Fewer units, but they also travel longer each turn. Was it two steps for the ordinary units?! Scouts and explorers, not to mention horses will probably cover a greater distance.
Maybe they could put a penalty for uncovering the undiscovered areas of the map, just like traveling through forests.
First, workboats cannot explore. Second, I increased animal density by a factor of 4 (and reduced their chance to attack significantly) while boosting the strength of animals. Third, I increased barbarian density significantly.
The result is that it isn't feasible to send explorers everywhere, especially into large chunks of desert/jungle. It also means you have to do a "civ-conquest" level effort to build a military to hold off the barbarian hordes in the early game.
First, workboats cannot explore. Second, I increased animal density by a factor of 4 (and reduced their chance to attack significantly) while boosting the strength of animals. Third, I increased barbarian density significantly.
The result is that it isn't feasible to send explorers everywhere, especially into large chunks of desert/jungle. It also means you have to do a "civ-conquest" level effort to build a military to hold off the barbarian hordes in the early game.
While I agree with sir Roland and Aussie that the ideas sound decent overall, I am concerned about one thing however... Early in the game there is so little you can do. What would there be left to do if you could not send your guy out for exploration? I seriously do not want to take a 2 commerce hit for who knows how many turns that early in the game, but It would be boring to not be able to go out and at least meet the neighbors.
Maybe the idea to limit scouting should not apply to the land close to you. Right there, you can venture as far as you can in order to keep things moving early in the game. Maybe the upkeep should kick in as soon as the scout ventures further than the neighboring lands. That way the land near your capitol is explorable, the lands beyond that is actually dangerous.
I more or less agree with this. Having upkeep will limit exploration, but it's a somewhat complicated feature and more importantly give a sense of being wet blanket on one of the most exciting features in the game. I like to explore the world and discover it. Having an economical factor that nags in the back of your head while you do it probably won't make the game more fun.
An overall unit/military and building upkeep is enough when it comes to upkeep. Perhaps there could be a fixed, extra upkeep outside your borders, but I doubt it would be a good idea.
In my view, the extra cost wouldn't kick in until you're say 5 to 10 tiles distant from your borders (or 5 turns worth of movement to have a natural way of distinguishing between the difficulty of exploring certain terrain and to give an advantage to some units which are less troubled by such terrain). And even then the cost wouldn't instantly become a huge burden, it would gradually increase as you explore ever more distant regions.
Of course, once you limit the amount of exploring at the start of the game due to for instance maintenance costs, there will naturally be less exploring at the start of the game and more later. But that was exactly the goal of creating such a mechanism. The goal is of course not to have almost no exploration at the start of the game. The early game should still have the most exploring.
By the way, to me, limitations to the amount of contact with distant civilisations at the start of the game is at least as important as the limitations to exploration. In my view, there should be some limitations to trading and dealing with distant civilisations like I suggested in my previous post. Glimpsing one of their distant cities with a single scout shouldn't equal the ability to sustain large scale trading or creating scientific deals. Once you invest a starting fee and an upkeep cost into an embassy (both dependant on distance and technology), more options should become available.
I've seen early maps, and the earlier they are, the more inaccurate they seem, especially for places really far away, which have only been visited once, a long time ago.
Maybe after some time what you have discovered can change subtley, so that mountains become hills, tiles are added or removed (the plains may look like it they're two hexes, but is actually just one). The actual terrain wouldn't change, just what you think the terrain is (until you visit it again). The more often you visit somewhere, the mroe accurateyour maps become.
I don't know if that's possible, but it would add some mystery in the ancient era. Wonder how hard it would be to mod that in (with absolutely no experience in modding and no knowledge of the programming language. )
I like the losing strength idea, however I would change it to a flat cost rather than percentage based, which provides a natural transition to exploration becoming easier as technology advances. For example, units lose 0.1 hp per turn - this is a significant hit to warriors, a decent hit to axemen, and nothing to tanks. Scouts and explorers could have a reduced amount lost.
