Mountains; things to do with them

[BeijingCat08]

So, I like the Erebus and Tectonics maps, both of which (Erebus more so) are chokepoint-tastic. But I kind of feel that there should be more ways to launch surprise attacks over mountains, both for the player's sake and to make the AI a little nastier - as things stand, it's often piss-easy to block AI assaults this way.

I'm thinking the following would be nice -

a) a 'Mountaineer' promotion (maybe after Guerilla II?) that lets units cross mountains.
b) a blasting powder 'tunnel blaster' unit that you could sacrifice to turn a mountain into a hill or similar.
c) a 'secret tunnel' event for the Council of Esus, maybe? Creates two invisible 'tunnel entrance' units on either side of a mountain that one unit a turn can pass through.
d) a 'mountain collapse' event that randomly turns a mountain into a hill.

 

[Gilg]

I personally like the unassailableness of mountains... perhaps flying units could be made more common to compensate, wee kuriotate dragonites anyone??

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I was planning on adding a hard to get RoK-only Mountaineer promotion (which is slightly easier for Dwarves to get) in my version.

RoK will get some way to boost the yields of peaks and discover/connect mineral resources there. I'm not sure whether this will involve Stonewarden spells and mountaineering workers, or simply repeatable rituals effecting peaks in the city radius.


I don't really like the tunnel ideas very much. They could be rather hard to implement. I proposed something similar in my first or second post here, but after looking into modding it I don't really like the ways that seem possible. I suppose that if someone made an improvement that looked just like a peak with a tunnel in it I'd consider allowing said tunnels. I'd probably give Great Engineers the ability instead of making a new unit it I were to allow it.

Implementing the "secret tunnel" event/"tunnel entrance" doesn't seem that good. It certainly shouldn't use invisible units. It would have to use either features of improvements, so the <PythonOnMove> tag could be used. It would probably be pretty slow though, and not work if there could be more than 1 pair of entrances.


Mountains collapsing would be fine as a rare event, similar to the volcano event. I'd probably prefer to have it be an Avalanche event that damages units near peaks and has a small chance of reducing the peaks to hills.

 

[Marnok]

Another thing might be, allowing cities to make buildings which can only be built if next to a mountain in a similar way that some buildings require coast or river. Perhaps a lookout tower which gives +vision range (though, usually culture makes that useless pretty quick) or special mines allowing mountain plots to be worked for a hammer or two. This could be a national wonder, or even a world wonder, like the Heron Throne but for mountains; there could be multiple of such wonders, maybe Fungus Farms allow the city to grow food in mountain tunnels, Tunnel Dwellings give +money, etc.

Perhaps resources could spawn on mountains and count as being "improved" automatically - maybe with a tech requirement. So after "mining" you can research "mountain mining" and if a mountain plot has gems, you can mine them just by working the plot. Or maybe you need to work it for a certain number of turns then a mine will appear; or perhaps the tech just allows mountains to pop up a new resource complete with mine/quarry on a lucky Event. There are issues with this; for example it is hard to block the production of an enemy by putting units on the plot.

Back when I first wanted to mod vanilla Civ4 (and didn't), I thought it would be good if cities gained +defence for adjacent mountains, to help compensate for the "dead zone" productionwise. Maybe +5% for each adjacent mountain - if you built a city in a little hollow you might have 7 surrounding mountains for +35% defense. This could be true for all cities, or only if a building is made, or only if a wonder is built... or maybe true for all with the building/wonder increasing the effect. Another idea is that with Defensive Tunnels. the effects of collateral damage are reduced.

