Natural Wonders brainstorming

[Leoreth]

I'm wondering if maybe prehistoric monuments should also fall under these mechanics. Stonehenge and the Lascaux Caves come to mind.

 

[Publicola]

Anyone suggested Mount Olympus before? Given that we are listing some holy mountains as possible natural wonders, it could be a nice addition.

I really like the idea of including a 'sacred mountains' category of Natural Wonders. I'm honestly inclined to say that these shouldn't be randomly generated, but should appear in every game. Or perhaps there is a 'random chance' element, but we ensure that there's always one holy mountain per major religion to preserve balance. (I still like the idea of 'discovering' them with Great Prophets, as well).

• Hinduism: Mount Kailash
• Buddhism: Sri Pada
• Judaism: Mount Sinai
• Zoroastrianism: Mount Damavand
• Taoism: Qīngchéng Shān (or another of 'Four Sacred Mountains of Taoism')
• Confucianism: Tài Shān (or another of the 'Five Great Mountains of China')
• Orthodoxy: Mount Athos
• Catholicism: Montserrat (or perhaps the Sacri Monti of Italy)
• Islam: Jabal al-Nour (or Mount Arafah)

There's plenty of other 'holy mountains' for pagan religions, though those we could randomly generate as well, especially since almost every mountain listed qualifies (including Moana Loa, Mount Fuji, Mount Everest, Uluru, etc). For those that weren't yet on the list:

• Mount Olympus (Greece)
• Mount Ararat (Armenia) -- this might qualify as an alternate holy mountain for Judaism
• Paektu Mountain (Korea)
• Black Hills (Lakota)

The problem with these, especially the more remote ones (Uluru, Black Hills) is that there is no native civ nearby that can use them in the ancient era. They only become relevant in-game once modern civs arrive -- but in that case, they can be treated as the equivalent of any other Natural Wonder.

I'm wondering if maybe prehistoric monuments should also fall under these mechanics. Stonehenge and the Lascaux Caves come to mind.

...This is brilliant. Considering how much earlier these were built or created, and how Stonehenge and other megaliths was believed to have been created by giants and the like, it'd make sense to treat them in the same category as natural wonders.

We may also consider adding an 'Archaeologist' unit as the modern unit in the Scout -> Explorer upgrade tree. Or we could add an 'archaeology' promotion for explorer units -- that requires the construction of a museum? -- to ensure there's some delay in finding and exploiting these sites.

If we're going to 'randomly generate' these, we should consider dividing them between three categories: one for megaliths (Stonehenge, Göbekli Tepe, etc.), another for cave art (Lascaux Caves, Cave of Altamira, etc.), and a third for prehistoric sites (Blombos Cave, Monte Verde, etc.). That would ensure that there's at least one of each 'type', regardless of where it appears in the world.

 

[Steb]

It sounds like we're reinventing the archaeology system of Civ 5 and 6. Which is not a bad thing at all, because the few times I've played with this system I thought it was fun—not a super important part of the game, and you're totally free to skip it, but an interesting aspect to play with if you want.

In any case, prehistoric sites are a great idea. Especially since they're an important part of the story of civilization that is unlikely to ever show up in the game otherwise. I remember an RFC mod from before DoC that had put Stonehenge and the Moai statues as features on the map just for flavor. It was a nice touch.

If we're going in that direction, the next step would be to add famous fossil sites. The Afar Triangle (Ethiopia, site of Lucy), the Cradle of Humankind (South Africa), and then going all the way to places like the Burgess Shale (Cambrian site in British Columbia). I don't know how I feel about this idea.

I'm not a big fan of including holy mountains for the sake of including holy mountains. Not opposed to it, but I'm not particularly enthusiastic about aiming for one holy mountain per religion or anything like that.

 

[Publicola]

If we're going in that direction, the next step would be to add famous fossil sites. The Afar Triangle (Ethiopia, site of Lucy), the Cradle of Humankind (South Africa), and then going all the way to places like the Burgess Shale (Cambrian site in British Columbia). I don't know how I feel about this idea.

The nice thing about cave art is that Caveman2Cosmos already has a 'caves' feature that we could use for the tile, as well as icons and wonder art for each of the major cave paintings, so those would be easy to add. They also have art for 'fossil bed' and 'tar pit' features, that we could just as easily use for fossil sites as you're describing.


@Leoreth: I like the idea of adding Stonehenge and other megaliths that were created before the rise of civilization. However, I'm wondering about major human structures that were built after the 3000 BC start date for the game, but before civilization developed in those regions. This would include things like the Nazca Lines (which, happily, C2C also has artwork for). Should we plan to include those sort of monuments as well?

 

[1SDANi]

@Leoreth: I like the idea of adding Stonehenge and other megaliths that were created before the rise of civilization. However, I'm wondering about major human structures that were built after the 3000 BC start date for the game, but before civilization developed in those regions. This would include things like the Nazca Lines (which, happily, C2C also has artwork for). Should we plan to include those sort of monuments as well?

It'd be weird if the Incans were expected to build the Nazca Lines 1000s of years too late.

 

[Leoreth]

I was wondering about that too, it's a tougher question. But I guess if no civilisation is present in these areas it's possible to spawn them.

I don't mind overlap with the archeology system, that is something I wanted to look into as well. I think both systems are closely related but imo archeology should also incorporate the ruins of actual civilisations and obsolete wonders.

