Movement Range Limit

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Islands can be similar to the reefs in the way they treat water units, but to improve them with work boats, and cannot be landed on by land units.
It just kind of occured to me, when I was looking at the map.

The natural harbours, essentially treated like coast, with the port upgrade can be treated like a canal, which would make more sense than using a 'fort', and can get improved in cohesion with the harbour buildings.

I hadn't really thought it all through yet, I just wanted to see if the idea would be acceptable before I fleshed it out.

The island idea is doable just need to figure out some graphics. May even be able to use a version of the goody island graphic, shrunk. I'll add it to my list for looking at.

 

[Hydromancerx]

just need to figure out some graphics.

That is the most limiting factor for everything on this project. Lack of graphics.

 

[Il Principe]

Channel.. I channel buildable by workerr to let ships pass land would be great. Real world examples would be the tha Panama Channel, Suez Channel and various smaller ones used to conenct rivers.

 

[BlueGenie]

You can already do that via Forts. If you have two land plots separating water you can build forts on them and ferry boats through.

Cheers

 

[Koshling]

You can already do that via Forts. If you have two land plots separating water you can build forts on them and ferry boats through.

Cheers

Yes, but that's a largely unintended side-effect, and limitted to 2 tiles. True mega-canal building would be nice to add (improvement type, becomes available somewhere around late industrial)

 

[BlueGenie]

I agree in part but I also see a 2-plot canal as a mega-canal. Besides I've managed to do longer canals in several games via small inland lake jumps. Coast, Fort, Fort, Lake, Fort, Lake, Lake Fort, Fort, Coast, for instance. In the latest games I posted I had Coast, Fort, Lake, Fort, Coast for a larger than 2 plot canal.
My point being that to make a longer canal you need to have nature on your side, in real life too. The Panama Canal uses the Gatun Lake (man made for this purpose, but still), and the Suez Canal spans several lakes and is mainly built along a flat expanse (and believed to follow an expanded Red Sea in ancient times, thus once the full Suez Canal was built they had several old canals to help facilitate the building).

Cheers

 

[Acularius]

Basically I had wanted to treat them exactly as BlueGenie has suggested we do with forts, but only as a most viable improvement that produces far more than a 'fort' as a port city naturally should be able to.

In theory, it should be better than a cottage in every way (as it improves), simply because of the rarity of the natural harbour while making island nations more competitive, or at least giving them a much needed boost in comparison.

As for the graphics, I didn't know how feasible it was, but largely I had just assume the use of a smaller 'goody hut' island and the improvement could somehow use the graphics from the citiy port improvements.
Natural habours could probably be represented by a low level harbour graphics. The Fishmonger hut looks pretty good, and it can slowly get 'improved' like cottages, over time.

 

[Il Principe]

My point being that to make a longer canal you need to have nature on your side, in real life too. The Panama Canal uses the Gatun Lake (man made for this purpose, but still), and the Suez Canal spans several lakes and is mainly built along a flat expanse (and believed to follow an expanded Red Sea in ancient times, thus once the full Suez Canal was built they had several old canals to help facilitate the building).

Cheers

I would make sense to restrict it fot flat land. At first. with some more advacned tech you could also make them available over hills. I mean the tech is there in real life, just not on the scale needed for sea ships. But there are canals for river ships going over some severe hight differences
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_lift
( for those speaking it: the German article is more detailed)

And although modern day navy ships are too big for most channels, earlier ships were way smaller.

 

[Koshling]

On a related (but not really belonging otyherwsie here I guess) note - how about canals implemented as route types (and later sea canals/mega canals). The later versions might act as routes usable by sea units, but I was thinking that the early ones would just be regular routes. They wouldn't have much speed advantage (perhaps none), but we'd add a new tag to routes generally, which they would have a significantly higher value for than early road-line routes - trade-capacity. Your trade route value would then depend on the trade capacity of the route in question, so building a canal network would increase your trade income...

...edit - actually it's not that off-topic - canal-served plots could quite reasonably act as supply points too

 

[BlueGenie]

On or off topic I was thinking along the same routes as a way to increase commerce along a river that's been widened to allow more trade, or a canal where there is no river to make River Ports and such available.

Don't know how feasible it would be though so didn't post anything about it.

Cheers

 

[Il Principe]

On or off topic I was thinking along the same routes as a way to increase commerce along a river that's been widened to allow more trade, or a canal where there is no river to make River Ports and such available.

Don't know how feasible it would be though so didn't post anything about it.

Cheers

Wasn´t the problem with those that the way trade routes are calculated would need a rewrite?
As a temporary sollution for the commerce increasing part a building could represent the widennig and deepenig of a river.

 

[Koshling]

Wasn´t the problem with those that the way trade routes are calculated would need a rewrite?
As a temporary sollution for the commerce increasing part a building could represent the widennig and deepenig of a river.

With the current infrastructure (I already rewrote trade route stuff a few versiosn ago) it wouldn't now be too hard really. Few days work I'd guess, but as always there are 10 times more things to do than time to do them in.

 

[Il Principe]

With the current infrastructure (I already rewrote trade route stuff a few versiosn ago) it wouldn't now be too hard really. Few days work I'd guess, but as always there are 10 times more things to do than time to do them in.

Great I think other things are higher o the list, but it would be nice to have to choose between equally valid rotues for workers to build sometimes, like channels for high trade volume, but highways for bettter troop movement.

 

[Koshling]

Great I think other things are higher o the list, but it would be nice to have to choose between equally valid rotues for workers to build sometimes, like channels for high trade volume, but highways for bettter troop movement.

We'd need suitable route graphics of course...

 

[Koshling]

It occurs to me that the brief discussion starting at this post - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11445527&postcount=204 also could model unit supply - essentially the uses of 'energy' in the galactic context are very analogous to 'food and materials' to model unit supply in much earlier eras.

 

[WimpyTheWarrior]

If you implement a supply system, I would be in favour of a promotion to "live off the land" for Hunter and Recon units. Allow the unit to ignore supply restrictions, but operates at reduced strength (50%?, 25%?) The intent is to allow some units to operate very remote from the empire, but at a risk that they never return.

 

[Hydromancerx]

So would pillaging an enemy's land when at war with them help re-supply the troops since they could take supplies from the enemy?

 

[Il Principe]

how about going one step further: Pillaging fills up your supply, but the already present battle effect reduces supply regrowth and supply lines throughput?

 

[philipschall]

Bump. This idea still needs to be considered.

 

[Mouthwash]

It should scale to map size, of course. Has that been brought up yet?