Merfolk Cities

Here are the city graphics I created for the Merfolk civilization, intended to be used in my Midgard mod. Since they are ready why should you wait for the release of the mod instead of posting them now?

They are based on the city graphics from the original civ2 Midgard scenario. What you see on the preview is not a city in the water, it is shallow sea (little brighter than coast with small land masses), the native terrain of the Merfolk race. It still has a marine feeling even on normal grassland or plains.



Get them here!

Wow! These are AWESOME!!!

I agree, those are very good.

Very good indeed.Bravo Yorgo

Yorgo,
Great looking cities. In case anyone is wondering, Civ III can be modified to allow cities in any water square. Just add a naval unit and flag the build city box. Also flag "allow cities" for coast, sea, or ocean under rules/terrain. Unfortunately, the AI settle option can not be checked for naval units, so the computer probably won't use these units. I haven't tested this much, but it might be useful in a scenario.
Edit: Thanks to Wyrmshadow for the cargo liner.

Thanks for the point NavyDawg. It is a good idea and I had never thought of the possibility. It would be much better to have the Merfolk civilization in my mod building cities in actual water, instead of a sea-like land terrain (of course they will get sustantial bonuses for movement and worker rate, but it will still be land). I don't believe that it will work for the AI and I have no idea what may happen with military units, but I'll give it a try.

Very nice Sygxarhthria

This would be great for an underwater mod. Have all the terrain changed to be underwater mountains, coral reefs and so on.

An underwater mod sounds cool. Who's going to make spongebob?

All right, I tested the idea and found that a) there is no way to make the AI use sea-based settlers or workers, however they work perfectly for human players and b) ground units in sea-based cities are practically immobilized (of course) unless they are close to land, in which case they can leave the city but can’t return. In addition there is no way to attack such a city with land defenders, since naval units “can’t attack land settlements” and ground units, even marines, can’t attack or move in sea. Finally bombardment always fails. According to these remarks the following possibilities are open:

• A war mod with fixed sea-based cities using only naval or air units. This would be fun in the way that you can make only sea the territory you can move and land will be a physical border, in contrast to the original rules.
  
• Another war mod, with only one playable civilization owning the sea based settlers and workers, facing various land based civs, located in small islands. Of course only part of the water terrain should be habitable, to keep the game more balanced. I think it could be possible to retain the original technology tree for the land civilizations and create an entirely differed for the playable one, more suitable for a marine race. Both ideas require a good designed map.
  
• And finally the solution I find most attractive. It includes using actual land terrain, but it should look like sea, while the technologies and units are competely changed to fit properly. It won’t have the disadvantages of the previous scenarios using actual water terrain, but the effect will be the same. In addition we could have many varieties of “water”, instead of only the three available ones. Perhaps I could name it "Europa", supposing that the theory that below the frozen surface of Jupiter's satellite Europa lies a sea, possibly likely to host some form of life.

The drawback in all cases is that there are very few suitable units graphics, and no settlers or workers. On the other hand, creating the terrain graphics should be easy. A partial transparency of coast and sea added on land graphics should do the work.

I may consider creating such a mod, after finishing with Midgard for which I’ll need all the summer I guess, still quickly for a mod. It is relatively easy since I have only 7 races and the original civ2 scenario rules as a good guide.