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

[Gordon the Whale]

Here is an idea that developed in the Economics thread, but really belonged here, since it's about TI's. It's a little like the farm idea I posted above, but much more complete. Here are the basic components as I see them (anybody else who contributed on that thread, please correct me.)

1) Villages are the primary method of gathering resources. They are the only place to put "average" people, i.e. not specialists. However, they exist externally to the city, on the surrounding squares. They gather the materials from the square they sit on and nowhere else.

2) Cities contain only specialists. These include scientists, entertainers, and workers. (Maybe also merchants?) Workers produce Industry, which is used to process the resources harvested in the countryside.

3) Villages contain the agrarian population. If they are destroyed by an invading army, so is the population contained.

4) The food production from a tile must be approximately twice that in CivX, because Specialists (i.e. city dwellers) are now necessary from the beginning, and must be supported.

5) Villages would be built by a "Public Works" type system, rather than by a unit. They could be autobuilt by the AI or queued by the player.

I believe that is the basic idea, upon which all in favor of the idea at all are agreed. (Again, correct me) Here are additional suggestions:

1) Villages don't count toward the maximum people in the city from Aqueducts, etc.

2) Villages don't count towards any particular city, but are shared within a region. Obviously, this would require regions.

3) Villages are divided into at least two types, mining and farming. Each type will act differently, producing either more food or more resources. A farming village on a forest square could become a logging village.

4) Villages may increase in size beyond 1. When they do so, their maximum production increases, but with diminishing returns (size 2 doesn't produce double what size 1 does.)

5) The second point of size (and any more) may be of a different type, i.e., a size 1 farming village becomes a size 2 farming/mining village.

6) When a village reaches a certain size (3? 4?), it becomes a city on its own.

7) Villages must be built in a square adjacent to either the city or another village.

8) The maximum distance from the main city would be dependant upon the technology level, or perhaps whether it is linked by road, railroad, etc.


Now here are some I have come up with that are new:

1) Allow the farmers/miners/loggers to come into the city in times of war. The villages could still be destroyed, but those are quicker to build than population. The population would be saved, but the extra people in the city would contribute to disease, and you wouldn't be getting any resources from the land.

2) What about Ocean squares? It doesn't make sense to build Villages in the Ocean. 2 options I see, which could work in conjunction: Cities with Harbors may make Fisherman specialists, which each allow one Ocean square to be harvested, and coastal Villages would have the option to be a Fishing Village, which uses none of it's own square, but harvests out of an ocean square. Under idea 5, this could be combined with a mining or farming village.

3) As an extension of idea 6 above: This is the ONLY way to make a new city until the discovery of a certain advance, which allows settlers. A Settled City (Colony) starts its own region, while Grown Cities belong to the same region as the Village they grow from. This would take the necessity of production away from expansion, since one wouldn't need to necessarily build cities with settlers. There would also have to be a way to split regions… Maybe by building a provincial capital, you would get to select the borders of a new region.

I think I will also post this to Radical Ideas, since it destroys the concept of City Radii, changes the function of Cities, and adds something completely new.

[Flavor Dave]

I skimmed, I didn't read, so maybe I missed it, but what is the purpose of elevated plains?

Oh, I know realism. Well, if you want realism, play two...

Wait, I won't go there. Elevated plains actually could enhance the game, by allowing very defensible cities to grow. You get the food AND the defense bonus in these squares. I like the idea, it adds to my palette of choices.

My suggestion, tho, is to come up with the simplest solution. Mountains never have special resources except iron and gold (I think), and mountains only have grapes and coal (right?). Why not add some kind of elevated plains--it would look kinda like the plain wheat tile.

[Flavor Dave]

sorry, double post
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Flavor Dave (edited July 30, 1999).]</font>

[ember]

Gordon, I have a couple clarifications and extensions to add.

1) resources and food are generated in villages, any 'trade' or 'idustry' produced in them is used by the villages to support themselves. Only extra food and reosurces are shiped out.

