Plans for DoC 1.16

[Imperator Knoedel]

Siberian marshes and the deep Amazon and Central African rainforests should never be productive. Since they are currently plain grassland terrain they would suddenly become the most commercially viable terrain which is not realistic.

What of global warming though?

 

[Leoreth]

Currently observable trends are not significant enough to justify that in my opinion, and we are soon in the far flung future that marks the end of the Civ4 timeline.

In general though if I would implement global warming from scratch I could imagine events that remove ice from arctic water and make the tundra more habitable. I don't know if global warming would lead to less or more marshes in Siberia though.

 

[1SDANi]

come to think of it....workers should have the ability to plant forests (terrain restrictions may apply).

The only issue is the free production from chopping said forests.

 

[Leoreth]

THIS!
please consider the idea of "zones" on the map that would slowly change. deserts expanding, ice receding, taiga expanding, forests shrinking.

Yeah, instead of the current mechanism that is entirely random and often too drastic (tiles being replaced by desert or water too early) I would more specifically define areas of the map where certain effects could happen to a random tile. The general idea is to have something more like the armageddon counter in FFH (how appropriate) where the higher the level is, the more severe the possible consequences are. For example early targets for desertification could be specifically northern China and the Sahel zone, and only with a higher climate change counter you would find additional regions targeted. Same with flooding starting to affect island tiles and one tile islands first.

 

[Sarius1997]

Yeah, instead of the current mechanism that is entirely random and often too drastic (tiles being replaced by desert or water too early) I would more specifically define areas of the map where certain effects could happen to a random tile. The general idea is to have something more like the armageddon counter in FFH (how appropriate) where the higher the level is, the more severe the possible consequences are. For example early targets for desertification could be specifically northern China and the Sahel zone, and only with a higher climate change counter you would find additional regions targeted. Same with flooding starting to affect island tiles and one tile islands first.

I think what would be interesting (even if quite an amount of work) would be an general mechanism for terrain change, within the current climate change could be a special case. Some parts of the world have had serious climate change within the last 4000 years, and it has affected the political situation pretty much always. For the first couple of thousand years this would just be a natural background cycle, changing tiles occasionally to higher/lower yield ones depending on the background climate and well, what could be defined for the regions, and therefore also giving civilizations times of natural strength and weakness. As soon as industrialization kicks in this would be influenced by human action, and probably gain an higher rate of change.

 

[Leoreth]

To do that, I would like to have a more comprehensive knowledge on where regional climate changed when and what the effects of it were.

 

[Sarius1997]

So, as base for historical events we could start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_periods_and_events_in_climate_history . This should cover most of the important events that were atleast semi-global. Interesting are espacially the last 5 climate cycles that affect global temperature and precipation. The roman warm period was a period of great conditions for civilization, and only rarely forced tribes from the higher latitudes into the civilized parts of the world. The climate changed heavily after that, with temperatures dropping, leading to famines and tribes from the lower latitudes being forced into migration. The migratory cold period ended around 800 AD and lead to rising temperatures around the world. Europe profited from that with bigger areas being available for agriculture. Other parts of the world (India and China) on the other hand had droughts because of those climate changes. For Europe this meant stable crop yields and comparitively stable political situations. India and China had famines. The little ice age was pretty much the exact opposite of this then.

Well, i could go deeper into it, but i think that is it as a start.

 

[star15389]

Jungle would represent forests that are hard to exploit economically even with modern technology. Lots of places like this; cleared land in the Amazon is mostly used for low intensity livestock rearing and the area is very lightly populated.

 

[cmakk1012]

Ooh, one good example of major natural events earlier on could be the silting up of aqueducts in Mesopotamia in the Middle Ages leading to Baghdad’s historical decline. It’s modeled in SoI after all

 

[HNation]

Ideally, the Arabs wouldn't flip the Levant/Mesopotamia/Egypt at all but instead get conqueror units to allow them to conquer the region. Same for Ottomans and Anatolia and other civs whose spawns cover a substantial amount of other civs' historical territory.

Agreed. Flips should only happen for nations that broke away. Arabs and Turks should be a conquerer event.

 

[HNation]

Ooh, one good example of major natural events earlier on could be the silting up of aqueducts in Mesopotamia in the Middle Ages leading to Baghdad’s historical decline. It’s modeled in SoI after all

Leoreth - you should add the entire Sword of Islam soundtrack to Dawn of Civilization for the Middle East. Yes, I know it's hours of music, but I've spent thousands of hours playing Dawn of Civilization, so the more variety in the soundtrack, the better, in my opinion.

