changed in the past. In Italy there was much more rain in 450BC then in 1999AD, some scientists think that this is the raison of the fall of the roman empire!
So civ3 couldn't be realistic without changing climats.
<h5>The effect of irrigation</h5>
When you irrigate then the area will become more salted over a time of 1000 years. And irrigation will make also the climat more dryer(because the salt and the higher) in that area, that explains also the fall of the city of Efese. But when one area becomes dryer then another area becomes more rainy(you can't destroy water). So maybe this could be also included in civ3.
<h5>How lesser jungle how more deserts</h5>
With the cut of the rain forest, the sahara has expanded and the bodem has lost his minerals over time. So maybe this could be also included in civ3.



<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Kris Huysmans (edited June 16, 1999).]</font>
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Old June 16, 1999, 13:55   #3
NotLikeTea
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Devolution of tiles:

It may be interesting to have unused tiles (not worked by a worker? Not in a city radius? I'd go for the second) degrade, and dissapear over time. If a ine is out in the winderness, sitting empty, it's not going to last millenia.

This raises an interesting situations, as I mentioned in the Technology thread. In the mid game (after discovering Archaeology), explorers could find squares that have been abandoned, and are no longer visible. "You come across the ruins of an ancient Greek farm", for example. This could add to science, or have some other effect.

Perhaps even cities that are wiped out could stay on the map as ruins for a while.
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Old June 16, 1999, 13:55   #4
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On another topic, I'd also like to see more climactic change, gradual, ad drastic. Deserts expand and recede. Swamps form and dry up. A major force on the change of nations.
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Old June 16, 1999, 14:46   #5
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This was originally posted in "OTHER", so hopefully it'll be more useful here:

----------------

Tile Improvements

As much as I liked the CivII system, I think CivIII should be a hybrid of CtP and SMAC approaches.

PW: I strongly support a system of PW like in CtP. It is far less hassle than using settlers or formers - a large reduction in micromanagement. Easily the most important consideration.


Terraforming: the idea itself is sort of silly in the context of the historical period in the game. In CivII, my engineers (who appeared with Explosives, a circa 1850 tech) would run out of useful things to do, so I'd just keep changing glaciers into grassland and moving my hills onto rivers to max out my cities. Aside from the micromanagement it involves, the idea that this kind of work can be done with anything short of WAY FAR future tech is ludicrous.

At the very least, provide us with some sort of convincing explanation: a "Weather Control" technology would be a nice start.

More importantly, even to the extent that terraforming is possible, try to make it appropriately scaled. Clearing forests doesn't take more than a large fire or an iron axe, and so should appear early. Changing a swamp into a desert mountain requires a lot more - make the tech (and PW reqs) reflect this.


Styles of improvements: CivII has a nice selection of both tile-based and city-based improvements (Harbors and Supermarkets for example). This should continue. I prefer more of everything, (I know - it is somewhat inconsistent to want more more more but have to do less micromanagement ) so I like both approaches. I also think there should be city improvements which *allow* certain TI, and vice versa. I.e. you could not build fisheries until you had built a harbor, or you could not build advanced mines until you had a railroad connecting to your city.


Transport TI: 2 beefs. One - I like the *graphics* for this in SMAC/Civ2 FAR MORE than in CtP: the ctp system is ugly. The representation of the transit type from the center of one square to the center of another should be uniform, not change abruptly at the square boundary.

Two - don't link them to special energy/trade/etc bonuses. It just provides an incentive to cover every square with railroads/maglevs/whatever. Nothing is uglier (well, maybe combining this flaw with the number One above - ecch). These TI graphics usually look quite cool when they are laid out in single stretches between cities, but when they cover the landscape like a fungus, they are hideous. Keep it simple and clean.

Sea Transport: Railroads in CivII allowed unlimited movement points, and given the scale of a turn (1-5 years by that point in the game) it makes sense. Airlifts also allowed for a reasonable approximation of the capabilities of the modern nation to rapidly reposition equipment and goods (although I'd prefer some sort of system with limit on total number of airlifts in a turn, but not tied to any one city - in Berlin, the Allies had a fixed number of aircraft, but they could fly them all into one city 'round the clock).

