I know there are two or three maps of a terraformed Mars out there. However, when the first settlers land on Mars it's obviously not going to be terraformed, so I'd rather make my own Mars map for this mod. I do plan on letting the progress of the terraforming effort (which will be one of the two main player objectives, the other one being winning the game through domination or through some other victory condition) show through, so I hope to be able to change the map dynamically based on things like techs and world wonders -- but more on this later.
My point is that I'd like this mod to have its own map of Mars (as realistic as possible), not use the existing maps. If anyone wants to help out with mapbuilding, I'd be very grateful, as I'm on a Mac and modmaking support is minimal to nonexistent for Macs (and I
really don't want to start on a random map and then edit it tile by tile with the IGE mod). The map size should be huge and
a true likeness of Mars and include all the terrain types, resources and natural wonders detailed below.
Map missing
In addition to possible (but not absolutely necessary) help with the map, I'm in need of help with terrain textures, resource icons, resource textures, natural-wonder icons and natural-wonder textures.
a. Terrain types
Mars, obviously, has completely different ecosystems to those of Earth. Today, most of it is a barren desert (littered with rocks and stones in some places), yet the evidence that liquid water once existed on its surface and sculpted many of its most prominent features is overwhelming and there are numerous underground water-ice deposits. The north pole is permanently covered in water ice, while the south pole's water ice is covered by a thick layer of carbon-dioxide ice. In addition, an enormous amount of craters and quite a few mountains dot the surface.
Below is a list of terrain types I came up with. It is divided into two parts: the first contains the "basic" terrain (snow, tundra, grassland, plains and desert in the original game), and the second contains the "additional" terrain types (forest, hills, etc).
A note on some of the terrain types: Water, lichen, grassland and forest can only exist when Mars is terraformed. If all the coding I have in mind is possible, a few key (mid-game) technologies and world wonders will trigger the appearance of tiles where photosynthetic organisms (first lichen, then plants such as grass and trees) exist and these tiles will then expand on their own (simulating the growth and reproduction of the photosynthetic organisms) as the game progresses, eventually leading to a green Mars. Water tiles (i.e. liquid water in stable form on the surface of Mars) will come in the late game only, and the water will obviously not expand or recede.
Nutty has kindly pointed out that the aforementioned terrain types need to be features in order for them to update dynamically (i.e. without a game reload). There's a table of features (and their ID numbers) on
this post. Unfortunately, only five terrain features (and no terrain types) update dynamically. This means that water must be a feature, not a terrain type. I'm worried the coastlines will be impossible to get right, but this must be investigated further. The melting of the polar caps doesn't require ice to be an additional feature which then disappears; changing the ice tiles to water (i.e. adding the "water" feature to them) is all that's needed.
Nutty has also been extremely helpful with all sorts of help with Civ 5 files.
Basic terrain types:
- Water ice
- Yield: 1 food
- Movement cost: 2 (missing)
- strategic-view texture doesn't show up
- Carbon-dioxide ice
- Yield: none
- Movement cost: 2 (missing)
- strategic-view texture doesn't show up
- Permafrost
- Yield: 1 food, 1 production
- Movement cost: 1
- textures taken from the "Red planet" mod
- strategic-view texture doesn't show up
- Dune desert
- Yield: 1 production
- Movement cost: 1
- textures taken from the "Red planet" mod
- strategic-view texture doesn't show up
- Rock desert
- Yield: 1 production
- Movement cost: 2 (missing)
- textures taken from the "Red planet" mod
- strategic-view texture doesn't show up
- Water
- Yield: 2 food
- Movement cost: 1
- must turn into feature
Additional terrain types:
- Hill
- Occurs on: water ice, carbon-dioxide ice, permafrost, dune desert, rock desert
- Yield: as base terrain
- Movement-cost increment: 1
- textures taken from the "Red planet" mod
- Mountain
- Yield: none
- Movement-cost increment: impassable
- textures taken from the "Red planet" mod
- Crater
- Yield bonus: none
- Movement cost: impassable (missing)
- normal-view texture missing
- strategic-view texture not showing up
- Lichen
- Occurs on: permafrost, dune desert, rock desert
- Yield bonus: +1 food
- Movement-cost increment: none
- normal-view texture taken from the "Red planet" mod
- strategic-view texture taken from the "Alpha Centauri maps" mod
- Grassland
- Occurs on: permafrost, dune desert, rock desert
- Yield bonus: 3 food
- Movement-cost increment: none
- normal-view texture not showing up
- Forest
- Occurs on: permafrost, dune desert, rock desert
- Yield bonus: 2 food, 1 production
- Movement-cost increment: 1
Terrain icons (for the civilopaedia) missing
Minimap land graphics not showing up
There are three types of resources in Civ V: bonus resources (which only provide a yield bonus), luxury resources (which also provide a happiness bonus when acquired) and strategic resources (which do not provide a happiness bonus but are required to build certain things). The following lists are what I have come up with.
