Terrain Actions!

[Portuguese]

Diferent types of desert is also a good idea.
As different types of all terrain, being main terrains and "specialized terrains". This last ones includes volcanoes (principal mountains), march (principal grassland), ashes (one king of plains) etc. This would trully give deph to the game...

 

[yoshi]

The 'Lost at sea' system should NOT be applied to land units: armies don't just disappear suddenly when in harsh terrain but rather ar slowly worn down. Units should lose health but not die (in the vanilla game at least).

A flexible editor is what you want. Here's an example that keeps with P's idea:

-----------------------------------------------------------
Units

Unit Health Modifier: _______ (selected unit loses/gains health at a rate of __ when on ____ terrain)

Tile Improvement Override: _______ (unit can enter selected terrain types when _____ tile improvement is present on those squares)

-----------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------
Terrain

Health Modifier: ___ (base rate of health loss/gain; minus unit modifier)

Unit Movement Modifier: ________ (selected unit has it's movement reduced by ___; zero = impassable)

Lethal to: __________ (selected unit type will not only lose health but die once it's health has reached zero)

-----------------------------------------------------------

Notice there aren't any flags. The above system offers more options and allows the modifiers to be unit-specific.

 

[rhialto]

Problem with saying a unit loses say, 1 health per turn in mountains is that munchkin style players will be able to calculate exactly whether a given mountain range (or desert etc) is passable, which removes the danger aspect from terrain.

Let's say we have the following terrains (conider this my exhaustive list)

grass - plains - desert - sand sea
hill - mountain - peaks
tundra - glacier
conifer - forest - jungle - swamp
mesa (very dry hills, almost desert-like)
forested hills

shallows (shallows accounts for about 1/4 of all tiles next to land)
coast - sea - ocean
ice floes - ice shelf

A unit would be defined by the tiles it can not enter at all, and the tiles it has a risk of "sinking" in. Note that there isn't an explicit split between land and sea units in this model. A civ3 galley might be:

can enter: any sea except ice shelf
danger terrain: ocean 50%, sea 5%, ice floe 20%

Percentages indicate the chance per tile entered that the unit is lost. Both the exact terrain and the percentages should be editable.

 

[Portuguese]

Yes yoshi, that's pretty it.

rhialto, you forgot tarrains like volvanoes, ash, marhses and so but that's preety it.

Basically we need many more options in the terrain section of the editor. Because a new type of terrain, we can add. Now the possibilities of new parameters, only the editor makers could really do.

What I pretend to stimulate with this thread is preciselly to INCREASE the EDITORTERRAIN's PARAMETERS.

Because that way, a few mod's I pretend to do when I have time would me much more detailed...

 

[rhialto]

What's the difference between a marsh and a swamp?

Regarding volcanoes, I see them more as places than as terrain.

 

[yoshi]

Problem with saying a unit loses say, 1 health per turn in mountains is that munchkin style players will be able to calculate exactly whether a given mountain range (or desert etc) is passable, which removes the danger aspect from terrain.

I don't understand this logic: an army goes into harsh terrain knowing that it will suffer loses so what's the problem? Losing a unit randomly because there is an 1 in x chance of losing it x terrain would be REALLY irritating.

You could have an 'Invisible' flag for terrain; e.g. a Minefield terrain type (or preferably tile improvement) that reduces the health of the ususpecting unit that enters that square. But in this case, the player does not know where the dangerous terrain is athus it makes sense--losing a whole unit in Minefields would still defeat the purpose: weakening the enemy. (The reason why I specify the tile improvement option is because, as Portuguese said, without a feature that gives tile improvements some of the same characteristics as terrain (e.g. health modifier), there's no way you can mod this.

[Likewise, if tile improvements are hard-coded like they are in Civ3, then all this is IMPOSSIBLE--note the stress.]

That reminds me: there needs to be terraforming in Civ4.

 

[rhialto]

The problem is this. Say a mountain tile costs 1 health, the unit has 4, and the best route across is 3 mountain tiles. The player can safely march across, then rest on the other side, and has effectively taken ZERO risk in crossing that mountain. Early mountain travel was risky, and this kind of los does not reflect that.