So why is sea power so damn slow? Solutions:

- Shipping - Allow sea transport TIs that scale with technology (sailing ships, modern cargo, and some future hydrofoil-style-thing, for examples). A player places (or builds, if you're going to use a "sea-former" type thing) a ferry/trade route which allows for fast-faster-instant (depending on type) transport from a city/port accross the ocean. Then, you just "drive" your tank across the ocean, although it could not attack and would have a defensive value of 0 if it got caught there. Just like a road or RR, it can be pillaged/pirated and destroyed, which would constitute an Act of War.

Sea power units are still needed to protect the routes and power project, as are transports to land equipment in other locations not served by regular trade routes, or if a player is cautious and wants the extra protection that Galleons/Transports provide. Different players could have their routes cross, but I imagine they would be rapidly cut in a war.

- Bridges/Tunnels - short one-square distances could be bridged over shallow water, a la the Japanese islands and the Florida Keyes; or tunnels in similar places like Chunnel. More advanced future-techs allow for longer bridges or under-sea tunnels.


Supply Crawlers in SMAC - generally a bad idea. Too much micromanagement, and too little relevance to Civ3/human history. They allowed for huge cities to be sure, but CtP has demonstrated that there are other ways to solve this.

Aside on Huge Cities in general: I'd rather see a more developed economic system that could mimic some of these effects, but at least the game should recognize that availability of food hasn't been a determinant of city size for over a thousand years. Cities create demand for food which is almost always met. Food can be interrupted to be sure, resulting in short-term famine and decline, but long-term city growth (even over the "mere" decades of a medieval-period Civ turn) depends more heavily on other factors like employment, social policy, war, disease, peace, and immigration. The demand for food that large cities or burgeoning rural populations create *drives* agricultural innovations, money economies, and cashcropping, not vice versa.


Upgrading of TI: older TI in a square should reduce the cost of an upgrade, but should not be a pre-req (i.e. having to build a road before building a railroad). Players should be able to plop down the newest available TIs immediately on unimproved land... they'll just cost more.


That's it for now...
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Old June 16, 1999, 14:56   #6
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Further ideas about terrian:

TIs should not be available simultaneously on all terrain types / cost the same. While it is easy to build fast roads across plains and grassland, it is more effort to build them through forests, and may take more advanced technology to do so through mountains (at least, for anything more than a footpath). Mines on hills should appear before mines on mountains; farms on plains before farms on deserts.

Terrain should limit military unit movement. Some units should get terrain bonuses, and others should have certain terrains be impassable.

- Mounted units and cannon, catapults, etc. should not be able to traverse mountains.
- Maybe a unit built in a city can get a movement ability based on the surrounding tiles of the city? Thus, if the city is adjacent to two swamps, the unit could get a swamp-bonus?

Maintanence costs for TIs? The farther an improvement is from a city, the more it should cost. If you want a Trans-Siberian Railroad, you would have to build lots of small towns along the way, or pay exorbitant maintanence costs, either of which seems totally reasonable.

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Old June 16, 1999, 15:22   #7
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A suggestion for roads and trade boni:

(1) Roads/railroads should not provide +1 trade
(2) However, the Superhighways city improvement should be implemented, which would provide +1 trade for every square with roads and thus encourage road-building near large, developed cities
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Old June 16, 1999, 15:34   #8
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How does terrain improvement work in SMAC?
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Old June 16, 1999, 15:37   #9
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The most awfull things of civ2 are in my opinion:
SuperMarkt and Superhighways I realy hate the idea that you must build improvements to use title improvements. This works very limiting on your strategy because the building of more smaller cities is then a realy idiot strategy because you need to pay the high costs of the improvements.

Also don't make the same fault of smac to make much science and money possible without Free Market because this makes Free Market a realy bad choice with all its penaties.

I don't know of puplic works is a good idea because clicking buttons and changing parameters isn't not so funny as moving your settlers and give them orders. I found well that settlers should work faster and just like smac don't need food.


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Old June 16, 1999, 16:13   #10
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Here is some material from the OTHER thread.

