What Happend to the Terrain?

Hydromancerx · Mar 19, 2017

So I have noticed a lot of problems with the current terrain. Like everything changed almost. Which i am not exactly thrilled about. However I think we can get some terrain back on track.

1. Who the heck thought it was a good idea to rename the polar terrains? First of all they were named Ice, Permafrost and Tundra for a reason. Taiga is when you have forest + tundra or permafrost, not its own terrain. Taiga is a biome not a terrain or terrain feature. Its what happens when you have both.

So please change it back and the art of the tundra back to its original brown and white looking terrain.

2. Rocky and Barren are all messed up. Rocky is spouse to use the brown rocky terrain from the Dune mod. Which matched the caves and stuff. Barren on the other hand was the gray and barren lifeless terrain. Yet somehow they now switched colors or something.

3. I understand before one complaint was about the bright desert. But now its hard to tell them apart.

Here are the old terrains in dune wars ...

the dark brown in the middle is what the rocky terrain should be. And honestly the muddy terrain should look like the terrain at the far right. The current one is hard to tell its even muddy.

Here is an old chart i made ...

As you can see they all cycle into each other. And look great as a set. You can still tell each of them apart too.

Not only that but because some Lunar and Martian terrains depending on the Earth graphics, they have been messed up as well. Such as ...

- Martian Rocky shared art with Earth Rocky
- Martian Desert and Martian Dunes seems not to be different anymore.
- What the heck is Lunar Dome? It should be Lunar Basalt and it should look different.

Gah! So much got messed up when you guys messed around with the terrain art! :mad:

JosEPh_II · Mar 19, 2017

Hydro did you really expect after you left that the need for graphics artists would not be needed? That it would stay pristine and untouched? And that those artists would valiantly carry your banner on?

Ideas on terrain changed. Even how terrains and features interact changed and 2 different Graphics artists worked on the mod since then. We just can't tear it all down again and rebuild cause it's not what you had in mind 2+years ago. Kind of unrealistic isn't it?

And there were actually complaints against the old terrains and some players reported eyestrain. Even DH and SO expressed that it was causing them problems.

Perhaps you need to adjust. Just sayin'.

Toffer90 · Mar 19, 2017

I could restore all the old terrains but then I will never work on making, or improving, terrain graphics in the core again.

This is the Taiga biome:

This is the Tundra biome:

I chose to call the inner greenland, and antartica for ice terrain.

JosEPh_II · Mar 19, 2017

And I prefer your take on this Toffer.

Toffer90 · Mar 19, 2017

I still consider the terrains in the core as WIP.
So I might be persuaded to take a different directions than what I've currently done.

Thunderbrd · Mar 19, 2017

Here, again, try to identify what the values are that are being disrupted by a new approach and see if the new approach can adapt to taking on some more of the values of the original approach that may not have been noticed when the redesign took place. But I don't think that the new approach didn't bring some new values of benefit of its own as well so point out what those design priorities were. Maybe we can find that between the two sets of design priorities, we can create something even better.

The swatch color chart Hydro expressed for the original, for example, makes a lot of sense. I'd like to see the current art and tile definition system displayed in a similar fashion to see how it compares directly.

And from Toffer's response, am I to understand that we added the Taiga to the scheme or did we just do some renaming or what exactly? I've noticed some things changed there since I last 'understood' things (probably my understanding is based on Hydro's system) and I haven't managed to obtain much clarity as to what was adjusted yet. I suspect there are some possible issues with terrain damage and promotions wrapped up in this too.

That said, I think most have appreciated what they feel is an art improvement in the way it is experienced in play, due to Toffer's recent work there, and I feel it's time I at least get more fully updated on what we did with terrains recently so I can consider if there are any conflicts or other issues to sort out if nothing else.

Hydromancerx · Mar 19, 2017

Ok this is the 2nd time fo me typing this sicne the power just went out ... Grrr.

JosEPh_II said:
Hydro did you really expect after you left that the need for graphics artists would not be needed? That it would stay pristine and untouched? And that those artists would valiantly carry your banner on?

I would have hoped that TB would have defended it.

JosEPh_II said:
Perhaps you need to adjust. Just sayin'.

Just hear me out. I need to explain why.

Toffer90 said:
I could restore all the old terrains but then I will never work on making, or improving, terrain graphics in the core again.

Believe me I know my biomes thanks to the Sagan 4 alien ecosystem project I have worked on.

In the project the biomes worked like this ...

