Deserts and Mountains should be improvable.

[Tamed]

In Civ Rev, you can turn mountains from 1 production to 4 with the railroad tech in the industrial era (usually). It seems like this would carry into V.

Woohoo.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Completely useless tiles add nothing to the game, have no productive value and really do not contribute to the overall fun or realism of the product.

I disagree, I would hope for more "useless tiles" rather than less. I'd hope for about 1/2 to 3/4 of all the tiles be useless economically. The game would then be about securing important tiles rather than merely expanding to expand, cities would be more diverse because those few tiles could be more significant, etc.

 

[Turkey_ballz]

I disagree, I would hope for more "useless tiles" rather than less. I'd hope for about 1/2 to 3/4 of all the tiles be useless economically. The game would then be about securing important tiles rather than merely expanding to expand, cities would be more diverse because those few tiles could be more significant, etc.

Wow that sounds horrifically frustrating.

No offence, but I'm glad you're not designing civ5 =)

 

[mjs0]

I disagree, I would hope for more "useless tiles" rather than less. I'd hope for about 1/2 to 3/4 of all the tiles be useless economically. The game would then be about securing important tiles rather than merely expanding to expand, cities would be more diverse because those few tiles could be more significant, etc.

Hopefully there will be intelligent map scripts that can generate games with a wide range of useful vs. useless tiles as well as variable resource abundance/scarcity.

 

[LDiCesare]

I love impassable, unexploitable mountains.
As for desert, once someone does something useful of the Sahara, I might consider improving deserts, but I think it's almost impossible on any large scale and far from the sea (or other water source like the Nile).

 

[sputnik323]

How does this not contribute to the realism? Deserts rarely get improved in the real world (although perhaps the ability to do this at great expense would be a nice feature, since there are places which do do this).

I dont know where you live to not know the history of mountain mining, or deserts improved.

Out west in the US the deserts are full of people that used to not be able to live in large numbers. Large canals and farms exist where none were before. In civ the deserts are represented as sand, but that doesn't mean they are all sand dunes - it says desert not dunes. So its not as RARE as ppl might think, its more than just a few places. Most of the western states have desert cities that were made in the civil war era.

Riding 4 wheelers up in the high mountains I always come across old mountain mines. They have been shut down for years for environmentalism or the old timers pretty much mined them dry - Especially gold and silver. Iron and coal are different. But most of the precious metals were likely mined from a HIGH mountain (+9000 feet than on a hill or plain. The largest open pit mine in the world, one of the few visible man made things from space is on a mountain range.

In maps.google.com look up bingham canyon utah in satellite view. -also note the cities next to it was all a desert.

 

[awesome]

i just wanted to add:

do do

you said "doodoo"

 

[Chalks]

I dont know where you live to not know the history of mountain mining, or deserts improved.

Out west in the US the deserts are full of people that used to not be able to live in large numbers. Large canals and farms exist where none were before. In civ the deserts are represented as sand, but that doesn't mean they are all sand dunes - it says desert not dunes. So its not as RARE as ppl might think, its more than just a few places. Most of the western states have desert cities that were made in the civil war era.

I certainly don't mean to imply that there isn't anywhere on the planet that does desert improvements, that's why I said that there are some places that do it.

I feel I must remind you that the united states is not the entire planet, however, and even if it was, the percentage of "improved desert" to standard desert is pretty tiny. Globally, it's absolutely minute.

Think about how many tiles of desert you get in North America on a civ 4 map. Maybe like 4 tiles. Even if every single square mile of desert in the entire united states was improved into farmland, we are still only talking about an extremely rarely used improvement.

From a Civilization game perspective, improving desert tiles would need to be an extremely rarely used terrain improvement - although how you would implement such rarity, I am unsure.

i just wanted to add:you said "doodoo"

Best post of the thread.

 

[00konichiwa00]

No, it means you have to really think about where you are placing your cities. There are places in the world which are simply not hospitable to civilization.

not many places in the world. only a few places in the world not hospitable. most things are possible with modern technology. even Kilimanjaro, Mount Everest, K2 and places like that can be built on/modified with modern technology. the only reason why it's not done is that nobody want to destroy these unique places.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Wow that sounds horrifically frustrating.

No offence, but I'm glad you're not designing civ5 =)

It wouldn't be frustrating... You get to a City and there is LESS micromanagement to do because there are less tiles to worry about shifting your people around in.

No need to count exactly how many Forests and Grasslands there are in the BFC and Juggle around all the possibilities... no just count the 10-12 important spots that this city can reach.

Cities could have a lot more variability in their productivity which would be good. As opposed to every city producing about the same amount after you switched the improvements.

