Suggestion: Straits

[hr_oskar]

Straits or small channels are an important feature of real-world maps which unfortunately can be hard to work into Civ4 maps. A map maker often has to make a tough choice between keeping the sea or land connected at certain points, but not both at the same time. In some of my scenarios I've "cheated" by making a land bridge knowing that there will be a city there to keep a sea passage open (think Constantinople or Copenhagen).

It occurs to me that one could make some kind of modification by adding a second type of river, "straits". Just like rivers, straits would run along the border of a plot, would be passable by land units but not bridgeable by roads (except perhaps with some specific tech just like rivers) and would give +1C. Unlike rivers, they would of course not provide fresh water or +2 health. Most importantly, they would count as a coastal plot for the trade network and would allow a sea domain unit to move onto the plot.

This may be quite hard to code and there are no examples to work from. The other option is to make straits as a plot feature but then there is the graphical problem of correctly portraying the direction of the strait - maybe feature variants (as used to make graphical varieties of forests) could solve that problem.

I'm just pitching this as a suggestion for now. I believe this could be a very useful little mod component for many mods out there. For now I don't have time to make this myself but eventually I'll try if no-one else is interested.

All comments and ideas are greatly appreciated

 

[Craig_Sutter]

I'd actually settle for this:

Instead of a corner to corner land bridge being only passable for land units from one land square to the next, allow ships to cross water to water also.

land | water
------------
water | land

right now, you can go top-left to bottom right with land, but not bottom left to top right with water. I'd be happy if the water to water route was possible. Most narrow straits, at the scale of this game, are crossable by land units in any case, so I don't see any problem with the water-water route's seeming inconsistancy with the land-land route.

 

[hr_oskar]

Yes, if the corner-to-corner land bridges were also passable by the sea domain, that would go a long way to solve the problem. Nonetheless, the greatest flexibility would be in having a way to simply place a strait on the map, since there are also cases where you'll have two land plots side by side while wanting to have a sea passage between them (e.g. the Oresund channel between Denmark and Sweden).

The reason why I find this worth working on is that the question of passage or no-passage often has very far-reaching consequences for the gameplay. As a scenario maker I therefore want to have full power over that. In many cases it's important to create land passages between certain territories because you cannot trust the AI to cross the seas enough to make things happen. In a typical map of Europe for example, having no land bridges at Copenhagen or Constantinople artificially breaks up the political and cultural reality of those regions.

 

[Delphy]

In the Fall from Heaven 2 mod they have a "Pirates Cove" improvement that allows ships to pass through it, essentially making it a connecting point between 2 bits of water seperated by land. If you took the same idea but made it move of a terrain feature (and assuming the AI could use it) would this be a possible solution?

 

[hr_oskar]

That's interesting... I'd have to examine the code for that to see if anything can be salvaged from such an improvement. Thanks for the tip.

Actually the map improvement could also just be used straight up as well. You can mod an improvement that cannot be built by a worker nor pillaged by any unit, so that it becomes essentially a map feature. It might not be as neat as imitating rivers but still, whatever works.

 

[Gunner]

This is a really good idea hr_oskar. I would love to see someone take it up.

 

[hr_oskar]

Well I'm thinking now that this really isn't much of a programming challenge at all, since there are many ways to make it work in-game. The real challenge is doing the actual graphics so that it looks smooth during play.

 

[micmc]

this won't solve what you're trying to solve....but another thing that could be done were "coast/ocean' improvements that could be called trade routes/straits....it wouldn't help you jump land corners or do much for overall speed, but it's an interesting idea to help goose up water squares.

 

[hr_oskar]

Hmm, you mean something like a resource on the sea representing a valuable trade route? Which could then be improved somehow to take advantage of it? Not that it could provide an additional trade route by any direct means but it could give good commerce yields. Anyhow, it doesn't really do what I'm trying to do but it's a good idea.