 

[Krieger-FS]

Nothing against adding structures built after 3000 BC on the map (on contrary, it could give a nice representation about human populations on current empty/unsettled areas), but it's important to note that civilization technically was already quite developed and with at least 3000 years in Peru when the Nazca lines were made.

 

[Leoreth]

Yeah, of course there was civilisation there, I mean the existence of the Nazca lines itself proves that. I meant civilisation in game terms.

 

[Publicola]

Okay, for wonders that were constructed post-3000 BC, but in regions where in-game civs do not appear until later:

• Labyrinth of Knossos (Crete - c. 2000 BC)
• Serpent Mound (North America - c. 300 BC)
• Gamla Uppsala (Scandinavia - c. 200 AD)
• Nazca Lines (South America - c. 500 AD)
• Cahokia Mounds (North America - c. 1100 AD)
• Great Zimbabwe (Africa - c. 1200 AD)
• Cibola (North America - c. 1400 AD)
• Puʻukoholā Heiau (Hawaii - 1791 AD)

I'm pretty sure all of these appear in C2C with full art, except for the last two. For 'Cibola' we can just use C2C art for the ancient-era Pueblo wonder, while 'Pu'ukohola Heiau' can be represented the Polynesian UB (I'm forgetting the name).

 

[ozqar]

The pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan (alternatively, the Street of the Dead) and the Olmec Colossal heads could also be considered here for Mesoamerica. For the first, what happens if there's an indy city that should have the wonder? They won't realistically build any wonders, but they're there. Should they automatically spawn them at some point? That would be nice.

 

[Enyavar]

I don't know why we should use visual art to represent natural and archeological wonders.
Wouldn't that slow the game down? We're now close to 100 suggestions, let's say a random function chooses 30 per game distributed over the globe...
Just saying, I see the nature wonders as secondary to the real ones, why put too much effort into that? Two extra models for St. Helens? We don't even have wonder movies for half the regular wonders, regrettably.

On the other hand, I like the idea of adding to the explorer queue, but 'archeologust' is too specific. Maybe 'discoverer'? But then, have them better armed than explorers? Or faster? Or able to cross neutral territory? Give them limited spy functionality? What should modern explorers be able to that renaissance explorers can't do? Just discover stuff on the map?

What I didn't like about the CivV system was how you needed to actively needed to micromanage the archeologists. And how big a role they played in victories.

 

[Leoreth]

I don't know much about Civ5 archeology but I agree. It always put me off that it was so important in the cultural victory as if culture was all about collecting some other civilisations artifacts from around the world.

 

[Publicola]

I don't know much about Civ5 archeology but I agree. It always put me off that it was so important in the cultural victory as if culture was all about collecting some other civilisations artifacts from around the world.

For brainstorming for a proposed 'archaeology' mechanic, should we keep that to this thread or move it to a separate thread?

 

[Leoreth]

It would probably get us off track from natural wonders.

 

[1SDANi]

Translation: Hold off on any archeology discussion until after natural wonders have been more solidly planned.

Did I interpret that right?

 

[Leoreth]

I just meant that if you want to continue that discussion it would be better in a new thread.

 

[Enyavar]

I am so sorry to have brought up archeology. I thought it ties in neatly with natural wonders and could be included into the same mechanic: you discover stuff that you don't build, make a fuzz about it and build a hotel for tourists who want to look at it.

If we go and make two separate mechanisms, im off.

 

[Leoreth]

I mean I definitely see some overlap between the two, so maybe the mechanics might involve both. I'm just worried that the thread would lose its focus on which natural wonders should be included and where their graphics come from.

 

[Publicola]

I'm not going to do another dozen screenshots, but here's an updated WorldBuilder save. All of the 'sacred mountain' suggestions have been included:

• Zoroastrianism: Mount Damavand
• Taoism: Qīngchéng Shān (or another of 'Four Sacred Mountains of Taoism')
• Confucianism: Tài Shān (or another of the 'Five Great Mountains of China')
• Orthodoxy: Mount Athos
• Catholicism: Montserrat (or perhaps the Sacri Monti of Italy)
• Islam: Jabal al-Nour (or Mount Arafah)

• Mount Olympus (Greece)
• Mount Ararat (Armenia) -- this might qualify as an alternate holy mountain for Judaism
• Paektu Mountain (Korea)
• Black Hills (Lakota)

Along with almost all of these:

Some few suggestions about South American natural wonders not yet mentioned:
- Aconcagua (Argentina)
- Angel Falls (Venezuela)
- Caño Cristales (Colombia)
- Chapada da Diamantina (Brazil)
- Colca Canyon (Peru)
- Kaieteur Falls (Guyana)
- Laguna Colorada (Bolivia)
- Lençóis Maranhenses (Brazil)
- Perito Moreno Glacier (Argentina)

I wasn't sure how important some of these were -- Aconcagua is 'the tallest mountain outside of Asia', and the Perito Moreno Glacier is a big glacier, but neither seemed especially notable otherwise. I didn't include 'Angel Falls', since that is the same tile as the Auyantepui (the waterfall descends from the tepui). Same with the 'Laguna Colorada', which falls on the same tile as the Salar de Uyuni.

That said, I would love to see the Canos Cristales (the rainbow river) not to mention the Lençóis Maranhenses (the sand dune lagoon). Anyone else have suggestions?

 

[TJDowling]

Honestly, natural wonders seems like a good replacement for villlages, where native villages would take on a greater significance.