Desert tiles, I don't know about...double-check. However, it might appear as though cities were founded on tundra when in fact they were built on forest that became tundra when the base terrain was revealed. I personally think that this is bad game design by Firaxis, which is why I had to defoliate much of Siberia and Canada. I didn't want to deny building on Forest since that would be too restricting.
A few others have clamored for more modern era flavor. There aren't any mods I'm aware of that address this. The problem is twofold:
1) There aren't as many units available for the modern era. Sandris, shiro, Plotinus, imperator, and others have spent a great deal of effort into building ancient through 19th century unit lines. Wyrm and Gary have taken stabs at the modern era, but there is generally less to choose from.
2) Modern units tend to look similar in the first place. There was a great deal more variety in the style of ancient military units than exists today. The differences between Iranian and British infantryman today is subtle enough that it doesn't show up well at the Civ scale. Gary has lamented this issue on the forums. You even begin to see it in the Napoleonic Era with Sandris and imperator's units. I kept adding flavor grenadiers and fusiliers only to realize that in many cases, the differences aren't noticeable.
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) and can't seem to build cities on squares that are deserts/tundra. Is this a feature in the mod? Confusing me a little bit
) is a much longer game with more in-depth age periods and maybe... Just maybe... A transition after space flight to a spacefaring colonization game. Also, a much larger representation of nations and cultures, and more specified units.
, either that or I just haven't played enough Civ recently. Just made it to the industrial revolution on one of my saves.
