Some Suggestions Of Mine regarding the enviromental mechanics.

Hello Everyone.

I have some ideas about changing the environment mechanics.

First, I think they should add tree regrowth.

They could implement this by making trees regrow a certain amount of turns after you chopped them down, but if you built an improvement on that tile after chopping the trees down, then they wouldn't regrow.

They could also have trees spread across tiles if the tiles were empty.
However I think that trees should have a slowed growth rate on tundra and shouldn't be able to grow on deserts.

Also I think there should be a way to deliberately plant trees in an area. This might be able to be done by builders. And in the later areas such as modern there should be a way to get trees to grow in the desert. Perhaps some type of terraforming?

That finishes up the ideas I have on tree growth.


Another mechanic I think they should add would be weather and natural disasters.

They could have this by having things such as rain, floods, earthquakes and droughts, and a few other stuff I haven't thought of probably.
In certain areas of the map these things could be more common.

Floods would result in water covering a certain amount of tiles depending on the severity and happen near the coast or near lakes. They would also destroy a small amount of population in coastal cities. Any unit caught in the flood would either be destroyed or if you had discovered optics turn into its embarked form. Any improvements caught in the flood would be destroyed. After a certain amount of turns the water would recede.

Earthquakes would cause a certain amount of tile improvements near the earthquake to be pillaged, and would cause nearby units health to go down a little. Nearby cities would lose a small amount of population. Perhaps there could also be way for

I'm thinking that there should also be a way to limit the effects of floods and earthquakes. To do this they could build a dam or dyke to stop floods and I'm not really sure what one could build to stop an earthquake that could be implemented in the game. Suggestions on this would be welcome.
Other weather mechanics I have in mind would be rain and droughts.
Rain would be rather common except in deserts and dry places of the map.
It would cause farms to grow more food temporarily and would perhaps cause one or two areas to turn into marshes. In extreme circumstances it might cause desert to turn into grassland. Rain would last one turn and cancel out a drought.

Droughts would be somewhat rarer then rain, and even rarer in marshes and wet areas of the map. They would decrease farm yields temporarily and cause rivers to dry up. And if the drought is bad enough citizens might die. Droughts would also cause marshes to dry up and become grassland. In extreme circumstances it might even turn grassland into desert.


I also have a few other ideas which are as follows.

I think some form of soil erosion could be implemented regarding farming, although I don't really have any detailed plan for how that would work so I would welcome suggestions on that.

I also think that there should be a way to tunnel through or destroy mountains with the advent of dynamite as during the industrial era in real life people used dynamite to cut through mountains, so they could put railroads through them. I think a way to implement this would be to let it be a type of improvement for workers to do.

Another thing I think should be added is forest fires. This would counter the growth of forests as I detailed above. If a unit was caught in a forest fire he would lose a certain amount of health. Forest fires would be started randomly with a higher chance in dryer areas. Rain would decrease the chance of a forest fire and droughts would decrease it. I'm thinking there should also be a way of using fire offensively to burn your enemies forests. There could also be a building you build in your city called a fire fighters station that would decrease the chances of forest fire in or near your territory.

I also think there should be some way to build a cause way to islands. I thought of this when I was reading an article regarding when Alexander The Great sieged Tyre. Since Tyre was on an island he used sandbar to build a walkway to Tyre, turning it into a peninsula. I think some form of what he did should be able to be done in Civ 5.

Anyway I think that's about all the ideas I have regarding that topic.
So thank for you reading! Comments and suggestions are welcome!

Sorry if my post was a bit long by the way

Negative random conditions such as Natural Disasters just don't sound fun.

There wouldn't be much of a way to plan for them, and they would very rarely cause more enjoyment for one player than they would frustration for another.

Yep, disease and volcanoes were implemented in civ3 and they were more or less just a mild form of frustration, adding little to gameplay. I'm open to adding such things to the game. I'm of the mind that if it happened historically, it should happen in civ. But only add such things if they add something to the gameplay, and are not just random-bad-stuff-happens-to-you-now events.

Tree regrowth was also in civ4, to a degree. If you had a forest, every now and then a new tile would convert to forest - not sure of the exact details myself, other than the tile had to have no improvements for the forest to spread (and it worked with jungle too).

