Y'know, maybe we could have something like "major" rivers and "minor" ones, and the major ones are navigable because they go through the middle of tiles like in Civ2, whereas the minor ones aren't because they follow the edjes of tiles like in Civ3. And they could flow into each other, maybe?
Back in the day there was some lengthy talk about how rivers should work, and this was one proposal - maybe from one of you for all I know - to allow ships to navigate rivers. It seems to give the best of both. The real challenge IMO is deciding how movement should work. How can land units cross unimproved navigable rivers? Can they move onto or along the river but not across? What happens if a land unit tries to move into a river tile occupied by an enemy ship or vice versa?
Which brings me back around to the point I was already thinking about: in light of all this what-should-move-where, I wonder if we should do away with the dichotomy of "land" and "sea" terrain and unit classes. Instead we could use stackable tags, similar to the transport rules, where a unit can move onto a tile only if it has a matching movement tag (among other purposes). So a navigable river could be tagged as "water" and whatever the base terrain is, so that both ships and land units could enter it (ignoring for a moment the question of whether it's crossable by land units). Amphibious units could then simply use both "water" and "land" tags. This fits nicely with road movement, as roads could add a "road" tag for units that need it. The same goes for a hypothetical canal. It's the same idea as the "wheeled" and "impassable to wheeled" settings, but scalable. You could add as many tags as you want, say "open-water" for ships that can't navigate rivers.
WildWeazel... The idea of using Tags rather than Unit Classes could solve the movement problems concerning having navigable rivers for river boats, especially for "land units' being able to cross the rivers.
It would however appear as though the "Land Units" are '"walking on water" as they cross the rivers as well as if a unit stops on a river tile, it would be standing on the surface of the river.
Really, it is the Graphics that cause a problem with land units being able to cross rivers.
Perhaps normal Land Units should use a Temporary Bridge that can be built and used just for one turn. Special Temporary Bridge Building Units could be used and Flagged to cause the Bridge Graphics to appear and allow Land Units to cross Rivers.
There would be no need for permanent bridges and the temporary bridges could be used to cross any tile of a river. Generally one turn represents a long enough time period that using temporary bridges would fit well.
Yes, there would be a very important need for the temporary bridge builders but that would fit in better with strategic realities.
There are no doubt many things to consider concerning navigable rivers...The Rivers would need to be wide enough to accommodate the various River boats and I suppose a 1 tile wide river would suffice.
This is something that I already mentioned earlier, but basically you can traverse shallow rivers with low-draft craft while a larger, heavier ship from more modern times requires constant dredging to excavate new channels. How would that be represented in a system with navigable rivers?
I played civ3 for a couple of hours today and wrote down some thoughts I had while playing it:
1) The city lists need fixing. The Celts', specifically, is really Gaulish with a couple of names in French or English like Richborough and Entremont.
But the idea for a name generator instead of ‘new whatevertown’ is something I very much like. Or else really give everyone 500 placenames.
2) The AI's decisions for declaring war seem to be illogical. To explain, I've had two recent wars and now have a new one:
Spoilerwar summaries :
-The Aztecs dropped off the one and only Jaguar Warrior next to my inland capital, garrisoned by one Gallic Swordsman and with warriors and musketment within reach. Before anything could happen the loen invader was either teleported out or sacrificed due to the Aztecs' crappy economy (they live on a 6-city island 10 tiles north from my Gauls across the sea from the continent).
Then they repeated the trick far further south besides a city on the shores of what amounts to a Gaul-held inner sea like the Baltic was in times of the Swedish Empire.
It seems that the Aztec AI is hellbent on provoking a war. After that second Jaguar Warrior vanished, the ill-fated galley began to row north to Aztlan again… and finally I'd had enough, made peace with everyone else, and told them to clear off our waters or be at war… and the Aztecs chose war.
