posted July 28, 1999 11:35            

technophile: Awesome idea about disease and moisture! You could put an even bigger risk of disease for cities founded by a settler not built in a city with a high disease risk, which would last for the first few turns, because the people have NO idea what to avoid. Make that go away after the discovery of medecine, or some similar advance.

theben: Tiles could double as several terrain types, but that makes the map ambiguous. When I'm going out to build a city, I want to KNOW whether I'm on a plain or a grassland; That one bit of food makes a huge difference in the long run. There would probably be a terrain inspection tool, so you could click on it to find out which it was, but that would get tedious... Like building cities in the monsoon jungle in SMAC, where you can't see the underlying resources. A pain. But the difference between the two could be very subtle... Just a matter of shading, or whatever. In fact, that would generally be the differences between similar terrains, especially Grass covered terrain of different types.

Actually, looking back at my old list, I'm not sure that grassland should be a Wet square. I had thought that wet should be reserved for REALLY wet squares... Jungles, swamps, etc. A Plain/Whatever/Wet/Grass should be a marsh of some kind. Maybe CivX Plains and Grasslands could be Plain/Temperate/Dry/Grass and Plain/Temperate/Moderate/Grass in CivIII.

Here are some ideas for the actual numbers:

Landforms

Plains are the basic square. The liklihood of finding mineral resources is pretty low... 1/10 of plains would have a mineral resource. (this could be represented as 1/10 having one shield of production, or in a more complicated, resource-based system, 1/10 of plains have iron, coal, quarries, whatever.)
The maximum food production of a Plain without a farm is 2.

Hills have a much higher chance of resources; say 1/4. Resources could be seeded individually, rather than by square, so some squares could end up with 2 resources. Hills could also have Large Deposits, which would give 2 of whatever resource (or just shields in a shields economy). However, Hills can only produce 1 food without a farm.

Mountains are the most resource heavy; 1/2 or 1/3 chance of resources. Mountains, like hills, can have Large Depisits. No food is found on an unfarmed mountain, and all Mountain Grass squares get a -1 food penalty.

Temperature is much simpler; -1 food per square (taken before improvements) for cold, no mod for Temperate, and +1 for Hot.

Moisture would have the same effect as Temperature, but an unfarmed Wet Plains square would function as Dry (-1 food), and Wet Plains squares would require a special kind of Farm. This is because you can't really farm a swamp; you have to drain it. However, since Moisture here represents rainfall, you can't really allow people to change it. So require a special farm. Hills and Mountains don't have that penalty because they are self-draining. When the special farm is built, then there is a +1 food bonus.

Vegetation

Nothing is nothing. it provides no food, and whatever resources are inherent in the Landform. The heat bonus for food does not apply in Nothing squares, although the moisture bonus does. (this is to simulate deserts with some vegetation, so you can get a minimal amount of food In the game, of course, a Moist Nothing square is not likely... It would grow something spontaneously pretty quickly. The only way would be nuclear/chemical war, volcanic blasts, etc, and the grass/forest would grow back eventually)

Grass produces 1 food and the resources inherent in the landform.

Forest produces 1 food and, depending on the system used, 2 shields or 2 wood. Farms cannot be built on forests. Climate bonuses and penalties that normally apply to food also apply to the wood production of a forest; this includes the Wet Plains Penalty. Note that since you can't build a Farm in a Forest, you can't get around this.

On Farms:

Here I am assuming there is a TI called a Farm. The Farm does not increase the food production of a square, but enables it to go beyond a certain point. For instance, Maybe you have a special resource Grass Plains square with 5 food production. A plains square can only supply 2 food without a farm, so you need to build a farm to get the third food out of it. This is an ABSOLUTE. All bonuses and penalties are applied before the farm is checked. Later, of course, other TIs that actually increase the food production of a square would become available; These STILL won't be able to increase the food production past the no-farm limit unless there is a farm.

