Complete overhaul of river system

[Pouakai]

I was thinking about the importance of rivers, and how this could be shown in ciV. I think this suffices:

Rivers become a linking set of tiles, instead of running between tiles. They are like hills, so you can have Plains/River, Grassland/River etc. A river tile can be occupied by a water unit and a land unit. Cities can be founded on river tiles, or next to them, to recieve the bonus.

A city on/adjacent to a river tile can build early river units, i.e. Barge, and some ocean going craft. Rivers can act as roads for trade routes for river city-river city. You can't go straight from a river to a road. To establish a river trade route between cities (see my thread on advanced trade for more info), you need to send a trade ship to the city you wish to establish a trade route with. This allows control over what cities you trade with, instead of trading with all cities on a river.

When the river is one tile from the ocean, it turns into a delta. Surrounding tiles get a massive food boost.


Two tile improvements related to this are, 'Canal' and 'Irrigation channel'.

Canal - Can be constructed from lake - ocean (erie canal) or ocean - ocean (panama canal). Trade routes can use this tiles (That take up 2 movement points), or naval units can as well. They become available with Engineering.

Irrigation Channel - Becomes available with Irrigation (New tech). Provides fresh water to inland tiles, giving farms yield boost.

If anyone has any ideas regarding this, feel free to post them

 

[glaivemaster]

That actually sounds like a brilliant river system - it would allow for a much better way of dealing with canals than Civ 4's fort system, and would make sense with the movement penalty as well (rather than having it for crossing rivers, just using it similiarly to hills).

One main problem however: what if a land unit wants to attack a naval unit on a river tile (or vice versa)?

 

[Pouakai]

In addressing your problem, even if they are on the same tile, land units cannot attack naval units, or vice versa, unless they are ranged. And units of different civs cannot stack anyway.

 

[Scilly_guy]

Irrigation channel would be a bit redundant as you could just build a farm where you would build the channel instead of a farm at the other end of the channel.

I certainly agree with you that rivers should be navigable, at least up to a limit. The very least that they should provide is a trade route with other cities on that river. Civ 4 had that.

 

[Nick Doom]

I like this idea this is how I think it would work

River

City built on a river can build naval units
River provide + food on the surrounding hexes
Rivers act trade route between cities built on the river
All Naval units can travel up and down rivers
Land units cannot travel in the direction the river runs without embarking, can embark with out optics
Units travel at the speed of a road when travailing up/down river (in friendly neutral or enemy terrain)
Cannot build road/railroad on a hex with a river until (I forget but tec that lets you build bridges)
When a hex has a river and a Road/railroad Naval military units cannot pass (maybe have a 2nd type of road/railroad that cost more to maintain i.e. paying for a big bridge to let naval units pass)

Irrigation channel

Provide + food bones in adjacent tiles
Like road does not stop you building over improvements
Can only be built nest to lake river or an over Irrigation channel

Canal

Works the same as river but are built can be workers after Engineering
Can be built next to Cost Lake or river
Cost Gold to maintain
Cannot be built on hills? (Or maybe they can but you pay more maintains i.e. to pay for locks)

Land/Naval unit combat problem

If a land unit is on a hex and not embarked it would be as if the river was land this would stop a naval unit travailing using this hex
If a naval or embarked land units is on a hex it would be as if the river was costal this would stop a naval unit travailing using this hex water



*edit forgot to spellcheck

 

[Archy]

factoring in pollution would work nice too - if you have a rival downstream taking advantage of a delta, then you can spoil his fun with a few factories

 

[aTobin]

And a "terrain improvement" called dock/wharf that is built on a river tile. The dock/wharf connects the river trade route to a adjament road trade route.

Small vessels should be able to sail in rivers but mavbe not battleships/carriers

 

[arkguy]

I was thinking about the importance of rivers, and how this could be shown in ciV. I think this suffices:

Rivers become a linking set of tiles, instead of running between tiles. They are like hills, so you can have Plains/River, Grassland/River etc. A river tile can be occupied by a water unit and a land unit. Cities can be founded on river tiles, or next to them, to recieve the bonus.