Spoiler :

There is also the Köppen climate classification system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Köppen_climate_classification

But both of those use biomes. And Civ4 is diffrent than that. They have two types a "terrain" and "terrain feature". So having two we can take advanateg of this duel system and make even more biomes by combining them. Such as ...

Permafrost + Forest = Taiga
Lush + Jungle = Tropical Rainforest
Lush + Forest = Temperate Rainforest
Rocky + Forest = Boreal Forest
Plains + Savanna = Dry Savanna
Grassland + Savanna = Temperate Savanna
Scrubland + Savanna = Aird Savanna

And so on ...

Also having the name "Taiga" can be confusing since you can have more than just polar regions for "cold" terrain. Such as high elevation on some maps use the cold terrains. And thus would work more like this ...

What I am recommending is that we treat the terrains as more genetic things that when combioned with terrain features can make the classic biomes we know. I have them separated into different types based on temperature and moisture.

Cold Types:Tundra, Permiforst and Ice
Basically they are increasingly colder biomes. That when combined with a Forest can make "Taiga" and when placed in lower latitudes near mountains can make alpine and Boreal forests.

Warm Dry Types: Scrubland, Desert, Dunes and Salt Flats.
These follow similar suite in which they have increasingly hotter and dryer climate. Salt Flats are a special case but more or less act like the ice type in the cold terrains. There are also cactus and other terrain features which can be placed on the Scrubland and Desert types just like Tundra and Permiforst. Since we have tundra we do not have to use the desert for cold deserts, since that represents that already.

Wet Types: Marsh, Muddy and Lush
These are less about temperature and more about soil wetness. For instance you can have marshes in the polar region for a polar bog or in the tropics for a tropical swamp. Lush is the least wet, then Muddy and then Marsh is the wettest. In which you can add in other terrain featuers such as swamp, jungle, forest, etc. To chnage the biome type.

Rugged Types: Scubland, Rocky and Barren
Scrubland also can be considered a bit rugged, but the main focus is on the Rocky terrain. It has no temperature or really dryness and represents less soil and more rocks. Thus one can combine it with say Forest and get a Rocky Forest or with a Jungle and get a Rocky Jungle. Barren is the opposite of the Lush terrain. This is to show low soil richness. most terrain features should not even generate on n this. In past debates about biomes some wanted to have low soil quality for Tropical Rainforests. Well with Barren you can do this by combining the two.

Middle Types: Plains and Grassland
These are base game and represent basically more wet and more dry version of the same thing. Scrublands would be more dry than Plains, while Lush would be more Wet than Grassland. Likewise Barren would be more soil poor than them and rocky is more rugged. I do not really ahve better names for them, but you can see that even in the base game if you add forest to them then they turn into a Temperate Forest. And if you add jungle to them they turn into a Tropical Forest. Where there would ne no more grassland or plains. Since they generally occur when there is no forest. We also have terrain features like long grass which could technically represent that too.

Ideally we would want to change the names from specific biome types to more generic ones. Such as with Grasslands, Plains, Tundra, Desert, etc.But there are not real better names unless we use some Koppen system. So I want to get what we can chnage where we can.

In short there should be no "Taiga" terrain in the same way that there is no "Rainforest" terrain.

Thunderbrd · Mar 19, 2017

Good post, H! Well explained in thinking. Toffer? This isn't asking directly for a complete destruction or overriding of what you've done but it is explaining some foundational plans that were in place before your adjustments that I wonder if you realized were conceived of in the original design. I was not aware of some of this depth myself. Hydro... you're not saying the art is all the problem here right? Just that there was a larger structure of intent in how biomes were arranged that's been disturbed since you left mostly correct?

Toffer, what do you think of his explanation? Does it hold mustard for you? And how would this then insinuate adjustments you think should be made?

Hydromancerx · Mar 19, 2017

Thunderbrd said:
Hydro... you're not saying the art is all the problem here right?

For specifically the old tundra (now taiga) terrain I WAS saying it looks too similar to the permafrost and should be more 50/50 snow / soil. As opposed ot its more like 80 / 20 snow / soil.

I also was saying that the Lunar and Martian terrains have gotten messed up since they shared the same art as the Earth terrains. So at the very least even if Earth terrains are not getting changed, the Mars and Lunar need to have their art fixed.

Toffer90 · Mar 19, 2017

I see merit in the complex system you envisioned, when I made the change I was looking more for a simplification based mostly on the picture below and reading up on different categorization systems for geography, climates and biomes.