My Gaul has just finished building JS Bach's Cathedral and Smith's Trading Company and might just pip everyone else to Newton's University. On land it has not one but two armies of Knights -all other Knights have been upgraded to Cavalry- and is upgrading its fleet to Galleons. It is in the process, also, of developing Steam Power and about to engage in a one-turn revolution to switch from Republic to Democracy. Somehow, even though the AI can ‘sense’ that they have no way of winning when their best attacker is an archer and their best defender is a spearman (they have 0 iron), they do not take it into account.
-The Persians were, technically, stronger than us due to death-stacks of Immortals. They had settled two cities amidst our southern tundra and they were ridiculously garrisoned; on their own corelands they lost three cities before Gaulish war weariness kicked in, they lost one of the two southern cities and gave up the last one as well as 25 gold (their entire treasury) in the peace treaty. Good use of artillery, higher mobility due to unupgraded Gallic Swordsmen and Knights v. slow-moving immortals (they didn't have horses back then) managed to help the gauls win the war on the northern front but it took ages and we had to recapture workers lost initially and fight for a loooong time -and the Persians got a Golden Age. Still, why would they attack when they knew they'd lose two cities that can only have been placed there to fish for future uranium, coal or aluminium deposits?
-the Sumerians, on another continent as a whole, sailed a lone longbowman to attack at the same place the Aztecs did. They had a couple of outlying colonies (of which they lost one) on the rather immense tundra (think a southern-hemisphere Siberia) and insisted on trying to sail round the entire continent rather than taking Celtic undefended cities all along the southern shores… this was so bad that the one longbowman which did try to attack on land got attacked and killed by a spearman.
So what does the AI take into account when declaring war? There's no point in somebody declaring war when their available forces are a spearman and two longbowmen versus Garlic swordsmen, knights, trebuchets and pike/musketmen, even if you have a stack of mediæval infantry back on another continent.
3) Lakes! Sometimes there are freshwater lakes in the game. Inland seas such as Aral and the Caspian are a thing and war fleets could be deployed in them. How come one cannot build harbour and connect cities by sea even when there are 10 tiles in a row of water?
4) The naval upgrade path results in an age of zero naval warfare. Caravels and Galleons are 1.2 so only the Byzantines might engage in warfare. Everybody else will just be unable to attack, because attacking with 1 against 2 is suicidal or at least prohibitively expensive. The stats need recalculating, because suddenly there's fifty or even a hundred turns of unrealistic peace on the high seas.
It would however appear as though the "Land Units" are '"walking on water" as they cross the rivers as well as if a unit stops on a river tile, it would be standing on the surface of the river.
This si something that I already mentioned earlier, but basically you can traverse shallow rivers with low-draft craft while a larger, heavier ship from more modern times requires constant dredging to excavate new channels. How would that be represented in a system with navigable rivers?
3) Lakes! Sometimes there are freshwater lakes in the game. Inland seas such as Aral and the Caspian are a thing and war fleets could be deployed in them.
You'd have difficulty deploying a fleet on the Aral Sea(s) these days, though. Historical (primarily Soviet) mismanagement/ overexploitation has caused it to pretty much dry up.
Which reminds me of another of my CivIII-bugbears: it's also always struck me as kind of ridiculous that the game-engine will theoretically allow a single 1-tile lake or river to (chain-)irrigate an entire continent.
Would it therefore be possible to code C7 to allow "irrigation-range" to be restricted to a (user-set) maximum number of tiles away from any given freshwater-source? e.g. for a randomly generated world-map, it might be limited to as few as 1-2 tiles, but for local/regional scenarios, that range could be extended proportional to the map-scale?
This is also a question of map-scale, though. Any 'lake' covering >20 water-tiles (any type), is considered by the Firaxis game-engine to be saltwater (i.e. 1 FPT rather than 2 FPT) -- so if larger maps also tend to contain larger lakes, that would also make it more likely that Harbours (and also ships?) could be built* in towns adjacent to such inland seas.