ALTITUDE
for the terrain. JT

NAMING TERRAIN FEATURES
The human (or the computer) should name geographical locations. Widowmaker

Take the starting positions of the Civ's into account, so we're likely to get a Nile River in Egypt, or the Andes Mountains near the Incas. the Octopus

Who is the first to discover a region should be the one to name it. kmj

MORE EMPHASIS ON RIVERS
*Increase trade depending on the number of cities upstream
*Increase aqueduct, sewage system and power plant effect
*Travel bonus only when entering the river from a city. Crossing the river should take time.
*Armies should be vulnerable when crossing rivers.
*borders should conform to the rivers. russellw

BETTER RESOURCE SEED
Something more random, where resources are not evenly ”lined up”. Rathenn

NATURAL EVENTS
What to do about real earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, land creation/destruction, and even continental drift? NotLikeTea

Natural conditions like earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, hurricanes/monsoons and tornados could be incorporated into the game. Floods cause food losses, volcanoes cause population and, perhaps, other losses, earthquakes cause improvement and/or productivity losses.

Volcanoes and flood prone rivers could provide extraordinary production bonuses. Fault lines could be especially rich in super oil/gas fields. Technology and/or improvements could help to get these bonuses or reduce the danger of bad occurences. Bird

ALTERNATIVE REWARD
Instead of rewards like the Throne Room, a special resource could be found outside a city. Sieve Too
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Old June 16, 1999, 16:42   #11
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I agree that moving settlers/formers around is fun in the beginning of the game when you've only got 4 or 5 of them. But when you have 30 settlers, and the process has become mindless, public works are a much better option.

I also think that the Superhighways improvement (road = +1 trade) suffers the same aesthetic problem: an incentive for a player to cover every tile with roads, which is fairly ugly. I certainly don't want a repeat of Civ1, where everything was covered by that ugly black lattice-work of RR.

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Old June 16, 1999, 16:42   #12
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Whatever you do, make sure that the various different types of tiles LOOK DIFFERENT AND CAN BE EASILY DISTINGUISHED FROM EACH OTHER. In Civ2, at a glance I could tell what surrounded a possible city site. That is convenient. Avoid at all costs terrain that looks the same (like different forests in Colonization - I couldn't tell what was what without clicking on each one). I have heard similar complaints about SMAC.

Though I am not sure this is a good idea, I will throw it out there. Perhaps we can have two different types of forest. There would be regular forest (like normal) and less valuable "scrub" forest. Some wooded areas are much more useful than others.

And DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT have unlimited movement from railroads. They make ground units way too powerful. At the end of the game, all you need are a bunch of howitzers and a railway connection and the enemy is erased in one turn. At least make me take several turns to conquer an entire continent. Otherwise, though it may be realistic to blitzkreig an unprepared enemy in a one year turn, it is just too easy from a gameplay perspective (it's not fun).

Also, consider increasing the speed of ships but giving them a movement penalty when they sail into uncharted ocean squares. Ships can now be fast but exploration is still slow, which is fine by me.
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Old June 16, 1999, 16:47   #13
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Almost forgot. Like SMAC, have special terrain squares that represent NATURAL wonders on the world. The Sahara Desert, the Grand Canyon, the Nile and Amazon Rivers, Mt. Everest/Himalayas, the Marinas Trench and many more that elude me at the moment can all be represented. These squares could provide bonuses (or not) and perhaps attract tourism for some cash if you have the wonder inside your borders (perferrably inside a city radius). Plus, if done right, they would look cool.
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Old June 16, 1999, 16:59   #14
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Yeah, I've been trying to brainstorm the natural landmarks of the planet... I'd gotten as far as the Sahara, the Amazonian Rain Forest, the Himalayas and the North and South Pole, but then I just shrugged and started surfing world map sites. I agree with all those suggestions, except maybe the Grand Canyon, because in global terms it's no more than a single square. It'd qualify for a "natural wonder," as discussed in my Wonders thread (it's on version 2.0 and gathering dust, everybody, go visit!), but I don't know about a geographical landmark. Remember, in SMAC, these were features that took up anywhere from ten to twenty squares.