On the other hand, having say, a 5% chance of a unit being destroyed each time it enters a mountain tile would give a genuine risk in moving it over mountains. The exact percentage should be defined for each unit, with "terrain specialist" units and more modern units having a better chance of survival.

 

[sir_schwick]

How about we combine both. There is an automatic cost, and a random chance for additional damage or no damage.

Mountain: -1 HP plus +1 to -1 HP = you have between no damage and -2 HP

Numbers could be fiddle with so they were more risky, such as makign that -1 HP plus +1 to -3 HP. = between no damage and -4 HP.

 

[yoshi]

NO. Don't combine both...at least not in the vanilla game. I don't know of any player that wants to lose a whole unit just because they happened to be unlucky crossing harse terrain that has to be crossed. Again, the point is to WEAKEN the unit, not destroy it. The defender can then use natural boundaries to his advantage (which is part of the reason why country borders are where they are in reality). Sure, in reality troops might be lost when crossing harse terrain but civ doesn't deal in specific troop numbers so losing a whole unit (i.e. like a whole battalion) just because you entered a mountain square is absurd.

The reason why unit loss work for naval units is because ships are singular units and ship loss is very common at sea.

The reason for health loss on harsh terrain is to prevent players using those routes and exploiting the high defensive bonus of mountains.

If the 'lost' unit flag and terrain weren't hard-coded to sea terrain, you could mod the effect to any terrain type and unit (regardless of domain) thus producing the desired result.

 

[rhialto]

But in a real assulat, you would be attacking with a dozen or more units anyway, in which case losing a unit or two will hurt your strategy, but not be crippling. If you lost a unit crossing that mountain (perhaps your only ubertank) which was absolutely vital, perhaps you weren't going to win anyway except by reload-cheating.

Let's say your army is 1000 men, and 400 are lost crossing the Alps. How does it make sense that simply resting for a few turns will bring you up to full strength? Sure, some are merely wounded, but most are dead!

On a tangent, the whole hit points idea probably needs reworking. You should only ever be able to rest to full health in a friendly city. Perhaps outside a city, only half your losses would ever be recoverable.

The reason why unit loss work for naval units is because ships are singular units and ship loss is very common at sea.

Losing ships at sea isn't any more common than losing men on land. Both are entirely avoidable if common sense is used. It is just that we tend to hear about teh ships more because they are bigger.

 

[yoshi]

How does it make sense that simply resting for a few turns will bring you up to full strength?

That's a problem with the franchise's system up to now: units (which are representative of groups that are non-specific in number) are able to regain health at no cost. If I had my way, you would have to send units back to a city with barracks, as you said, AND pay gold to get your remaining health back (i.e. replace dead troops in group). I Agree that regaining health should be rather limited (i.e. you can only regain x % unit health, the rest has to be paid for).

Losing ships at sea isn't any more common than losing men on land. Both are entirely avoidable if common sense is used. It is just that we tend to hear about teh ships more because they are bigger.

Perhaps but my point was that when it happens, the whole unit is gone in one shot (i.e. the malestrom gobbles up the WHOLE Nautilus, not just Captain Nemo and some of his crew).

That said, I would apply a slight health loss to certain areas in Oceans so that ships suffer wear and tear. (If Civ4 adds seasons then this would have a profound effect on shipping.)

 

[jonax]

An alternative would be to simply consider desert impassable. That is really the case for the driest, hottest part of Sahara, Gobi, Namib even to this day. Cambyses supposedly lost an entire army 50.000 strong in Egypt. Alexander was lucky not to perish in Gedrosia. I have no example of modern armies being lost in the desert, but that is because no commander has been crazy enough to have tried.

Crossing a desert is something only specialized or very desperate units would try. For other hostile terrain I can't think of much fighting in real tundra, but there are stories of armies that have fallen through the ice and drowned/frozen to death. And winter wars in Northern latitudes without proper clothing and experience have horrible casualty rates.

