On the water.

Starship

Warlord
Joined
Feb 9, 2006
Messages
197
Ok. I have a little rant to get off my chest. Water. What's the deal? I've learned to subdue my anger, but it's time to let go.

Rivers & Bridges - One of the pinnacles of engineering is represented by a tech advance, and not a worker function? This is not cutting it guys. Bridges aren't just everywhere on rivers and keys. They are strategic industrial wonders, specific in location. Why can we not have a worker build a special terrain improvement? EX: Worker builds special terrain improvement bridge A. Another worker builds a terrain improvement bridge B. Both bridge A&B would search for it's counter part up to one tile away, and make a bridge. You could have advanced bridges that search up to two tiles away. and specific railroad bridges that can bridge over rough terrain like hills and mountains.

Also, why aren't rivers navigable? They are aren't they? Solution = two types of river. Just like coast and ocean. Deep river, and shallow river. That simple, ones a little darker. River vessel units could me made appropriately, and some sea units could go deep river.

Could not a dam follow the same principle as above with the bridge, and create a lake? The lake could flood nearby tiles, and create more fresh water and fish.

Canals - Ok, seriously now... Why would you have a civilization not be able to terraform a canal. It should be a worker type wonder. Hundreds of turns to do one tile. These are miracles of modernity. Would you have Egypt without the Pyramids? Is the Panama Canal no less a feat?

Movement - In the ancient world a trading mission from Greece to Egypt took basically one year to accomplish. If one turn represents one generation or so....It would stand to reason that marine units should move, and move fast. 6-50 would be a decent range. They were railroads before there were railroads. Land = Slow, until railroads (but water is still faster for the most part), and superhighways/bullet trains which should be a little faster than water.

Merchant trading vessels- Much like the great people of trade....these units seek out friendly ports of call generating treasure units of varying value. Not a new concept. What is strange to me is that it's fun, it's alot of fun to move units around. Units that need guarding, which equals pirates. Who doesn't like pirates and privateers. Hell Sid made a game of just that, and it was fun.
I would've always liked to see every special resource you have generate a merchant unit that must find a place to go trade, but that's more than on the water...

Resources- Can we get some production from sea tiles....please. Most cities are on the water. A large part of them are hubs of industry. Cities on water are very productive, and they should be in Civilization as well. I would like to point out as well that land resources are in the surprising majority? Is not the aquatic world bursting in variety and diversity, many times more so than non marine environs? The water is not fun in this game, b/c it is not made so in this game, in general.

Fluctuation of water level - Rivers change course. The sea swells and recedes. If we are representing large annals of time, and it's possibilities...Can we please have some map activity that marks changing times. A good random event engine that doles out earthquakes, floods, tidal waves, changing water levels, volcanos, drought and desert formation...etc. These events formed the essence of what civilization is all about.

Cough. Man steps down from the soap box, and shuffles off.
 
I have to agree with you, rivers have always been underdone in the Civ games, but atleast in civ2 I think rivers gave a bonus to movement similar to roads, not the best solution but its something.

I would love to see someone do up this mod, it would give rivers some of the importance that they have had in RL since the beginning of time.
 
Jeckel - Thank you. At least someone does. I am really considering doing a simple utility mod that adds two depths of river. I've been looking for something that wouldn't be too difficult. My problem is that then marine units would have to be tagged and created for interface. I would like to see Firaxis address these things in a patch, civ5, or whatever. The water is fun, should be fun, and isn't very fun in civ. IMHO. That rivers, trading/pirates, bridges, and dams all get the shaft is a bur under my saddle. I will try to do what I can, but I am at a loss lately. I don't doubt my ability to learn to make these changes, or any changes, however...I am a sales person, and have a family. They are both hugely time consuming. I rarely get more than a few minutes here and there to do things. I usually have civ running on my tool bar between phone calls, and this site as well...but modding in any way takes many hours at a stretch, and in depth thought. So while I'm free to interact, true action is much more difficult for me. We'll see. Sigh.
 
Lots of good and interesting ideas...

I was also disappointed with the lack of water usage... I am currently working on a mod to use more water stuff... or at least involve more usage of water (ie naval battles/buildings)... it's still in the beta stages...

however I am not a coder/programmer of SDK/Python :sad:
so I am limited to xml stuff :blush:

anyway.... I digress...

I wanted to help you with this:


Starship said:
...Resources- Can we get some production from sea tiles....please. Most cities are on the water. A large part of them are hubs of industry. Cities on water are very productive, and they should be in Civilization as well. I would like to point out as well that land resources are in the surprising majority? Is not the aquatic world bursting in variety and diversity, many times more so than non marine environs? The water is not fun in this game, b/c it is not made so in this game, in general.
...


you can get production from sea tiles... and it's pretty easy!

Fitchn does it in his mod CivMore:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=163596


the building (not workerboat improvement) called:
Offshore Platform (+1 Hammer on Water Tiles; +1 Unhealthy; Requires Plastics)


I checked it out myself and it's an easy XML TAG line change in the CIV4BuildingsInfos.xml file


and technically you can add more hammers if you wish (as well as food and gold) to each water tile :mischief:


it doesnt answer all your questions... but it's a start! ;)


I hope this helps!
 
@Starship
I hear ya on the time constraint thing, but no worries, it may take another year or two, but before long I'm sure just above every wishlist item of Civ players will get coded up. :)

The building form of the Offshore Platform is a simple and elegant way to get some production from water squares. I would like to see a impovement that can be built on water squares WITH OUT fish or whales. Maybe 3 improvements, one with + to hammers, one with + to food, and one for commerse.

And carrying this idea back to land (and the topic of the post), how about 1 or 2 more improvements that can only be built by rivers.

I love the watermill and it + to hammers, but this doesn't make much sense in the later eras. Would be cool if the watermill upgraded to a factory or somthing, giving more hammer bonus and a little unhealth. You could even go a little father with some python and keep track of the polution of rivers caused by improvements and cities along them. Add to this a some new skins for the river to make it look various stages of poluted and you would have an easy way to visually see these effects without any new popup windows or extra numbers to keep track of.

Another river improvement could be River Casino. It would, obviously, boost commerce a little and maybe also a little more corruption in the city.

Just some things I've thought about.
 
Very good thoughts. I like the direction that the oil platform was going, but it should be a workerboat function. The reasoning is that it would give more reason for attack, and defense. In CivIII they had something along these lines. I'm not sure why they went away from it.

Jeckel, I agree. There should be a variety of aquatic tile upgrades available.
For sea and river, and that don't need a special resource to build.

It would be nice if the actual special tile resources didn't even need to be in your zone of control.

Whales for example. Why is it necessary to capture this resource right next to your city. Isn't that the point of boats?

If you had crabbers, sailfish captains, tuna boats...going to deep water to bring resources back, that weren't w/in culture boundaries...well that's something to raid. Not to mention oil.

That would bring an interesting twist to imperialism. Imagine worker boats were tagged for the city, any tiles worked by this boat goes to that city, and they can function in barbarian tiles or non aligned tiles. If a different civ or another one of your cities claims w/culture that resource, then the worker boat upgrade switches hands to that city and/or civ.

Now that would be a true advantage for marine cities. Can upgrade all tiles, just like land, and can bring in resources that aren't in the zone of control. True hubs of empire.
 
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