C2C Aquatic cities

[Faustmouse]

Here's an idea of how to implent aquatic cities with low programming effort:

The terrain group tags (lunar, earth, aquatic, etc.) would allow us to make some buildings, that are only buildable under water. The graphical problem with how to display cities under water can be solved by having something like an elevator from the surface down to the city and only showing the upper part. Like it was done in Anno 2070. And, as in Anno 2070, there should be under water plateaus as a terrain feature. These would be the only valid places to settle under water cities at first (IIRC there is a tech called Abyss Colonization which would allow to build cities everywhere). I THINK this could be done without any bigger code changes, since we can settle in March only after Canal Systems and on Mountains only after Algebra. So having UW Plateaus only settleable once you researched a certain tech should be possible.

The REAL problem for me is: Why would you settle there?
It would be much more expensive then settlements on land. Much more prone to earthquakes. Sure, there are plenty of resources down there, but IMO they can be harvested by robots far better. No need for human interaction. At most for research bases. Maybe because of overpopulation, but it is far easier and cheaper to just settle in the desert.

Floating cities on the other hand would be a valid alternative. Plus they can be used as a storage for goods you mine underwater.

 

[tmv]

I think there are two reasons to settle the ocean: Overpopulation (Two thirds of the surface area are water), although that would better be handled by floating cities, and catastrophes, like nuclear armageddon or out-of-control global warming (or in the distant future: Better protection against attacks from orbit / space).

A big problem might be that floating cities would probably come first - I think there is already some planning in that direction, and that would be tougher to handle in the game. In any case you need to handle interaction with ships (mostly when using floating cities) and subs (in all cases). And floating cities could move, so you would be out of luck until the nomad project was completed.

 

[Noriad2]

Yes there are plenty of deserts on earth that can be terraformed and settled, but most of them are owned by other countries.
However, it is cheaper to build some dikes around an area of sea and pump out the water, as has been done in several areas of the world, even centuries ago (Netherlands being the most famous, as half of the country lies below 1 meter above sea level with an eighth of the country lying below sea level).

 

[Nevets_]

Floating Islands sound cool, and it might be possible if you used a special sea settler unit action that changes the tile from ocean to a special 'artificial island' tile, and founded a city on that tile. By having it be a unique tile it shouldn't raise the ocean floor around it. Additionally, if you could build the tiles with workboats too, you could make it so that some improvements could be built on them, like villages or factories but not farms, and expand the floating island beyond the city itself. If the special settler unit also auto-built a normally unbuildable prerequisite building in the city then you could tie underwater mining or sea farming buildings to require that prerequisite building.

It makes more sense for underwater exploration or sea cultivation to be carried out by people living on a floating island rather than underwater simply because it requires less materials to build a flat platform that floats on the water than a dome or other shaped building that has to fully enclose your living and working areas, in addition to the increased dangers already mentioned and the hassle of going through pressurization and depressurization whenever traveling between the surface and the underwater habitat.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The idea of a terrain changing action for workers or settlers to establish the ability to found on a tile is quite interesting. But all in all I would suggest we wait until a little more work is done in regards to depth interactions, which was planned for perhaps the next release version cycle.

 

[pepper2000]

It's hard to think of a strong business case for underwater cities, but three possibilities come to find. I have not examined them rigorously, but given how much artistic license I took with space colonization, that is hardly an objection.

- Tourism. People like to visit exotic locations. Future civilization might be wealthy enough that tourism alone could justify at least a few small sea floor settlements. The tech tree also has Lunar Tourism, after all.
- Underwater geothermal vents. It might make sense to colocate high energy industrial processes (today, most aluminum smelters are near hydroelectric dams or geothermal sites). Yes, that could all be done robotically, but the presence of resources and a manufacturing base can pave the way for human habitation.
- Deep ocean aquaculture. The need to increase food production, together with a desire to reduce the terrestrial ecological impacts of agriculture, might lead to an expansion of algae-based aquaculture in large facilities on or just below the ocean surface. Future agronomists (e.g. Augment Consumables) can find ways to make this algae-based diet more nutritious and palatable.
- More speculatively, I wonder if there might be novel manufacturing processes that would naturally benefit from the high pressure environment of the deep ocean.

In thinking about overpopulation, to the extent that it is a problem on the horizon, the main limiting factor in human population has long been and will probably continue to be food production. Most human land use in the world today is for agriculture, and only a small fraction is for actual human habitation. Habitation can be densified through taller skyscrapers and arcologies (which probably closely resemble what an underwater habitat would be like).

And let's not be afraid to resort to political or cultural factors, which throughout history and to the present day motivate all sorts of behavior that would otherwise be hard to explain. Maybe underwater cities will be built to escape national boundaries (see e.g. the Seasteading Institute). Or maybe to extend national boundaries (e.g. South China Sea dispute). Or because some eccentric trillionaire thinks it's a neat idea. Or it fits with some neo-pagan belief system.

