Natural barriers

[Uiler]

In playing Civ I noticed that with the exception of ocean, and the rare chokepoint, natural barriers almost never appear. Mountains, deserts, jungles - a bit slower to explore but in the past, it was normal to have entire armies, let alone exploring expeditions perish while trying to get through these. Rivers were natural defensive barriers e.g. the Yangtze River in China was Southern China's greatest natural defense. Countless times in Chinese history, Chinese in the south, though outpopulated, out-gunned and out-numbered were able to maintain successful defense for decades by controlling the Yangtze river with their navies. If you heavily fortify mountains it is harder to get past but you never really replicate situations in the past where you have a huge mountain range with only a few well-guarded passes. Also in the past mountain ranges with winding narrow tracks and dangerous terrain also made it difficult to supply land based armies.

 

[von Bismarck]

That is true, indeed. Also, on a graphical aspect, it looks like there is a tracks between two mountains. But what I would like to see is a connection between the two tiles with no path. So there should only be certain paths which you can use and those could be guarded then.
There should be no passing mountains at all if you don't use the paths...

 

[bob rulz]

See my thread about new terrain. I had an idea that several interconnecting mountain tiles would be very hard to pass, and that a peak (basically a very tall mountain) would be impassable.

Also, the river thing is replicated in the fact that if you attack across a river the defender gets a bonus.

 

[bonscott]

Rise and Rule replicate some of this by making many units not able to pass through moutains or jungle without a road (i.e. building a pass). So similar things can be done today in Civ 3 in the editor.

 

[sealman]

Rise and Rule replicate some of this by making many units not able to pass through moutains or jungle without a road (i.e. building a pass). So similar things can be done today in Civ 3 in the editor.

I do this in my games. The problem is that the AI goes road happy and builds roads everywhere thus killing the whole idea.