2) cities produce all useable trade and industry. Varisu specialist types, the normals +laboureres to start and more types later.

3) villages are constructed without resource cost. It takes the same time as a unit fortifying to move or create a village. All expenses of this are covered by the resources not generated during the move. This allows you to ship the villagers back in to your cities.

4) costal villages. Put the icon for the village on the shore, but in the costal square. The pop is counted as being there, and can be killed by bombard capable ships. Oil platforms actually house their pop in the open ocean, this is the only time that deep ocean squares are harvested up to modern times. ( I don't see why you can harvest from deep ocean squares, when your treiems can't even go there...)

5) no need to deferentiate vilage types. Use regular tile improvments, like farms and mines.

6) settlers could be used to start remote villages without using them up (colonies on nearrby islands, etc. Still a distance limit, and only costal to start.

Other points:

a) terrain types that cities becomes even more imoprtant. they don't generate resources, but different terrain types would give growth and trade bonuses, espicially river, and costal.

b) I have proposed that food affects happiness, which affects gowth, not directly.
This removes the potential cheese of puting next to all your citizens on farms to boost growth. It would work a bit, but with highly diminishing returns...

c) At the start only one city per region, but as tech advances you get to select which ones go in. Regions would then split the villages according to the closest city. You could move the border if you wanted, but there is a max # of squares within the border depending on tech.

d) I think that vilalges should never be able to grow into cities without direct intevention ( a setler, which represents an infusion of infrastructure) spontanteous cities would be bad, because you would suddenly have a shift in available resources and loss of stratigc control.

That's all for now...

------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[Monk]

As long as desert squares aren't as easy to cross. Also, there gotta be Dunes (hard desert), Savannah and different kinds of forests like needle trees, rainforests etc. It looks silly with those Civ2 forests near Equator

[Gordon the Whale]

That would largely be solved by the LTMV system. A traditional Civ forest would be Temperate, and probably with moderate moisture. That wouldn't happen near the equator, because everything would be hot. You'd get rainforest where it was wet.

Savanna is a harder issue. That's halfway between forest and grass, but not really in a transitional zone. Adding another otion to ANY of the four parameters would be bad, because it would make the number of possibilities skyrocket. I'd have to say that savanna would be represented by grass in Civ3, because that is closer to the biome concerned.

I believe it has been noted elsewhere that the x10 system, if adopted, would make movement more realistic. If an standard, infantry unit has movement 10, then a plain costs 10 to move across. Make other landforms cost very much more, and have movement work as a build, so that if a Hot, Arid, Barren Plain costs 40 to move across, that means 4 turns. Also mentioned were harsh squares damaging units not specially equipped for them (for instance, camels can cross desert without penalty). Harsh desert could be either a special "resource" tile, or the assumed nature of Hot/Arid/Barren. Typical deserts have plants, and could be Hot/Arid/Grass.

[ember]

Terrain:

First step is determine the form of the terrain. Form never changes during the course of the game.
These are:
Deep ocean
Ocean shelf
Glacier
Mountain.

Flat
Hills
Major Rivers

Navigable rivers cannot be in hills, so to keep things simple they will be their own landform. Otherwise it is basically the same as flat.
Flat terrain gives a food bonus, hills have a defensive bonus and allow mines.

Vegitation:
Vegitation can only be applyed to the last 3 landforms. The first 4 do not support vegitation types.


Plains
Grassland
Taiga (evergreen forest)
Boreal forest
rain Forest
tundra
desert
swamp

Combinations to note:
hill + grasland = plateau
river + grassland = flood planes, the most fertile standard terrain type.
flat + grassland = no irrigation reguired.
taiga + hills = shield, like the canadian shield or siberia. This is the best resource producing terrain.
swamp + hills, acts as fresh water lakes, these cannot be changed to anything else. (just as a place keeping way of proraming it)

Landform cannot be changed by your engineers.
vegitation can.
Allowable changes:
Grassland <--> Boreal Forest
Taiga <--> plains
swamp --> grassland
jungle --> plains
Irrigated desert acts like plains.
Irrigated plains acts like grassland.
tundra can't be changed to anything else.