 

[Faustmouse]

Tourism: There is not THAT much to see below let's say 100m. Sure, there are all sorts of strange deep sea creatures, but most of them don't like the bright light you'd need to make them visible from the habitate, so they wouldn't come close. Biolumiscent jellyfish could be a reason, but probably not for tourism. But who knows.

Geothermal vents:
Could be, but I think having it purely robotic would be much more efficient.

Algae culture would make sense, but not as a deep sea city. They need light after all, so you want them to be as close to the surface as possible.

I was thinking about the high pressure enviroment as well. But it's somewhat hard to imagine that it would be cheaper to locate production line 5km below the surface, just to generate 500 bars of pressure. 500 bars aren't that much after all and it is quite easy to generate them on the surface at compareably low cost.


That was my biggest problem: I had an idea how to make under water cities possible because ppl liked them, but as I wrote the post I found that I couldn't find a reason why we would build some in the first place. Maybe it's time to switch from critical reality thinking to could-be-gameing-thinking. Which for me, is quite hard to do

 

[tmv]

As long as you have perfect clarity regarding the tech tree, reality thinking can only take a backseat. There were political leaders and even famous scientists at the end of the 19th century who thought the airplane would never be successful, while we have a prehistoric chieftain who already knows which road to take to unlock the Epsilon Assembler.

The problem is that ocean surface / shallow water cities are more realistic, while cities on the ocean floor should be much easier to implement in the game, since they don't interact with ships at all and subs cannot dive under the city.

 

[Noriad2]

For a gamer, underwater cities would be map painting. And that is a good enough reason. Every tile must be your colour! (okay, map painting is mostly an obsession among Europa Universalis 4 players)

Which also begs the question what the effect of increased map space would be on a Domination victory, as this requires a certain percentage of map controlled. Same goes for moon/space colonization.

 

[pepper2000]

I do appreciate how much work has gone into accuracy and historical realism for this mod. I've learned quite a bit from playing it, certainly more than from some of those boring history classes in grade school. Obviously anything more than 10 years in the future will be highly speculative, but it is still a great opportunity to explore plausible theories of how future cities, space colonization, or transhumanism might work.

There is a lot of research and visionary proposals out there for space colonization, and some for ocean surface colonization, but nothing off the top of my head for the ocean floor. If someone has attempted to map it out, then it would give a good starting point for making a building tree. But there is a ton of great artwork.

 

[Kornifere]

Hm... For me it's reversed. History was one of my favorite subjects in school and it's still a hobby, I wrote some Wikipedia articles about the history of Westfalia e.g. So I see the missing parts in caveman2cosmos...

Especially the medieval era does not feel like the historical (European) Middle Ages at the moment. So I made a concept for a mod mod. First modding steps were successful... Added the dreamtime religion of the Australian Aboriginal people to the game. I've established a concept simulating the spread of religion by legends and myth, next step will be to provide every religion with it.

After that I will add the main Greek philosophies to the game, Stoicism, Sokrates, Aristoteles, Platon, Cynicism as a condition for theology and other medieval techs. Christianity and papasty will go to the classical era where they belong, and then the I want to enlarge the medieval era. From the "Gogerichtsbarkeit" (the law that allowed to build early countys) over the law book "Sachsenspiegel" to the Hanse. With counties, duchies and kingdoms, knights that are not obsolote fifty rounds after their invention, the Romanian and Gothic periods, the Cathedral at Speyer and lots of other stuff.

Let's have a look how long it will take...

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Especially the medieval era does not feel like the historical (European) Middle Ages at the moment.

Probably because most of the modders are more interested in the Ancient and earlier or the Modern and beyond.

Added the dreamtime religion of the Australian Aboriginal people to the game. I've established a concept simulating the spread of religion by legends and myth, ...

This I would be very interested in seeing as I dislike the way religions operate at the moment, and I am the one who keeps them working.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Hm... For me it's reversed. History was one of my favorite subjects in school and it's still a hobby, I wrote some Wikipedia articles about the history of Westfalia e.g. So I see the missing parts in caveman2cosmos...

Especially the medieval era does not feel like the historical (European) Middle Ages at the moment. So I made a concept for a mod mod. First modding steps were successful... Added the dreamtime religion of the Australian Aboriginal people to the game. I've established a concept simulating the spread of religion by legends and myth, next step will be to provide every religion with it.

