Harsher Terrain? / Exploring "Wonders"/ New World idea

The nartural world is a harsh place. I like the idea of extending the boats being lost at sea.

Say you send some troops accross a big desert, then there should be a chance that they don't come back. Same with mountain ranges.

Obviously, this would only apply to early units, and once you got to a certain stage, it wouldn't cause a problem.

Also, the larger the region, the more likely. So, if it's one square of desert surrounded by plains, well, you're pretty safe. If you send some medival infantry into the middle of a huge desert, they'll probably die.

In the real world, it wasn't just the sea that hindered exploration.

This way, you could have a civilisation on one half of a continent with a huge mountain range across it, and there could be a rival civ on the other side, and you wouldn't know for ages, until you managed to send some explorers across (or sailed round the coast) and find a well developed civ on your doorstep.

Oh, and maybe change the ships a bit. So they can't operate out in the ocean indefinatly without risk of being lost at sea. (again, until a certain tech).


Would also lead to some exploration missions/wonders (somebody mentioned circumnavigating the world in the wonders thread). So, you could add travelling to the north/south pole (although, would have to redo the way the poles are treated to allow this). If your unit makes it there, and back to home land, then their home city gets a cultural boost or something.

On the whole, in the real world, civ's havn't had "wonder races" (expect for nukes and space race). But there was a large part or european history in which various countries raced for the pole's and what not. (If anybody knows the story of Shackleton, you'll know this was a very interesting time).

I wouldn't make it a big prize though, just an optional thing you can do. FOr a start, it would add a little excitment if your civ is largely peacefull.

Maybe have a small wonder which you can build (Royal Geographic Society or something) which allows you to mount exploration missions.

in civ 3, does the Explorer unit actually have a use?

Also, something like Africa/America would be a cool. This would simply involve tweaking the map generating engine a little. As it is, in every map I've seen, the civ's have been speard over a few continents, and there's rarely much unsettled land by the second half of the game.

So how about increasing the chance of a continent with no civ's starting on it being genereated. And if the maps a large one, it might take a bit of finding (and due to the randomness, it may be that there isn't a "new world" on the map you're playing, or that it turns up to have an advanced civ on it).

Then you'd have the "new world" with minor civ's on it (fancy barberians of some sort). Then you can exploit/destroy them the way the British Empire (and others) did for huge profits (that's how history has generall worked). But I'd have some negative side effect to this. I'm not sure what the best method would be.

Thoughts?

YARRR, I'll tell ya thes laddy, Then you tell me.

Hows about they add an element to the game based on unit statistics say. Yer people may learn to travel and trek different lands and sail the high seas after trial and will. They learn different aspects of advances known to yer civ to defeat certain natural obstacles. All the percentage based on safe and succesful passage may be argued by the equipment used, the quality of all the equipment/transport, and the knowledge and health point bases of knowledge in different areas includen anatomic/medicinal knowledge/supplies and knowledge of geography? Whats ya be sayen to that says I.

Kind of like what I came up with for diseases. Every time a unit enters a type of terrain flagged as "hostlile" and survives, it would increase the survival rate of all future trips to reflect the explorations skills developed by that unit and passed on to the rest of your people. This would help to impliment an attrition factor into civ. CivA Lives deep in a desert, dotted with rivers and plains, while CivB lives in a very mountainous reigon with the odd grassland for city development. When CivA is invaded by CivB, CivB will intialy be at an unbearable disatvanatge due to unfamiliar terrain. The same would happen if CivA attacked CivB. Now, say CivC decides to ally with CivA. CivA could sell it's aquired knowledge of desert survival to CivC, so their units can safely cross the desert to attack CivB.

OK, this has been discussed in a number of other threads, but bears repeating here! I have long advocated the idea of an 'operational range' stat, which limits how far units can go beyond their own borders. Explorers, scouts and settlers would have the highest OR score, but even THEY would be limited to just how far they could roam! Not only would this help to contain the current land grab problems we currently have in the game, but would also add an exciting new element to warfare as well (as range will dictate battle strategies!) In my model 'harsh' terrains halve a units operational range UNLESS the unit has an 'ignore terrain' tab! So, for instance, a desert rider might have an 'ignore desert effect' tab, giving it standard OR in desert terrains, but would be at half range for marsh, jungle, mountain and tundra!
Lastly, someone put forward the idea that, until mapmaking, your scouts and other units can only expose the part of any foreign lands that they can currently SEE, and that this reverts back to 'fog of war' when they move on! This will leave much more of the land unexposed until later into the game which, in turn, will vastly increase the value of maps well into the late game!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

The expansion of the treacherous water concept could be very interesting. Units could lose one hit point for spending so much time in desert or other treacherous terrain. Explorers could have a resistance to this effect and units could gain a resistance due to supply lines (roads) or cultured areas (within culture boundary)

Yarrrrr! All In Good Name!

Aussie_Lurker said:

Lastly, someone put forward the idea that, until mapmaking, your scouts and other units can only expose the part of any foreign lands that they can currently SEE, and that this reverts back to 'fog of war' when they move on! This will leave much more of the land unexposed until later into the game which, in turn, will vastly increase the value of maps well into the late game!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Click to expand...

I don't entirely agree with that idea. Even though peoples didn't learn how to draw a picture of terrain features they still new what terrain was where. Granted their empire didn't span very far but there was no need for maps to find your way about.