I think this also works for supply lines for your military - your troops become more fatigued the longer they are outside your cultural borders - it encourages quick, decisive wars and punishes the attacker for drawn out battles (eg sieges), or attacking enemies a further distance away. Of course defense modifiers may have to be reduced to balance this.
Here's a thought in terms of limiting the cost of exploration-whilst still retaining the overall cost mechanism. How about a cost discount-or even zero cost-if you are exploring along coastline, rivers or plains?
So Hills, Grassland & Forest would have-say-a 1x maintenance cost; Jungles, Desert & Arctic would have a 2x cost & Coasts, Rivers, & Plains would have a 1/2x maintenance cost.
Aside from that, though, I have no problem with exploration incurring an early game cost. It might lead to some interesting strategic choices-do you invest your resources more heavily in research? In exploration? In cultural expansion? Or maybe a mix of the 3.
I think it's pretty silly to have your military units out exploring - that's what scouts are for. So first of all, make military units outside borders (anybody's borders, not just yours) cost 5x in upkeep (1x in your borders and 2x in others' borders - which IIRC is the same as civ4). Then we have Scouts for land exploration and Scout Ships for ocean exploration.
Second, a scout explores a tile by walking into it and then exploring and mapping (E&M). The E&M part takes a number of turns equal to some factor based on map size (the larger the map size the less time it takes). In a "standard" game - whatever that may be since we don't know at this point - let's say it's 2 turns.
So what happens is you move your scout into a black tile, he pulls out a broom and starts sweeping away the blackness (or some other animation - picture whatever you like) and you don't actually see the contents of the tile until he's done. When the scout is done with his "scout job" (like worker jobs of building improvements, but this would be done automatically for you), you can then move him again and he E&M's another tile. There might be other "scout jobs" for the units as well.
Third, I increased barbarian density significantly.
The result is that it isn't feasible to send explorers everywhere, especially into large chunks of desert/jungle. It also means you have to do a "civ-conquest" level effort to build a military to hold off the barbarian hordes in the early game.
First, workboats cannot explore. Second, I increased animal density by a factor of 4 (and reduced their chance to attack significantly) while boosting the strength of animals. Third, I increased barbarian density significantly.
The result is that it isn't feasible to send explorers everywhere, especially into large chunks of desert/jungle. It also means you have to do a "civ-conquest" level effort to build a military to hold off the barbarian hordes in the early game.
The problem with this is that it forces the player into a very military minded game style.
Not only exploring becomes hard, but general expansion and survival as well.
The general problem with using barbarian threat to limit exploration is that it does not scale with distance to your own civilisation. It scales somewhat with distance to civilisation in general, but exploring civilized lands is still fairly ease, especially once you have open border agreements.
Maybe after some time what you have discovered can change subtley, so that mountains become hills, tiles are added or removed (the plains may look like it they're two hexes, but is actually just one). The actual terrain wouldn't change, just what you think the terrain is (until you visit it again). The more often you visit somewhere, the mroe accurateyour maps become.
So what happens is you move your scout into a black tile, he pulls out a broom and starts sweeping away the blackness (or some other animation - picture whatever you like) and you don't actually see the contents of the tile until he's done. When the scout is done with his "scout job" (like worker jobs of building improvements, but this would be done automatically for you), you can then move him again and he E&M's another tile. There might be other "scout jobs" for the units as well.
That's just boring, because you can't get around of it and there's no choice in it.
You would just move the unit every round, hit the button, and wait. -> hitting the button is unneccessary.
I like the idea of making the exploring cost of entering a new tile greater than the normal movement cost of entering said tile. To reduce the tedium however I would do the following:
The explore action takes 2 (or some parameterized number) turns per adjacent uncovered tile to complete; without risk of being attacked. While the action is in progress your unit is made invisible and placed onto the central tile.
Upon action completion the unit becomes visible and all adjacent tiles are decloaked.
Additionally, all type 1 resources (those readily observable on the surface of the planet) are revealed.
Type 2 resources (those underground / not readily observable) would either require being within your cultural boundaries (or within X tiles of your cultural border) or require you perform a geologic survey in the same manner as the exporation survey (1 action, N turns per adjacent tile surveyed).
