Natural Wonders

What if there were wonders that existed naturally that you can't build but they are on the map and if they are within your borders and connected with a road you can reap benefits from them? Here is a few example:

Mt. Everest
Mt. Fuji
Niagra Falls
Ayre's Rock
The Great Lakes
Great Barrier Reef
La Brea Tar Pits
Lake Titicaca
Glacier


Each one of these may have different effects, like Mt. Fuji is considered sacred so may be treated like a Holy site. Niagra Falls could provide bonuses to hydroelectric dams. The Great Lakes could provide extra food and commerce. All of them could provide tourism and/or be treated as a Luxury.

Thoughts?

I like the idea, but some questions:
Should they be visible from the beginning?
Doesn't it look weird to have these special named things in a scientifical created world?
Doesn't it look weird to see e. g. Mt Fuji in the aztec territorry?

mfG mitsho

btw. you totally left out Europe, Africa and the middle east, intended?

Seems kind of unfair to get a "wonder" effect because you started somewhere special and not through any player involvement.

Trip said:

Seems kind of unfair to get a "wonder" effect because you started somewhere special and not through any player involvement.

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Not all starting positions are equal. In one of my last games I started surrounded by a bunch of swampland and so had a slow start and was quickly defeated. What's the alternative? Make all terrain identical so everyone has an equal start? No thanks, the fact you don't know what you get adds fun to the game. Natural wonders would add alot of flavor.

And Mitsho, what would you recommend as European natural wonders? Lake Geneva?

One point worth noting is that natural wonders weren't recognised as such until the early modern age, alongside teh national parks movement. They probably shouldn't give any particular gold/tourism bonus until then.

Teabeard said:

Not all starting positions are equal. In one of my last games I started surrounded by a bunch of swampland and so had a slow start and was quickly defeated. What's the alternative? Make all terrain identical so everyone has an equal start? No thanks, the fact you don't know what you get adds fun to the game. Natural wonders would add alot of flavor.

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So you think it's a good idea to imbalance them even further?

Trip said:

So you think it's a good idea to imbalance them even further?

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Their effects are minor. Extra tourism revenue and maybe some religious/cultural bonuses. As Rhialto said the effects would not even be that great until the modern era anyway.

Well since they didn't really start attracting tourists until mid industrial maybe there's a tech there, maybe National Parks, or Tourist trapping?

This resembles the old idea about giving certain unmodified forms of terrain (eg. jungles, mountains, river deltas, tiles with unexploited animal resources etc) extra trade value due to eco-tourism, if they are within easy reach of cities in the Modern Age. It would encourage players to designate those areas nature reserves or national parks (a type of terrain improvement already available in the Call to Power games.)

As for having uber-special, very rare terrain features with exceptional value of this type: maybe some, but they don't need pre-set names. That would be silly, since their location and host civ would be different in every game.

I propose that, when the player designates a national park or reserve, (s)he should be prompted to give it a name - just as when a new city is founded. Each nation might even have a list of such names available, separate from its list of city names: if they are based on real nations, names for parks & reserves can be taken directly from the World Atlas.

Well, as someone pointed out, the conservation movement began in the 19th century. Many US parks were founded in that era. What I would like to see is a tech named "Conservation", this could come after industrialization but before the techs like Mass Production, Flight, etc., be a good follow on to sanitation, maybe. This could give a happiness improvement, like City Park. I would also like to see an antipollution improvement here, the current ones come a bit too late for me. If you had a natural wonder area in your civ, you'd get a popup box like this "Sire, our environmentalists have discovered a wonderful nature preserve. Let us preserve this for the people and make it into a national park!" You would then be given the opportunity to name it, and a new graphic would appear to replace the tile, a new mountain with trees and a glacial lake, perhaps. Building a road to it would give the nearest city extra gold and culture per turn. The kicker would be that if you had already industrialized it with mines, you would never get the message. Maybe necessary to have the game pop these up in a currently undeveloped area, to be fair. Also, if you were a heavy polluter, there would be a chance the park would be destroyed, and a citizen in the nearest city would become unhappy as a result.