Terraforming model.
Economic TI's are auto built by enginners in cities. A former type unit is fortified in a city. While it is there, it can automatically build farms and mines as well as changes the veggitation in friendly squares. You can change the terrain view mode 't', and click on squares to set their priority and change prefered. If villages are used, can only do squares surrounding friendly villages and cities. Squares do not have to be near the city the engineer is in, just connected by roads, or in the same region.

Engineers outside of cities act like normal civX, but they cannot build farms/mines. (to prevent building away from your pop centres). When acting this way they can build paths (along with most millitary units) as well as Roads, highways and RR, and military TI's

Nothing can bu built on deep ocean/glaciers.

military TI's:

bases act as both fortress and airbase, costal bases can have ships enter as well. Units can be 'deployed' to bases.
forts act as a scout unit and stop the first enemy unit to step on it. also offer some defense bonus.
sonar acts as a fort in the water.

economic TI's:
Farms / modern farms, built on any plains, grassland or desert.
irrigation, built on desert or plains, makes it act as the next stage better, whithout changing it.
mines / modern mines, built on any hills or mountains. Farms can also be built if it is a grassland/plains square.
fisheries can only be built in coneinental shelf, which usueally only extends one square from land, but some times more.

transport TI's:
Paths, built by and most military units as well, MP/2 move
roads, MP/4 move, and give a trade bonus (and allow resource sharing) when connectig cities.
Highways, modern roads, MP/8 move, more resource sharing.
Rail-roads, MP/8, take 50% longer than highways to build, but enemy units act as if on path (or road?) when using.
Tunnels, connect two squares of land under a shallow ocean square. Allows land units to cross water.
Cannal, connect two ocean squares over flat land. Can connect a city on a river to the sea if 1 square away.
When a unit enters a tunnel/cannal it uses 1 full MP and goes diredtly to the other side, units cannot rest in a tunnel/cannal. Both can only be used by the owner. Neither can be pillaged by sea units.
A tunnel is built by having an engineer on each end of the desired location. Both then build the tunnel. To use you press a key.


------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[Theben]

Ember,
Niicce. I like it. However, I must insist that desert cannot be irrigated unless it has a river or you have modern irrigation techniques that allow water to be pumped over vast distances.
Gordon,
A forest wouldn't need 100 years to be built. It would take a few years to plants, and then maybe 20-40 to grow to a decent size.
Now we can add young, middle & old growth forests to this concoction?
I also oppose having villages grow into cities. Realistic yes, but a micromanaging nightmare.

I think I've got a workable minefield idea. Taking the "terrain causing damage to units" idea, simply state that a mined tile is equivalent to a wilderness/mountain type square, and that no unit has immunity to it. These could be placed on land, water, or space with the same basic effect. Any military unit or engineer can lay/sweep mines. The civ who laid the mines and any allies take 1/2 damage when moving through. They also cause unhappiness when in a city radius.
That's it.

[FinnishGuy]

Hey minefields as terrain improvements, that's a good idea! But I don't think they should cause unhappiness during wartime.

[mindlace]

3d + LVTM
A square is comprised of a 3x3 grid where each point on the grid has an individual Z (altitude) value for rendering purposes.

one square:

OOO
OOO
OOO

Landform is the average of Z. I recommend 3 more landform types: Shelf, basin, and trench- for underwater terrain.

Temperature and Moisture, OTOH, are computed on a rendered-square basis. This means that the vegetation graphics vary _within_ a tile.
(as a tangent, I suggest a moisture value of "underwater". This is not satisfied by the new Landform value because some subsquares will be rivers.)

Advantages: very natural looking terrain. The vegetation sprites could be very simple (forest=1 tree, for example)
River navigation now becomes simple: If a river is 2 subsquares wide, a boat may navigate it.