Maybe the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley, um, the Great Barrier Reef perhaps... maybe there could be bonuses and earthquake dangers for the edges of continental plates, but I'd hate to be the programmer in charge of a Random Continental Plate Generator.
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Old June 16, 1999, 17:24   #15
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Even if we do not have real plate tectonics (and I doubt we will), some geological realism would be nice.

If the game has faults and volcanoes, at least place them in a reasonable fashion, along the coasts of continents, or in the middle of oceans (Mid Atlantic Ridge (Hrm.. another landmark?)), for example.
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Old June 16, 1999, 17:31   #16
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Wheathin: Finding roads "ugly," it seems to me, is a lousy reason for disallowing any trade boni for roads. I personally think that filling up city radii with roads fairly well simulates urban sprawl, at least visually. It seems inkeeping with the modern era, and it conforms to modern maps, whose emphasis is often on roads. If, however, you are complaining about landscapes cluttered with railroads, I doubt that will be a problem because railroads will have no inherent advantages over roads as far as boosting trade in a square.

More Emphasis on Rivers: I might well expand this to become More Rivers. The way I picture it now, the first step of the map generator would be to generate various interconnected river systems, then generate continents and mountain ranges based on that, then design the rest of the interior terrain: forests, deserts, plains, that sort of thing.

Eggman: If not unlimited movement on railroads, how about unlimited movement on maglevs? This would push all-powerful ground units into the near future, well into the modern age. It would also mean that any enemy civilization you are able to assault with your howitzers would necessarily be a formidable one, probably with nuclear deterrence on its side.
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Old June 16, 1999, 19:15   #17
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Couple of things about sea transport and railroads/roads effects:
Sea Transport relative to land transport has to be changed in a couple of ways. As others have mentioned, it should be faster, at least for cargo, than anything on land until MagLevs or Modern Railroads (which are 2-3 times faster than the original 19th century RRs for moving bulk freight). Maybe once you've established a Sea Lane (trade route?) between two points Cargo travel (including passengers) would be 2x or 3x regular sea movement rate?
Also, and more important over the bulk of the period of the game, sea ships or river boats were the ONLY way to ship bulk goods before the railroad. No type of road with animal-drawn wagons on it could ship more than a few tons at a time for a 100 miles or so. Even early ships/boats allows a few men to sail/row/pole 10-50 tons for long distances. This means that Food, Coal, Iron, and similar bulk goods, can only be shipped to a city by water before railroads.
Which takes me to terrain: why not a Head of Navigation icon (small falls) on a river? Any city between the icon and the sea gets benefit of boat/sea transport (trade in bulk goods, food imports, etc) while above that, the river provides only defense. Advances like Canal Building would allow you to 'extend' the Head of Navigation later in the game.
Realistically, railroads and improved (all weather, hard surface) roads should extend the city radius, and allow the city to draw goodies from further away than it could with carts over dirt tracks. Graphically, this would lead to the ugly grid of tracks all around the city. One possibility would be to make the original building of railroads very expensive (they were the first Major Economic Projects that required extensive public and governmental financing- dominated 19th century stock markets) so that grids would be really costly to build. After Concrete/Macadam (improved) roads are developed, instead of a grid you could build a (Public Works) Hinterland or Suburbia improvement on a tile within the city radius. This could use a better-looking graphic to represent an area connected to the city by good roads, light rail, etc and feeding said city with resources. Hinterland could be built anywhere along the railroad/MagLev or navigable river, even outside the 'formal' city radius, and still feed resources to a (selected) city or group of cities.
This would give us the effects of the better transportation, a better choice of graphics, and a way to get more resources from further away without having to build new cities everywhere late in the game.
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Old June 16, 1999, 19:31   #18
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What if RR's allowed unlimited movement, but only inside your own borders? It's always seems odd that the Romans would allow my tanks to use their rail system for my invasions

I've captured 20+ cities in CivII in one turn by connecting their RR to mine, and moving in the forces. Blam.
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Old June 16, 1999, 19:35   #19
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An alternative to a fixed city radius
Citizens can work on any squares that are two movement points or less away from the city. Production will however be penalized for any square that is further from the city than 1/3 movement points - the double after discovery of Automobile.
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Old June 16, 1999, 21:12   #20
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My problem with railroads isn't realism. My problem is that no matter how strong an enemy you are facing, if you can hit the majority or all of their cities using their rail system, it doesn't matter if they have the largest army in the world with a huge nuclear arsenal. All I have to do is build an overwhelming number of howitzers (I need only a minimum of other units - Armor? Who needs armor?) and then blitz them. Spies help a lot. By the time they get a chance to react, they don't exist. Game over, man. And I did it using a completely unbalanced military of all offensive units. My casulties are nil.

