@Primem0ver:I get your and Laskaris' points about tropical rainforests, but that is not really how the civ game works with regards to forests, jungles, and their base terrain. I don't think such a radical change for such small gameplay benefit is really worth it.
I guess that is a question of personal gaming philosophy: do you want a pure digital boardgame (which is a great concept, and what Civilization was originally set out to be), or do you want a game that strives for a higher level of realism and contains some simulation elements as well?
Personally, I am not one of those "ultra realism" fetishists who completely ignores matters of gameplay. But I do like a good level of realism, and I tend to believe that, more often than not, realism in historical strategy games enhances gameplay rather than diminishing it (Thunderbrd has brought up that exact same point already).
It bothers me to no end when civilizations in the game just raze the tropical jungles and then build thriving, agriculturally productive empires on the "grasslands" that used to be underneath the jungle. This is just not how it works in the real world. It's one of the things where Civilization being a digital boardgame really shows, and it breaks the immersion for me. Like I said, this comes down to a question of personal gaming philosophy, and I am a bit of a roleplayer and a fan of plausible alternate history.
If the different climate zones of an Earth-like planet, their effects on agriculture etc. would be modelled more realistically, the resulting alternate histories would also look more like Earth: instead of having civilizations spread out fairly evenly across large portions of the map, you would have more distinct population centers, "bread basket" regions that are very agriculturally productive, and hinterlands that are thinly populated (but maybe contain plenty of gold, oil, coal etc., like Siberia). I for one think it would be a very interesting game.
If we were to add just Mediterranian and Temperate Steppe, we would have a grand total of 18 (!) base terrains, that combined with the wealth of features we have should be more than enough to model almost any climate system to a close enough point in C2C.
The sheer number of terrains is not the decisive factor, it's the kind of terrains that are available. C2C currently has an over-abundance of desert terrains, "barren", "rocky", "scrub", "desert", "dunes" and "salt flats". It has three sea terrains, three very cold terrains ("tundra", "permafrost", "ice"), and two different swamp terrains ("muddy" and "marsh"). On the other hand, humid (or semi-arid) tropical, subtropical and temperate regions are severely under-represented with only three terrains, "plains", "grasslands" and "lush", despite the fact that they have a big variety of climate types in the real world. All in all, the terrain palette really isn't well-suited for making detailed, Earth-like worlds. It seems more well-suited to making desert planets, frankly.
If I had complete freedom, I would throw out half of the desert terrains, one of the swamp terrains, and add a bunch of terrains that are well-suited for humid and semi-arid regions from the tropics to the temperate zones. All in all, it probably would not be a bigger number of terrains than what you currently have, but it would be more well-suited for making Earth-like planets with their full variety of climate zones.
At the same time, I understand that there is a whole bunch of stuff tied to the current terrains, culture wonders and so forth. Which is why there is such a high degree of resistance against major changes to the terrain palette. I can appreciate that, and it's why what primem0ver is aiming to do may not be compatible with C2C, at the end of the day.
