Natural Wonders brainstorming

[Steb]

EDIT: This spreadsheet contains a list of proposed natural wonders and their properties.


I’ve been thinking some about natural wonders now that the new map is nearing (?) completion.

Leoreth has said this of natural wonders:

I have seen this in a few mods and in general it's a cool idea, but right now I don't know exactly what they would do. Would be cool to give bonuses to the first to discover, especially with a scout or explorer unit.

So this is a thread to figure out what’s they would do.

I think the most interesting aspect of natural wonders would be to make exploration more exciting. Since experienced players know the map well, there is little incentive to exploration after you’ve played a few games. Natural wonders could make it rewarding to explore both in terms of game mechanics (some culture or gold bonus?) and in giving a fun feeling of having discovered something interesting on the map. It would make sense, as Leoreth has suggested, to increase any reward if the discover is a scout or explorer (or a ship with such a unit on board), since that’s would increase these units’ importance.

However, I can think of two issues with this idea. First, I’m not sure it would work to grant the rewards only to the first player to discover. There are civs in most areas of the map, so in practice the bonus would just go to whatever civ spawns first in the vicinity. Except in some places like Australia.

A solution could be to restrict the bonus to civs that are not native to the area. Or to tie the bonus to some tech or the explorer unit. Or (this is my favourite solution) grant the bonus to everyone who discovers the wonder, but not if it is already revealed through some map exchange, so as to encourage original exploration and diminish the value of buying maps (which is often what happens, eg buying a map from Congo instead of exploring the heart of Africa). Or give the bonus to everyone but make it better to the first civ.

(This is the brainstorming part by the way.)

The second issue is that players would quickly learn the locations of the wonders and home in on them instead of actually exploring.

For this, we could make the set of available wonders nondeterminisitic. Each game could get a specified number of wonders out of a larger set, so you don’t know in advance whether Mt. Everest is in the game or not, and are encouraged to explore many locations. We could tie this to categories: there would always be a “beautiful waterfall” wonder but in game it might be any of the Victoria Falls, Iguaçu Falls, Niagara Falls, etc. Even the locations could be random. Mt. Everest (perhaps more generically named Summit of the world) could be any peak in the Himalayas or even in any large mountain range. Maybe some would consider this immersion breaking though.

Making the set of wonders random would also allow us to include more wonders. But maybe adding randomness isn’t desirable. Then we’d have to select a small set of wonders to always be present.

It would make sense for natural wonders to grant some bonus to nearby cities. I’m thinking something small, like a happy face “we love the scenery!” They could also interact with a building like the hotel and maybe some world wonders as well.

What would the wonders be? I’ve researched them a bit and will post my list later. One major limitation of course is art. If we can’t get nice looking art for a wonder it might just not be worth including it, since the feeling of discovering something beautiful and nice is a big part of the point.

 

[Publicola]

I would love to see natural wonders as part of this game.

One problem with natural wonders is that, if they take up a full tile, then even on the new Big Map they'd still be outrageously oversized compared to real life.

My question is: would it be possible to add some natural wonders to the line between tiles, similar to rivers? That'd be perfect for Victoria Falls (and Niagra Falls, and Pamukkale) especially, as well as the Dead Sea and even Sugarloaf Mountain (which lies on a peninsula south of Rio de Janeiro that juts out into the Atlantic).

It might even work for other geological features, like individual mountains -- I'd be really interested in seeing a Mt. Everest that lies at the point between four other mountain tiles, but towers over each of them. Krakatoa might exist between coastal tiles, while Mount Sinai would exist at the bottom edge of the Sinai peninsula, between a desert hill and the coast of the Red Sea.


As far as defining a specific list -- there are a bunch in Cavemen2Cosmos (here), and even more in Civilization 6 (here), so putting those together should give a fairly comprehensive set of candidates.

As for your 'random wonders' idea, I'm torn. Perhaps we could do as RFCE does with independent cities, and create a list where some natural wonders appear in every game, while others appears only occasionally. Depending on how big our list is, each natural wonder should give a fairly small (if not very small) bonus, though if Leoreth revamps the 'quests' and 'events' mechanics we could probably pair each one with a certain quest for a bigger bonus ('build an apothecary in the city next to Pamukkale') or with certain events that allow them to affect the game ('Krakatoa is erupting, causing damage across the Strait of Malacca' -- with destroyed buildings, wounded units, and turning the Strait into an impassible tile for one or two turns).