Here are the types of farm:

Farm: Allows unlimited food production on Plains, 2 food production on hills. Cannot be built in mountains.

Terraced Farm: Allows 3 food production on hills, and 2(1?) food production on mountains. Remember that Mountain Grass gets -1 food. Can only be built on Mountains/Hills, and requires a Tech. Advance (Earthworks? Terraced Farming? Construction? Engineering?)

Drained Farm: Acts as a regular farm, but alaso gets rid of the Wet Plains penalty. Makes Wet squares the best. This also requires a Tech advance... Maybe start a new line of advances that covers Aqueducts, Sewers, Irrigation, Drained Farm, Canals, Dikes, Dams, etc. (not in that order, of course)

Maybe there could be furthur farms, also... Like limit the Farm/Drained Farm to 4 food or something. It wouldn't come into play unless you had other improvements to increase food production. Those could include Irrigation (in Dry squares) and various special crops. For instance Rice could add +3 food but only be available on Wet squares, Wheat could add +2 but not be available on Cold or Dry squares, Maize could be +1 on anything but cold or wet, and Potatoes +1 anywhere. These could become available either as research advances, as random events (Chinese farmers have domesticated a new crop: maize) or could be given 1 per civilization at the bginning of the game, determined by the starting location. In any case, you could trade them like an advance with other Civs, so in the end, you could plant anything. There could also be Cash crops, which operate like the food crops but produce money instead of food. This could be a single crop, or Tobacco, Cotton, Sugar, and Indigo. All of these grow in similar climates, though, so maybe they could be lumped as Cash crops, and allowed anywhere but Cold or Dry.
Other than crops and irrigation, greenhouses could eliminate the penalty for cold squares, and various Advances might generate other bonuses. Late in the game, you might get things to increase the food from forests.

Notice that the Crops are VERY important. On a basic Flat/Temperate/Moderate/Grass square, you're only getting one food; That's not even enough to feed the population working it! However, remember that you start the game with a crop suited to your particular climate, that will increase the food production by at least 1. Crops are very easy to plant, and if there's a Public Works TI-er, it's even easier, and you only need to spend your first turn or two improving that land. Otherwise, I'd suggest that every City get a free Terraformer (I know they can't be called that at the beginning of the game, but I'm not sure what else to call them) when it is founded. The graphics for crops and farms should be low-key, mostly transparent things. Later there could be bigger, more in-your-face improvements.

That is one heck of a long post!

posted July 28, 1999 16:20            

Er, sorry. Look, I've only got so many hours in a day to summarize all this stuff... And it looks like I'm going to have to reorganize the summary a bit, or it'll end up being fifty pages long. It looks like at least a three-hour job. I'd put it off to the weekend, but who knows, maybe it'll be up to 150 posts by then...

posted July 28, 1999 21:19            

Irrigation should upgrade a squares mossitre rating.
Implimenting farms and crop rotation are the big harvest boosters.

posted July 30, 1999 13:35            

Post 116.

posted July 30, 1999 14:24            

As for the artillery bonus from high ground thing, it's a close call... How about instead of that, just give any unit an attack bonus from a "higher" square, i.e. mountain to hill or plain, hill to plain. It's true that modern artillery might be able to bombard ONE square away on a civ map, but it doesn't seem all that important. I guess that really belongs in the combat thread, but it is a sort of overlap thing.

I think that 3D terrain on a sub-grid level is a good think... CtP had that, right? Where a mountain square will stick up above the plains square behind it? It could be done with sprites instead. (as I believe it was in CtP, but I've never played it, just seen shots) However, you get better tile continuity by using a 3D map, at least to generate the sprites. Can anyone tell that I'm a big fan of tile continuity?

The high altitude plains thing, as I saw it, was just a nice way to make the world look more realistic. Didn't think it would actually change anything.