Spoiler :

Because large forest (large enough to be represented as a forest feature) are rare on permafrost I felt we needed a snowy terrain to represent much of canada, sweden and russia that could also have lots of forests. I wanted something like that because it would compliment maps visually. Taiga was the best terrain name I could come up with for something like that.

I felt permafrost was out of place (perhaps a bit too vague) as the ice and tundra terrain also are permafrost terrains in certain aspects that I feel defines permafrost. I also imagined permafrost could be here and there within a taiga terrain (without being visible graphically in any way or mentioned in text). I removed it because I saw no functions for it in C2C.

I can add in the permafrost terrain again, but I want to keep a terrain with the taiga graphics. I reckon you want to rename the taiga terrain, you seem to have strong opinions on the matter so I will let you figure out what to name it.

Hydromancerx said:
For specifically the old tundra (now taiga) terrain I WAS saying it looks too similar to the permafrost and should be more 50/50 snow / soil. As opposed ot its more like 80 / 20 snow / soil.

I'm not against reducing the amount of snow in the taiga terrain, it is something that has crossed my mind before too.

Hydromancerx said:
I also was saying that the Lunar and Martian terrains have gotten messed up since they shared the same art as the Earth terrains. So at the very least even if Earth terrains are not getting changed, the Mars and Lunar need to have their art fixed.

I was aware of this, figured I'd fix them up when we needed them. I did fix one of the lunar terrains,, lunar basalt.

Toffer90 · Mar 19, 2017

Spoiler Here is how I intended Ice terrain to look like. :

Dancing Hoskuld · Mar 19, 2017

Strange Taiga= cold dry grassland when talking about the habitat of woolly rhinos and mammoths etc.

Hydromancerx · Mar 19, 2017

Toffer90 said:
I see merit in the complex system you envisioned, when I made the change I was looking more for a simplification based mostly on the picture below and reading up on different categorization systems for geography, climates and biomes.

Ah yes the wikipedia biome map. I had a long conversations about this on another forum when comparing my Sagan 4 biomes to this chart. However those arguments do not really apply to Caveman2Cosmos due to the way maps are generated. And the whole duel terrain system I mentioned before. So to go into detail we have some biomes doing double duty such as Tundra vs Alpine Tundra. While we have many Combos making the various biomes on that chart.

Ice Sheet = Ice
Tundra = Tundra and Permafrost
Taiga = Tundra and Permafrost + Forest
Temperate Broadleaf Forest = Grasland + Forest
Temperate Steppe = Grassland + Tall Grass
Sub-Tropical Rainforest = Lush and Grasslands + Jungle
Mediterranean = Scrubland
Monsoon Forest = Wetlands + Forest
Arid Desert = Desert + Cactus
Xeirc Desert = Dunes
Dry Steppe = Desert or Scrubland + Grassland
Semi-Arid Desert = Desert + Grasslands
Grass Savanna = Plains + Tall Grass
Tree Savanna = Plains + Savanna
Sub-Tropical Dry Forest = Plains + Forest or Jungle
Tropical Rainforest = Barren or Wetlands + Jungle
Alpine Tundra = Tundra or Permafrost
Montane Forest = Tundra or Permafrost + Forest

As you can see thanks to the many combos we can do we can actually make even more types of biomes by combining the two.

Toffer90 said:
I was aware of this, figured I'd fix them up when we needed them. I did fix one of the lunar terrains,, lunar basalt.

One of the lunar terrains needs to have the "green" part of it either removed or the "color saturation" reduced so it looks gray instead of green.

Toffer90 said:
Because large forest (large enough to be represented as a forest feature) are rare on permafrost I felt we needed a snowy terrain to represent much of canada, sweden and russia that could also have lots of forests. I wanted something like that because it would compliment maps visually. Taiga was the best terrain name I could come up with for something like that.

I felt permafrost was out of place (perhaps a bit too vague) as the ice and tundra terrain also are permafrost terrains in certain aspects that I feel defines permafrost. I also imagined permafrost could be here and there within a taiga terrain (without being visible graphically in any way or mentioned in text). I removed it because I saw no functions for it in C2C.

I can add in the permafrost terrain again, but I want to keep a terrain with the taiga graphics. I reckon you want to rename the taiga terrain, you seem to have strong opinions on the matter so I will let you figure out what to name it.

Permiforst was ment to be vague as alf way between solid ice and tundra. Tundra is not always snowy which is why I wanted to make it 50 / 50 when it comes to snow and soil. While Permafrost rarely melts but still can while ice just never melts.

