Feedback: Improvements

[Xyth]

Can names be applied to combinations of terrain and features? For example, in the (wet) tropics, we could have:

Grassland Flat -> Tropical Grasslands
Jungle Grassland Flat -> Lowland Jungle
Wetlands Grassland Flat -> Tropical Swamp
Jungle Grassland Hills -> Upland Jungle
Mountains

Would this damage the map scripts?

Can't be done, universally anyway. Mapscripts would be fine but I'd to add some code in every part of the interface that references terrain and feature names. And some areas, tooltips for example, can only be changed in the DLL.

 

[Eucalyptus]

Can't be done, universally anyway. Mapscripts would be fine but I'd to add some code in every part of the interface that references terrain and feature names. And some areas, tooltips for example, can only be changed in the DLL.

Thanks for that! I add a new definition of terrain to my wishlist for Civ VI.


Eucalyptus' Terrain definition wishlist for Civ VI, version 1

Each tile (land and water) has a Terrain Type described by 3 factors:

• Fertility (Barren, Semi-fertile, Fertile, ..., based on soil/water nutrients)
• Geomorphology (Plains, Hills, Mountains, Freshwater Lake, Coast, Ocean, ... )
• Climate (Polar, Temperate, Subtropical, Tropical, ..., zones defined by mean temperature)

Geomorphology describes what is visible for most of history. It is constructed by map scripts using 2 underlying variables Morphology and Altitude.

• Morphology (Plains, Hills, Mountains)
• Altitude (Relative to mean sea level: -10km to +10km)

These variables don't appear in the trinomial naming of the Terrain Type but might be useful if the underwater terrains were needed.

Climate is determined primarily by latitude, but also by continental location and Geomorphology.

The Terrain Features (vegetation!) that can possibly occur (Desert=Null, Wetlands, Grassland, Forest, Ice, Sea Ice ...) are dependent on the underlying Terrain Type. Terrain features can generally be removed. Removal of Forest leaves Grassland, removal of Grassland leaves Desert. Some Terrain Features can grow back (slowly, and only in some circumstances), some can later in history be made to grow back (plant a Forest, green a Desert into Grassland). Ice is an exception: (Land) Ice in Polar regions is unremovable, and can lie on top of many Terrain Types. (If, in the Future, it is made removable, then what lies underneath should be Desert.) The only possible terrain feature on water is unremovable Sea Ice, and it can only appear on (Polar) water.

Animal and plant-related Terrain Bonuses are then dependent on the Terrain Features (and thus on the underlying Terrain Type). Fertility is meaningful variable for water for determining the presence of sealife.

Removal of the necessary Terrain Feature makes any extant Terrain Bonuses disappear. Mineral Bonuses are largely independent of Terrain Type (Geomorphology excludes some --- no Gas under Mountains), but accessing them may be impossible (can't Mine Iron from under Ice in the Classical period).


Of the possible combinations, each can have a common name, and these common names can sometimes be duplicated. Glacier, Ice, Savannah, Jungle, Prairie and Tundra and Taiga are then examples of common names for combinations rather than the underlying Terrain Type.

For example:

Semi-fertile /Temperate/Subtropical/ Plains Grassland -> Prairie

Remove the Grassland to obtain:

Semi-fertile Temperate Plains Desert -> Desert (or Dustbowl?)


Pollution is independent of Terrain Type. Pollution is better described by another variable (or variables --- a tile could have both chemical and nuclear pollution). The presence of pollution causes yields to drop, Terrain Bonuses to vanish and Terrain Features to slowly degrade. The world begins as unpolluted. If present, Volcanoes create not pollution but Desert (perhaps unimproveable).


All the factor lists in the Terrain Type, together with their possible combinations, and those of the Features and Bonuses are moddable, to deal with refinements and imaginary geographies.

-----------------------------

The remainder of my Civ VI wish list includes that it has the basic rules of BTS IV, modulated by the improvements of HR (in particular its Timeline, Buildings, Resources, Improvements, Units, Promotions, Technology Tree, Civics, ...), the hex tiles and finer granularity of V, that it contains complete documentation of all its structures and game mechanics, and that it is more comprehensively moddable (perhaps by its being implemented in Java, but that begins to sound like an open source project ...).

 

[tchristensen]

Any thoughts on making a "goody hut" for the ocean? Graphic could be an island or sandy Atoll and have it act just like a good hut but for later game play when "ocean" going vessels enter the game. Could simulate a Age of Discovery granting much needed wealth and technology to those who find them.

 

[tchristensen]

I wonder if you ever considered adding advanced resources in the game that are created by having two or more basic natural resources and then with the construction of specific buildings convert those into more advanced resource. Some basic rework of the game would be needed but as an example, Copper and Tin could be combined for Bronze with a Forge. All sorts of "advanced" resources could be added for this. Not sure if the AI would understand the concepts, however?

Another one I thought of off hand is Sulfur and Coal converted into Gunpowder.

 

[Xyth]

Any thoughts on making a "goody hut" for the ocean? Graphic could be an island or sandy Atoll and have it act just like a good hut but for later game play when "ocean" going vessels enter the game. Could simulate a Age of Discovery granting much needed wealth and technology to those who find them.

Yeah that could be pretty fun. I believe there's a mod component somewhere that does something along these lines, I'll look into it.

I wonder if you ever considered adding advanced resources in the game that are created by having two or more basic natural resources and then with the construction of specific buildings convert those into more advanced resource. Some basic rework of the game would be needed but as an example, Copper and Tin could be combined for Bronze with a Forge. All sorts of "advanced" resources could be added for this. Not sure if the AI would understand the concepts, however?