Changing Rainshadows? In Civ? It was implausible enough in SMAC. As I said earlier, the idea of knocking down a mountain range with any technology we have today or can forsee in the immediate future is ludicrous. Raising one is even worse. The only way to change the Landforms that I could see would be to change Continental Shelf to Plains... This might even require a special square on the continental shelf, called Shallow Flatland, or something, because you can only extend land by diking in a very few places in the world. In fact, only vegetation could be purposefully changed, and then the only one that would be at all easy would be to change Forest to Grass... Grass to Forest should take at least a hundred years. Either of them could be turned to None using nuclear warheads, I guess. Moisture and Temperature might change as a result of Pollution, but Landform? Not even nuclear war would change Landform. Can you imagine people actually knocking down the Rockies? It's silly.

posted July 30, 1999 16:28            

1) Villages are the primary method of gathering resources. They are the only place to put "average" people, i.e. not specialists. However, they exist externally to the city, on the surrounding squares. They gather the materials from the square they sit on and nowhere else.

2) Cities contain only specialists. These include scientists, entertainers, and workers. (Maybe also merchants?) Workers produce Industry, which is used to process the resources harvested in the countryside.

3) Villages contain the agrarian population. If they are destroyed by an invading army, so is the population contained.

4) The food production from a tile must be approximately twice that in CivX, because Specialists (i.e. city dwellers) are now necessary from the beginning, and must be supported.

5) Villages would be built by a "Public Works" type system, rather than by a unit. They could be autobuilt by the AI or queued by the player.

I believe that is the basic idea, upon which all in favor of the idea at all are agreed. (Again, correct me) Here are additional suggestions:

1) Villages don't count toward the maximum people in the city from Aqueducts, etc.

2) Villages don't count towards any particular city, but are shared within a region. Obviously, this would require regions.

3) Villages are divided into at least two types, mining and farming. Each type will act differently, producing either more food or more resources. A farming village on a forest square could become a logging village.

4) Villages may increase in size beyond 1. When they do so, their maximum production increases, but with diminishing returns (size 2 doesn't produce double what size 1 does.)

5) The second point of size (and any more) may be of a different type, i.e., a size 1 farming village becomes a size 2 farming/mining village.

6) When a village reaches a certain size (3? 4?), it becomes a city on its own.

7) Villages must be built in a square adjacent to either the city or another village.

8) The maximum distance from the main city would be dependant upon the technology level, or perhaps whether it is linked by road, railroad, etc.

Now here are some I have come up with that are new:

1) Allow the farmers/miners/loggers to come into the city in times of war. The villages could still be destroyed, but those are quicker to build than population. The population would be saved, but the extra people in the city would contribute to disease, and you wouldn't be getting any resources from the land.

2) What about Ocean squares? It doesn't make sense to build Villages in the Ocean. 2 options I see, which could work in conjunction: Cities with Harbors may make Fisherman specialists, which each allow one Ocean square to be harvested, and coastal Villages would have the option to be a Fishing Village, which uses none of it's own square, but harvests out of an ocean square. Under idea 5, this could be combined with a mining or farming village.

3) As an extension of idea 6 above: This is the ONLY way to make a new city until the discovery of a certain advance, which allows settlers. A Settled City (Colony) starts its own region, while Grown Cities belong to the same region as the Village they grow from. This would take the necessity of production away from expansion, since one wouldn't need to necessarily build cities with settlers. There would also have to be a way to split regions… Maybe by building a provincial capital, you would get to select the borders of a new region.

posted July 30, 1999 16:34            

Oh, I know realism. Well, if you want realism, play two...

Wait, I won't go there. Elevated plains actually could enhance the game, by allowing very defensible cities to grow. You get the food AND the defense bonus in these squares. I like the idea, it adds to my palette of choices.

posted July 30, 1999 17:56            

1) resources and food are generated in villages, any 'trade' or 'idustry' produced in them is used by the villages to support themselves. Only extra food and reosurces are shiped out.