(Tundra in the summer.)

If you absolutely want to have a specific "Taiga" terrain then I think we should have ....

Ice > Permiforst> Tundra > Taiga

Ice and Taiga would keep their graphics. The current Tundra would get back it's old tundra graphics. And Permiforst would get the current Tundra's graphics (how it use to be). We will also need to make one more promotion on the Polar promotion line to reflect this if we go this way.

Toffer90 said:
I'm not against reducing the amount of snow in the taiga terrain, it is something that has crossed my mind before too.

Well they are all so close together its hard to tell which of the snowy terrains are which.

Hydromancerx · Mar 19, 2017

Toffer90 said:
Spoiler Here is how I intended Ice terrain to look like. :

View attachment 467326

I don't have a problem with Ice. That looks awesome. I just want to have a tundra terrain that is half snow and half soil.

Hydromancerx · Mar 19, 2017

Dancing Hoskuld said:
Strange Taiga= cold dry grassland when talking about the habitat of woolly rhinos and mammoths etc.

Realistically Mammoths and Woolly Rhinos did not live just in colder climates but also wooded or warmer plains. Similar to the regions where American Bison live. But game wise its so much cooler to see them in the very cold biomes.Remember these large animals needed a lot of vegetation to sustain their huge size. So they had to come to snowy forests and cold grasslands to feed.

Harrier · Mar 19, 2017

Thunderbrd said:
And from Toffer's response, am I to understand that we added the Taiga to the scheme or did we just do some renaming or what exactly?

As far as I am aware, apart from any graphic changes - it was just renaming. That is all I had to do on my world maps.

Edit: Sorry did not read all the replies to the above, before my post.

But I would like to know, when you reach a conclusion. How would this effect an (out of date) Earth map?.

Toffer90 · Mar 19, 2017

Hydromancerx said:
Taiga = Tundra and Permafrost + Forest

Imo. neither tundra nor permafrost terrains should hold any forests, well especially not tundra at least..

I can agree to most of what you are saying, though I do wonder what features or functionality you have planned that requires a permafrost terrain.

Hydromancerx · Mar 19, 2017

Well the difference between ice and permafrost is that permafrost has soil on top of the ice. meaning that the top soil can allow for plants to grow even trees. So like the ice terrain would be like glaciers and such. While the permafrost would represent an area so cold that it almost never thaws like a tundra would thaw in the summer.

In the same way that a Grassland is no longer a Grassland when a Forest is on top of it the Tundra terrain is not longer Tundra when the Snow Forest is on top of it. Basically that Snowy forest graphic is what I mean when I say "Taiga". The terrain of a "Taiga" can have frozen permafrost under its soil. Or the cold soil of the tundra on it. Which depending on the season goes from frozen to thawed.

However the way the game works is they do not have a distinction between the Pine Trees, Snowy Pine Trees and Deciduous Trees. Even though they all have different graphics. They are all just called "Forest". If i had to name something "Taiga" then I would name those "Snowy Pine Tree".

I also am generally "additive" in my changes to things. I usually like to take what we got and then add or on re-purpose things. Since we are talking about terrain changes, perhaps rather than removing one for another we can have them all stay. Adding new types of terrains to allow for all the art styles.

Give me a bit and perhaps I can come up with a proposal.

Toffer90 · Mar 19, 2017

As long as you think we need the extra terrain resolution, I won't object to it.

Although I will protest if we allow forest to spawn or spread to tundra, that is sacrilegious imo.
No matter how much you try to tell me that the terrain is not what it says it is when it has a forest. ^^

Hydromancerx · Mar 20, 2017

Ok so I found an old chart I made awhile back. So I added onto it and then tracked down all the source art too. I tired to use all your art in it as well. So here is the epic list!

As you can see while back someone request Karst so I added it to the middle since there is no art for that I could find.

So as you can see with this the different forest types will have their own associated terrain. I believe this idea was discussed a long time ago. Which is how I still had a chart to build on for this new one.

Some old terrain art i could not find the sources for so some of Toffer's art filled in the gaps such as the Deciduous and Boreal. However I think Boreal worked out well.

The Rich Loam was requested awhile back and I thought the Barren terrain worked perfect. Likewise the so called "hideous" old C2C barren works great for a new "scorched" terrain we could use in conjunction with the burned forest terrain feature. After forest fires.

EDIT: I think i found the original topics, Georealism and New Terrain

Ah it was the Terrain mod that had the missing art.

EDIT2: And my old chart.

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