Vegetation underwater should be simple: 'shelf' level terrain has a high enough temperature to support kelp, basin perhaps fish, and trench, nothing. Since the moisture value is constant (underwater) it reduces variables a lot.

TI consequences
Mines could be built anywhere the landform type was hill or mountain.

Farms, however, would require that the square be leveled. You could raise or lower to level, depending on what temperature you wanted. Raise would make the 3x3 grid level with it's current highest vertex, lower would make it level with the lowest vertex.

Another appearance advantage is that roads would level out the rendering squares they crossed:

N/S   E/W  NW/SE  NE/SW
O|O   OOO   \OO    OO/
O|O   ---   O\O    O/O
O|O   OOO   OO\    /OO

Rivers, though they would have different sprites, would look similar to roads from the 3d perspective.

~mindlace

[Metamorph]

I seem to be on an abstraction kick, so forgive me if I stride off on a tangent.

I've always found it immensely peculiar how civlike games treat tiles so absolutely. That there tile is either a *grassland* or a *plains*. The entire zone, however many square miles, functions uniformly throughout it in a precise manner, producing the exact same quantities of raw materials as, say, that grasslands tile over yonder -- and exactly twice as much as the plains tile sitting right next to it. No more; no less.

If you have an engineer etc. transform that land, he works on it for years and years (turns and turns )... then suddenly one day, magically and mystically, the entire area is transmogrified into an entirely different type of area, and produces an entirely different set of resources with the appropriate quantity.

Bizarre! Why must tiles be so uniform? Why must every grassland always produce exactly twice the food of every forest or plains? There is no differential, no curvature. Either it's grass, or it's not grass.

I propose instead that we approach tile production from the other extreme. Each tile can produce X food, Y shields, Z gold, or whatever you want them to produce; that's not important now (I love being abstract ). The random world generator assigns production quantities to various tiles, grouping tiles of high/low production of various resources together (the same as it does now, only based on the numbers, not on the "tile type"). Naturally there will be proportionality limits; if a tile produces a lot of food, for example, it can't produce quite as much shield or gold or whatever.

Then the game goes back and says well gosh, look, this tile produces lots of food and very little of anything else. So I'll use a grassland tile icon to represent the general area, since that's pretty much what most of the area looks like. When the user holds the mouse over the tile, a corner of the display window will indicate what that tile's exact production is. But that's only for number-crunching. The layman can simply point and go, "Mmm, look, grassland. Good spot for new city. Lots of food."

If an engineer works the land, and is say assigned to improve its shield output, he'll slowly increase that tile's +shield, and reduce its +food. If left there for long enough, the shield output will equal the food output, and the tile will appear as a plains. If left for longer, it becomes a forest. Or whatever.

Tiles that produce decent shields and gold and little food look like hills. Tiles that produce lots of shield and little else look like forests. Tiles that don't produce a god damn thing will be desert or tundra. If an engineer is assigned to work on a desert and irrigate it (i.e. give it more food) it'll eventually look like a grassland. Someday.

If a river flows through a tile, the river will affect the tile and give it some sort of bonus to its resources. Consequently the tile type appearance will change. So if a river flows through the desert, for example, you'll likely see a strip of grassland tiles where the river is, but beyond the river will be desert. Other "specials" might work similarly.

Which I'll now take even farther: Engineers could tap a source of water and BUILD a river through land. This could have all sorts of nifty effects on tile production and tile appearance. I won't point out at this point that you can't really irrigate with sea water... We can get into water types found in rivers at a later date.

Bah, there's that tangent. Okay, so that's my abstraction: tiles are places which produce stuff, and appear like what they produce; rather than, tiles have appearances, and produce based on what they look like.

- Metamorph

[Theben]

Oh, NOW you come along with this concept. Guess what? Too late, buddy! Pack your bags and go home!! We gots other ideas!

Actually that looks pretty good. And it's not that abstract.