*Can't remember offhand which of the improvement-flags applicable to epic-game Harbours restricts them to be built by saltwater -- though the most logical trigger(s) would be "Coastal installation" + "Increases food in water"
The Units shown over trees or buildings are understood as being in them where as if a Unit is seen Over water, it would be assumed to be either On or Under it... either way, still appears strange.
Hello everyone
I'm an old civ3 player who created some mods/scenarios a few years ago now! I discover with enthusiasm this project. Concerning the units, I would like to see the following improvements:
- less lethal combat. When an offensive unit is more mobile than the defender, it can choose to avoid combat.
- when the attacker is at 10 to 1 (for example), he can execute an overrun on the defender who is routed
- special abilities to defend against cavalry (pikemen, Napoleonic square infantry, etc.)
- special abilities to defend against tanks (anti-tank artillery, etc). Otherwise I would like to see a distinction made between 'hard attacks' against vehicles and 'soft attacks' against infantrymen
- for the aviation, I think that it is necessary to distinguish the AA defense force, from the defense force against the attack of another plane. Aircraft carrying out reconnaissance must also be able to be intercepted
I was thinking of something of the sort (because, seriously, a 1 MP with ‘all terrain as roads’ gets you farther than 2 MP without that feature) but haven't been able to get there just yet.
I propose to extend the concept of resources from the binary type of civ3 (I have some / I don't have any) to a more elaborate system, taking into account the quantities. So an iron mine could generate more or less ores depending on the time and the technological level. For example, 1 iron per turn in ancient times and 5 irons / turn at the end of the game.
Each military unit can ask for up to 3 resources also expressed in quantities: for example a tank can ask for 1 oil + 2 steels.
We can imagine the same system to build some buildings in the cities.
I would also distinguish 3 types of resources:
- Raw materials (iron, oil, coal, etc)
- Processed products (bronze, steel, etc)
- Luxury resources (diamonds, emeralds, gold, silver, etc)
Each civilization has a stock of resources that it can trade. Diplomacy and negotiation become more interesting, I think:
For example: "I offer 3 irons + 5 wools + 3 coppers / turn against 2 oils / turn
The trade system could be more elaborate:
- Creation of caravans between 2 land cities
- Creation of maritime trade lines between 2 ports with merchant ships
- Creation of merchant air links at the end of the game
Interception of these lines or attacks by pirates/barbarians could temporarily interrupt these links. In case of war, these trade links would also become highly strategic.
In addition to resources, it could be interesting to buy mercenaries from other civilizations during diplomatic negotiations. Of course, these purchased military units would be more expensive to maintain.
I suggested these kind of "Civ 4 transformation settings of resources" for buildings (the other one is the production of units only possible with a special building in a city) to Flintlock in a pm some time ago.
That sounds more like a Settlers of Catan derivative than ‘true civ™’ but is something that I'd very much like to have a possibility of for making scenarios and so for.
I.e. processed resources. Of course, it could seriously become a headache if you had to, for example, take lumber and see whether it's used as a construction material or for finished consumer goods or for making charcoal or spear hafts or for ship hulls and so on which would then be used (or stockpiled) to further manufacture actual units or city improvements or terrain improvements.
It'd be more like managing the economic output of a factory+mine complex in Transport Tycoon games, which could be a lot of fun, but far less civ.
Still, ‘depletion-counter’ style resources are something that we could take into account. I.e. resources that are exhausted easily, but only if they are actually used. Like a stone quarry.
Or ‘storage-counter’ resources, i.e. ones that you have to stock up on, presumably by paying some other cost, before you can use them.
I think there should be an option to re-enable it. It can be a handy mechanic. And just for nostalgia reasons!
(I've just been having an enjoyable lurk in the forum. It's wonderful to see tangible progress on a project like this. In the unlikely event that I can help please let me know!)
At least in the Flintlock patch for C3C the fix of the submarine bug can simply be disabled by setting the entry in the Config text file from true to false.
The next dev diary should be out within a week of the Ides of March, which is in six days. If you need a sneak preview, you can see the last post of the "Babylon" release planning thread.
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