PS, in the future, break such long posts down into several smaller posts (in the same thread is fine), so in this case, you'd put tree growth in one post, weather and disasters in another and miscellaneous in the last post. It's clearly organized this way anyhow, so it's fine, IMHO.

I'm all for natural disasters if there are random good things too like in Civ 4 and you could choose how you reacted to them.

If someone didn't like them there could be a way to turn them off when making the world or make them less common. They would also apply to other players beside you. I think it would be nice to see your enemies armies pummeled by a tornado. And there could also be multiple ways to respond to natural disasters as dudewiththefood suggested. Anyhow thanks for your comments. One could also construct buildings in cities to limit the effects of natural disasters.

And yeah I think I agree with you about some positive events, acting as a counterweight against the bad. What positive events do you think there could be? I've never played civ 4 so I don't know what they were like in that game.

I was also unaware that a some of what I said was in previous versions of civ so thanks for telling me. Diseases sound interesting by the way. I think they could add to the gameplay if you could use them offensively against other players. And if there was a way to combat against them. Perhaps by building hospitals. Offensively wise, in ancient times people put diseased dead bodies onto catapults and fired them into enemy cities to spread disease. I think this could be incorporated into civ v.

TheMightyRyon said:

I was also unaware that a some of what I said was in previous versions of civ so thanks for telling me. Diseases sound interesting by the way. I think they could add to the gameplay if you could use them offensively against other players. And if there was a way to combat against them. Perhaps by building hospitals. Offensively wise, in ancient times people put diseased dead bodies onto catapults and fired them into enemy cities to spread disease. I think this could be incorporated into civ v.

Click to expand...

You should definitely pick up a copy of Civ3 Complete. You're describing the way diseases work almost perfectly, though without the player control to use them offensively. That way you can try this out in actual play. If you do get it, check out the Rhye's of Civilization Random Mod - that's my favorite from Civ3 days.

I can't remember most of them but in Civ 4 or at least in BtS there were faux pas(es?), disagreements over religious weddings, floods/volcanoes/other natural disasters, humanitarians, tree growth and random people doing things like planting an apple orchard (+1 gold on the tile and a forest grows). In the religious wedding example, there were 3 options. Say your religion was Islam and India's was Hinduism. A wedding is going to be held between one of your nobles and an Indian lady in Muslim tradition. Gandhi is annoyed so you can either get a diplomatic bonus by having a Hindu wedding but a little unhappiness for a number of turns, have an Islamic wedding and annoy him or have a big state wedding where you get a happiness bonus, lose some money (funding) and really annoy Gandhi. In civ 5 the happiness could be changed to faith bonus/increase or decrease of religious pressure/religion spreading.

Yep, I'd forgotten about that. I hated the random events in Civ4, found them extremely annoying, so stopped playing with them fairly quickly, but they also had some of what the OP wants buried in there. Probably should pick up a copy of civ4 complete too, if you don't have it.

TheMightyRyon said:

First, I think they should add tree regrowth.

They could implement this by making trees regrow a certain amount of turns after you chopped them down, but if you built an improvement on that tile after chopping the trees down, then they wouldn't regrow.

They could also have trees spread across tiles if the tiles were empty.
However I think that trees should have a slowed growth rate on tundra and shouldn't be able to grow on deserts.

Also I think there should be a way to deliberately plant trees in an area. This might be able to be done by builders. And in the later areas such as modern there should be a way to get trees to grow in the desert. Perhaps some type of terraforming?

That finishes up the ideas I have on tree growth.

Click to expand...

Yes tree growth in Civ4 was cool but it happened to rarely to my taste. (that's why the idea have been abandonned, because all in all we can see little difference) In early eras it should happen nearly every turn, and more to very rarely in modern eras; to scale up with time scale. Additionnally I think that jungle chop should give some instant benefits like more classical forests do. (hammers or resources, the amount of this last depending on whether we exploit the forest with responsability or with a thurst of instant gold - it can be the same with any resource, either you "pillage" your own land for great instant benefits, and you go conquer another (if you can), either you manage it with caution for long last profit)

As to your idea about wheather, I think it has to be exploited. I dont mind if there's no effect on gameplay, but some turns with rain would definitely add some atmosphere and graphical effects (raibows?). I don't think it would make the map unclear if well done.