Bring back Alpha Centauri goodies!

[eldar]

Um, Civ3 handles maps in pretty much the same way.
Until you get updated WMs, you don't know that an AI has laid rails, etc.

 

[Elrohir]

Generally I consider the SMAC terraforming system way better than Civ3. In SMAC your terraforming strategy affects your entire game strategy. You have to think! In Civ3 you have to do little more than build farms and mines all over the place without further pause. A boring micromanagement task.

However I agree with warpstorm about the specific terraforming option of raise/lower terrain. IMHO it already made little sense in SMAC, and in a terran setting it's completely unrealistic.

Maybe the raise/lower terrain thing wouldn't be available until you go to, say, Ecology or so? Around the time you actually have heavy machinery, then it wouldn't be unrealistic. (But if the AI started creating their own continents, or Japan made a land route to the US in the WW2 Scenario, it would get stupid pretty fast)

 

[rhialto]

The raise/lower terrain feature is an artifact of the smac terrain system, which is not relevant to civ short of a radical overhaul. But civ2/ctp1/ctp2 style terraforming should definitely be a late/very late game option.

 

[Kosez]

Terraforming would be nice. Changing deserts to gardens of eden isn`t something we never heard about (United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Las Vegas,...). To level a hill should not represent itself as a difficulty to civilization that is determined to do it. And so on.