[loinburger]

Wow. I have absolutely no idea of what to make of that idea, Metamorph, because I want to hate it but kinda like it. It kinda reminds me of the old Commodore 64 game, Oil Barons. In that game, the computer would generate invisible pools of oil under the land, so that once you've struck oil in one square, odds are that the next square will hold oil too. That way you won't go having fertile river valleys right next to the Himilayas--at least, not very often.

THE WHOLE VILLAGE/CITY THING: Any of you ever play Lords of the Realm? That had the concept that your population was housed in villages outside of the main town, and an invading army could pillage the villages and reduce your population. I like that idea. I also like the idea of multiple workers being able to farm/mine/whatever a single square for diminishing returns. I loathe the idea of villages spontaneously turning into cities.

FUTURE TI's: What's this about never being able to turn a mountain into a grassland?!? True, no technology in our foreseeable future could accomplish this (without creating enough fallout to wipe out life on this planet), but if future techs are available I'd still like to be able to squeeze blood from a stone through ecological + geological engineering marvels. However, this is totally irrelevant to the first 6000 or so years of the game.

MINES: I still like the idea of mines increasing the damage caused by bombers + artillery, to the point that the artillery (and bombers, if they attack as artillery) can actually destroy units. Reason for this is that a unit stuck in a minefield can't move around much while the bombs are falling. I wouldn't raise too big an outcry if ANY military unit were allowed to mine a square, but I'd still like to see Engineers get a bonus at this (let's say that it takes a tank 2 turns to sweep a square while it takes an Engineer 1 turn).

Movement TI's: I've already voiced my opinions far too much on these, so I'll be brief. I just wanted to clarify my Vacuum Tunnel TI. The concept for this came to me from some science fiction book or another, so obviously it would require many future techs to be built. A Vacuum Tunnel is a reinforced tube running on the ocean floor that has had all the air sucked out of it. The unit can move at extremely high speeds through this tube (on a transport vehicle) due to the total lack of wind resistance. The Vacuum Tube can extend as far as you want and can go anywhere, through land, through water, whatever. Each section must be built by a sea Engineer, and the ends (if not located at cities) must also contain their own TI's. Vacuum tubes would provide unlimited movement, and could only be exited or entered from their openings at either end.

Metamorph
I said something a little like that back on Page 2, but not in that detail. I don't have time to develop the idea more, but I'd like to see what comes of it!

VILLAGES

If I said any of this before, I can't find it. So, here goes. I favor the idea of special Village TIs for other uses. For example, an inland city with shore tiles in its radius could use a village on a shore tile to serve as a port. The city could then build ships, but not port improvements (other than Harbor). If some improvements are necessary for ship production, an idea I favor, then building the improvements would confer only the ability to build that type of ship; no other ship effects (vet status, fast repair) would accrue.

I prefer the idea of special TI's rather than Supply Crawlers. A Village TI could be used to assign the resource to a city if connected via road or rail. Road would offer some partial utilization of the resources, and rail the full value. Could coexist with mine, fortress, airbase, etc. Or a Depot improvement could serve the same purpose by a different name (especially after RR).

I would also like to see a Suburb TI only for plains & grasslands. Preq: Automobile. This represents small cities economically tied to the major city (heard of SMSA?) that, in ages past, would have been cities in their own right by population size. Could coexist with irrigation & farms (these tile are 50-100 miles across, ya know). Would allow an extra "worker" in the square producing only trade (2 trade units, perhaps). This allow for much bigger cities, as we have in the real world (Mexico city would be size 49).
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by don Don (edited August 14, 1999).]</font>

[EnochF]

(pant, pant, guzzle a Gatorade...)

Okay, I've got a summary that includes the first 100 posts of this thread... now I've just got to work up the energy to do the last thirty or so... then I'll move on to Version 2.0... whew...

