Publicola
King
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2014
- Messages
- 740
I was doing so reading and research, and came across this map of northwestern Europe and how its coastline has changed over the past many thousands of years.
http://imgur.com/SbDsKpb
This made me wonder, given the sheer breadth of this mod, whether it would be possible to code a dynamic map of the world that would reflect real geologic history. The image above gives an example of coastline changes, but the biggest adjustment would be to model the ebb and flow of glaciers and temperature during the last ice age. There'd also be a lot of potential if we could model desertification -- the Sahara and Arabian deserts, for instance, were not nearly as lifeless as they are today, but were host to lively ecosystems fed by rivers that have long since dried up.
Not only would this more closely resemble real history and allow players to work within those constraints w/r/t human prehistory, but it would also provide opportunities for the human player to pursue alt-history strategies, just as much as "Megafauna Domestication" (with domesticated bears and mammoths) do presently. There are many instances where conquerors 'salted the earth' after a victory to ensure that former city sites could no longer be used -- it was at least partly due to the Mongol horde's siege and razing of Baghdad that left the "Fertile Crescent" as much of a infertile desert as it is today.
Most Civ games tend to wait until the modern age to model humanity's impact on climate and terrain, what with Civ II's 'global warming' mechanic et al. This is an opportunity to do a more comprehensive job of it, and show how human choices and natural processes affected climate and geology over the full sweep of human history.
http://imgur.com/SbDsKpb
This made me wonder, given the sheer breadth of this mod, whether it would be possible to code a dynamic map of the world that would reflect real geologic history. The image above gives an example of coastline changes, but the biggest adjustment would be to model the ebb and flow of glaciers and temperature during the last ice age. There'd also be a lot of potential if we could model desertification -- the Sahara and Arabian deserts, for instance, were not nearly as lifeless as they are today, but were host to lively ecosystems fed by rivers that have long since dried up.
Not only would this more closely resemble real history and allow players to work within those constraints w/r/t human prehistory, but it would also provide opportunities for the human player to pursue alt-history strategies, just as much as "Megafauna Domestication" (with domesticated bears and mammoths) do presently. There are many instances where conquerors 'salted the earth' after a victory to ensure that former city sites could no longer be used -- it was at least partly due to the Mongol horde's siege and razing of Baghdad that left the "Fertile Crescent" as much of a infertile desert as it is today.
Most Civ games tend to wait until the modern age to model humanity's impact on climate and terrain, what with Civ II's 'global warming' mechanic et al. This is an opportunity to do a more comprehensive job of it, and show how human choices and natural processes affected climate and geology over the full sweep of human history.
