Civ 5 Maps: Solstice & Equinox

[exhile]

I think it would be conventional to have both Solstice & Equinox change the terrain of plains, grasslands, swamps, deserts, forests etc... during these celestial events in the year. An equator, tropic of Cancer, tropic of Capricorn, arctic circle and antarctic circle would represent circumferential lines running across the map horizontally. After the discovery of say, "Meteorology" in the modern age would these changes on land take place.

I'm not sure if this idea has been suggested before I think it would realistic to implement. Remember the plan of attack for the Iraq war had to start before the summer or else it would have been too hot. Cold & hot weather should have an affect on combat.

 

[Scilly_guy]

Weather has been mentioned before, by myself at the very least, and it is indeed an interesting subject. I am unsure what you mean by it only happening after the discovery of a tech, I mean, the weather always happened hehe. I think I might have to start finding references to where I have previously had all these ideas, maybe I am falsely remembering them.

Perhaps "Meteorology" would progressively add the weather for the next few turns. For instance as soon as discovered you know the weather in the next turn, after 100 turns you know the weather for the next 2 turns. But then of course how is the weather to be implemented.

The Tropics, Equator and Polar circles are not visible in them selves but if you notice the Tundra and jungle do fool them. There is also a restriction on where the Space Elevator can be built, in that it must be near the equator, I am not sure of the exact rules.

Oh and there is a few random events that happen in cold climates, blizzards, ice sculptors.

 

[Onionsoilder]

The problem is early in the game, Years go by 25 at a time. Unless you want there to be four seasons in a century(one per turn), that wouldn't work too well. Later on in the modern eras, you have two turns per year, which means seasons would HAVE to switch every turn...

I can see it working well in a mod that only spans 500 years of so, but I don't see it working in standard Civilization games.

 

[exhile]

I agree. Four turns a year would be required for the idea of equinox & solstice to actually work. Only recently through satellite pictures has the earth been photographed to show different vegetation growth during these four events in the year. The idea of the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter being implemented is also congruent with the solstice & equinox maps. However, "calendar" is already a tech unless "seasons" becomes a tech too. If the developers want to add more turns to the Civ 5 game, here's one of them.

Asides from that, the polar circles (+/- 66 degrees latitude), tropics (+/- 23 degrees latitude) & equator (0 degrees latitude) could be implemented with ease than the solstices & equinox. How would knowing these circumferential lines on a map be useful to a civ 5 player? Would a prime meridian (180 degrees longitude) or a GMT 0 (0 degrees longitude) be useful either?

For weather, perhaps each tile should have a certain weather condition besides it's terrain after the discovery of meteorology. It would be cool to see a rain cloud, snow cloud or thunder storm in a Rubik's cube tile.

 

[Scilly_guy]

I still don't understand why after Meteorology? THERE IS ALWAYS WEATHER. As someone else has pointed out, TIME is meaningless in the game, and why should the seasons change correctly according to date. You could say that when a turn represents 40 years its actually 40.125 years, that way two turns would fit into each season. There are many ways around it.

 

[UWHabs]

I'd rather see this happen as sort of more frequent random events. So every turn, there's a chance that a unit standing in a desert square will get caught in a sandstorm, and either not be able to move, or get 50% damage, or something like that.

You could even do that for most tiles:
desert: sandstorm
ice/tundra: snowstorm
ocean: tsunami
jungle: monsoon

Or for weather, you can add specific events which trigger as well. So, you would have maybe a patch of 5X5 land that for the next 20 turns sees heavier rains, and so you lose the effectiveness of certain improvements. Or massive windstorms, so all windmills get like +5 hammers for the next couple turns. Alpha Centauri had that a bit, with the whole "sunspots - no communication for 10 turns" and similar events.

 

[rysmiel]

I'd rather see this happen as sort of more frequent random events. So every turn, there's a chance that a unit standing in a desert square will get caught in a sandstorm, and either not be able to move, or get 50% damage, or something like that.

I don't like the random events here at all, but I could really get behind desert or tundra causing something like 20% unit health damage per turn, and being able to reduce that with various techs as the game went on.

 

[Naokaukodem]

I would not reject some eye candy, aka clouds in the sky, rain, snow, oh and don't forget sun reflection on armor.