Terrain

[joelwest]

this post is copied from post 838, page 42, of main SotM mod forum.

my later posts in this thread will try to parse this material for development work.

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plans for meteorite damage??? . . .
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About barbarians....Hopefully they will be removed soon and replaced by meteorites or impact debris. Or at least lessened. They do come in waves.

I am curious how you plan to implement meteorite damage or debris. on the real Luna this is big concern due to a total lack of atmosphere to disintegrate them. hence real Luna colonies would no doubt go underground as soon as possible.

maybe you have in mind road damage due to meteorites???

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BTW, in researching the geological history of the moon I found out that both the maria (flat "sea") areas and non-maria areas of the moon are ancient, ie over 3 billion years old.

since the maria areas are much less heavily cratered the obvious inference is that the really big meteorites all but vanished after the maria were no longer molten.

hence the smaller size of meteorites currently hitting the moon do not usually create huge impact craters.

 

[joelwest]

this post is copied from post 847, page 43, of main SotM mod forum.

my later posts in this thread will try to parse this material for development work.

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are there any goody huts? . . .
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I think if you created a new type of Goody_Hut, which I think is possible with pure XML, or possibly XML+Python. Just skin up something interesting, and bada bing bada doom, you've got a relic to hunt for.

goody huts only appear as "debris" when playing a Moon map based version of the game.

in that so many folks are playing non Moon map versions of the game (usually like myself by accident), I would suggest adding debris to such non Moon maps as well adding all the other missing resources such as titanium and plutonium (that do correctly appear on Moon based maps).

 

[joelwest]

this post is copied from post 855, page 43, of main SotM mod forum.

my later posts in this thread will try to parse this material for development work.

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suggestions for terrain improvement options . . .
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Most terrain squares cannot be improved and only a few improvement types are possible. So its just buildings and a few units.

currently only floodplains and resource tiles (plus hill tiles in a non Moon-map version of the game) have any production value greater than an engineer specialist (2 hammers).

Spoiler :

anyone implementing the Genetic Screening special civic can make all of his workers eng spec if he wants to starting with year one.

all flatlands can be "improved" by a worker action of building a road facilitating movement.

custom outposts and glasshouses (the latter are only available for Moon-map based versions of SotM 0.23) are improvements that help all of the other tile types except crater rims and dust seas.

crater rims are worthless tiles regarding production or locating a city there (the latter fact not currently noted in the Civilopedia). crater rim tiles only usefulness currently is to provide a defense bonus to units located there.

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suggestions

1) crater rims could be treated as Civ 3 mountains, ie they can be mined but yield less hammers than hills.

2) cities should be allowed to be built on crater rim tiles since "hills" are currently not implemented in Moon-map based versions of SotM.

3) flatlands can have a +1 food improvement that comes about later in the game. (the E-M Shielding tech currently makes possible the Ion Shield improvement that boosts food production in dust seas located on a non Moon-based map.)

however the above improvements would radically change the game and make the moon much less bleak a productive landscape than it is actually is.

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speaking of terrain, forests, jungles, and rivers as moon terrain "features" are ludicrous, yet are created on non Moon-based maps for SotM.

if the desire is to have more hammers or more defense, these features could instead be a smaller type of crater, mineral rich maria, or something else more moonlike on non Moon-based maps for SotM.

 

[joelwest]

this post is copied from post 878, page 44, of main SotM mod forum.

my later posts in this thread will try to parse this material for development work.

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nice to know someone else is playtesting this mod . . .

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#2. Dustseas. Its been mentioned elsewhere I think, but while dustseas are a good idea originally, something needs to be provided later to allow units to cross them. I completely dominated the map, but was unable to capture a couple remaining civ's cities due to them being on, or surrounded by, dustsea... and culture wars are too slow and unfeasible.

to get a feel for how the naval units (skimmers) currently operate play a SotM game with a land-based map which has "oceans." (I used a fractal continent map myself for a land-based map.)

it is counter-intuitive, but for some reason all three skimmer units work fine on a land-based map whereas they do not work at all on a Moon-based map.

as you noted, on a Moon-based map island or archipelago states potentially will remain isolated unless a nearby city's cultural borders allows a series of roads across dust sea tiles to create a path to nearby coastal islands.

on the Moon-based map in the game I played virtually EVERY tile in the whole grid (Moon) could be reached using the above technique since all coasts had nearby islands that could serve as a bridge to get ever deeper into a nearby dust sea/dust ocean.

did you try this technique?

the only case "island-hopping" did not work in the game I played was when I tried to attack a civ on an island with an area of only one tile. in that case amphibious attack was disallowed by the mod and hence the civ could never be NEVER be attacked or conquered.

 

[GeoModder]

My view on terrain on the moon:
- Get rid of the dustseas. All of it, it doesn't exist and never will IRL.
- Brink back hills and peaks, Lunar topology is alot more distinct then Earth's.
- Surface ice is a big nono, the only waterice pockets on the moon would be subterrean, so would better be used as a resource.

To be continued...

 

[joelwest]

My view on terrain on the moon:
- Get rid of the dustseas. All of it, it doesn't exist and never will IRL.

I presume the dust seas were introduced into the mod in order to make the built-in naval units and all their properties moddable to the different terrain of the moon.

if the starting era is a Disaster World ("see Tech tree and Game era thread", post # 8)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=215026

this to me implies that all non maria based roads on the moon would be underground to escape both radiation and meteors.

we could keep special movement units on maria tiles to improve the variety of the game. we could call these units Lunar Rovers rather than naming them after a naval unit.