OK, I lied. I do have time to develop the idea more… I had said,

I'd want to see something a little more innovative for handling terrain use and improvement. Allow more than one pop unit to use a tile, with some kind of diminishing returns depending on terrain. For hills only one pop unit could farm at the highest productivity, but for a fertile grassland several could. Then Civ3 could actually use a linear population scale for the city size… but maybe I'm asking too much.

I think it would be better to have a scale with many steps of productivity (fractional/decimal outputs) rather than the few integer value steps allowed in Civ/SMAC.

I like the idea of Engineers (terraformers) being distinct from population expansion (colonies). However, I disagree with the whole idea of changing basic land types. A possible exception is deforestation, which could result in grassland, plains, or desert (but should reap a substantial bonus of timber/shields in the process). Reforestation should be a tech developed late in the industrial age of technology after huge tracts are denuded and the consequences hit the pocketbook!

I don't see too many examples of modern engineers turning hills into grasslands or mountains into hills, etc. We have strip-mined long ridges of hills, but not enough of them together to result in a "grassland" tens of miles across. We have dug a pit mine two miles wide on the sides of mountains, but that wouldn't turn tens of miles of mountains into hills. The cost of earthmoving is usually the most expensive phase of construction. It would take an expenditure of man-hours and machinery equivalent to all the dams, canals, and roads built in the USA to turn one hills tile into grasslands, much less mountains to hills.

[Theben]

One last TI suggestion:

Auto TI building. No, not auto-settler/engineer working the land, but have the people who're actually using the land transform it.

You place a citizen, in the City Screen, on a tile. After several turns if you haven't used your engineers to upgrade the land then the people do it instead. They'd go by you're Preference list to decide what to change 1st, up to the maximum possible changes. Perhaps flagging a tile will be necessary to indicate what should be done 1st, if different from your Preferences.

FE, You put a worker on a unaltered grassland tile. Your Preference list says 1)road, 2)irrigate, 3) RR, 4)farm (using civ2 TI's). 10 turns go by and you haven't done anything to the tile, so your people build a road. Another 10 turns and you do nothing, they irrigate. And so on. Once everything is done (up to tech level) and more time passes the people will build a village (assumes villages as city TI). If you wanted to do somthing different you'd have to "flag" the tile to change from grassland to forest or to irrigate 1st, etc. This only works as long as the citizens remains in the same tile for all turns involved.

Pros: Reduces micromanagement. Somewhat more historically accurate as citizens almost always built their living areas.

Cons: Cities would build quickly, possibly disrupting game play. Engineers may lose their importance in game. One possible solution is to only allow engineers to build things that aren't in the Preferences, so no flagging would be necessary. Another is to allow people to only build irrigation, farms, villages, and roads; everything else must be built by engineers.

[loinburger]

Theben:

I like that idea, but perhaps it could be weakened somewhat if you were to lose tax income as a result of auto-improvement. So, if a tile receives 2 extra trade as a result of a TI placed on it, but your engineers, settlers, or public works did not build that TI, then you receive only 1 trade from that improvement, since the workers will skim off the top and will become extremely unhappy with you if you don't allow them to do this--they built the TI themselves, after all. (this would make more sense if the x10 system were used, in that if 20 extra trade were produced then the workers would only give you 15 without a fight). You could give royal decrees (or whatever) disallowing workers to improve a tile, so that you can reap the full benefits of the extra trade.

[ember]

I have already proposed something similiar to auto-settle. Engineers psoted in cities (or in your reserves, if deployment is used) develop the land around your empire without actually moving them there.

I also said that the basic landform could not be changed, but the type of terrain on the land form could (with a bunch of limitatiions)

------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

Theben,

I disagree about building roads, irrigation, etc. In general, the populace will only invest the minimum effort to make the land useful. They may clear winding dirt paths, but they won't build paved military roads. It does take some kind of effort and organization to do tile-scale projects, which means player mgmt or automated governor scripts.

Your idea really just points towards the Public Works mechanism used in CTP. Someone already suggested both terraforming units for speedy completion of jobs well outside city radii and PW for inside the city radii.

