Can we please have the semidesert terrain in Civ 7? (and other terrain suggestions)

[Uncle Paul]

It's a terrain in between plains and desert, used in several Civ 4 mods, but I think it originates with embryodead's Sword of Islam RFC modmod. It looks really nice, provides a better aesthetic transition, and also leads to better, more accurate maps. It could offer 1 more production than a desert tile.

It would also be nice to bring in some more Sword of Islam terrains into the main Civ 7 game - salt flats and salt lakes, perhaps also moorland (present in RFCE and soon to be present in DoC), and savannah (soon to be present in DoC). We could also have a differentiation between tropical waters, temperate waters, and arctic waters, and bring back Civ 3's coast/sea/ocean three-tiered distinction of water tiles, with ocean bordering sea which borders coast which borders land. We could also have the islands terrain feature from DoC, which I think Leoreth originally borrowed from somewhere else. Maybe even lagoons, which are soon to be present in DoC when Leoreth brings in the new map.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I'd like to have tropical mountains, similar to the ones that they introduced during the Pirates Scenario, which could be found in the middle of maps near rainforests etc.

Also woods tiles could look more diverse such as deciduous trees in the middle of the map as well, instead of every tile being evergreen trees.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

"Mediterranean" perhaps? I guess you could call it "scrub" for the game's purposes.

 

[Uncle Paul]

I'd like to have tropical mountains, similar to the ones that they introduced during the Pirates Scenario, which could be found in the middle of maps near rainforests etc.

Also woods tiles could look more diverse such as deciduous trees in the middle of the map as well, instead of every tile being evergreen trees.

Pirates scenario?

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Pirates scenario?

They released a multiplayer pirate scenario, based in the Carribean, in a free update in October of 2020.

 

[Uncle Paul]

They released a multiplayer pirate scenario, based in the Carribean, in a free update in October of 2020.

Interesting, I'll check it out

 

[Ekmek]

I'd would actually like a climate layer on top of terrain so plains can very by arid, tropical, polar, temperate, continental and so on.

If I get real crazy I'd rather see this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Köppen_climate_classification

 

[Evie]

Unfortunately a lot of terrain types are climate specific to begin. Virtually no terrain type would work with arid or polar climate, etc.

A system that determine climate then vegetation and determine terrain types accordingly (so each terrain type is a specific climate-vegetation combo) may be better.

In that case, I would keep the number of climates relatively small: Tropical (include sub-tropical), temperate (include the warmer humid continentals), Arid (include semi-arid and mediteraneanish) and Boreal (include the colder continental and polar climates), and the vegetation types (Trees, Grass, Barren, Wetlands) down. With this system, the difference in vegetation further distinguish climates: semi-arid will tend more toward Arid Grassland (Veld), Mediteranean toward Arid Wooded (Shrubland), and pure Arid toward desert. Likewise warmer cold regions will tend toward taiga and steppe and colder ones toward tundra.

Then you have:

Tropical: Jungle (wooded), Savanna (Grass), Barrens (Barren), Swamp (Wetlands)
Temperate: Forest (Wooded), Prairie (Grass), Heath (Barren), Marsh (Wetlands)
Arid: Shrubland (wooded), Veld (Grass), Desert (Barren), Flood Plain (Wetlands)
Boreal: Taiga (wooded), Steppe (Grass), Tundra (Barren), Bog (Wetlands)

 

[BuchiTaton]

A mix of temperature and vegetation cover could be easy to understand and remember by most players:

	DESERT	BARREN	OPEN	DENSE
COLD	Glacier	Tundra	Steppe	Taiga
TEMPERATE	Badland	Moor	Prairie	Forest
HOT	Dunes	Scrub	Savanna	Jungle

 

[pineappledan]

I worry too many specific terrains will make terrain-dependent abilities too narrow. It could become too difficult to incorporate many different types and still be able to place civs in their correct start biases.

 

[Evie]

I like your simplification of my plan, Buchi Taton. Vegetation to represent wetness and temperature limited to hot, temperate, cold.

I would keep the wetlands vegetation though (bog for cold, marsh for temperate, swamp for hot).

Pineappledan - those terrain types are largely equivalent to adding jungles, forests or marshes to a grass, tundra or plain tiles. Just that is already 10-12 terrain types (grass marsh, grass forest, grass jungle, grass, plain forest, plain, plain jungle, tundra forest, tundra, tundra marsh, desert, ice) for 12 terrains. Adding three more isn’t that big a jump. Abilities that targeted all tundra or all plains can instead take all hot or all cold tiles or all dense vegetation or all barren tiles.

 

[GeneralZIft]

What's to be the difference between Sea, Ocean and Coast?