In order for relations to take place between civs a non-fogged line of tiles between the two capitals needs to exist (igoring diplomatic status). To this end non-fog should extend further when following a coastline or river (assuming the source of the unfogging is adjacent to said river/coast). I would still use technology to limit what can be discussed during such exchanges.
A simple solution would simply to be that tiles that have more movement points to enter than a unit has CANNOT BE ENTERED. They are impassable to the unit. Right now, a scout can enter a forest (2 movement) even though he only has 1. So, you would need to research techs to upgrade units to have more movement points. This could probably be done right now in a mod for Civ 4.
Alternatively, those tiles could still be entered, but at a cost to the unit's health. This means the unit would have to keep stopping to be healed. This would slow it down quite a bit.
"Interior" civilizations end up with the option to play peacefully. It is only "exterior" civilizations that have to deal with the hordes.
The hordes generally prevent early-game map-corner to map-corner paving of the world -- deserts and jungles end up pushing civilizations back from them.
And yes, this does force somewhat of an early military game. I actually consider it more realistic -- civilizations built armies in order to defend their big piles of resources from being stolen. Once they had these armies, using them against neighboring civilizations was gravy. (Look at Alexander's early history -- spent fighting Barbarians up north).
Despite this, you can make it less militant by using "chance to attack" mechanics with Barbarians. Animals in my mod are ridiculously common (especially at high difficulty levels), but they have a small (as low as 10%) chance to attack a unit they see. This makes traveling over the wilderness dangerous, and the further you travel the more likely you will run into an aggressive animal. Something similar could be done for Barbarians -- or even have the Barbarian attack percentage scale with the distance to your capital or your cities.
Oh, and I also have an extremely high "barbarian settle" rate and period and starting defence load (4 archers -> 4 longbowmen) -- so the map ends up scattered with Barbarian cities, which (as you develop into the middle ages) AIs and players become capable of taking out.
Usually, one or two AI civilisations will fall before you get around to meeting them. So you'll explore some far away continent, and find nothing but barbarians (sometimes worshipping a major world religion), and ancient "ruins" (including wonders of the world).
Map trading is the #1 offender for revealing the whole world (or large continental cluster like Eurasia+Africa) before 1 AD in all previous civ versions. AIs trade these amongst themselves and then the player picks up this combined map for change in a tech exchange. It is not only unrealistic (maps were highly valued by civs, and surely no one had such complete continental maps as pointed out by the OP) but it completely subverts any need for an Age of Discovery (thus effectively eliminating a significant game aspect that is very fun for some of us).
There are many other problems and possible solutions, but I found that modding out map trading in civ4 was an easy change that had a huge effect in extending the period of discovery.
I could not disagree more with the people who want Civ to be more "historicaly acurate". In fact, I already think it's way too "acurate" as is.
Civ is or should NOT be a lesson of the history of earth's civilizations. Watch the history channel or maybe use a realism mod for that.
Civ is or should be a way to play a 'what if history was entirely different' style of game.
When playing the romans I don't want to lose the game in 450AD because that's what's realistic! When playing the Romans, I want to play a "What if the Roman Empire never fell?" game. And in that game, maybe the Mongols never got powerful, instead the Japanese conquered most of Asia and turned into my most hated enemy, against whom I ally myself with the Zulu who are technically more advanced and have proven to be good friends to the roman empire, trading those top-quality worldwide renowned Zulu Silk in exchange for some of the crops of the lush Roman Rice fields... And then few centuries later, we get invaded by civilizations from some continent called "the new world", from across that vast ocean we thought was the end of the world; inhabited by the far more powerful and advanced Inca and Indians who now threaten to slaughter the white people of the world and colonize Europe...
That's what civ is to me anyways... A different history, each time I play.
First, workboats cannot explore. Second, I increased animal density by a factor of 4 (and reduced their chance to attack significantly) while boosting the strength of animals. Third, I increased barbarian density significantly.
The result is that it isn't feasible to send explorers everywhere, especially into large chunks of desert/jungle. It also means you have to do a "civ-conquest" level effort to build a military to hold off the barbarian hordes in the early game.
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