Map reveal at Satellites

[pepper2000]

Do we really need it? By the time you get that far, you probably have most or all of the world explored anyway. And it ruins a lot of the potential fun for space maps, where you could be using rovers and probes to explore the solar system and beyond.

 

[Praetyre]

Well, setting it to only reveal Earth tiles should be a relatively straightforward matter, though I think there should be some sort of set of things to allow the same effect on the Moon/Mars/other places in the Solar System.

 

[Thunderbrd]

It's one of those things that has been discussed but would require programming to restructure. I suppose it could be removed as an effect from the tech but then the question becomes how do you get any visibility onto other planets at all?

 

[pepper2000]

I like the idea of exploring space the old-fashioned way: with spacecraft. Yes, we now have a detailed map of Mars due to satellites around the Red Planet and observations from Earth-based telescopes, so there is a sacrifice of realism to say that it should be explored with rovers, but I think it would add more fun to the late game.

No immediate plans to change the map-reveal for now, but for long term planning purposes I'd like to know what others think.

 

[Praetyre]

How about making it so that Mars' terrain can be uncovered via said building/wonder/project(s), but that its resources require rovers to find?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Resources are reveled by tech. Once you have the tech they will show up on plots you can see or have seen.

 

[pepper2000]

Yeah, my dream solution would be for the planets to initially be revealed as nondescript blobs, and resources, map features, etc. would only be revealed on close examination. But that would be yet another major piece of surgery on the game code. And it's low on my priority list.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I like the idea of exploring space the old-fashioned way: with spacecraft. Yes, we now have a detailed map of Mars due to satellites around the Red Planet and observations from Earth-based telescopes, so there is a sacrifice of realism to say that it should be explored with rovers, but I think it would add more fun to the late game.

No immediate plans to change the map-reveal for now, but for long term planning purposes I'd like to know what others think.

The problem is really how do you create the mission to get a rover to the moon or mars without having some visibility on the planet so you can select the appropriate tile? I suppose you could send them to any random valid landing plot, whether you can see it or not.

 

[tmv]

As far as the existence of the moon / mars is concerned, our ancestors have known about it since ancient times, or in case of the moon, since the beginning. The presence of these celestial objects has been known for a long time, and their place in space is very well known since Newton at the latest.

 

[Noriad2]

Yeah, my dream solution would be for the planets to initially be revealed as nondescript blobs, and resources, map features, etc. would only be revealed on close examination. But that would be yet another major piece of surgery on the game code. And it's low on my priority list.

I do appreciate exploration. In Civ 4 it is weird that just because a band of hunters went through a very remote area once, then thousands of years later your civ suddenly remembers that there is a lot of Uranium or oil there. From a realism point of view, that would have more priority to fix.

However in the modern age, satellite prospecting is a thing: see for example this map of Thorium deposits on the moon:

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/galleries/global-map-of-the-element-thorium

Of course this doesn't uncover deep deposits but you'll need more than a rover to find those anyway.

 

[Faustmouse]

As far as the existence of the moon / mars is concerned, our ancestors have known about it since ancient times, or in case of the moon, since the beginning. The presence of these celestial objects has been known for a long time, and their place in space is very well known since Newton at the latest.

But no one ever saw the far site of the moon until the 1960s, and while our ancestors knew that mars was there and where it is, they had no idea how it lookked like. No mountains, valley, craters or something was know until we launched a probe there.

 

[tmv]

Of course. But I was speaking about position in space. So the space tiles should be revealed with telescopes, but the tiles of these celestials bodies would only be revealed by space probes (or spaceships later on).