 

[Evie]

Not really relevant to this system. Coast-Sea-Ocean is more about elevation (the underwater equivalent of mountains and hills) than about temperature or humidity.

 

[BuchiTaton]

II would keep the wetlands vegetation though (bog for cold, marsh for temperate, swamp for hot).

I was thinking about use mangrove for hot and swamp for temperate, since like the bog all these are forested while marsh is used for flooded grasslands. But the dowside is that mangrove is only coastal related.

I am not sure how to apply wetlands in game, for example just in Brazil there are both the Igapó flooded forest and the Pantanal flooded grassland.

 

[Evie]

I did consider mangrove and I'm neutral on that vs swamp. Though at the end of the day, all words we're looking for are loose approximation for a broad category of terrains. Here we just want words that carry the loose general connotation of "hot wetland", "temperate wetland" and "cold wetland", it doesn't need scientific accuracy that encompasses all types of wetlands.

At most you put a note in the pedia that "mangrove/swamp in the game represent all types of tropical wetlands, including (describe various type)".

 

[BuchiTaton]

By the way, a rework of terrain/climate/biomes is perfect to have a more significative agricultural mechanic, for example different kinds of crops and livestock. Then domestic varieties could be introduced in a city with a proper "terrain" to improve food and/or production, for example:
- Reindeers in Taiga, Horses in Steppe, and Lamas in Tundra.
- Pigs in Forest, Cattle in Prairie and Sheep in Moor.
- Water Buffalos in Jungle, Goats in savanna and Camels in scrub.

The historical impact of the introduction of new crops and livestock in new regios is complety ignored in CIV series, I think is time to gives these a real value.

 

[Evie]

I know it's a popular idea, but I remain unconvinced that just adding resources (especially horses) as something a player can "paint" on the map is very balanceable. It's an idea that would need to be carefull examination, iteration and balancing.

 

[BuchiTaton]

I know it's a popular idea, but I remain unconvinced that just adding resources (especially horses) as something a player can "paint" on the map is very balanceable. It's an idea that would need to be carefull examination, iteration and balancing.

It could and should be balanced.

I dont see why historical major historical elements of change like the introduction of new crops and livestock or industrial ways to replace regular goods with synthetic ones should not be in game for "balance reasons" while we can win by "rock bands" , CIV6 overdid with wacky culture and religion mechanics is time to give some real balance in others aspects with CIV7.

 

[mitsho]

As long as Deserts start to take up more movement points even though they are „flat“ terrain, I‘m happy.

What's to be the difference between Sea, Ocean and Coast?

Though call, tiles don‘t really make sense on the water as it‘s quite hard to stop moving. So my utopia is to abandon tiles for the water and have bigger regions and make water movement kinda like the air units function now. If we can‘t get that, then you‘d need tiles separated by Depth (but deep tiles can also be besides a coast), Current and Wind (imagine them as arrows on the tiles). Complicated

I know it's a popular idea, but I remain unconvinced that just adding resources (especially horses) as something a player can "paint" on the map is very balanceable. It's an idea that would need to be carefull examination, iteration and balancing.

That doesn‘t necessarily need to be done by hand by the player. That sounds tedious to be honest. And it doesn‘t work with how you build the map full with districts at the moment, where to place all the resources? So yeah, needs a lot of thought how to do that properly. But I would very much like it!

 

[Krajzen]

A mix of temperature and vegetation cover could be easy to understand and remember by most players:

	DESERT	BARREN	OPEN	DENSE
COLD	Glacier	Tundra	Steppe	Taiga
TEMPERATE	Badland	Moor	Prairie	Forest
HOT	Dunes	Scrub	Savanna	Jungle

I love this, but two inputs about naming conventions.
1) Shouldn't we get "Plains" or maybe "Grasslands" instead of "Prairie"? I mean the latter is very localized terrain which is also not very suitable for agriculture - North China Plain or Gangetic Plain or European plains sound ridiculous as "prairie", they are just... Plains covered with not too much vegetation, flat and very fertile areas. Unless we assume that the entire temperate and fertile terrain in the world starts as Forest to be cut down, which sounds practically awful for the game
2) All other terrain types are actual scientific geographic terms, except "badlands" which feels really jarring. Ah yes, famous mapped North European Badlands, Wuzhao Badlands, Bonboro Badlands, you get the idea. Also, "dune" and "glacier" are not synonymous of "big arid areas". But while we coukd rename those two to just for example Hot/Cold Desert, idk what to do with "temperate desert" (the term itself feels weird). Maybe call those three Sand, Rock and Snow/Polar Deserts, but the problem then is "well rock vs sand does not equal temperate vs hot"