I do like the idea of only providing bonuses for non-local civs that 'discover' certain natural wonders. Perhaps there could be a rule that, for an explorer to receive such a bonus, they must have their capital on a different continent?

 

[Leoreth]

Thanks for starting this thread! There are a lot of open questions around this for me and your train of thought captures my thinking on this quite well too.

Regarding art, the concept of natural wonders exists in a couple of mods so that should become our base stock of graphics.

I really like your idea though of making the natural wonder locations fixed (they kind of have to with an accurate world map) but never having all of them present for the same game. This way there is still a feeling of discovery because while you know the possible locations, you can never know in which of them you will find one. With enough possible locations there is still enough incentive to go exploring everywhere then. Also, it allows us to incorporate natural wonders on their own merits without having to worry about having too many, because we can still limit their overall numbers on the map. And in terms of graphics, we can take e.g. existing Everest art and reskin/modify it a little to make e.g. Denali or Ararat. It's not even too bad that it's just reskins if only one of them shows up in the same game.

In terms of effect, I definitely think it should reward discovery most of all. I always wanted to have more stuff that rewards you for doing stuff on the map like circumnavigation and this definitely is it. I think it should be tied to the Explorer unit only. But you are raising good points that discovery should only apply to something out of your native area. The whole idea is somewhat colonialist and Eurocentric in nature (can Japanese explorers come to Europe and "discover" a natural wonder there?) so I need to think this through a little.

But a natural wonder should also have a secondary effect for the nearby city. I've always thought that there should be a more explicit tourism effect, but maybe other buffs could apply too. But it should not be too economically powerful in my opinion.

You also bring up a good point around map trading and revealing the entire map being too easy. I'm kind of trying to combat that a bit on the new map with new impassable terrain types and features, but let's see how this plays out. As far as map trading goes, I am thinking about making it more granular, maybe by letting civs trade maps for specific regions instead of the whole world (it's also my plan to introduce smaller more granular regions), while also introducing additional requirements for which regions you could buy maps for (must have at least one tile revealed for example). I'd definitely be happy if mapping out the entire world would become a lot harder.

For the time being, I would love a survey of natural wonder art we can find in other projects.

 

[Leoreth]

Crosspost with Publicola. Unfortunately, there is no way to place anything except rivers in the way rivers are placed (I have dreamed up ideas for different types of rivers that are unfortunately impossible because of this). In game terms, natural wonders could either be a form of terrain feature or a form of resource on a tile. In either case, we can scale the actual art appropriately so they do not take too much space if that is more appropriate for the natural wonder. Others, like e.g. Everest, could basically be a feature on top of a peak that takes up the entire tile.

But I really like your idea of opening little quests for cities next to a natural wonder to unlock their special effect. First of all, I think it's a lot more fun if you have to do a unique thing for each natural wonder, even if it's just having a building in the city. It also makes the natural wonder less powerful because its effect is gated.

Lastly, it could provide a neat rule to what things you can still discover with an Explorer. As in, if someone has already unlocked the city effect the natural wonder isn't discoverable anymore. This way, natural wonders in less developed parts of the world like the Americas, inner Africa or Australia would remain discoverable while e.g. Fujisan would not. On the other hand, the Everest effect could be gated by a quite advanced tech so Everest would still be discoverable by Europeans even though its right within Indian or Tibetan cultural control.

 

[Publicola]

Crosspost with Publicola. Unfortunately, there is no way to place anything except rivers in the way rivers are placed (I have dreamed up ideas for different types of rivers that are unfortunately impossible because of this). In game terms, natural wonders could either be a form of terrain feature or a form of resource on a tile. In either case, we can scale the actual art appropriately so they do not take too much space if that is more appropriate for the natural wonder. Others, like e.g. Everest, could basically be a feature on top of a peak that takes up the entire tile.

Is it possible to create a single feature that takes up more than one tile? Something like Patacanal could easily replace 2-3 marshes as a single 'natural wonder', for instance. This would in theory allow us to create natural wonders that sit between tiles.

If it's not possible, then yes, scaling down the graphics should make it more manageable. Is it possible to force a natural wonder to a certain part of the tile? This would ensure that, even if it doesn't occupy the same space as a river, it's still clear that Victoria Falls flows into the nearby river? Likewise, it's important to make sure that Mount Sinai rests at the bottom edge of the Sinai tile.