 

[Leoreth]

Jungle would represent forests that are hard to exploit economically even with modern technology. Lots of places like this; cleared land in the Amazon is mostly used for low intensity livestock rearing and the area is very lightly populated.

But it's really counterintuitive to have unremovable jungles represent land that is unproductive when jungle is cleared.

I really don't see what the downside is to keeping things as they are instead of getting jumping through intellectual hoops to justify a change that isn't needed.

Ooh, one good example of major natural events earlier on could be the silting up of aqueducts in Mesopotamia in the Middle Ages leading to Baghdad’s historical decline. It’s modeled in SoI after all

Wasn't that after the Mongols came in and killed everyone who maintained these canals?

Agreed. Flips should only happen for nations that broke away. Arabs and Turks should be a conquerer event.

Already accounted for in my plans.

Leoreth - you should add the entire Sword of Islam soundtrack to Dawn of Civilization for the Middle East. Yes, I know it's hours of music, but I've spent thousands of hours playing Dawn of Civilization, so the more variety in the soundtrack, the better, in my opinion.

Isn't it already basically the Islamic soundtrack?

 

[cmakk1012]

Wasn't that after the Mongols came in and killed everyone who maintained these canals?

I’m no expert but the events start up before the scripted invasion in SoI.

Anyway if that is true that silting could happen after the Mongol conquest ingame instead

 

[Logoncal]

The only issue is the free production from chopping said forests.

I recall Civ III having this problem solved by making new forests yielding 0 production.

 

[1SDANi]

I recall Civ III having this problem solved by making new forests yielding 0 production.

Which I'd say is kind of strange. I'd honestly rather it if the initial build only took 1 turn, but then 20 years for it to go from Seedling to Forest. This would be unlocked with Ecology or something like that, so by that point 20 years would be a long time.

 

[Leon Michiel]

Which I'd say is kind of strange. I'd honestly rather it if the initial build only took 1 turn, but then 20 years for it to go from Seedling to Forest. This would be unlocked with Ecology or something like that, so by that point 20 years would be a long time.

Could there be a gold cost associated with planting forests?

Or perhaps 'planted forest' as extra tiletype.

 

[Sarius1997]

Ok, so as an idea for natural and unnatural climate change i'd propose the following: Split the world into climatic regions (size of maybe Scandinavia as an example), maybe we could also use already existing definitions there.
For each region there'd be an "climate score", with higher representing drier+warmer and lower representing wetter+colder. The climate score would influence the chance for tiles to turn into other types. Also i'd like an second plain type, maybe Savannah or something to represent hotter climates.
Medium values would likely only melt ice and slowly turn it to Tundra and then Plains and sometimes turn desert into savannah. Higher values would (slightly above medium) lead to plains becoming grassland, and Tundra+Ice changing fast towards Plains. Even higher values would then start to change Grassland to Savannah and sometimes Savannah to Desert. If you go beyond a certain value desertification on a major scale would be likely. Lower values would work the same way, but with tiles changing in the direction of Ice. Forests would make it less likely for tiles to change, but could also suffer from bad climate, either being removed, or, if a new forest type would be added, first changed into worse versions, and then removed by climate change.
The climate score would, in the simplest version, change depending on natural cycles (pre-programmed), every 10/20 turns. If we want it to be deeper we can make it an more complex formula, with an global constant (solar irradiation, albedo, possibly random volcanic eruptions) going into it, and local modifiers (Thermic cycles like El Nino, the NAO, gulfstream, etc...) feeding into it. If we just want the climate to develop like in RL the complex formula would probably be overkill, if an slightly random factor is wanted it could be fun though.
Melting ice would have a chance to turn tiles close to the coast into water, new ice being generated could turn coast into land, with higher chances, if it'd be enclosed on more sides by land/water.
For climate change i think Leoreths doomsday meter idea is great, which would push in general the climate score more in the hot+dry direction. That way colder regions would profit, and already hotter ones would lose. The melting ice then would slowly start to cause problems in regions that have water on many sides.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Now kiss.

 

[1SDANi]

gay commies from outer space!


no, seriously...i'm in love with this proposal. it's really in depth, albeit veeeeeeeery ambitious in design.

what do you think about it @Leoreth, @knoedel, @1SDAN, @Tigranes?

I just started modding a month ago. I'm not entirely sure if I'm entirely ready to set up an entire new gameplay system.

 

[Leoreth]

It's not in the OP so ...