Natural wonders

One thing that seems to be missing from Civ is natural wonders. For example things like Ayer's Rock, the Rocky Mountains, the Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef, national parks etc. Basically I think they should bring in Culture and Commerce (from Tourism). I guess they should be distributed randomly and should be known that they are wonders from the beginning. However, they should not be allowed to be "used" until certain techs are researched so as to not to give civs an unfair advantage in the early game. The reason why I believe they should be known from the beginning, if not used is so as to give the players a choice to destroy them for short-term goals. They can be destroyed, either deliberately or accidentally. For example, the cities near the Great Barrier Reef has too much pollution? Oops. You want to rush-chop that forest which will later be a Natural Wonder? Do you want to mine that uranium in the jungle that will later be a National Park that will bring in Tourist Dollars. To actually give people a choice the ones which can be destroyed should bring in tons of culture and commerce so there really is a playoff between short-term goals and long-term goals.

It might finally make that Environmentalist civic actually useful...

That sounds like a really cool idea.

That does sound like a really good idea. In Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri there were actually natural wonders like the Sunny Mesa, Freshwater Sea, Garland crater among others. These wonders provided production, food and energy bonuses. They were great assets to nearby cities. I think these kind of natural wonders would be nice to have in Civ IV as well.

I would also like to see a Santa Claus Wonder, that would give tundra and ice +3 trade or the ability to build Santa Claus Workshop on all these squares

Great idea indeed!

You have researched: Souvineir manufacturing

nekom said:

Great idea indeed!

You have researched: Souvineir manufacturing

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LOL! I can just see you getting 3 snow globes for trading.

More seriously, the game isn't about reality. The markers for resources, techs, units, leaders, buildings and wonders are just strategic elements, and have little or no resemblance to reallife. We're dealing with a strategy title, here, not a sim.

I cant see how this would work. You couldn't just build them. And if they suddenly appeared at random. Any benefits could give a civ an unfair advantage as they haven't had to do anything to get the wonder. It just happened. Its a nice idea, but I don't think it would work in the game.

It could work, but only if there were a lot of wonders that didn't have a huge effect individually.

Alpha Centauri+some patches added some significant natural landmarks that greatly boosted the power of a city or your entire nation, but the varied amounts of these and that you couldn't control them all made them interesting strategic points rather than random game-crushers.

But realistically, most natural wonders don't do much for a civilization, they just add some tourism points. Really, with the resource system, natural wonders would add too much randomness to a persons.

@Bongo-bongo: But the terrain is random and can give civs an unfair advantage, as can the resource distribution. A civ hasn't done anything to get a good starting location. I'd just look on it as a way to make the world map more interesting, and as long as they don't give benefits right at the start of the game it shouldn't throw the balance. They wouldn't need to have huge effects. It worked quite well in Alpha Centauri anyway, and it's one of the things I would like to see appear in Civ.

Yeah, it's a nice idea but it takes away from a players skill and adds more to a players luck which isn't what the game needs. Maybe if you could turn them on or off it would be cool, but I think the devs would rather spend time on other features.

MrCynical said:

@Bongo-bongo: But the terrain is random and can give civs an unfair advantage, as can the resource distribution. A civ hasn't done anything to get a good starting location. I'd just look on it as a way to make the world map more interesting, and as long as they don't give benefits right at the start of the game it shouldn't throw the balance. They wouldn't need to have huge effects. It worked quite well in Alpha Centauri anyway, and it's one of the things I would like to see appear in Civ.

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I thought about starting location terrain, but if managed well, this doesn't effect the hopes of a civ that much, especially if expansion is carried out in effective locations. As a natural wonder would have an effect on something for a civ, be it production, growth or whatever, and a civ would get one purely out of chance would unbalance the game.

On the other hand, I could see this working if and only if, only one was available to each civilization, and others could only be gained by conquering or capturing it from another civ.

It might finally make that Environmentalist civic actually useful...

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What's wrong with environmentalism?

I like it a lot.

cant see how this would work. You couldn't just build them. And if they suddenly appeared at random. Any benefits could give a civ an unfair advantage as they haven't had to do anything to get the wonder.

