But at the same time, you now have twice as much polar 'area' since that space that was desert between islands of polar terrain is now a solid landmass of Polar and Polar sink, so with only the higher polar terrain developable, you end up 'balanced' roughly the same as before.
I don't understand what you are saying here. Before, you could terraform some polar terrain, so it would count towards the terraforming victory condition. Now, you can't terraform any of it, and there are more land tiles (which I presume increases the number of tiles you have to terraform to win - though I am not certain these are counted). How is this "roughly balanced"?
As far as being resource poor, you'll notice this isn't the case anymore.
Yes, there a handful of resources, though not a ton. I'm fairly agnostic about whether these stay or not. They don't have luxury or health resources, which I think are the most important ones.
It also has a nicer aesthetic look than a completely improvement covered polar region, I like the empty space there.
By this argument, shouldn't we remove the ability to build any improvements on the map?
I also see no realism argument; sinks are supposed to be superior terrain, because they are protected from the wind. Why would we want them to be inferior? Why should it be possible to build improvements in the harsh rocky areas, but not in the cooler polar zone? Why should it be possible to build improvements at "sea level" where the winds are still very strong, but not in the protected sink?
But I'd like to hear any other opinions than just ours if anyone has them too
Agreed.
Seems if it's going to terraform, it ought to require a good bit of the terraforming goal have already been met before you start seeing 'warming' of the polar region.
The design intention is for terraforming in the polar region to be possible with the melting lens improvement.
I'd have no problem with having the polar terrain have a lower probability of terraforming, and for it taking longer to terraform than other areas. The main reason for anchor grass being skipped wasn't because we necessarily wanted it to terraform faster, it was because it isn't a desert zone, so anchor grass wouln't make much sense.
I think part of the problem is that we have different ideas of what the polar zone represents. To me, the ice cap is only the handful of tiles with the ice resource; the rest is just cool and pleasant, and mostly above freezing.
Whereas I think you are imagining the polar zone as like antarctica.
If you consider Earth as an example where we have tropical, temperate, and polar areas, it's rather easy to imagine the terraforming being aimed at the temperate latitudes primarily while leaving the polar regions, well, primarily polar.
This is not a good comparison IMO, because Arrakis is so much hotter than earth. Arrakis does not have tropical and temperate zones. It has incredibly hot desert, fairly hot desert near the north pole, and then the polar zone itself. For a comparison; on Arrakis, the natural climate of Greenland is like the Sahara on earth.
After terraforming, Arrakis will still not be like earth, it will remain hotter and the poles will continue to be the zones most fit for human settlement.
The other question is what happens to the polar ice resources if the region turns to grassland?
I think these should stay. As you say, they keep melting lenses on those polar ice resources for a long time. The ice caps are shrinking, but within the same tile. Eventually they would disappear, but beyond the timeline of the mod.
I think from personal experience the terraforming victory is one of the easier to achieve
This has not been the playtest feedback we have received. Other victory conditions require you to be the dominant player. Terraforming requires you to be the dominant player *and* then wait a long time for the terraforming to occur in your conquered territories.
Also, the dogpiling is part of the design intention for the terraforming victory.
I'd like Reservoirs of Liet to take up a % of your water in each city(instead of a flat amount)
I would oppose this, this can make them really not worth building, and can make the AI suffer really badly for building these. The current system is simple and works fine.
The design goal was very deliberate, to make the catchbasin and reservoir have an upfront investment (the hammer cost) and short term cost (from less water), but a long term gain (in water). The idea is that these should be valuable in themselves, not solely for achieving the terraforming victory. If you keep sucking out more and more water the more terraforming gets done (and remember that terraforming reduces hammer and gold income) then you can make a city with these buildings worse off even in the long run than one without.
One of the biggest problems with vanilla Civ4 culture victory was that culture had very little incremental value up to the point where you actually got the culture victory. We have tried to correct this in Dune Wars by making cultural expansion an economic boon from getting more spice. So lots of culture is valuable even without a cultural victory. We want a similar approach for terraforming.
and make the amount of water collected itself contribute to the terraforming chance
This seems nontransparent to the player and unnecessarily complicated.
I worry that you're trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist; I think simpler is better.
The hammer cost of building a Reservoir is the same in each city, I think the benefits should also be the same.
), I added the ability for air units to gain experience from combat when intercepted (where they can actually do small damage to the intercepting unit now, I'll go more into that in a minute) or when running a mission where they could be intercepted, based on the interception chance.
, are now likely to take light damage in the exchange, and just like before it prevents the air unit from hitting it's intended target or dealing collateral damage. So it's mostly a immersion thing. 
.
)