There are few resources of each kind on Mars. I believe these reflect the sort of useful compounds and elements colonisers might find there, but in game terms there will be a noticeable happiness deficit (at least in the early game) due to the limited variety of luxury resources. To counter this, I wonder whether it would be possible to eliminate the +4 happiness each luxury resource gives and instead assign a +2 happiness bonus to each occurrence of each luxury resource (so if I have 3 cobalt mines I get 3x2=6 happiness from them; if +2 per occurrence is too much, perhaps it could be +1, although with the planned rate of expansion in the early game (severely limited; see section d) I doubt +2 will be a problem). Perhaps this could be achieved by setting luxury resources as bonus resources with a +2 happiness yield instead; hopefully more-skilled coders can enlighten me on this. Alternatively, if anyone can think of some other way to counter the luxury-resource-scarcity-induced happiness deficit, I'm all ears.
Bonus resources:
- Buried nitrogen
- Rarity: common
- Occurs on: dune desert
- Yield bonus: +1 food
- Improvement: missing
- Becomes visible at: Element extraction
- Becomes exploitable at: Element extraction
- Glass
- Rarity: common
- Occurs on: dune desert, rock desert
- Yield bonus: +1 gold
- Improvement: missing
- Becomes visible at: game start
- Becomes exploitable at: Mining
- Granite
- Rarity: uncommon
- Occurs on: rock desert
- Yield bonus: +1 production
- Improvement: missing
- Becomes visible at: game start
- Becomes exploitable at: Mining
- Buried ice
- Rarity: common
- Occurs on: crater (mid-latitude, high-latitude and polar regions only)
- Yield bonus: +1 food
- Improvement: missing
- Becomes visible at: Drilling
- Becomes exploitable at: Ice extraction
Luxury resources:
- Cobalt
- Rarity: uncommon
- Occurs on: rock desert
- Yield bonus: +1 production
- Improvement: missing
- Becomes visible at: Local geology
- Becomes exploitable at: Mining
- Copper
- Rarity: uncommon
- Occurs on: rock desert
- Yield bonus: +1 production
- Improvement: missing
- Becomes visible at: Local geology
- Becomes exploitable at: Mining
- Gold
- Rarity: uncommon
- Occurs on: rock desert
- Yield bonus: +2 gold
- Improvement: missing
- Becomes visible at: Local geology
- Becomes exploitable at: Mining
- Magnesium
- Rarity: common
- Occurs on: rock desert
- Yield bonus: +1 production
- Improvement: missing
- Becomes visible at: Local geology
- Becomes exploitable at: Mining
- Opal
- Rarity: uncommon
- Occurs on: dune desert
- Yield bonus: +1 gold
- Improvement: missing
- Becomes visible at: Drilling
- Becomes exploitable at: Drilling
- Organic compounds
- Rarity: rare
- Occurs on: rock desert
- Yield bonus: +1 production
- Improvement: missing
- Becomes visible at: Element extraction
- Becomes exploitable at: Deep mining
Strategic resources:
- Aluminium
- Rarity: common
- Occurs on: rock desert
- Yield bonus: +2 production
- Improvement: missing
- Becomes visible at: Local geology
- Becomes exploitable at: Mining
- Palladium
- Rarity: uncommon
- Occurs on: rock desert
- Yield bonus: +1 production, +1 gold
- Improvement: missing
- Becomes visible at: Mining
- Becomes exploitable at: Mining
- Perchlorates
- Rarity: uncommon
- Occurs on: dune desert, crater (mid-latitude, high-latitude and polar regions only)
- Yield bonus: +1 production, +1 gold
- Improvement: missing
- Becomes visible at: Drilling
- Becomes exploitable at: Mining
- Thorium
- Rarity: rare
- Occurs on: dune desert, rock desert, crater
- Yield bonus: +1 production
- Improvement: missing
- Becomes visible at: Deep mining
- Becomes exploitable at: Deep mining
- Titanium
- Rarity: uncommon
- Occurs on: dune desert, rock desert (only in the southern highlands)
- Yield bonus: +2 production
- Improvement: missing
- Becomes visible at: Mining
- Becomes exploitable at: Mining
- Uranium
- Rarity: rare
- Occurs on: dune desert, rock desert, crater
- Yield bonus: +1 production
- Improvement: missing
- Becomes visible at: Deep mining
- Becomes exploitable at: Deep mining
There are several important locations on Mars. Many of these (such as Valles Marineris, Olympus Mons, the Hellas Basin and the Argyre Basin) are extremely large and cannot possibly fit into a single tile on a huge map, but the tiles with the natural wonders (which give happiness and special yields and so on) should be placed at the most important part of each feature (for instance, the Olympus Mons natural-wonder tile could be placed at the tip of Olympus Mons and the Hellas-Basin natural-wonder tile could be placed at the centre of the Hellas Basin).