After that I will add the main Greek philosophies to the game, Stoicism, Sokrates, Aristoteles, Platon, Cynicism as a condition for theology and other medieval techs. Christianity and papasty will go to the classical era where they belong, and then the I want to enlarge the medieval era. From the "Gogerichtsbarkeit" (the law that allowed to build early countys) over the law book "Sachsenspiegel" to the Hanse. With counties, duchies and kingdoms, knights that are not obsolote fifty rounds after their invention, the Romanian and Gothic periods, the Cathedral at Speyer and lots of other stuff.

Let's have a look how long it will take...

I feel the same about the medieval and it sounds like I would agree with most everything else you're doing there. Please post this as a modmod for DH to take a look at since he has interest... My personal feeling on the medieval area of the tech tree is that it is absolutely the most underdeveloped and inaccurate region we have and really needs someone who KNOWS the history of the era very well to get in and engineer it out properly. There's quite a few techs in 'classical' that should be in medieval as well imo. Feudalism for example! So your efforts could very well be something we are needing here.

 

[Harrier]

I feel the same about the medieval and it sounds like I would agree with most everything else you're doing there. Please post this as a modmod for DH to take a look at since he has interest... My personal feeling on the medieval area of the tech tree is that it is absolutely the most underdeveloped and inaccurate region we have and really needs someone who KNOWS the history of the era very well to get in and engineer it out properly. There's quite a few techs in 'classical' that should be in medieval as well imo. Feudalism for example! So your efforts could very well be something we are needing here.

I agree - plus 1.

 

[pepper2000]

I'll second the favorable comments about Medieval Era expansion. For a very long time, historians have not given the Middle Ages the attention they deserve. And not just in Europe; the Middle Ages were a dynamic and important time in Chinese, Indian, and Islamic civilizations. I look forward to seeing how that turns out.

But don't put Aquatic Cities in the Middle Ages.

 

[Kornifere]

This I would be very interested in seeing as I dislike the way religions operate at the moment, and I am the one who keeps them working.

The idea is quite simple.

Premise 1: Why is the holy city of a religion the holy city of the religion? Because here all the stories about the supernatural entities are told, because here the holy books are written.
Premise 2: Stories, myth and legends told to the people are an umportant instrument zu spread religion.

Leads to the following game mechanism:

Every religion gets a mythology resource, Druid mythology, Christian mythology, Jewish Mythology and so on.

Every religuon gets a single great wonder that can only be build in the goly city. E.g. Legends of the Uluru for the dreamtime religion or the Holy Bible for Christianity.

The great wonder creates a small amout of the Mythology resource.

The resource is needed to build further buildings, e.g. Christianity legends. These buildings have the spread religion trait and create a single unit of the mythology resource simulating tales are now even told in other cities.

So at the beginning the resource is only available in the civilization with the holy City. But other civilizations can get it by trade or by conquering a holy city or a city with a legends building. Then they build their own legends buildings and can also trade the resource to the next Civilization.

The medieval Hanse should work the same way.

 

[Kornifere]

But don't put Aquatic Cities in the Middle Ages.

No tournaments in Atlantis, hm?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The idea is quite simple.

Premise 1: Why is the holy city of a religion the holy city of the religion? Because here all the stories about the supernatural entities are told, because here the holy books are written.
Premise 2: Stories, myth and legends told to the people are an umportant instrument zu spread religion.

Leads to the following game mechanism:

Every religion gets a mythology resource, Druid mythology, Christian mythology, Jewish Mythology and so on.

Every religuon gets a single great wonder that can only be build in the goly city. E.g. Legends of the Uluru for the dreamtime religion or the Holy Bible for Christianity.

The great wonder creates a small amout of the Mythology resource.

The resource is needed to build further buildings, e.g. Christianity legends. These buildings have the spread religion trait and create a single unit of the mythology resource simulating tales are now even told in other cities.

So at the beginning the resource is only available in the civilization with the holy City. But other civilizations can get it by trade or by conquering a holy city or a city with a legends building. Then they build their own legends buildings and can also trade the resource to the next Civilization.

The medieval Hanse should work the same way.

Does this do away with missionaries? Or do they have another function?

The spread religion function/values in BtS only spread religion to cities without any religion. The Spread Multiple religions helps but the only way, currently, to get a religion into a city is via missionaries.

 

[Kornifere]

Grml, I guessed there had to be a catch...

What about a modified version? It is said King Richards Crusade spreads free Crusader units... Perhaps the legend building could spread missionaries? (Unfortinately I don't know how the free spread of Crusaders works...)

The light variant would be that the legends building only gives priests and better birth rate for prophets.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Grml, I guessed there had to be a catch...

What about a modified version? It is said King Richards Crusade spreads free Crusader units... Perhaps the legend building could spread missionaries? (Unfortinately I don't know how the free spread of Crusaders works...)

The light variant would be that the legends building only gives priests and better birth rate for prophets.

It creates units every so often. It uses Python to do the work.