Civ 6 is already familiar with floodplains which can be improved by seaonsly/occasionaly drowned land. Which can be regulated through a dam, in order to prevent damage to districts. But why not take it a bit further?
Player options
- Lava defensive wall : limits/redirects the impact of volcanic eruptions
- Oasification : remove a desert
- Desertification : create a desert
- Reforestation : (re)create a forest
- Deforestation : remove a forest
- Artificial lakes : create a lake
- Land reclamation : create land
- Tectonic manipulation : create mountains
Game (disablable) options
- Land reclamation through vulcanic eruptions
- Land disappearance through (vulcanic) erosion
- Tectonic activity adds land, mountains, fissures, ravines, etc.
As stated, most of the "player options" not really possible given the current state of technology BUT they have been part of 'ordinary' Climate Change throughout human history:
9 - 10,000 BCE: first Agriculture, or the 'real' Start of Game
7000 - 2000 BCE: Sea levels world wide rise an average of 200 feet as glacial ice melts: radically changing coastlines in some places, inundating large marsh areas in some places and creating new ones elsewhere.
6500 BCE: Up to this time, Britain was connected to mainland Europe by a large lat grassland called Doggerland, a prime hunting, waterfowl and fishing source for Europeans. In the last glacial ice melt, this gets submerged, forming the English Channel and turning Britain into an island.
6200 BCE: Lake Ojibway Glacial Lake Collapse. A large (1000 km wide) lake formed of melting glacier water has its ice-walls collapse and dumps an estimated 50,000 cubic kikometers of ice-cold fresh watere into the North Atlantic from southern Canada. This modifies the entire current pattern of the North Atlantic, causing wetter, colder weather across northern Europe but a wind shift that brings a drught lasting several centuries to the middle east and Anatolia - where several early cities, like Catal Huyok, are abandoned as a rsult and farmers and gth agriculture technologies move north into Europe.
6000 - 5000 BCE: as post-glacial warming finished off in the northern hemisphere, hardwood forests spread all across Europe to the Urals, bringing oak and lime trees which were preferred by honey bees, which therefore also expanded: Forestation and some side effects usually not thought of.
5680 BCE:
Mount Mazama volcanic erution blows most of the mountain away, creates Crater Lake in Oregon, USA - "Natural Wonders" are not permanent either!
4800 - 3800 BCE:
Piora Oscillation: Solar insolation hits Europe, much colder weather, glacieers advance in the Alps, 4100 - 3900 BCE extremely cold years which kill off lots of forest area and turn it into plains/prairie, more flooding in Danube and other river valleys.
4000 - 3900 BCE: End of the
African Humid Period: Arabia and the Sahara until now (since at least 12,000 BCE) have been relatively wet savannah/plains with rivers, lakes, supporting large herds and even agriculture. It all dries up within 2 centuries creating the modern deserts in both area, and incidentally driving African peoples into Egypt and possibly Arabian peninsula populations north into Mesopotamia.
1750 BCE:
Great Dam of Marib - in modern Yemen, 1900 feet long, built for irrigation and by 500 BCE was providing an artificial lake and cropland for over 50,000 people - a significant population for the early Classical Era.
1287 CE: A sea surge breaks through barrier dunes and seawalls, inundating a large area of Holland and creating the ZuiderZee or Southern Sea - and drowning an estimated 50,000 people.
Loss/Modification of Ports.
Wonder why several coastal tows in modern Britain used to be important Medieval/Renaissance Ports and now aren't? Silting up of harbors, change of currents, larger ships - and the classical port areas of Alexandria, Egypt are now far under water because of sea level rise and land subsiding there. ANYTHING along the coast is subject to change in historical times on a local basis.
Canals:
People have been channeling rivers and draining marshlands since at least Classical Era (in China, Mesopotamia and elsewhere) - in fact, the earliest building of 'canals' was to straighten out rivers and get around rapids to improve river freight traffic - started in Egypt around a Nile cataract as early as 1900 BCE.
Finally, we can (sort of) Remove Mountains: modern Open Pit mechanized mining techniques make huge open pits that are visible from Space, and have turned several (small) mountains/hills into flat land or Pits.
So, Very Important changes to the map and terrain have been taking place on both a long and relatively (3 - 10 turns) short term basis throughout the time scale of the game, but only a fraction of it is caused by people, most of it requires Reactions by people and civilizations, and so should be in the game.
Not to say I'm opposed to more anthropogenic geography, but while we can create small islands and small hills we can't add/remove mountains, manipulate tectonic plates, or create/remove deserts. Some of these things might have been added in Civ6's future era, but given how much tedium it added to the already tedious late game I'm hopeful we won't be seeing that return in Civ7 unless the devs find a way around the perpetual 4X problem of the tedious late game.
