Unpassable mountains...

[Naokaukodem]

I think that making mountains unpassable in games with 1UPT is not a wise move. It could have been OK with stacks, but it can *sometimes* be a butthurt with 1UPT...
The problem now with Civ5 and Civ6 is that mountains looks pretty realistic and are more or less high ones, with eternal snow on top of them.
In order to keep those magnificent graphics and allow passable mountains, we could make them... between tiles, just like rivers.

This way, we could work tiles between mountains which should be quite profitable in term of outputs, because they would in fact be valleys... not even need to represent graphically rivers in every valley, just in some of them, while keeping the nice outputs everywhere.

If any, we could still make some unpassable areas with particular mountain shapes, that would kinda "link" two tops. Not sure if we should keep the unpassable mountain though, as we know the highest one in the world in reality (Everest) stays practicable, eventhough with some health repecussions, but it's not like an army would mount the Everest, just passing between two peaks the easiest way possible.

As I'm at it, why not finally allow the walking on one side of a river like it is a road, regardless of the type of terrain ?

 

[Zaarin]

Mountains should be passable, but it should consume a unit's full movement to enter a mountain and units should take attrition while in mountains (or Desert or Snow or Ocean before Refrigeration). Add in a new feature: Mountain Passes, that only cost two movement points and don't inflict attrition. IRL mountains are barriers, but not insurmountable ones.

As I'm at it, why not finally allow the walking on one side of a river like it is a road, regardless of the type of terrain ?

Rivers have been invaluable to civilization as pre-motorized highways. Civ's depiction of rivers is very deficient.

 

[Imaus]

Passes should be passable. Mountains shouldn't. Passes should either be, well, hills, or a special tile thereof.

 

[Phrozen]

Scouts should be able to go over mountains but not anything else.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Mountains should be passable, but it should consume a unit's full movement to enter a mountain and units should take attrition while in mountains (or Desert or Snow or Ocean before Refrigeration). Add in a new feature: Mountain Passes, that only cost two movement points and don't inflict attrition. IRL mountains are barriers, but not insurmountable ones.

The 'Xploration' part of '4X' in Civ could be extended to much later in the game if the difficulties of certain terrain were modeled better. Desert, Jungle (rain forest), Tundra, Ice were all impassable to large groups until the Industrial Era and later, and areas like Marsh//Floodplains were vectors for diseases that made them murderous to groups not native to them.
I would make Tundra, Ice, Desert, and Rain Forest all inflict possible Damage on any unit other than a Recon unit trying to cross the tile, Unless the unit was from a Civ that started with one of those tiles in its Initial City Radius - reflecting that they had spent a few dozen generations getting used to the climate and terrain. Try to take an entire army of several units through multiple tiles of Desert, and you should pay for it. Try to do the same thing through Tundra, and you'd lose Units. Sit a unit on Rain Forest or Marsh for any length of time, it's gone.
That would, incidentally, show some of the effects of Disease without needing a specific Plague Mechanic in the game.

Mountain Passes could be added to the 'standard' terrain set, but in addition ordinary mountains can and could be crossed by recon units since Ancient Era - see the mummy found in the Alps from before Start of Game who was found at High Altitude, not a low pass. With preparation, entire armies could cross mountains. Suvorov, after retraining his troops, took an entire Russian Army through the Swiss Alps in 1800 CE, complete with cavalry and artillery, fighting off or out-marching three French Armies on the way. Alexander the Great did much the same thing through the Zagros Mountains between (modern) Iraq and Iran after he took Babylon, suppressing hostile mountain tribes as he went. I suggest that doing that would require a Great General, and possibly even a specific Great General like Hannibal (who, however, was not as successful as either of the other two mentioned) or Suvorov.

Rivers have been invaluable to civilization as pre-motorized highways. Civ's depiction of rivers is very deficient.