I would also like to see 'Natural Wonders' become an issue after your discover either ecology or conservation. This would actually then give a bonus for poor people like Teabeard who started in the Marshland and/or Jungles and/or Mountains. Those terrain features which made the starting point of the game so painful will, in the late industrial age and beyond, prove very lucrative for the player-IF he/she had the wherewithal to keep it in largely pristine condition (perhaps each untouched square reaps x gpt and x% happiness?? Thus forcing the player to balance early game needs against possible later game considerations !)
Of course, if combined with my idea of terrain being partly connected to tech research, then suddenly 'bad starts' are not nearly as bad as they had been in previous iterations of Civ!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Discovery of "ecology" or some other modern age advance could enhance the trade bonus of natural wonders, but they should be visible from the start of the game. In SMAC they had something like this eg Monsoon Jungle and Uranium Flats. If you have these natural wonders in your territory they should give a bonus like a bonus resource or the should increase trade or happiness for instance if they are connected to your capital by road or harbour or airport. They could be like a cross between luxury resources and wonders-it is a good idea to have them in Civ4. By the way, it may be odd for the Aztecs to have Mt Fuji, but you could give the natural wonders more generic names. Besides, in the game you can end up with the Aztecs having the Pyramids for example, so what would be so odd about them being near Mt Fuji in the game?

Gatsby said:

By the way, it may be odd for the Aztecs to have Mt Fuji, but you could give the natural wonders more generic names. Besides, in the game you can end up with the Aztecs having the Pyramids for example, so what would be so odd about them being near Mt Fuji in the game?

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Since the primary language of the game will be English, perhaps these generic names (if preset for given, unique terrain feature) should be definitely English, such as

Great Lakes
Verdant Volcano

...i just want to be able to name mountains, hills, walleys, lakes, seas forests and areas in general.
Oh... and forts, borders and so on.

SimCity 2000 had a facility for putting names, like roadsigns, on specific buildings or spots. Might be a nice touch in Civ4, as long as the signs could be turned off to reduce clutter on the screen.

Aloha!

I enjoy the idée of having natural wonders and I believe some of our Civilian brothers mentioned it. Natural wonders should be identified when a certain level of enlightment has been reached. How does one know that there is actually a mountain further away from the great hill you just discovered?

The idea of naming rivers, mountains and gulfs could add to strategic naming of battles being fought and random events taking place. The player that reaches a certain peek first or discovers a river or identifies a gulf would be able to name it and gain some kind of a cultural bonus.

It will be a nice touch to be fighting a sea battle in the Gulf of Kilian, don’t you think?

I think it should be like this:
Your scout finds an extraordinary place,Domestic Advisor pops out and asks what name should it have(The names could be put like city names,each civ has it's own names).Then you get a victory points for it.Then you build a town near it,first it could give addition to the religion(+1 happy face).After you research Monotheism the Religious bonus stops,after Tourism has been invented it should give some commercial bonus depending what kinda natural wonder is it.And it should continue like that,maybe there's some adjusting in this idea...

How about giving extra trade on tiles that are rare. If you play on an earth were mountains are rare, you get a bonus trade on them. Or combinations of tiles such as if long tropical beaches are rare, extra trade on them too. A lone tropic island away mainland? Extra trade bonus! Chop down all the jungle and save a small jungle square - huge trade bonuses! That could in a way reflect tourism, trade with tropical fruit, animals, medicin etc. without complicating anything.

They had similar things in Alpha Centauri, like the Borehole Cluster (three really high production/ trade squares), and the Manifold Nexus (+1 planet rating). I think they'd be a neat addition, although the names should definitely be varied in some way (Who wants to see a Niagara Falls on every planet?), and really there should be one available for every civ so as to not unbalance things. Of course there'd need to be dozens programmed in then, but maybe instead they could be included at a minimum distance from any starting location so no-one definitely gets one, and they are a reward for expansion.

Spetznaz said:

I think it should be like this:
Your scout finds an extraordinary place,Domestic Advisor pops out and asks what name should it have(The names could be put like city names,each civ has it's own names).Then you get a victory points for it.Then you build a town near it,first it could give addition to the religion(+1 happy face).After you research Monotheism the Religious bonus stops,after Tourism has been invented it should give some commercial bonus depending what kinda natural wonder is it.And it should continue like that,maybe there's some adjusting in this idea...

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I like this idea, but Maby The tiles should have a %chance to turn into things like national parks or landmarks depending on the type of gov and your overal policy to terain, like if you chop down great tracks of forest the chance a forest would turn into a national park is higher.