Think of it this way, what if only 1/4 of the spots produced anything but they all produced 4x as much... would that be Frustrating or more interesting because those tiles would be 4x as important.

 

[cardgame]

It definitely would be interesting, but I'm sure a mod could do that

 

[KrikkitTwo]

It definitely would be interesting, but I'm sure a mod could do that

A mod could do anything.

If we want All the tiles to be improvable a Mod can do that as well.

You could probably get a mod to make Civ 4 only have 1 Unit per Tile as well. (complicated)

The issue is if it would be good in the standard game... I say it would because it would decrease MM and increase the importance of decisions.

 

[sputnik323]

I certainly don't mean to imply that there isn't anywhere on the planet that does desert improvements, that's why I said that there are some places that do it.

Think about how many tiles of desert you get in North America on a civ 4 map. Maybe like 4 tiles. Even if every single square mile of desert in the entire united states was improved into farmland, we are still only talking about an extremely rarely used improvement.

From a Civilization game perspective, improving desert tiles would need to be an extremely rarely used terrain improvement.

Ok it can be clarified a bit. In north america the deserts are almost terrafomed into paradise comparatively to how they were. However, we are not talking about terraforming, we are talking about improvements. Ancient people's lived in those north american deserts. They built stone houses and graineries and with irrigation farmed desert land.
This has not been limited to north america. Many great ancient empires were built in the desert. Egyptian, Babylonian, Mesopotamian, Carthaginian, Persian, ect. ect. all came from a desert environments that was IMPROVED upon for man to live there. They built farms, buildings, had animals, water wells, ect. ect. The peoples adapted, yes the improvements were not the giant farms of the Midwest US of today - But ancient peoples have often populated deserts on all continents and have adapted to do so.

Of course this all depends on how much desert we see in civ V. Gameplay is more important, I just dont want people to use a realism argument against desert improvements when so many people have lived and do live in deserts.

 

[Gamemaster77]

I'm not sure but I remember learning along time ago that the Miyans(or whatever), or some other ancient civ cut into the mountains and farmed them.

EDIT: Yes, I just checks, it was the Mayans. They were called terraces.

 

[Decimatus]

Mountains should be a key part of your industrial landscape.

In CtP you could tell exactly where the hugely productive manufacturing centers were just by looking for the mountain ranges. Vast open plains of farm land, and then BAM! a giant industrial mecha with 4 cities glued all around it.

I would like to see mountains take this industrial mecha position.

I would also like mountains to remain impassable to military without heavy and very expensive infrastructure added. Even then it would be a straight through tunnel, which would mean a serious bottleneck for combat.

 

[Chalks]

Ok it can be clarified a bit. In north america the deserts are almost terrafomed into paradise comparatively to how they were. However, we are not talking about terraforming, we are talking about improvements. Ancient people's lived in those north american deserts. They built stone houses and graineries and with irrigation farmed desert land.

I think the issue here is that we are missing the distinction between desert and flood plains, or oasis.

I would have to defer to someone more knowledgeable for this, but I am very sure that the Egyptians made no attempt to colonise raw desert (I'm talking 100% sand, no water, no solid surface to build on). They simply didn't have the technology.

Their farm land was flood plains and although they built palaces and fortresses into desert rocks and mountains, I would not consider this to be the sort of improvements we are talking about.

 

[civ_king]

I'm not sure but I remember learning along time ago that the Miyans(or whatever), or some other ancient civ cut into the mountains and farmed them.

EDIT: Yes, I just checks, it was the Mayans. They were called terraces.

I think you mean the Inca, the Mayans were Jungle dwellers

Also the Balinese developed terraces

 

[MatrixTheKitty]

I'd like it if you were eventually able to make a railroad through a mountain, just like we have in the Rockies here in BC.

 

[silversheep]

It is true that "bad" terrain doesn't give much food, etc. in real life. However, this doesn't mean you can't have big productive cities near "bad" terrain. So how about being able to shift resources more? For example if one city is producing a lot of surplus food, you could "import" it to a city to a mountainous area? (Note: I believe Civ2 actually had something like this with caravans.)

On another note, I always find it annoying when I do OCP that I "miss" a productive tile not covered by any city radius.

In summary, I'm suggesting that cities may not need to derive all their food, etc. from their immediate vicinity.

 

[Disgustipated]

Coming from California I support Desert eventually being improvable, in fact much of our Agriculture involves reclaimed desert

I think you are being a little loose with the term desert. But either way California desert will be equivalent to desert with the Oasis resource on it (in civ4 terms). Or irrigated flood plains.

Not all desert is created equal. irrigation can only go so far (unlike unlimited irrigation in civ games). There is only so much water. It's not feasible to irrigate the entire mojave desert!