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behind this discussion of dust seas is a consideration of whether units on the moon should initially be isolated by some sort of terrain before a tech is learned to overcome this. instead of maria the isolation tiles could be crater rims or crater valleys. the question then is how much liberty can we take with the actual terrain fo the moon in creating vast grids of such tiles?

I know maria tiles are not "really" navigable (except by Lunar Rovers), but the actual moon does have large sections of dust seas. my gut instinct is to keep maria tiles reserved for special navigation of some sort.

- Brink back hills and peaks, Lunar topology is alot more distinct then Earth's.

hills is a terrain feature already part of vanilla Civ 4. to do justice to the moon we need a corresponding valley tile with equally difficult unit movement cost.

unlike the hill, the valley (or rift) would hurt unit defense, not help it.

in Civ cities can be built on hills but not on mountains. in the current SotM cities cannot be built on craters. are we then to interpret craters as the moon's equivalent of Terran mountains?

mountains are also impassable in Civ 4 and in default Civ 3. craters are currently passable in SotM mod. shall we change this?

mountains occur in ranges on earth. craters are randomly placed on the moon. hence if craters were impassible it would hardly hinder overall movement on the moon. hence my initial inclination is to leave craters as being passable in the SotM mod.

speaking of craters, current size is a 2 x 2 tile grid. the user should have the option on larger maps of also having 3 x 3 or 4 x 4 craters.

 

[Drtad]

Whoops, wanted to post in the Barbarians thread, sorry.

P.S. I like the terrain as it is now.

 

[GeoModder]

I presume the dust seas were introduced into the mod in order to make the built-in naval units and all their properties moddable to the different terrain of the moon.

There's no need for "naval units" on a sealess satellite.
I think they will be enough variation with infantry units, transport landunits, armored units, "space" units and the inevitable rocketship transporters.

 

[joelwest]

There's no need for "naval units" on a sealess satellite.
I think they will be enough variation with infantry units, transport landunits, armored units, "space" units and the inevitable rocketship transporters.

are you also rejecting the idea that units at the start of the game have trouble traversing certain types of tiles yielding a certain degree of isolation between civs? this after all is the net effect of enabling naval-like units.

 

[GeoModder]

No, why should I? large amounts of mountainous (unwalkable) terrain would do an even better job.
But about difficulties having easy contact between factions on a lunar body:
- Moons are rather small.
- I can't imagine there wouldn't be comm satellites around it once people lived on it.
- I also have difficulties imagining the few base leaders wouldn't have been in contact with one another before they became on their own.

But I better do something of the tasks Woodelf gave me instead of discussing.

 

[woodelf]

Are we planning on hovercrafts for unwalkable terrain?

 

[joelwest]

Are we planning on hovercrafts for unwalkable terrain?

the amount of potential unit damage that occurs in the starting Disaster World era would imply how we should handle each type of terrain in a ground up revision of the mod.

the proposal I currently have on the table is that all non maria tiles would have subways as roads due to the ongoing meteorite, solar flare, etc. damage.

in addition maria tiles would still be navigable, but by Lunar Rovers, not Skimmers.

I am also proposing we dump attrition as a source of unit health damage.

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Spoiler :

there has yet to be a full discussion of impassable terrain. I currently favor crater rims as impassable and hills as passable and able to build cities in.

the mod currently does not have hills and crater rims are passable, but cities cannot be founded in them.

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hovercraft would not be sturdy enough to cross moon craters (mountains) anymore than they would be sturdy enough to cross an earth mountain.

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your question does suggest an idea for a new unit however. currently aircraft are not implemented. given the moon's lack of atmosphere this is not surprising. however there could be a low orbit vehicle for going say 10 to 20 tiles away, including over otherwise impassable terrain.

 

[woodelf]

When I get some python knowledge or help attrition is gone. It can be turned off in the start-up of the game though.

 

[GeoModder]

Are we planning on hovercrafts for unwalkable terrain?

Hovercrafts are simply impossible on a vacuum worldlet. They suck in air (atmosphere) to stay afloat.

 

[GeoModder]

When I get some python knowledge or help attrition is gone. It can be turned off in the start-up of the game though.

I agree. Last night, I simply put a scout on "heal" somewhere outside my territory, and it would never auto-activate for further play.

 

[woodelf]

Hovercrafts are simply impossible on a vacuum worldlet. They suck in air (atmosphere) to stay afloat.

What can we use to traverse dust seas then?

 

[GeoModder]

Well, since in the downloadable version roads can be created on it, there's not even a need for special units to traverse them.
Infact, I still think of this feature as redundant... but at least it gives me a save handle to switch to hilly terrain once I can figure out the moonmap python file.

 

[woodelf]

Maybe we'll have skiffs and sloops have transport ability and larger movements to make them useful for now...

 

[joelwest]

Well, since in the downloadable version roads can be created on it, there's not even a need for special units to traverse them.
Infact, I still think of this feature as redundant... but at least it gives me a safe handle to switch to hilly terrain once I can figure out the moonmap python file.

dust seas can have roads built only when a civs cultural boundaries enclose a maria tile.

the way the mod currently works is that a civ can culturally grow into a dust sea, create roads to a nearby island in the dust sea, build a new city, and thus eventually build a road across an entire dust sea as long as there are enough islands in it.

the naval units would also accomplish the task of crossing a dust sea and do so in a much more rapid manner, but naval units are NOT currently enabled for a Moon based map.

 

[woodelf]

This stuff wasn't touched after matthewv made the terrain and mapscript. It definitely needs work.