The unlimited movement using railroads (or maglevs, depending) while inside your own borders could work. But you would have to deal with the loopole of capturing an enemy city (effectively putting it inside your border) and then getting the infinite movement bonus from those recently captured railroads.

Perhaps movement over railroads could be infinite but combat movement isn't. The armor unit can move 100 squares using the railroad, but if it moves over, say, six (3 times an arbitrary multiplier of 2), it cannot attack (except to occupy cities, which should be free).

Of course, if ground units should be able to move infinite squares, airplanes should be able to move an infinite number of squares to redeploy (not attack).
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Old June 16, 1999, 21:18   #21
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Some of these are dupes of other's comments so just take them as votes for "what they said".

Generally I want to see more dynamic game that better portrays the historic rise and fall of civilizations over time. Evolution and revolution. Terrain and climate have had major influence on the civs over time and that should be reflected in Civ3, much more than in Civ2. On the other hand, if it something serves no useful purpose in making Civ3 a better, more fun game then it shouldn't be included. Things I think are important:

· Dynamic maps - changes in the map during the game, rivers change course, new special resources found, old specials "peter out", gradually wetter/dryer areas, changes due to influence of play.
· Evolution in climate - whole planet (or at least regions) shifts to wetter, drier, warmer, colder, gradual change over hundreds of years.

- Geologically reasonable maps. Civ2 (and most others) map generation routines suffer from too little realism and too much random terrain. Compare the Earth maps to anything that the map generator will produce. Desert just doesn't occur in little 1-2 square patches all over the map for instance. Mountains should generally occur in chains defining a plate boundary. Most mountain chains will form boundaries between terrain types--forest on one side, plains on the other; desert on one side and jungle on the other. Sure exceptions exist in the real world and some randomness should be present, but not to the degree currently present. It also seems incapable of producing really large continents that don't snake and twist all over the map. Sure, that should be one result, but all the time?

· Include major (named) terrain features with unique benefits or penalties, like those in SMAC. Examples: Volcanoes, Canyon, an exceptional mountain range, Ice / glacier.

· 3 dimensional maps in the sense implemented in SMAC so that altitude matters

Climate/geographic "random" events. There should be a mix of favorable and unfavorable events. Most of the disasters should be preventable or lessened by something that the player can do, but decided not to do. Not intended to be exhaustive, sample:
· Famine. Ranges from a single turn to several consecutive with loss of food production in the effected area from 1 unit per square to all food production lost. Also causes increased unhappiness. Impact lessened in a square if irrigated or farmland. Further lessened if supermarket present (implied ability to efficiently move food among cities.)
· Flood. Impact similar to fire, but only if city is built on or adjacent to a river, ocean or lake square. Impact lessened by engineering advance, city walls improvement, sewers improvement.
· Epidemic. Decreases population in affected area which could span multiple civilizations. Range from minor to severe. Chances increased by city size. Chances and impact lessened by hospital improvement, medicine and sanitation advances. Eliminate with Cure for Cancer (or equivalent)?
· Mine/oil well failure. Opposite of a strike, an existing special resource becomes exhausted and/or produces at a much decreased rate.
· Bumper crop. Opposite of famine--one to several turns of increased food production in one or more cities, or an entire area. Increased chances if aqueduct, irrigation, and/or farmland present.
· Gold/silver/coal/iron/uranium strike. Random event in which a hill or mountain within a city radius acquires one of the special resources. Chances increased by the presence of mine or settler/engineer in the process of making a mine in square.
· Oil discovery. Random event where the oil special resource is added to any non-mountain square within a city radius. Increased chance for discovery in any square adjacent to a pre-existing oil resource.
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Old June 16, 1999, 23:53   #22
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Enoch: while suburbs do expand, they rarely stretch for 200 miles from the core of the city, which is what the city-radius represents. It is not just the greater metro area, it is all the surrounding tens and hundreds of miles of forests, farms, mountains, etc... and those certainly don't have the kinds of highways you find in the city.