I think further development of Metamorph's idea can wait until after ver 2 summary.

[loinburger]

Will there BE more after the Version 2 summary? I'd heard it in the rumor mill that Firaxis is already hardening its code and that a Version 3 wouldn't do much good. Is this rumor valid?

[Maniac]

This question hasn't been asked directly, I think and it has to be asked now if there aren't going to be further lists v3.0. So do we want Public Works? Organize a poll here?

Yes : 1
No : 0

[loinburger]

Ember:

This is regarding villages, my idea coming from Lords of the Realm (I've spoken of something similar elsewhere, but not in any detail).

I don't know and I don't care about the economic aspects of villages--I'll leave that to you (although I am opposed to villages spontaneously becoming cities). My thoughts on villages are that a village will pop up whenever workers begin to work a square. They will be represented by a small house or something, nothing too large that it would conceal other terrain improvements. If multiple workers are working a square, the village will grow in size. Again, nothing so large that it would conceal the other TI's in the tile.

When an enemy army enters the city radius and moves on top of a village square, the villagers will remain in the village under "house arrest" (instead of being kicked off the land and made into specialists, as is now the case). The village will not be able to supply the city, though, but it can still feed itself. If the enemy army attempts to pillage the village, the city's population will be reduced and/or Refugee units will be made and/or Partisans will be formed, depending on tech + SE choices + city improvements (barracks etc.) + movement TI's (roads will help refugees escape) + whatever other factors are involved. Also, if the Civ is warlike enough, Fanatic/Partisan type units might spontaneously form when the enemy army enters the village square.

This will also address the "reservists" idea that many have been expounding upon.

OTHER THINGS WHICH ARE MADE POSSIBLE BY THIS:

Other than the obvious benefits of there being reservists surrounding your cities you being able to reduce enemy population without attacking the city directly, this system will also help the defender survive a siege. He/she will no longer be forced to support dozens of specialists who have been kicked off of their land only to starve in the city. What's more, perhaps another specialist, "reservist", could be created. If you know that an enemy army is about to enter one of your villages and pillage it, you can instead take the villagers out of their village and protect them behind your city walls as in feudal times. These villagers will make terrible defenders (if they are capable of defending themselves at all), but at least they'll be taken out of harm's way. Furthermore, the village system can be used to add more rigidity to which squares are being worked. Perhaps it takes a full turn to build the village and being output. I personally am opposed to this (villages should be spontaneously formed when population is moved--it only takes a few months to build a house, if even that), I merely mention it as something which can be added to the game if others feel that it would improve it.

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Just a scattering of comments here:

High Plateaus. If the purpose is to get some Food production out of a mountain tile, just add the historical TI of Terracing. Terraced farming was used extensively in precisely those situations, in the Far East and Incan lands.
You can irrigate with salt water, but it requires special tech advances and resource unput. I believe the Israelis have been doing it in the Negev for over 20 years now.
Rivers are both the major source of irrigation and the major transportation system for most of the game. Therefore, the movement bonus for rivers has to be adjusted slightly. Units can actually move faster on riverboats than on most roads until motorized vehicles come along (maybe x4 instead of x2 move?), and rivers extend city radii because the river boat is the ONLY way to move food and other bulk goods in quantities sufficient to be significant to a city.
Finally, the Head of Navigation should be marked on a river (waterfall icon?). Most early ships can go up river to that point (at least up to and including the Galleon or Frigate) and engineers can extend it (canalizing the river) after certain Techs are discovered - Pound Locks, furinstance.
Cities bult at the Head of Navigation get a Trade bonus because all goods have to be transshipped there from ocean to river or road and the merchants/warehouses of the city get their cut. This would also allow for 'inland' ports, like London, Philadelphia, Hamburg, etc.

[bcr3]

It's probably not worth posting this here, as it's already appeared in the Misc. Vers. 2.1, and the idea isn't all that original, but EnochF HIMSELF visited my original thread (getting Apolyton All-Stars to visit my threads is kinda cool!) suggested I post it under Terrain, so here's hoping it doesn't get buried...