Almost ALL games' depiction of rivers is grossly deficient. One of the major defects of Grand Ages: Medieval, which is mostly a game of trade rather than warfare or expansion, is that rivers are completely unrepresented except as graphics on the map: they have no effect on city growth or trade, which is Madness.
At the very least, rivers should, for much of the game, extend the Sea Bonuses to trade routes inland for as far as the river is Navigable (and, (ARE YOU LISTENING FIRAXIS or AMPLITUDE?) Waterfalls would be a neat graphic way to show the Head of Navigation on a River - Eye Candy and Mind Candy combined. River or Sea access should be required to get enough food to build a major city anywhere before railroads. Rivers should extend a city radius along it due to the better short-range travel and freight hauling along rivers.
And, getting right down to UUs, one of the Extra Bonuses to the Viking Longboat was that it could sail far up rivers and then be 'portaged' between rivers over flat country to another river - they regularly made the trip from Sweden all the way to the Black Sea through Russia by portaging between the Southern Dvina and the Dnepr, Dniester, or Volga.

So much could be done, but hasn't.

 

[Zaarin]

Passes should be passable. Mountains shouldn't.

*laughs in Tibetan, Georgian, Armenian, Cisalpine Gaulish, and Quechua*

 

[Naokaukodem]

Scouts should be able to go over mountains but not anything else.

You mean between mountains...

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

You mean between mountains...

Over, Around, Through - Mountains were and are not much of a barrier to individuals and small groups: i.e., in-game Scout units. They are barriers to Armies and larger groups and Trade Routes, but the cultural, religious, and other influences between groups on opposite sides of 'Mountain Barriers' indicates the ease of traversing by individuals or small groups carrying ideas and knowledge. No mountain range, not even the Alps, kept the Roman World from having a very good idea of the geography and inhabitants of all of Europe south of Scandinavia and west of the Vistula.

On the other hand, Deserts and Jungles (tropical rain forests) were, historically, major barriers to any kind of sustained contact: central Africa remained terra incognita to the classical Mediterranean world and Europe until the Industrial Era, long after they had direct contact with the Americas, India, and Southeast Asia. The case has even been made that the lack of contact between the Inca and the civilizations of the yucatan and central Mexico was less due to the mountains in the way than the dense jungles, and the fact that a 'new' civilization/culture group has been discovered (at least, indications of them) in the area of Panama for which there is no evidence of contact with the civs to the north and south supports this argument.

All of which (Ahem!) supports my argument that Civ needs to tighten up on terrain barriers to large-scale movement across Deserts, Jungles, Tundra, Ice, etc. For one thing, making these only easily accessible to Recon Units would prolong the 'lifespan' of those units and the amount of time you could spend on Xploration in the game in the 'nooks and crannies' of the map.

 

[Naokaukodem]

OK, was just a joke refering to my original idea (making mountains between tiles), but the input is cool. So mountains haven't been so a barrier for cultural spreading ? I didn't know that.

Although you admit large armies can't do the way without losing health or something, Civ5 style. In my opinion, it's more a problem of food than terrain. In my vision for Civ7 or later, armies must feed themselves. This is done by setting up a camp instantaneously and without costing any movement point, so you can dispatch whatever population points constitutes your army 3 tiles away. Soldiers can't cultivate farms (representing the fact that cultivating takes a whole year or more), they just can pick up what's in mother nature, even wheat, as long as it's considered non-improved.
So you can travel even into deserts for example, with a little troup that would take care of one or two oasis giving 3 food per turn each (for an army of 3 people), but if there's a point there's not anymore those oasis, the soldiers start to lose health points.
This could be the same i guess for mountains, jungles, tundra and ice, except you do not encounter oasis in them. I guess fertile valleys would be the equivalent for mountains, but i have no clue of others.

Again, this example with deserts makes them more or less equivalent in term of porosity as mountains, which you contradict. I believe then that if desert were so much unpassable, even with oasis, it's because not all deserts have oasis, and they are to be found. (which is kinda misrepresented by the two tile sight range of units in deserts) Arabs, after all, came from the tip of the Afro-Asian peninsula which is now a desert. (and probably was)

So we have Arab armies that travelled across desert, and Roman empire that was well aware of what was behind the Alps. We can find Incas having few contacts with other jungle civs, but still built empires on top of jungle or so. (probably chopped a lot of it) So in my book it is Toundra (mother Russia) >= Deserts (with oasis, but there are several types of desert, sandy, salty, rocky, obviously roads can't be done on sand, hence the importance of camels) > Mountains > Jungle > Ice.