But, more importantly, they can be abstracted out. It shouldn't be necessary to cover the map with ugly road tiles... it ruins the aestheic experience of the game.

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Old June 17, 1999, 00:33   #23
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TERRAIN & TERRAIN IMPROVEMENTS (ver 1.0): Hosted by EnochF
Okay, there's been some talk about this, both in the General/Suggestions section and occasionally (and improperly, I might add) in this forum itself. And since I've got a fairly small workload, I think I can handle it.

The subject of Terrain includes:
* types of terrain to be used
* suggestions for new types of terrain
* levels of detail for such landscapes as mountain ranges, oceans, deserts, hills and forests
* military aspects of terrain (defense bonuses, whether horses can traverse mountains, etc.)
* how air and space should be differentiated from ground and each other
* on which types of terrain cities can be built

Then there's Terrain Improvements:
* what terrain improvements should be used
* suggestions for new terrain improvements
* how they should be built, by public works or engineers
* how long it takes to build them
* limitations by terrain (no mines on grassland, etc.)
* whether roads differ significantly from other terrain improvements
* whether railroads should offer unlimited movement

That sort of thing. As with all other threads, this one is going to end up crossing over to other threads. For example, a vote for "listening posts" is a vote for the "fog of war" option, which crops up occasionally in the Radical Ideas and Other threads. In the meantime, though, I expect everybody's got an opinion or two to add, and I'll be collecting them all for the next round of suggestions.
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Old June 17, 1999, 01:13   #24
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I figured I'd better chime in before this got too full to keep up.
My Terrain/TI wish List:
(* means very important to me)

* A round planet.

* Keep the square/diamond tiles. I know there have been discussions on hexes and other tile markers, but I think squares are best. I don't remember who said it, but he pointed out that we all have the 1-9 keypad on our 'puters, and from a player's standpoint ease of use is paramount. Now this would be difficult with a round world, but I have 2 ideas. One is to have 2 roughly circular maps made with standard squares laid flat, each representing 1 hemisphere. When you move off of one you will appear on the other. The other would be akin to a "strobe-globe", where each tile is laid on the surface of the sphere. The result would be that no tile would be on the exact same plane (except the one on the other side of the globe). Centering on the moving unit it would appear that the unit is on a flat surface with the rest of the world bending away slightly from the center. Personally I don't know if this will be feasible, or even work, but I thought I'd try anyway.

All roads add a % bonus to all goods from worked tiles. Basic roads about +20%, advanced roads, railroads, future ?, get higher bonus. The % decimal bonuses are added together when the total city output is figured in the city interface.

No raised land like SMAC, it was a pain; keep the civ2/CtP tiles.

During world generation, have the computer generate a tectonic plate map. The computer will then base mountain ranges, volcanic activity, windward & leeward climates, etc. on tihs. Also have the terrain based on the hot forest, hot desert, cold forest, cold desert latitudes. The player will not get to see tectonic map until appropriate tech is developed, and maybe not even then (by then the player should be able to figure it out by himself w/o the programmers adding yet another map screen).

Sources in the game (iron, coal, uranium, wood, oil, others). To keep it simple if the player has the resource anywhere in his empire and/or claimed borders you can utilize it in all your cities (this may be transport dependent; i.e. no connecting roads or ship access=no can use in those cities), if not must trade for or conquer land. Lack of these resources may inhibit your tech research. Random events may cause such sources to be used up or discovered in your borders.

*People get unhappy when pollution is in/near city radius. Nuclear pollution=x2 unhappiness.

*Nuke pollution takes longer to clean. Only engineers(or better) may clean. Fallout may cause nuke pollution downwind of detonation point. Nuclear pollution & fallout can lower population & population growth for x# of turns. Nukes should damage terrain.

*All tile construction costs $$, which varies per govt. type and freedom levels.

*New functions: Build canal, upgrade forts(fort, keep, fortress, castle), upgrade coastal/AA defenses, Transform terrain gives you a possible list of things to terraform to with approx. times.

