[GS] Dams/Flooding video

[Aussie_Lurker]

Personally, I'm rejecting the notion because it would lead to frustrating gameplay moments, would be inconsistent with how improvements have been handled in the past, and would further weaken an already suboptimal gameplay strategy.

As a video game, having artificial land out in the middle of the ocean which used to be coastal is not something that will break my immersion any more than dudes summoning lightning storms as they preach about their faith... Civ's scale is already super fuzzy and many an artistic liberty has been made for the sake of visual or mechanical design.

As far as I am aware, the game doesn't continue to check your improvements to make sure that initial requirements needed are still valid; that is why improvements stay and changing that just for polders seems like a bunch of work for no real reason. Also, having multiple turns of production vanish into the ether because the AI halfway around the world is burning fossil fuels like its going out of style, sounds like a very fast way to aggravate players.

So... yes, Civ can be dumb at times. In this case, I think letting the Dutch maintain a functional UI is more important than accurately replicating the destructive effects of sea level rise. I do like the idea you posted of of Polders providing a level of resistance to rising seas. Internally adding non-existent elevation to adjacent land tiles for example would be handy, even more so if they can build polders in tiles that have flooded fully. Allow the Netherlands to slow down the effects of the rising sea without things being too silly.


Can't a Bomber just pillage the Dam on its own power? If its a district, I imagine it would follow the same rules as other districts.

In that case, hopefully there will be a promotion that helps with that.

 

[Sostratus]

Okay, well, that'd be kinda dumb and a little sloppy, and maybe it will just be dumb and sloppy.. On the other hand, it's not analogous to building a mine next to a seaside resort. The possibility that the dev's aren't going to have polders, visibly designed to fit into a pocket of land, just sitting nonsensically in the ocean by themselves, should not be so hard to accept.

My biggest reason to think we might actually end up with polder islands floating out in the sea is because the graphics support it, so it won't break anything. Using the magic of firetuner:

Spoiler :

The right middle polder is a legal polder. The Bottom polder was placed in the middle of the sea. The left polder is placed on flat land, and the top polder is placed on a hill tile! The lump of dirt the windmill sits on acts like land does- it will grab towards other land, or if you make a whole nest of polders in the ocean, each other:

Spoiler :

Its not perfect but its not like illegal polders have goofy graphics. I'm more impressed that the flat and hills polders properly contort the terrain!

Obviously the devs could change the rules but iirc even in firetuner changing tiles is myopic - only twist is you have to reload the map or run a script to render in-game terrain changes from water to land or vice versa. They will have a cleaner way of doing rendering when tiles submerge for GS, I am sure. But right now improvements only get deleted on city capture if they are unique or nuked. There's isn't anything that evaluates improvement deletes based on the condition that they could still be built on that tile afaik; so they would need to code in something new. That's why i compared it to mines by seaside resorts- under the hood it would be the same.

It's another thing that can go wrong and would need time to fix. This is the company that adamantly would not fix code typos like the infamous 'yeild' table after release until they fixed other bugs. The Strategic Air Force policy card is still missing the "%" symbol from its text, for example.

Argument via path of least resistance. I personally would love it if they really tinkered with each civ for the new expansion to make sure things are as fun and connected as they can be with the new mechanics, since they put so much effort into making unique civs in the first place.

 

[local_hero]

Good point. Though I think I will still end up building these later rather than earlier. I still think they will be a magnet for AI spies.

Depends a lot on how often the AI builds them. Unless you control the whole river, the AI might build it before you (only one dam per river was the rule, right?).

Regarding spies, if the AI likes to sabotage dams - lovely! Quick way to level up spies. There are also too many policy cards I rarely or never use. The Police State policy card is one I use sometimes but I'd appreciate if I need to consider it and other policy cards more often.

 

[Vandlys]

I find it striking no one has mentioned the quality of the animation so far. It seems incredibly jarring to me, the way the disaster goes from nothing to "happening". It's almost not fluid, like someone pulled a lever and bam, land tiles lower a bit, things are damage, water splashes around. Quite ugly... : /
I also wondered the same about the Volcano animation. I think we saw one in the Canada livestream, and eventhough we got to see how beautiful it was animated, with all the lava streaming down, we didn't actually see it affect the tiles around it. They just skipped the animation (which took ages anyway). So, will it just be an animation, and then *poof*; the tiles around it are charred and destroyed? If so, which seems likely because it happens with floods as well, I find a huge disappointment...

 

[Deggial]

By the way (and I am willing to overlook this for the sake of gameplay) ... but will a destroyed dam flood upstream areas? By the looks of it, flood planes are calculated as regions of linked tiles adjacent to the river and a dam will control them no matter where placed. A bit unrealistic, but probably a necessary mechanic to reduce the inherent complexity. Civ6 is a strategy game and not a hydrodynamic simulation, after all.

 

[Victoria]

it will be very annoying if spies really do breach your dams often

Often?.... well if I remember correctly they had a very low chance of breaching a dam, I think it was the same as raising partisans but may be wrong, certainly I would not risk it

Does it just mean you aren't protected from floods that might occur while the dam is sabotaged? As that's much weaker.

Agreed, it is only worth doing if you know there is a flood coming by the looks of things... now if they can breach coastal defenses thats a nastier thing... flood a district.

As long as you just keep a 1 charge Worker around for Repair duty - it's not much of a waste.

The final nail in the coffin of sabotaging dams. Seems pointless... but we do not know 100% until we see in game I guess

If coastal land starts turning to water, stands to reason you lose polders attached to them

Maybe they float away, add a unit on them ... mobile intercontinental army

What else could there be? How dammy can you get?