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Well random and "unfair" benefits are already a big part of the game.
(starting location, resources)

A civ which starts with four gold deposits and lot of floodplain within reach of it's starting city has a lot more hopes than one clinging to a few squares of grassland on the edge of a mass of tundra and ice, and I've seen this plenty of times in game. Starting on a small isolated island will cripple the best of civs, and this happens as well. There's already a large element of luck in Civ games, but this hasn't done it any real harm. If they only start to have effects in the late game (tourism and so on) then they won't really be much different from resources in terms of giving one civ an unfair advantage. It would just be nice to give the map a bit more variety and flavour.

ToFro said:

I would also like to see a Santa Claus Wonder, that would give tundra and ice +3 trade or the ability to build Santa Claus Workshop on all these squares

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That should be quite easy to mod in, just mix workshop and deer, and give one of the deers red nose.

Along with natural wonders there should also be roadside wonders, world's biggest ball of string, mystery spot, ect... +1 happy for tourism

jlindy, I like. Herodotus publishes his book, "The World's Greatest Tourist Traps (I Mean Travel Destinations)."

1 - Branson, Missouri (Mongol)
2 - Cancun (Russian)
3 - Orlando, Florida (German)
4 - Six Flags Over Bottleneckville (French/English/Inca/Greek/Roman/Spanish)
... et cetera.

I got a huge "coffee table" book of natural wonders of the world at Xmas, so I love this idea too

i say if u get the grand canyon there should be a chance ur settler can fall in. And if u get the barrier reef there should be a chance that any coastal town loses population to the new unit - barbarian sharks.

Go play Alpha Centauri. In that game, there were a dozen or so "landmark" terrain features, each of which had a terrain bonus. For instance, they had:

The Monsoon Jungle: +1 food in each tile of it (and it was big enough for several cities)- this one was by far the best.
The Ancient Ruins: a ring of monoliths, each providing 2 food, 2 prod, 2 energy
Garland Crater: +1 production in each tile of it
Pholus Ridge: the few tiles along its ridge were (I think) +1 food, +1 energy
the Unity wreck: several squares provided one-shot bonuses to the first civ to send a unit there; a free infantry unit, a free helicopter, or some money
and so on. There were a couple water features, too.

So anyway, it's been done before. However, most of these were pretty huge; whichever AI civ started next to the Jungle usually was your only competition. So, I'd keep it small, which ties in nicely with the problem that none of the "natural wonder" features on earth are large enough to actually take up more than one tile on a world map. You'd probably want to treat it more like an Oasis; say, +1 production and +2 commerce, but the square can't be improved beyond simple roads.

I love the idea of natural wonders. I think they should be merely small boosts for most of the game (+1 or +2 to food/prod/commerce as appropriate), but with the Ecology tech you can improve a 'Natural Park' or something on top of them that would give a significant boost to commerce.

The forest and jungle wonders should give say five (arbitrary number, could be two or three for balance) times the normal amount if you chop them, but that would of course get rid of the wonder for good.

I don't think any of this would be that hard to implement.

Thanks for the replies. Yes, I agree, the benefits they give should be fairly small.

The main reason I thought of it was though, well, I've played all the Civ games and let's face it, the landscape is damn boring to look at once you've cleared all the jungles, chopped all the forests etc. It's a maze of roads, with a patchwork of farms, mines, etc. There is no individual character. Sometimes I feel like NOT chopping some jungle or forest just so I can make a nice national park to break up the monotomy.

Also, traditionally, people have often orientated themselves with special features of the natural geography. Oh, yeah, it's along the Nile River. It's in the Himalayas. The city is next to the Great Barrier Reef. The state is close to the Rocky Mountains. I'm going to visit the ski resorts in the Alps. He's travelling through the Amazon Jungle. People like giving names to geographical features. People would name towns and cities after close geographical features e.g. east of the mountains, on top of the hill, the windy place, etc. They help differentiate different places, different countries.

Another idea - instead of geographical wonders that give something, allow people to designate certain areas (one or more tiles) as "regions" with special names, even if they give no benefits, but show up on maps. So I can designate this collection of peaks as the Himalayas, I can name this mountain, Mt. Uiler. I got this really long river running through my 3 initial cities. Let's call it the Nile. Might add more flavour to game read ups as well..."Monty had to go the long way round as his troops were blocked from my inner cities by the Himalaya mountains. However, I cut him off at Hornshead Pass and decimated his invading army. I guess we can call this the Battle of Hornshead Pass. There was one calvary that managed to survive the whole time and got a lot of experience points. With the Hero of Hornshead Pass I went back to London and built the Heroic Epic."