No 'zoom-out' like SMAC that shows the rises in land (thus where land is in black squares). Need a better zoom-out like civI which was easy to read

Some tile changes would require maintenance costs (castles, AA batteries)

*Forts on a coast can be built with sea defenses. Tile improvement: AA def. Can also be built into forts & upgraded.

Weather conditions for random events & in random combat events (I'll explain later).

*Grasslands,plains, hills, can ALWAYS be irrigated UNLESS they are adjacent (and maybe for a couple extra tiles distant) to the leeward side of a mountain range. River squares can always be irrigated. Desert, tundra, cannot be irrigated unless there is a river in the tile square, contains a resource suitable for irrigation (oasis), or the civ has advanced enough tech & infrastructure to pump in water.

Aqueduct as tile improvement: Mountain squares w/ aqueduct TI's generate +1 food.

+1 shield from jungles/swamp (they DO have trees, after all)

*TI: Naval base. Extends range of ships (if used). Ship units may move into, only on islands or coastline (naturally). Improved repair rates for ships. Land, air, and sea bases may be built on same tile.

Environmentalism tech adds +1 trade to wilderness squares (mountain, jungle, swamps, tundra)/forests with roads in them.

Windward Mountain/hill slopes are forested; +1 food and +1 shield. New TI's: Mountain side, mountain pass (no move/damage penalty if move from one particular direction to another)

*Extreme climates damage units. I went over this more throughly in another thread, but the gist is this; Some units (chariots, tanks, etc.) may not enter (swamp, mountain w/o roads/passes). Other units take damage as they move through (bogged down, disease, exposure,etc.) Some special units would be immune in specific terrain (alpine in mountains, tundra, marines in jungle/swamp). The special units would also be immune to movement penalties, but would not get a road multiplier. Some immune to all climates (partisan, explorer). Bases, cities protect against extreme climates.

*While all civs may use enemy roads, they may not use enemy railroads or better(maglevs). Non- combat units may use peaceful rr's; all units may use allied. Rails may be captured. The last civ's combat unit to move through owns, if at war. Perhaps color-code rails to civs for easy identification?

**FIN**

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Theben (edited June 17, 1999).]</font>
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Old June 17, 1999, 02:43   #25
Alexander's Horse
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I don't think the city square should produce anything. Reason? I find it really annoying having to site my city on a particular square when the less suitable one next to it would give a better city radius.

Also should cities get defence bonuses from the terrain? I think not. Most cities are built on plains, near rivers or the sea. Can't think of many in the ancient or modern period which actually gained defence advantages from their location (as opposed to castles or forts, which are a very different story).

I had a long lunch today so perhaps that's why I can't think of any............................


"I drink therefore I am."
Australian proverb.

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Alexander's Horse (edited June 17, 1999).]</font>
 
Old June 17, 1999, 04:18   #26
Kris Huysmans
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New terrain improvement:

Animal farm = +1 food and +1 trade when you have discoverd "Fast Food" and have a Free Market SE choice.

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Old June 17, 1999, 04:31   #27
EnochF
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Animal farm?

All suggestions are equal. But some suggestions are less equal than others.
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Old June 17, 1999, 08:48   #28
Kris Huysmans
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I mean a pig farm or a chicken farm or something. And the pigs are more equal then the chickens.
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Old June 17, 1999, 09:23   #29
Eggman
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Another solution for the infinite railroad assault: sabotage the railroads. When a city is captured, there could be an automatic chance that the railroads leading to other cities are instantly destroyed (by partisans or retreating troops). That should slow them down and is realistic to boot.

As a corollary to that idea, if the railroad crosses a river, there should be a chance that the partisans destroy both the railroad AND the road. Blow up the bridge, if you will. That will really slow them down.

And cities do gain defensive bonuses from their terrain in real life. The city of Quebec was almost impossible to take because it was built on the high ground. The only time it was ever captured was because the British general duped the French commander to bring his troops outside of the walls.
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Old June 17, 1999, 11:26   #30
NotLikeTea
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Interesting.. maybe partisans should be allowed to pillage for no movement cost on their first turn of automatic creation?
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