Another one I thought of off hand is Sulfur and Coal converted into Gunpowder.

This is something I planned for HR and actually started preliminary work on a while back. Unfortunately I came across some significant AI problems and technical restrictions that pretty much killed the concept. I've since moved development of resources and related buildings in a different direction so it's not something I'm likely to revisit.

 

[Nightstar]

Playing a 1.18 game as Roosevelt (Progressive/Organized), I chopped a riverside grassland forest with a Camp (but no visible resource) to speed up production of the Great Library in my capital. Upon completing the chop I received the appropriate number of and the forest was properly removed, but the Camp was *not* removed and remained on the now-bare grasslands tile.

 

[tchristensen]

I would also like to make a suggestion about adding a bonus to building roads. Perhaps an addition to connecting resources and speeding up troop movement, it facilitates in commerce -- not hard to rationalize. It could even be construed that it adds food or hammers as it changes the way improvements are harnessed by a culture, cutting down on waste and time, but that changes the very foundation of the game.

As someone who struggles mid game with money, I do not think that added a +1 coin to a plot with a road would be disastrous but another reason to build roads.

Troy

 

[Little Faith]

Roads already facilitate commerce by connecting cities thus creating trade routes.

Also, I don't think anyone here want the mindless road-spam of Civ 1, 2 and 3 back.

 

[tchristensen]

I counter that civilization generates "road spam" as you so disingenuously call it. So perhaps you should say that you don't want it, but not necessarily speak for everyone?!?

 

[Boggy]

I do not think that added a +1 coin to a plot with a road would be disastrous but another reason to build roads.

Well, I do think so +1 for every plot with a road means, in the end, +1 for every plot. Roads are already important enough, I think. Giving them a bonus ends up in a bonus for every tile, because you will build roads on every tile then (what I already do, in fact, if more workers have nothing to do...) and I doubt we need that.

 

[tchristensen]

Well, I do think so +1 for every plot with a road means, in the end, +1 for every plot. Roads are already important enough, I think. Giving them a bonus ends up in a bonus for every tile, because you will build roads on every tile then (what I already do, in fact, if more workers have nothing to do...) and I doubt we need that.

You do realize the +1 commerce is not +1 gold, right? You can have +20 commerce (those little coins) which means very little if the infrastructure of the city can't convert them into real gold.

 

[Xyth]

And +1 is even more powerful than +1 because of its flexibility. If a city isn't converting it into wealth, it's converting it to research, culture, or espionage. Commerce (or production or food) from roads would require considerable redesign and reduction in yields elsewhere to compensate. Balancing the effect across all map sizes would be a nightmare. It's not something I'm interested in implementing.

 

[tchristensen]

Much like the idea of putting pastures and farms on non-resources squares, what thoughts are to put fisheries in empty ocean squares -- providing either food, commerce, or even hammers?

 

[tchristensen]

And +1 is even more powerful than +1 because of its flexibility. If a city isn't converting it into wealth, it's converting it to research, culture, or espionage. Commerce (or production or food) from roads would require considerable redesign and reduction in yields elsewhere to compensate. Balancing the effect across all map sizes would be a nightmare. It's not something I'm interested in implementing.

Just for fun, I added a +1 commerce to all roads and have played several games. It does add a bit of wealth to games, but not as much as you would think. It actually made coastal cities and cities on small islands far more useful. I understand you don't want to add this to the game, but from my initial changes I found it actually made the game a bit more responsive (for me and my friends we were always fighting for money in the mid-term game).

 

[Xyth]

Much like the idea of putting pastures and farms on non-resources squares, what thoughts are to put fisheries in empty ocean squares -- providing either food, commerce, or even hammers?

Possibly, I'd have to think through the implications.

Just for fun, I added a +1 commerce to all roads and have played several games. It does add a bit of wealth to games, but not as much as you would think. It actually made coastal cities and cities on small islands far more useful. I understand you don't want to add this to the game, but from my initial changes I found it actually made the game a bit more responsive (for me and my friends we were always fighting for money in the mid-term game).

On some mapsizes/maptype perhaps. On others it would be out of control.

 

[Nightstar]

Building a Mine or Workshop directly on a feature (e.g. Forest) without manually clearing it first removes the feature without providing any "chop" hammers. Since other improvements such as Farms and Cottages don't have this problem, I'm wondering if it might have something to do with the implementation of the Pollution feature?

As a separate issue, chopping the feature out from under a (non-resource) camp or plantation does *not* remove said improvement, even though it is no longer a valid build option for the tile.

 

[Little Faith]

Am I the only one here who thinks potatoes is a tad weak for a food special? I mean, it only occurs on dry hills and when improved it's actually worse than the dreaded plains cow. Start positions with potatoes as the only food special are really rough.

 

[Xyth]

Am I the only one here who thinks potatoes is a tad weak for a food special? I mean, it only occurs on dry hills and when improved it's actually worse than the dreaded plains cow. Start positions with potatoes as the only food special are really rough.

Oops, missed this post. In 1.19 they're set to appear on flatland plains as well as hills, so that might alleviate the issue a little. I'll keep an eye on it.

 

[Skidizzle]

In my current game I have a vassal that has oil in his territory but is technologically incapable of accessing it. He won't negotiate for that territory and I don't want to give him 15 techs for free. I also don't want to declare war on him in the mist of the current world war.

Is it possible to code a way for you to develop your vassals resources so you can export them to yourself? You know, imperialism at its finest.

 

[tchristensen]

Combat Engineers -- much like a laborer, the combat engineer could create pillboxes, trenches, hard point emplacements, clear jungle, build landing strips, build bridges, destroy bridges. Idea for them to be able to target a square and remove swamp, radiation, or icebergs?