Bring back terrain improvement!

[TommyTankRush]

I fondly recall Civ II. You could drain swamps, turn hills into grassland, turn grassland into hills (I think), generally make your country very very nifty.

Now I agree it should only become available in the late game - and it should be hugely labour intensive (ie 200/300 worker turns), but if they can build a size 20+ city in the Nevada desert, and drain thousands of square miles of swampland up near the great lakes, I don't see why huge engineering feats should be excluded from the game.

And don't even get me started on why your workers are unable to plant trees!

In the 11th Century, William the Conqueror forcibly disbanded numerous villages in what is now Southern Hampshire to create the 'New Forest' - because he liked hunting! I like National Park, Forest Reserve GP farms and if that means trampling some sniveling peasants into the mud, I'll do it.

 

[Vala]

Planting trees... nice!

 

[nbcman]

You can foster the spread of trees if you put a forest preserve on a forested square. But I agree with you TommyTank Rush that there should be some ability for workers to 'terraform' some of the less desirable terrain(desert and tundra).

 

[Slaughter]

I believe that, in the late game, you should have some good terraforming options. Maybe like Alpha Centauri.

 

[Bhruic]

And don't even get me started on why your workers are unable to plant trees!

Because it's completely exploitable? Stack enough Workers on a tile, and you can build the Forest in a turn. Then chop it in a turn. Free hammers for whatever city you want.

Bh

 

[Tully Bascombe]

Because it's completely exploitable? Stack enough Workers on a tile, and you can build the Forest in a turn. Then chop it in a turn. Free hammers for whatever city you want.

You make a good point. I wonder if new forests could be set up so that chopping produces only a miniscule number of hammers. As time progressed and the trees matured, the number of hammers from chopping could increase up to the maximum (which would be the current rate for pre-established forests).

 

[L4zXX0r]

just set worker built tree's to produce 0 hammers if chopped.

 

[Ethric]

Myeah, it seems easy enough to make planting forests "fairly exploit-proof". The workes would just plant seedlings, it would take 20 years (turns) or so before you had a forest. Then yes, you could chop it after 20 turns, but then you would have had a tile with nothing but the base terrain on it for the same, as planting would remove any other improvement save road. A balanced tradeoff, I think.

 

[JamesWolfpacker]

The best possible setup is to start hammers at zero and then for every turn the planted forest is in existence add one hammer to the amount if the forest is chopped.

 

[Fireseal]

String resonance and fungal bloom missiles needed too

 

[Stylesrj]

Perhaps the option to turn Grassland into Flood Plains or add them if the tile is next to a river. That'd be nice for super grassland tiles, with wheat and all that

 

[CTH]

Planting trees could be like inverted cottages, they give just a very small ammount or no hammers for chopping in the begining but after time they grow IF you don't work/use the title with a city.

It would be really nice, but forest preserves would be pretty useless... they could perhaps increase the grow speed of the forest they are put on...

 

[Stylesrj]

Forest Preserves would not become useless from the spread.
They can still provide the free specialist and spread forests to nearby tiles, just that the spread thing might not become as important

 

[Ossian]

Only Terrain improvement I would want added is the ability to irrigate desserts into a shabby farm for a +1 or +2 food, I don't like being able to mess with Hills and Mountains, I know it's possible but I don't like total control of the environment.

Should be able to do special farms in snow also.... "green houses"?

 

[BoydofZINJ]

It is possible to impliment some of these ideas if you mod the technologies a bit and/or the improvements.

Make a "Terraforming" technology where you can have certain improvements based on what you all want.

 

[ggganz]

I fondly recall Civ II. You could drain swamps, turn hills into grassland, turn grassland into hills (I think), generally make your country very very nifty.

Now I agree it should only become available in the late game - and it should be hugely labour intensive (ie 200/300 worker turns), but if they can build a size 20+ city in the Nevada desert, and drain thousands of square miles of swampland up near the great lakes, I don't see why huge engineering feats should be excluded from the game.

And don't even get me started on why your workers are unable to plant trees!

In the 11th Century, William the Conqueror forcibly disbanded numerous villages in what is now Southern Hampshire to create the 'New Forest' - because he liked hunting! I like National Park, Forest Reserve GP farms and if that means trampling some sniveling peasants into the mud, I'll do it.

Wouln't you need to put swamps in the game first?

 

[OctavianFlu]

I fully agree with the original statement. It seems silly to me that you can not modify the landscape for a cost. If they can expand the land on the Hong Kong island, and build houses in the everglades, why can't we do that in Civ IV.

I guess you could always CTRL+W and edit it yourself, but that sort of takes away from the game.

 

[Willem]

If they can expand the land on the Hong Kong island, and build houses in the everglades, why can't we do that in Civ IV.

Because the AI wouldn't be smart enough to do it well and it would just become another human player exploit?

 

[JavalTigar]

I just feel like eventually you should be able to put a workshop/cottage everywhere. desert, tundra, oaisis. after you research some tech the other terrain should open up.

maybe even some kind of mutant hybrid call it a work camp.

starts by adding nothing then ten turns later adds

ten turns later add

ten after that add

Would help those crap city sites but only a little

 

[Minmaster]

look at my avatar.

maybe a great engineer should be given the ability to transform tiles like the civ2 engineers did.

i agree, i miss being able to terraform.