A city on/adjacent to a river tile can build early river units, i.e. Barge, and some ocean going craft. Rivers can act as roads for trade routes for river city-river city. You can't go straight from a river to a road. To establish a river trade route between cities (see my thread on advanced trade for more info), you need to send a trade ship to the city you wish to establish a trade route with. This allows control over what cities you trade with, instead of trading with all cities on a river.

When the river is one tile from the ocean, it turns into a delta. Surrounding tiles get a massive food boost.


Two tile improvements related to this are, 'Canal' and 'Irrigation channel'.

Canal - Can be constructed from lake - ocean (erie canal) or ocean - ocean (panama canal). Trade routes can use this tiles (That take up 2 movement points), or naval units can as well. They become available with Engineering.

Irrigation Channel - Becomes available with Irrigation (New tech). Provides fresh water to inland tiles, giving farms yield boost.

If anyone has any ideas regarding this, feel free to post them

Here is some suggestion that might be helpful. Small naval units like destroys could go one or two squares up river as the do on the Columbia River where they can go up river as far as Bonneville Dam east of Portland, OR (about 130 miles up river) without aid of lock & dames and farther than that for friendly units if dames are added as an improvement. In fact the battleship New Jersey has gone up river as far as Portland (100 miles up river) before, but not aircraft carriers. I went to see it when it came for the Rose festival one year. I’ve seen a Destroyer on the lower Columbia River in The Dalles, OR, 185 mile up river with the aid of navigational locks. Washington Canal in Seattle, WA was used to hide our battleships as an inland safe haven during WWII. They could be give a penalty for lack of mobility in the river, say -4 on movement/defensive bonus for lack of being able to take evasive action as they would have to stay in the main channel, thus would be easy targets for artillery, PT boats, iron clad, planes and even small arms would be with in range as they would be within a half mile distance or less. Smaller vessels like iron clad & PT boats could easily go 2 or 3 squares up river as they are slower draft vessels.
River: +1 food to deer, buffalo & game; +1 production for horses & ivory because they are more plentiful around sources of water (would also apply to springs and lake too). The same applies to all animal and plant resources. Gold & gems: +1gold to as placer deposits are easier & less expensive to mine than hard rock mines, +1 productivity of mountains & peaks as resources are easier to transport to markets.
New improvements: gill net (an improved net used for commercial fishing, banned in many areas because it didn’t allow enough fish to get through to keep fish runs productive.) +3 F, +10 G, turrets at mouth of river/or at cities of the river, ccoastal batteries & navel mines at the mouth of rivers can damage or sink naval units, Water flume: +1 gold, +1 productivity to mines, farms, lumber mills, forests if linked to a lumber mill & watermills. Above ground flumes built to carry water over land to monitor cannons, mines, lumber mills,watermills and for irrigation. Can be built with other improvements just like roads & railroads are. Used on the Columbia River into the 70’s to send logs & lumber from near by mountains to a mill on the river for shipping. Can build on any land terrain or feature except swamps, marshs, ocean, & lake.
Sluice box: +1 gold for placer deposits of gold, diamonds, gems & platinum. Give it an 8% chance to find another type of mineral on that site. Ex. if it is built on gem resources there is an 8% to find gold, diamonds or platinum depending on what resources are used in the game & a 2% to find any one of the 4 deposits on any river tile below a deposit that doesn’t have a deposit on it every 17 turns. Game refuges or preserves: +1 food & +1 production through controlled hunts & improved habit, +4 gold for tourism and +2 happiness with environmentalism.
A few resources that can be found in/on river banks include: fish, exotic birds (while can be found anywhere as what is common in one area or continent may be considered exotic anywhere else but most common on jungle rivers), elephants in the tropics, olive oil, rubber: +2 gold improved with plantation in jungles, clay: +5 productivity, +1 to health for better food storage from pottery, +1 gold to art galleries/guilds. Clay is one of the most important natural industrial substances and is available in nearly every country and nearly every state. Used for common & paving brick, drain tile and pottery. Improved with road, railroad and mine.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

This would work well, it would remove the need for Floodplains (those would just be Desert/River tiles) All river tiles could produce 2 food (unless it had a Forest on top)

You could remove the +1 Gold effect, and rely on the Road savings

 

[Pouakai]

River tiles could also harbour minerals, i.e. Gold, Silver, to be removed with a dredge improvement

 

[Camikaze]

I agree that rivers should be an important in Civ, but I think the ideas for irrigation and canal improvements in the OP will actually achieve the opposite. They essentially allow for an alternative to rivers, rather than making the need for river access greater.