Sea defences?

Britain is not famous of its Dam in the real world, is it?

I guess not everyone has seen the Thames Flood Barrier.... like many flood barriers it is really to stop high tide water flooding the river... not as good as the Oosterscheldekering in the Netherlands but certainly vital to London.

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

Interesting. Border colors in this video are Korean, but city style is the Mediterranean.
Is it alt jersey, Gorgo or maybe Phoenicia?

 

[Weraptor]

Pretty sure it's one of Gorgo's alt jersey colors.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

I guess not everyone has seen the Thames Flood Barrier.... like many flood barriers it is really to stop high tide water flooding the river... not as good as the Oosterscheldekering in the Netherlands but certainly vital to London.

Giving them that great bonus (1/4 production cost actually) at Dams seem not reasonable.

 

[WillowBrook]

At least we know that Firaxis is back on line. More than likely there’ll be a reveal next week.

They said the week before Christmas that they would be taking two weeks off from first looks and livestreams, so I think it's a pretty safe bet that they plan to resume those this coming week. I'm guessing that the other social media stuff we've seen these past two weeks was preloaded and timed for release.

On topic, I like the addition of dams, and I'm glad they fixed the curve in the graphics - that would have really bugged me.

As for the sabotage and polder discussions, we'll see when the game comes out. I'm not too fussed however they pan out.

 

[Victoria]

Giving them that great bonus (1/4 production cost actually) at Dams seem not reasonable.

Considering they are coastal... coastal civs having to build flood defenses is just an annoying disadvantage.
1/4 of the cost of something additional is still additional.

 

[UWHabs]

My biggest reason to think we might actually end up with polder islands floating out in the sea is because the graphics support it, so it won't break anything. Using the magic of firetuner:

Spoiler :

View attachment 514036

The right middle polder is a legal polder. The Bottom polder was placed in the middle of the sea. The left polder is placed on flat land, and the top polder is placed on a hill tile! The lump of dirt the windmill sits on acts like land does- it will grab towards other land, or if you make a whole nest of polders in the ocean, each other:

Spoiler :

View attachment 514037

Its not perfect but its not like illegal polders have goofy graphics. I'm more impressed that the flat and hills polders properly contort the terrain!

Obviously the devs could change the rules but iirc even in firetuner changing tiles is myopic - only twist is you have to reload the map or run a script to render in-game terrain changes from water to land or vice versa. They will have a cleaner way of doing rendering when tiles submerge for GS, I am sure. But right now improvements only get deleted on city capture if they are unique or nuked. There's isn't anything that evaluates improvement deletes based on the condition that they could still be built on that tile afaik; so they would need to code in something new. That's why i compared it to mines by seaside resorts- under the hood it would be the same.

It's another thing that can go wrong and would need time to fix. This is the company that adamantly would not fix code typos like the infamous 'yeild' table after release until they fixed other bugs. The Strategic Air Force policy card is still missing the "%" symbol from its text, for example.

Argument via path of least resistance. I personally would love it if they really tinkered with each civ for the new expansion to make sure things are as fun and connected as they can be with the new mechanics, since they put so much effort into making unique civs in the first place.

Yeah, they're definitely not going to destroy polders already out there. If they end up as an "island" after sea flooding, so be it. And as the dutch, I probably want that flooding, since it would be really nice to see land behind a polder sink, so I can throw another polder there to get the sweet adjacency bonuses.

Ideally, polders should protect land around it from sinking, but we'll see if they add that to them or not.

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

And as the dutch, I probably want that flooding, since it would be really nice to see land behind a polder sink.

Sounds really really weird.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Sounds really really weird.

You can't "reclaim" land if the ocean doesn't take it in the first place.

 

[Victoria]

I'm more impressed that the flat and hills polders properly contort the terrain!

How about this Golf course I built in GOTM33... a couple of quite tricky greens

 

[OmegaDestroyer]

Often?.... well if I remember correctly they had a very low chance of breaching a dam, I think it was the same as raising partisans but may be wrong, certainly I would not risk it

Same chance as recruiting partisans? So 100%

 

[Victoria]

Same chance as recruiting partisans? So 100%

very good ...
However I did decide to look up my original screenshot... boring as it may be, I must say 25% chance of breaching a dam is pretty rubbish. thats one expensive spy and at 25% the chance of getting caught or killed is higher than you may think... the 25% is the chance of blowing up the dam, you may even get caught or killed while succeeding.

It does indicate it causes a flood though

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

very good ...
However I did decide to look up my original screenshot... boring as it may be, I must say 25% chance of breaching a dam is pretty rubbish. thats one expensive spy and at 25% the chance of getting caught or killed is higher than you may think... the 25% is the chance of blowing up the dam, you may even get caught or killed while succeeding.
View attachment 514073

I think his point is that the AI will attempt it repeatedly and succeed often enough to be annoying, just like Recruit Partisans.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

man i know people like it, but the entire spy game kind of annoys me. I want better counterspy "set and forget" missions/options.

 

[UWHabs]

very good ...
However I did decide to look up my original screenshot... boring as it may be, I must say 25% chance of breaching a dam is pretty rubbish. thats one expensive spy and at 25% the chance of getting caught or killed is higher than you may think... the 25% is the chance of blowing up the dam, you may even get caught or killed while succeeding.

It does indicate it causes a flood though
View attachment 514073

If you have multiple promotions, and presumably the "breach dam" promotion itself, it might become more worthwhile if the odds get up to 50-60%. I mean, if it does cause a flood, that could be the equivalent of pillaging 2-3 districts, so you can't have it happen too often. But I'd agree - that's a big risk to take to not even get a reward out of it yourself.