I'd also be really interested to learn if we could turn natural wonders into new types of terrain, rather than features or resources. That would allow us to adjust the terrain itself to have a certain look to ensure they look good as a single entity: so the entire 'Mount Sinai' tile could be designed to emphasize the mountain, rather than having it be 'generic desert hill with a Mount Sinai added afterward). This would also allow us to add a 'Yellowstone' national wonder, while leaving the rest of the tile available for a normal forest (that could be cut down for hammers without affecting the natural wonder). Or we could add the Yellowstone wonder as a feature, base the graphics off the regular forest, but ban cutting it down. Or we could have two variants of 'Yellowstone', one that starts with forest, the other that indicates a chopped forest (or forest fire) with a lesser tile bonus.

EDIT: having multiple variants of certain wonders would also allow us to represent Krakatoa (and other volcanoes) before and after they explode.

 

[1SDANi]

Perhaps natural wonders could have two effects? One of "Colonialist" conception for nations from far away, and one of "Nationalist" conception for nations native to the region. The "Colonialist" one could fulfill the exploration objective, and the "Nationalist" the tourist.

Slightly on/off topic, has Leoreth said anything about having national culture spread over trade routes?

 

[Leoreth]

Well for the multiple tile natural wonder it would simply be placing the art on multiple tiles. You can still make sure to get only one discovery and one effect out of it.

 

[Publicola]

Well for the multiple tile natural wonder it would simply be placing the art on multiple tiles. You can still make sure to get only one discovery and one effect out of it.

Agreed -- there should be only a single discovery & single effect.

I'm wondering if it's possible to create a 2x2 'Mount Everest' feature, so that Mount Everest would be represented as a single taller peak in the center of four normal mountain peaks, or something similar.

Likewise, there could be an elongated 'Great Barrier Reef' feature so it appears as an integrated whole (rather than a single-tile 'reef' feature that gets repeated across several tiles). Does that seem possible, or are only single-tile features allowed?

 

[merijn_v1]

IIRC the Great Barrier Reef in HR is more than 1 tile. So is should be possible.

Features that are more than 1 tile are certainly possible. The ice feature is an existing example of this.

I noticed that several mods have different natural wonders. IIRC C2C has a different set of natural wonders that HR. We can start with compiling a list of all natural wonders already available in another mod or in the CFC database.

 

[Leoreth]

Yes, I think there is overlap but C2C and HR have different natural wonders. Not sure if there is anything else but it might be a good idea to look through the graphics database, maybe there is something classified as a building or wonder that could be useful.

 

[Swarbs]

Would it be possible to delay the discovery effect until explorer units are available? Victoria Falls, for example, wasn't 'discovered' by a major civilization until the 18th-19th century, despite the region as a whole being generally scouted.

That way you could have some natural wonders remain hidden until later, so you need to send explorers across parts of the map you have already 'discovered' in order to find them, and colonial powers would need to take explorers with caravels to chart the Americas, Australia etc. That would make it a bit more of a challenge to find them, and mean some still remained for the 'Age of Discovery' period of the game.

 

[Publicola]

All right, here's a comprehensive list of the natural wonders used by other games.

Here's the list for Cavemen2Cosmos and History Rewritten (the two lists have a lot of overlap; exceptions are noted below):

• Aurora
• Auyántepui
  
• Barringer Crater
• Basalt Organ
• Dead Sea
• Devil's Table (C2C only)
• Eisreisenwelt (HR only)
  
• Great Barrier Reef
• Kilimanjaro
  
• Klyuchevskaya Sopka (C2C only)
• Krakatoa (C2C only)
• Lake Baikal
• Mount Everest
• Mount Fuji
• Mount Sinai (C2C only)
• Ngorongoro Crater
• Nukuoro (C2C only)
• Pamukkale
• Pravcicka Brana (C2C only)
• Shark Bay (C2C only)
• Sugarloaf Mountain (C2C only)
• Uluru
• Victoria Falls
• Yellowstone (HR only)

Here's the list for Civilization V, minus the mythical or legendary ones:

• Barringer Crater
• Grand Mesa (CiV only)
• Great Barrier Reef
• Krakatoa
• Mt. Fuji
• Old Faithful
• Rock of Gibraltar (CiV only)
• Cerro de Potosi (CiV only)
• Mt. Kailash (CiV only)
• Mt. Sinai
• Sri Pada (CiV only)
• Uluru
• Lake Victoria (CiV only)
• Mt. Kilimanjaro

And here's the list for Civilization VI, most of which are not only either list above:

• Chocolate Hills
• Cliffs of Dover
• Crater Lake
• Dead Sea
• Delicate Arch
• Eye of the Sahara
• Eyjafjallajokull
• Galapagos Islands
• Giant's Causeway
• Gobustan
• Great Barrier Reef
• Ha Long Bay
• Ik-Kil
• Lake Retba
• Lysefjord
• Mato Tipila
• Matterhorn
• Mount Everest
• Mount Kilimanjaro
• Mount Roraima
• Mount Vesuvius
• Pamukkale
• Pantanal
• Piopiotahi
• Sahara el Beyda
• Torres del Paine
• Tsingy de Bemaraha
• Ubsunur Hollow
• Uluru
• Yosemite
• Zhangye Danxia

If there are other games or other mods that have Natural Wonders, let me know so I can include them in the megalist. I imagine that many of the ones listed above won't be significant enough to include, but there are plenty of good ideas to be found, including quite a few that I wouldn't have considered.

 

[Publicola]

Once we finish brainstorming for the raw list, I suggest we identify a number of Natural Wonders that should appear in every game -- whether due to remoteness (Great Barrier Reef) or historical significance (Mount Sinai), I think some wonders should be consistent.

For the other wonders, I suggest we classify them by region (Northern Europe, Mediterranean, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East, East Asia, Australia/Oceania, South America, North America) and find a way to ensure that each region receives one or two randomly-picked Natural Wonder for each game. That would ensure that players never know which wonders are present, and that no civ or region is specially advantaged or disadvantaged by the start (imagine rolling a start with no wonders in your area, while another civ starts with four).

If it'd be possible, I'd also really like to classify these Natural Wonders by type -- for instance, mountains (Everest, Kilimanjaro, Fuji, Matterhorn), volcanoes (Krakatoa, Vesuvius, Eyjafjallajoku, Klyuchevskaya Sopka), lakes (Dead Sea, Crater Lake, Lake Baikal), sea features (Great Barrier Reef, Nukuoro, Galapagos Islands), coastal features (Sugarloaf Mountain, Shark Bay, Cliffs of Dover), desert features (Uluru, Sinai, Eye of the Sahara, Sahara el Beyda), tundra features, jungle features, forest features, etc. -- and try to ensure that each game features at least one from each of those categories. That'd provide an additional bit of diversity, so that one game doesn't start with five lakes while another game has too much emphasis on special mountains.

Would it be possible to delay the discovery effect until explorer units are available?

...Would it be possible to ensure that certain Natural Wonders can only be discovered by Explorers? Like submarines can only be spotted by destroyers, could natural wonders be coded so only certain units can discover them? (And not just Explorers either -- how cool would it be if Mount Sinai could only be revealed by a Great Prophet?)

 

[merijn_v1]

My question is: would it be possible to add some natural wonders to the line between tiles, similar to rivers? That'd be perfect for Victoria Falls (and Niagra Falls, and Pamukkale) especially, as well as the Dead Sea and even Sugarloaf Mountain (which lies on a peninsula south of Rio de Janeiro that juts out into the Atlantic)

Yes and no. It is not possible for the game engine to recognize that a natural wonder is placed between tiles like it does with rivers. They can only be placed on tiles. However, we can modify the model files in such a way that they are not placed in the middle of a tile, but on the edge of the tile.

Another note. The natural wonders are modelled as features, like the oasis and forests. That means that if a tile has an natural wonder, there can not be a regular feature on that tile.

 

[Leoreth]

Can we find out if it's possible to import Civ6 natural wonders into Civ4? Otherwise I don't think having its list of natural wonders would help much. It's probably not simple because of the higher polygon count but maybe it's different for terrain elements.

 

[Publicola]

Another note. The natural wonders are modelled as features, like the oasis and forests. That means that if a tile has an natural wonder, there can not be a regular feature on that tile.

Given that every Natural Wonder will go on a pre-determined tile, couldn't we adjust each 'natural wonder' feature to ensure that it looks like the original feature (design 'Crater Lake' so the lake covers part of the tile, while the rest of the tile is normal forest)? Likewise, couldn't we ensure that each wonder has comparable tile bonuses as the normal feature (Crater Lake gives extra production, just like any other forest tile).

Can we find out if it's possible to import Civ6 natural wonders into Civ4? Otherwise I don't think having its list of natural wonders would help much. It's probably not simple because of the higher polygon count but maybe it's different for terrain elements.

I doubt that Civ 6 would be easily imported, but others can give it a try. My reason for including the list was a) to see if there are any good ideas that we might incorporate, and b) so if someone wants to design new wonders, they'd have an idea of which ones could be incorporated into this mod, and which ones have a model for comparison.