 

[sir_schwick]

troops travelling thorugh a mountain could easily get lost and never reach where they intended too. later on, with maps and such, then you shouldn't loss the entire unit

 

[jonax]

Some natural walls, like the Upper Himalayas, are impassable to all land units even today. Others are impassable for a large part of the year. On the other hand mountain ranges quite commonly have passes, which can be very strategically important. The terrain generator isn't very realistic, mountainous areas usually have a number of valleys with a river or stream running in the middle of them. Sometimes the valleys are interlaced from either side like cog wheels, sometimes they are connected through passes, sometimes the valleys run through the entire range. Maps, or really local knowledge, could help an army get through.

It might be useful to discern between adverse and hostile terrain. All terrain is to some extent adverse, though it is much harder to cross a mountain or a swamp than farmlands. Not only is the going tougher (and too tough for some), bringing supplies or foraging can be near impossible. The attrition (hit points) aoproach can model this nicely. You can easily cross a lava lake, but you are dependent on getting supplies on the other side. If you have to fight another army on the other end instead. then you are in a poor position.

Civ already has sea and jungle as hostile terrain. This is terrain that regularly kill you. Adverse weather, poisonous fumes, disease, avalanches, the ground swallows you up, animals will eat you. There is plenty of this kind of terrain on Earth, the terrain in fantasy and science fiction is even more brutal. The terrain doesn't have to be deadly to be hostile, eternal fog might disperse armies, bathing nymphs might distract them.

 

[yoshi]

An alternative would be to simply consider desert impassable.

Okay, but that's moddable and is not a new feature.

I have no example of modern armies being lost in the desert, but that is because no commander has been crazy enough to have tried.

Are we forgetting a certain engagement in southern mesopotamia in 1991? The reason was not insanity but rather GPS.

Point is, for game purposes, you don't want to be losing units (note that players complain when you make the game slightly more difficult than its predecessor--losing whole units is not fun). Losing health is for strategic purposes (i.e. there is some penalty for going through harsh terrain rather than just making it completly impassable).

Losing ships is to desuade players from venturing out too far (i.e. colonizing new continents too early) without making it impossible (losing health would make no difference in this case as it is not a question of strategy).

 

[rhialto]

Deserts are kind of a weird thing. In reality, rocky desert and sand seas are completely different animals. Rocky desert is comparateively easy for foot and wheeled transport, but because of ground pressure, sand seas are very hard going for these. modern tracked vehicles can safely ignore almost all the ground pressure problem with sand seas, and are fast enough that even without a gps, they can reasonably hope to get to the far side simply by going in a straight line far enough. In any case, Iraq/Kuwait has hardly any sand sea terrain.

The ideal solution would be a new health model. Say a warrior unit has 10 hit points. It gets wounded down to 1. Half of any losses (round down) are considered permanent losses. So that unit's max hits is now 5. It wins another battle and gets wounded down to 1 again. It can rest to heal back up to a new maximum of 3. The only way to restore the original maximum is to go back to a city and "R&R" the unit. This order would cost a small amount of gold and takes time as if it were being refitted.

With this health model, it makes sense for most terrain to merely wound instead of civ2 style sudden death.

 

[Portuguese]

I would prefer to loose HP but not units (like in bombardements).

BTW, a point that you are not considering here is that this would end the advantadge of attacking a nearby city from the mountains: fortifying an unit in a mountain tile near a city would result in having a 1HP unit next to an enemy city, ending with the ridiculous strategy of fortifying units in mountains next to AI cities so the AI kills all its unit against that unit...

 

[sir_schwick]

I really like rhialto's suggestion. Then Battlefield Medicine would let you heal to higher strength in the field, yours or theirs.

 

[rhialto]

I'd say that once you get battlefield medicene, 1/3 of all hits lost are considered permenent losses instead of the basic 1/2. You could even have multiple battlefield medicene type wonders, each one increasing that divisor by 1.

 

[sir_schwick]

Instead of multiple wonders, here is how it works.

Maximum Permanent Losses = 1/n of the total HP

n starts at 2
+1 for Military Camp(new terrain improvement avaliable with Feudalism)
+2 for Military Base(new terrain improvement avaliable with Steel)
+2 for Occupied Cities
+4 for Occupied Cities with Barracks
+1 for Battlefield Medicine
+2 for Medic School(New Great Wonder; needs a different name)