Also on the subject of mountains, I don't like the way culture spreads over them. I can't actually visit this farm, to travel there would take a lengthy journey by land and sea through enemy territory, yet for some reason they consider themselves part of my civilization. To be honest I'm not a big fan of the culture-spread mechanic anyway so maybe I am biased, but I think this is legitimately an oddity.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

lots of nice ideas here. there is definitely a lot that could be done with mountains to bring more strategic choices to the game

 

[darkuss]

I'm thinking the following would be nice -

a) a 'Mountaineer' promotion (maybe after Guerilla II?) that lets units cross mountains.
b) a blasting powder 'tunnel blaster' unit that you could sacrifice to turn a mountain into a hill or similar.
c) a 'secret tunnel' event for the Council of Esus, maybe? Creates two invisible 'tunnel entrance' units on either side of a mountain that one unit a turn can pass through.
d) a 'mountain collapse' event that randomly turns a mountain into a hill.

a) b) would lead to overusing and mountains would loose theier strategic meaning

c) sounds good in theory but once you acctualy use it the enemy will locate where you came from and again we recive a single defense point but now even worse since you can only bring 1 unit along

d) this one I quite lake, could be explained with dwarves digging for gold or experimenting with gunpowder

I think Gilg suggestion sounds better. 4 national flying units could add a little twist to the game, as long as they cannot pillage. I would also add them -25% combat aggainst archery units sa that a neat defense can be made for them.

Those flying units could be used to stop the reinforcment or wreck havoc in enemy workers when he is hiding behid his pass defenses

And as for making civilization specific flyers - pegasus, wyverns, rocks, giant bats, griffons, I belive the fantasy world provides enough inspiration

 

[MacGyverInSpace]

I'd like to see a mountain based Dwarve/RoK 'Tunnel' or mountain mine (with different, Moria like graphics) which could allow passage (maybe with a high movement cost) to units. If not in FFH, maybe it could be tested in FFr.

Additionally, mines or caves improvements such as this could give units an invisibility promotion, and while they're inside they're art-less (just a flag on a mountain top to indicate them) which would be neat and would require sight of the tunnel entrance tile for enemies to notice your slow moving stealth attack.

Of course, you'd be able to see enemy tunnel improvements (if you don't think this is logical, border security employs listeners...) Anyway, my 5$...

oh and Flyers sound like a good idea for the late game. I wouldn't want them very strong, not being able to take a longbow in combat seems about right.

 

[mazirian]

give bonuses to dwarven city (food,production,defense) built next a mountain , to simulate the undermountain city .

dwarves could only built outpost when outrange of mountains , and change their worldspell to produce mountains instead of hills .

 

[heisenberg]

out of topic post for some laughs~

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Anyone remember how hard it was getting to it in Age of Ice?
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So you thought saving Brigit was hard...
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Instead of having mushrooms... can we replace that with Bird's nests? would make more sense that way...

(errr for those who didn't get it its an expensive asian delicacy)
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Sorry for the shameless hijack

 

[Imuratep]

The only thing I'd like to have would be some civilization getting boni from mountains like the Inka in Rhys' and Fall . Could be something about +3 hammers. Or introduce the boni with the research of certain techs for all civs.

 

[Mailbox]

Now that terrains can be given bonuses, couldn't mountains be given production for dwarves. I'll actually test this right now.

Edit: Nope, it doesn't work.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Peaks aren't really handled in the xml, but rather hardcoded in the game engine. Very few tags for peaks or mountains are actually read. You can even delete their entries with no problems.


I'm not sure how Rhye gave his Incas yields from peaks, but I suspect it relied on SDK changes I haven't located yet. I think I'm still leaning towards adding Dwarve or RoK rituals that use python to boost the yields of nearby peaks.

 

[xilr]

Since discovering "creation.py" I've grown to love mountains. Im pretty sure the AI cheats and sees everything, all the time regardless of line of sight. Mountains can let you plan a defense, and prevents easy "ninja'ing" of cities based on intel the AI never should have had.

My biggest problem with "AI Nastyness" (reference to original post) is that the AI cheats in a lot of ways. I'm not a programmer and cant confirm this in the code, but it sure seems to me like the AI sees everything all the time. I've had no open borders agreements with anyone, laid down a new city in a remote place and had a warring civ beeling right to it. The CPU also seems to know if your armies are "too far" away. If your stacks of doom are 15 turns from one of your cities, and the CPU thinks he can take that city in 12 turns, he'll do it, without having any explaination for how he got the intel on where all your units were.

Right now the "solution" is to spend a fortune on defense and have fast moving troops on standby, but that is expensive. A smarter AI is fine, but a cheating AI is kinda lame. Since finding maps with chokepoints, thats what I been playing now. Until I find a way to conceal my strategic information from the AI so he actually has to take a risk in attacking me rather than knowing ahead of time if he'll win or not, I cant think of a more fair way....