I don't think there's a Civ 4 mod that includes the 'Eye of the Sahara', for instance, but would designing that as a new feature be harder than designing the graphics for La Metropolitain wonder, or the Mars colony, or satellites?

(Also, just for the record: I've played Cavemen2Cosmos, and some of the Natural Wonder models are pretty hideous. So there is an available model for Auyántepui, but yikes, I would not suggest we use it. So even some of the existing Civ IV features may need to be adjusted.

 

[merijn_v1]

Can we find out if it's possible to import Civ6 natural wonders into Civ4? Otherwise I don't think having its list of natural wonders would help much. It's probably not simple because of the higher polygon count but maybe it's different for terrain elements.

It might be possible (in theory), but I'm pretty sure it is very hard. I downloaded this mod to see how the civ6 files look like. (I don't own a copy of civ6 myself) I also looked in the civ6 forms and saw this tutorial. I guess that converting from civ6 to civ4 artfiles requires similar steps.

I see that they use blender at some point. Maybe it is possible to reverse the tutorial to the blender stage and then use blender to export it to civ4. (After all, I also use blender to create my nif files) But I have no idea if this is possible. (I will certainly not bother trying it myself)

Given that every Natural Wonder will go on a pre-determined tile, couldn't we adjust each 'natural wonder' feature to ensure that it looks like the original feature (design 'Crater Lake' so the lake covers part of the tile, while the rest of the tile is normal forest)? Likewise, couldn't we ensure that each wonder has comparable tile bonuses as the normal feature (Crater Lake gives extra production, just like any other forest tile).

I can include forest in the model of a crater, sure. But if we want to have this forest behaving like other forests (being chopable etc) we need 2 versions of natural wonder features. One with the bonuses a forest (health, production etc) and one without the bonus of the forest when it is chopped.

I don't think there's a Civ 4 mod that includes the 'Eye of the Sahara', for instance, but would designing that as a new feature be harder than designing the graphics for La Metropolitain wonder, or the Mars colony, or satellites?

I don't think it will be that much harder. Some parts are easier, others are harder. I think it is easier to determine somewhat accurate dimensions for buildings. But on the other hand, the natural wonders will require less detail, which is easier. And some natural wonder, like Yellowstone Park, need to be modelled very abstractly because there is no way to fully model them.

 

[Leoreth]

I mean for Yellowstone it could be a bunch of geysers, as they are one of the most famous features of the reserve.

 

[DC123456789]

All right, here's a comprehensive list of the natural wonders used by other games.

Here's the list for Cavemen2Cosmos and History Rewritten (the two lists have a lot of overlap; exceptions are noted below):

• Aurora
• Auyántepui
  
• Barringer Crater
• Basalt Organ
• Dead Sea
• Devil's Table (C2C only)
• Eisreisenwelt (HR only)
  
• Great Barrier Reef
• Kilimanjaro
  
• Klyuchevskaya Sopka (C2C only)
• Krakatoa (C2C only)
• Lake Baikal
• Mount Everest
• Mount Fuji
• Mount Sinai (C2C only)
• Ngorongoro Crater
• Nukuoro (C2C only)
• Pamukkale
• Pravcicka Brana (C2C only)
• Shark Bay (C2C only)
• Sugarloaf Mountain (C2C only)
• Uluru
• Victoria Falls
• Yellowstone (HR only)

And here's the list for Civilization VI:

• Chocolate Hills
• Cliffs of Dover
• Crater Lake
• Dead Sea
• Delicate Arch
• Eye of the Sahara
• Eyjafjallajokull
• Galapagos Islands
• Giant's Causeway
• Gobustan
• Great Barrier Reef
• Ha Long Bay
• Ik-Kil
• Lake Retba
• Lysefjord
• Mato Tipila
• Matterhorn
• Mount Everest
• Mount Kilimanjaro
• Mount Roraima
• Mount Vesuvius
• Pamukkale
• Pantanal
• Piopiotahi
• Sahara el Beyda
• Torres del Paine
• Tsingy de Bemaraha
• Ubsunur Hollow
• Uluru
• Yosemite
• Zhangye Danxia

If there are other games or other mods that have Natural Wonders, let me know so I can include them in the megalist. I imagine that many of the ones listed above won't be significant enough to include, but there are plenty of good ideas to be found, including quite a few that I wouldn't have considered.

What does 'Aurora' refer to?

 

[Leoreth]

Aurora Borealis / Australis.