This message is a condensed form of all the ideas presented on the CivIII General Forum "Nature's Wrath" thread. The basic idea is to add random natural disasters in CivIII. They were present in Civ but didn't make the cut for Civ2. Here's what we have so far:

- Specific disasters should target specific land types, i.e.: Tornadoes hit grasslands & plains, Tsunamis hit coastal squares, Landslides hit hills & Volcanoes hit mountains. Earthquakes would be either truly random or fall along predetermined fault lines.
- Certain disasters destroy specific city improvements, i.e.: Tsunamis take out ports & harbors, floods wreak havoc on aqueducts & sewer systems.
- Two levels of disasters, Major & Minor, one of which is somehow preventable.
- Present disasters as Wrath of the Gods, i.e.: Fundamentalist gov'ts get hit less often (though it seems to me they get it pretty good already...)
- New technologies & improvements which would either prevent or lessen the effects of disasters, i.e.: Seismology tech could reveal the predetermined faultlines, if used, or allow a Seismology Center improvement to warn of coming Earthquakes.
- Disasters could kill off a certain number of population points which varies depending on Major or Minor status of the disaster.
- An evacuation order which allows a city to be spared loss of pop. points (but not city improvements) at the cost of stopping the city's production (trade, shields, everything) as long as the evacuation is in effect. This order should probably become available when and only when a disaster warning has become available, thus preventing any possible abuse, i.e.: evacuating cities with 150 shields in their production boxes until Manhattan Project is finished... just a little unfair.

My thanks again to Icedan, who directed my attention to this forum as the "serious" one, and to Theben for helping me figure out the Rules to posting here.

Just to throw in my two cents, all this worrying about the conformity of land types is gonna seriously screw land customizability. Do y'know how long it's gonna take to turn tundra into, I don't know, Enchanted Forest, for a fantasy scenario? Not that I don't like realism, I just like customizing better. Just a thought.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by bcr3 (edited August 22, 1999).]</font>

[ember]

While it now takes a few months to build a village, I think the one turn down time well represents the resources tehy need to build them, also it takes a year to get new fileds working and merchant routes sorted out. One turn lost is not a very big penalty either.

Villages should definatly not spontatniously turn to cities. A settler can build a city there and the villages there will be added to the city pop.

------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[Theben]

don Don,
I haven't played CtP, so aside from what people have mentioned here I don't know what the public works does. I assumed it was something built by the player in the city which then was placed on a tile. My idea would allow these things to occur over time w/o any player management. As to your other concern about people only building the minimum and the rest needs engineers/settlers, I agree, and I thought I got that through in the 1st post with my suggestions on how to keep engineers important. Yes, people won't build paved roads, but they will cut paths through wilderness; i.e. early roads as has been suggested elsewhere. So limit this idea to:

irrigation
paths
farms
villages

That's it. Possibly updated irrigation & farms but no more.

[Maniac]

From what I read about Public Works (I haven't got CtP either), you gather PW points and with a certain amount of PW points you can build a TI. I don't know what gives you PW points but I know sure they aren't built in the city as Theben says.

Is there anyone here that has CtP and wants to explain PW better?

[ember]

In CtP public works acts as a production tax.
You take a certain % of your production and convert it to PW, each TI costs a certain amount of production. In CtP the cost was very high, a mid level mine cost about as much as a machine gunner (rifleman type unit)...

You would but the TI and it would take 2 to 4 turns to build itself.

------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[Maniac]

Then it can easily be converted to the labor/resources system. Just have PW points be equal to a certain % of your labor.
With my proposal that a city size 1 city produces 10 labor (x10 system), size 2 30, size 3 60... large cities would produce more labor thus making more TI possible thus partially solving ICS.
But 400 labor (eqiuvalence of 40 shields, cost for a Riflemen and a CtP mine) is too much I think.