The barge idea is decent, but it would rely upon the scope of Civ being changed, if rivers were meant to become whole tiles.

 

[Pouakai]

I understand your concerns, but in modern society the need to be near a river is lesser. The canal and irrigation both have pros and cons, the irrigation boosts farm production but doesn't allow naval units, and the canal allows naval units to travel, but no yield boost, if anything, a food penalty.

 

[TrashMan]

Would 't this require a drastic redesign of whole map(s)?
We'd end up with massive rivers (if a river actually is a whole tile) and not for much gain.

Not too hot about this idea personally. I'd rather the devs focus on other stuff.

 

[Pouakai]

The river would not be a whole tile, but rather part of the tile, and like a hill, so there could be River/Grassland/Forest, and units could occupy the tile.

 

[Geek113377]

great idea! but you have absolutely no idea how many times the community has asked for canals, it won't happen until a modder gets creative. but still a great idea!

 

[Pouakai]

I was watching a program on, funnily enough, rivers, and it gave me the idea for rapids tiles, that would require more movement, and maybe have a 50% chance of giving 3 damage

 

[Nick Doom]

I like the idea of rapids and other water related things like waterfalls that for e.g. make it so you can’t move but we need proper rivers 1st

there is a topic like this in the mod creation forum and in there I have suggest creating the river as a terrain feature I think with this we could make a lot of the ideas for rivers work (I would have a go myself but I atm I have no idea how i would make the Art for it) as for the other bit witch i would also love to see we would need to alter the base code for the game to bring them in as we need to tack bits from different files and to get what we want, I have tried a couple of ways to do this with what we can edit and despite the code looking good to a human eye the game had no idea what the hell was going on so it ignored it

 

[arkguy]

I was thinking about the importance of rivers, and how this could be shown in ciV. I think this suffices:

Rivers become a linking set of tiles, instead of running between tiles. They are like hills, so you can have Plains/River, Grassland/River etc. A river tile can be occupied by a water unit and a land unit. Cities can be founded on river tiles, or next to them, to recieve the bonus.

A city on/adjacent to a river tile can build early river units, i.e. Barge, and some ocean going craft. Rivers can act as roads for trade routes for river city-river city. You can't go straight from a river to a road. To establish a river trade route between cities (see my thread on advanced trade for more info), you need to send a trade ship to the city you wish to establish a trade route with. This allows control over what cities you trade with, instead of trading with all cities on a river.

When the river is one tile from the ocean, it turns into a delta. Surrounding tiles get a massive food boost.


Two tile improvements related to this are, 'Canal' and 'Irrigation channel'.

Canal - Can be constructed from lake - ocean (erie canal) or ocean - ocean (panama canal). Trade routes can use this tiles (That take up 2 movement points), or naval units can as well. They become available with Engineering.

Irrigation Channel - Becomes available with Irrigation (New tech). Provides fresh water to inland tiles, giving farms yield boost.

If anyone has any ideas regarding this, feel free to post them

Another idea would be to have 2 different types of rivers, like the grassland & grassland with production idea. One would be large rivers like the Mississippi & the Columbia that are navigable by smaller navel ships and the other are smaller rivers that aren't or usable only by smaller no ocean going ships.

 

[Zenstrive]

rivers running through cities are so Civ I

 

[civ_king]

Another idea would be to have 2 different types of rivers, like the grassland & grassland with production idea. One would be large rivers like the Mississippi & the Columbia that are navigable by smaller navel ships and the other are smaller rivers that aren't or usable only by smaller no ocean going ships.

Uh hi, reality check. My city is up a river from San Francisco and the shipyard here (since closed) built a battleship, do tell what is bigger than a Battleship. (My city also holds the record for building a destroyer which stands at 17.5 days)