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

Alternate idea... what if there were a high tier spell to create mountains? This, of course, relies on their use as permanent blockades.

Option 1: Sacrifice the unit, mountain grows in the square.

Option 2: Alternately, you can just do a multi-turn cast like druids and forests except the unit gets bumped in a random direction upon completion.

Option 3: To prevent abuse, make it castable only in your own borders. You can even call it 'illusory mountain' and if an enemy's border overlaps it, it vanishes.

 

[Blakmane]

Alternate idea... what if there were a high tier spell to create mountains? This, of course, relies on their use as permanent blockades.

Option 1: Sacrifice the unit, mountain grows in the square.

Option 2: Alternately, you can just do a multi-turn cast like druids and forests except the unit gets bumped in a random direction upon completion.

Option 3: To prevent abuse, make it castable only in your own borders. You can even call it 'illusory mountain' and if an enemy's border overlaps it, it vanishes.

I remember they used to have a similar spell? But the possibilities for exploitation are too large.

 

[petepetepetep]

How feasible would it be to let a Great Commander spend himself in teleporting a stack over two squares? (That is, over a typical Erebus mountain barrier.) Classic Great Commander move, torn from the pages of history, etc.

 

[Marnok]

How feasible would it be to let a Great Commander spend himself in teleporting a stack over two squares? (That is, over a typical Erebus mountain barrier.) Classic Great Commander move, torn from the pages of history, etc.

Sounds do-able. Maybe though, a promotion granted to whole stack with an expiry time? I think the AI could handle that better, would still be tricky to train them to walk up to mountain and cross it... aso need to drop units off mountain when time expires or people will use it to station untouchables on mountains... (it's where archmages live now!)

 

[Marnok]

Thinking; might be better if Mountains were not impassable barriers at all, just very hard to cross. Think; enter mountain takes all moves for non-flyers and those without the terrain-crossing promos. Also "holds" unit for X turns. X can be reduced with Mountaineer promotion, certain units, races, tame goats, etc. so X might be 3, -1 with mountaineer, -1 for Dwarf or Giant. Could also randomly grant some kind of "weariness" promotion to some units which expires a turn after hold but reduces combat ability. The balance issue needs to be considered - fireball mages standing in the middle of a mountain range could be unstoppable.

Perhaps a chance for a damaging (to possible death) Avalanche every time a spell of any kind is cast in mountain? In fact maybe an Avalanche is possible with any *move* in a mountain. (Mountains could have an invisible Improvement type and we could use the pythononmove thingy to handle this... also then the improvement could grant bonus in certain conditions... useful for tracking. There could even be multiple invisible improvements, meaning sometimes you find a Mountain Trail and sometimes Impassable Terrain...)

With this sort of approach Commanders could be sacrificed while on a mountain to remove the hold to their stack, add Mountaineer and remove the weariness promo.

Thing is, if this becomes the movement of choice for the AI or players, it sort of messes up the idea of the Erebus map. This ought to be an option and a valid one, but not the normal mode of travel.

Might be worth a test. Make mountains passable, add an invisible improvement and python handlers, see how it goes.

Edit : also, perhaps they start off with an improvement called "unexplored mountain" and have to be scouted first. Unexplored mountains are very dangerous, you could easily lose a scout. If the scout survives, the improvement randomly changes to another type (pass, rugged, normal mountain, etc)
This is based on an idea I had for general scouting - that ALL map tiles would have an "unexplored" improvement from the start of the game, to make exploration perhaps more "realistic". In vanilla, I often had scouts wandering to distant lands and faxing back maps somehow, which didn't seem right... the chance that a unit would vanish moving into Unexplored area made it more real (scouts would not vanish in this way, so scouts went first), and made the "villagers giving you a map" the best result (as it would be changed to clear the unexplored too!) One thing is, once explored by *anyone* the improvement would pop, which seemed odd but I decided I could live with that. None of this is implemented anywhere of course.

 

[zup]

Also consider how Kuriotates fly their units over the mountains. Hmmmm AI does not understand chokepoints anyway, not a big deal.