The following is a list of the natural wonders which can be found on Mars. Most of them are very large and important mountains, craters or canyons. Notice the strong culture yields; it is only obvious (to me at least) that any Martian civilisations will be attracted to these places and treat them as cultural and national symbols (and perhaps even holy sites). The yield of the Da Vinci Crater natural wonder, conversely, is not an attempt at reflecting the possible cultural significance of the crater (it's just another crater, after all), but rather a nod at the Da Vinci research team from Kim Stanley Robinson's excellent
Mars trilogy.
No modding work has been done on this section.
Natural wonders:
- Olympus Mons
- Yield: 10 culture, 5 happiness
- Ascraeus Mons
- Yield: 6 culture, 3 happiness
- Pavonis Mons
- Yield: 6 culture, 3 happiness
- Arsia Mons
- Yield: 6 culture, 3 happiness
- Elysium Mons
- Yield: 4 culture, 2 happiness
- Hecates Tholus
- Yield: 2 culture, 1 happiness
- Albor Tholus
- Yield: 2 culture, 1 happiness
- Alba Patera
- Yield: 2 culture, 1 happiness
- Valles Marineris
- Yield: 8 culture, 4 happiness, 2 science
- Noctis Labyrinthus
- Yield: 2 culture, 1 happiness, 3 science
- Hellas Basin
- Yield: 8 culture, 4 happiness
- Argyre Basin
- Yield: 6 culture, 3 happiness
- Da Vinci Crater
All civs are meant to start in the north polar region (because of this, there should not be many civs in a game using this mod, but then not many nations are capable of developing a Mars-colonisation programme (however, I'd like to include all of the vanilla and G&K civs in case someone wants to play this as a sequel to the great game they just won as whatever civilisation they like the most)).
Initially, progress should be slow: just enough food to support a 2- or 3-citizen colony and maybe a 1- or 2-citizen second colony, relatively little production, no plans for expansion, no trade, very little resource-mining, and definitely no viable wars. In the event that a civ decides to spread and build a second colony, said colony will be unable to survive out of the north polar region, where there is water ice readily available. At this point, it should all be about survival and about acquiring a technological advantage over your neighbours so you can later be the dominant nation.
bouncymischa has suggested making famine an actual in-game threat, not just a flavour for the tough times the colonisers must be facing at this point. I haven't thought about how to implement this threat, but a more drastic version of the "Health & plague" mod is likely a good place to start.
As the game progresses and Mars becomes warmer and acquires a thicker atmosphere, civs should slowly be able to begin expanding. The development of mining technologies should make resource-acquisition viable, at least for the more common resources, and the rudiments of what makes a true civilisation can begin to be seen. Colonies should remain near the north polar region, but they should now be able to grow a little larger than before and they should be able to survive at lower latitudes.
Once photosynthetic organisms begin to populate Mars, both food and oxygen will become available. This will be the first major turning point in the colonisation of Mars, and a drastic change in game speed should reflect this. Self-sustainable cities (notice how I used the word "cities" as opposed to "colonies" this time) should begin to appear, one of them should be declared the new capital (because your headquarters can't forever stay in the cramped, resource-poor colony you established upon landing), and a strong southwards migration should occur. Trade, diplomacy and all those consequences of civilised life should finally start to appear, and the first culture points (and therefore cultural policies) should be acquired by this time (there should be zero culture gain prior to this point).
Mars's northern hemisphere lies three or four kilometres lower than its southern hemisphere, so when water is finally available the northern hemisphere will turn into a vast ocean and the southern highlands will remain dry (save for two enormous seas (Hellas and Argyre) and any number of smaller craters-turned-lakes). Therefore, by this point civs should have reached the highlands and established at least one city there if they don't want to disappear when the water floods their old lands. This should be a very interesting point in the game, especially because different civs will be at different points in the tech tree and will therefore be affected differently. On one hand, the overnight disappearance of most cities and colonies should be a severe setback for everyone; on the other hand, expansion will be quick and efficient from that point onwards, as there will now be grasslands, forests and water for everyone. I expect there to be important power shifts at this point.
I'm thinking of actually having goody huts in my mod, contrary to my initial thought on this. (Still no barbarians, though.) Obviously, goody huts would need to be renamed (and would need new graphics), since no ancient civilisations have existed on Mars. They could be old, broken-down machines we've sent to Mars (the Vikings, Spirit & Opportunity, Phoenix, Curiosity, maybe a Mars Express which fell into the planet, and so on). The bonuses would also have to be reworked, of course. What do you think?
Map of Mars (need huge map)
Civs
Technologies
Social stuff
Buildable stuff
Events
Victory conditions
Nutty: I assume slots 0-7 are the ones taken up by forest, jungle, marsh, oasis, etc; am I correct? I wouldn't like to reuse the fallout ID because I do plan on including nuclear weapons (why else have thorium and uranium as strategic resources? 
).
