I'm working on a map/mod where rivers are simulated as coast terrians. It'd be great to put some bridges in there.

At first, my thoughts were to make it a workboat function. It would be an improvement on the tile that would allow for land units to cross. Problem is, some coastal connections are E-W and others are N-S. Visually, it could look wierd if not accounted for. Anyone have any thoughts on how to make the correct improvement (direction) implement?

I think this would be a pretty cool element, especially defending/destroying during war.

Another thought would be to make it a wonder where the resource needed to build it is on the tile itself. Once the wonder is built, the tile changes to a custom bridge tile. Think of the England/Euro tunnel or the idea of the Bering Straights bridge. This option could make canals too like the Panama or Suez.

Thanks!!

short answer : Civ4PlotLSystem.XML
long answer : ... sorry I can't help you more but tell you to search in a thread in the SotM forum.

Song of the Moon will be incorporating bridges but as of right now nothing has been done in adding bridges yet. (Besides thinking about how they will work)

As Snipper said the Civ4PlotLSystem.XML could be used in this regard but I think you will need to define a separate bridge improvement for each direction and then use python to control which improvement is placed based on the surrounding plots.

Thanks, that's helpful. I'm thinking it may be worth creating a bridge building unit based on the workboat and using it to have all four directions as choices for improvements.

TechniCT, can I ask what you mean by an improvement that allows units to cross over coast terrain. I am very interested in this idea :)

This is an excellent idea. I was interested in implementing something like this for my Rise of Rome scenario, so the barbarians can't cross the Danube and Rhine just anywhere. ;)

Can improvements be tagged in a way to allow land based units to cross them when placed on water????

I tried out several things last night and could not get anything to work. I always thought this was something only the SDK could allow :(

If anyone has implemented any form of 'bridging' using only XML then please post your approach.....even if it may have graphical problems or placement issue.

Given the number of historical scenarios that use rivers as strategic points, it stumps me why no one has ever found a solution that works!

I was trying to take another approach, making it so that if there is a river between two tiles you cannot cross unless a road is present on both sides.

TechniCT, can I ask what you mean by an improvement that allows units to cross over coast terrain. I am very interested in this idea :)

Well, I have been working on a mod of Louisiana during early colonization. The Mississippi, Atchafalaya, and Red rivers I made using actual ocean tiles. This makes them completely unpassable as they were before boats, and allows civs to develop in areas of isolation. It also adds a cool combat feature (like the famous English Turn if it actually would have played out).

The bridges here are very important to commerce, and would be in game as well (and military). I've played some mods where units can terraform terrain into other terrain. The idea was to have an improvement to terraform it into a bridge terrain that allowed travel by water units and land units.

I haven't tried the pure XML method yet as I've been focused more on the swamp and marsh terrains, but I'll definately keep the progress updated.

There's an early map attachment here that shows how the rivers are setup.

If your interested in swampy/marsh terrain, I have successfully implemented some in one of my mods.

I take no credit for the terrain graphics but I can provide the XML and graphics files for you to implement if you want.

The only catch is that the swamp graphics do not appear on the map when you place via the worldbuilder.

My solution to this is to place a terrain type that is not already used like 'desert', save the map and then open in wordpad and replace 'desert' with 'marshes'. When I reload the map the correct terrain graphics appear.

Let me know if you want me to upload.