Reconsidering exploration: ideas to make it funnier

[ConjurerDragon]

...
- We could spawn "native raiders" i.e. always hostile native units on the barb team. Place small stacks of them to guard goodies.

Where would they spawn? When I explore the map (I mostly play gigantic Americas map) the map is filled with native tribes and their villages. "Barbarians"/Wild Animals are hostile to the natives, too - so would those native raiders start raiding the next natives?

- Raiders could also target lightly defended cities.

How would they know which city is lightly defended? If they approach to scout and attack only lightly defended ones, sure - but please no beelining to the one city without a garrison.

- Pirates could raid coastal land (Arrr!)

Can player ships do that too? If not, no.

- Impose a "soft" distance cap by preventing units from healing when too far from friendly territory / structures etc.

Not "too far" - simply when outside your own cultural borders.

- Introduce ammunition to make non-melee units loose effectiveness unless regularly supplied.

Only if the AI understands that and does not send out ineffective units for not understanding that it would need to supply them.

- Ships should not heal unless when stationed in a friendly city \ port.

Historically usually every ship had a carpenter and a small store of wood on board for repairs. Masts broke, cannonball splintered through the planks etc.
Small repairs - or a limited amount of repairs should still be possible outside ports.

 

[Morlark]

I also have always thought that exploration is too easy. It's difficult to make the deep and far-reaching changes necessary to truly solve the problem, but as a partial way to begin addressing this problem, I've always modded my games to increase terrain movement costs in difficult terrain (e.g. deserts), and reduce easy availability to movement-increasing promotions. I also change promotions that grant -1 terrain movement cost to +1 movement speed instead, as I feel that reduced terrain movement cost is an extremely powerful ability for how readily available it is.

I also increase the terrain movement cost on oceans to 2, while leaving coasts and favourable winds at 1. This more realistically models the relative ease of coastal transport, while also meaning that favourable winds actually have a purpose, beyond a single niche promotion.

 

[Raubwuerger]

Maybe we can implement a system similar to ships in stormy weather.
Out side cultural boarders units could loose some strength. But only in hazardous terrain, like desert, swamp, jungels, ...
And only if these fields are also surrounded by hazardous terrain ...

 

[raystuttgart]

Out side cultural boarders units could loose some strength.
But only in hazardous terrain, like desert, swamp, jungels, ...
And only if these fields are also surrounded by hazardous terrain ...

Such checks are extremely bad for performance.

For every Unit (and there are really many of them in late game) we would need to check

1. Is it inside Cultural Borders?
2. Is it on a specific Plot / Terrain Feature Combination?
3. Is it also surrounded by specific Plot / Terrain Combinations?
4. Is the Unit excluded from this rule? (e.g. Animals or Natives)
   
5. Does it maybe even have special Promotions?
6. ...

It is also probably not the best solution for game play.
And also in some way we would need to teach this to AI.

Guys, let us please stay away from anything overly complicated like:

• Distance based damage / restriction systems
• Plot / Terrain damage based systems
• Food Supply systems

Anything we should ever do here would need to be simple and clean.
Unless we of course want to mess up performance, game play and AI.

By the way:
Winds and Storms itself is not necessarily the most performant system itself - although its logic is still quite simple.
However it is not that bad either because of these simple facts that limit the performance impact to still be ok / acceptable:

• Not that many Ships on Map (Number of Units very limited)
  
• Not that many "Storms" on Map (Number of affected Plots / Plot Features very limited)
  
• No special Unit exception rules (No dedicated Unit exception checks needed)

 

[RayCorps]

In vanilla Civ4 barbarian spawns were quite usual, depending on the game settings.
Perhaps implementing it would not only solve the boring exploration but also put some dynamic into the game itself. Spawning barbarians which attack everyone could create unique opportunities in the game, as this units not only attack the European colonists but the natives as well.
Furthermore the wildlife could be more aggressive. At the moment, attacks are quite rare. Combined with a slightly higher combat strength and higher spawn rates, exploration gets more difficult.

 

[raystuttgart]

In vanilla Civ4 barbarian spawns were quite usual, depending on the game settings.

See here.
It is already on our todo-list.

We are not planning to have "Barbarians" attack Natives though.
(That could actually cause very strange game play.)