2) cities produce all useable trade and industry. Varisu specialist types, the normals +laboureres to start and more types later.

3) villages are constructed without resource cost. It takes the same time as a unit fortifying to move or create a village. All expenses of this are covered by the resources not generated during the move. This allows you to ship the villagers back in to your cities.

4) costal villages. Put the icon for the village on the shore, but in the costal square. The pop is counted as being there, and can be killed by bombard capable ships. Oil platforms actually house their pop in the open ocean, this is the only time that deep ocean squares are harvested up to modern times. ( I don't see why you can harvest from deep ocean squares, when your treiems can't even go there...)

5) no need to deferentiate vilage types. Use regular tile improvments, like farms and mines.

6) settlers could be used to start remote villages without using them up (colonies on nearrby islands, etc. Still a distance limit, and only costal to start.

Other points:

a) terrain types that cities becomes even more imoprtant. they don't generate resources, but different terrain types would give growth and trade bonuses, espicially river, and costal.

b) I have proposed that food affects happiness, which affects gowth, not directly.
This removes the potential cheese of puting next to all your citizens on farms to boost growth. It would work a bit, but with highly diminishing returns...

c) At the start only one city per region, but as tech advances you get to select which ones go in. Regions would then split the villages according to the closest city. You could move the border if you wanted, but there is a max # of squares within the border depending on tech.

d) I think that vilalges should never be able to grow into cities without direct intevention ( a setler, which represents an infusion of infrastructure) spontanteous cities would be bad, because you would suddenly have a shift in available resources and loss of stratigc control.

That's all for now...

posted August 02, 1999 00:10            

Savanna is a harder issue. That's halfway between forest and grass, but not really in a transitional zone. Adding another otion to ANY of the four parameters would be bad, because it would make the number of possibilities skyrocket. I'd have to say that savanna would be represented by grass in Civ3, because that is closer to the biome concerned.

posted August 05, 1999 18:50            

First step is determine the form of the terrain. Form never changes during the course of the game.
These are:
Deep ocean
Ocean shelf
Glacier
Mountain.

Flat
Hills
Major Rivers

Navigable rivers cannot be in hills, so to keep things simple they will be their own landform. Otherwise it is basically the same as flat.
Flat terrain gives a food bonus, hills have a defensive bonus and allow mines.

Vegitation:
Vegitation can only be applyed to the last 3 landforms. The first 4 do not support vegitation types.

Plains
Grassland
Taiga (evergreen forest)
Boreal forest
rain Forest
tundra
desert
swamp

Combinations to note:
hill + grasland = plateau
river + grassland = flood planes, the most fertile standard terrain type.
flat + grassland = no irrigation reguired.
taiga + hills = shield, like the canadian shield or siberia. This is the best resource producing terrain.
swamp + hills, acts as fresh water lakes, these cannot be changed to anything else. (just as a place keeping way of proraming it)

Landform cannot be changed by your engineers.
vegitation can.
Allowable changes:
Grassland <--> Boreal Forest
Taiga <--> plains
swamp --> grassland
jungle --> plains
Irrigated desert acts like plains.
Irrigated plains acts like grassland.
tundra can't be changed to anything else.

Terraforming model.
Economic TI's are auto built by enginners in cities. A former type unit is fortified in a city. While it is there, it can automatically build farms and mines as well as changes the veggitation in friendly squares. You can change the terrain view mode 't', and click on squares to set their priority and change prefered. If villages are used, can only do squares surrounding friendly villages and cities. Squares do not have to be near the city the engineer is in, just connected by roads, or in the same region.

Engineers outside of cities act like normal civX, but they cannot build farms/mines. (to prevent building away from your pop centres). When acting this way they can build paths (along with most millitary units) as well as Roads, highways and RR, and military TI's

Nothing can bu built on deep ocean/glaciers.

military TI's:

bases act as both fortress and airbase, costal bases can have ships enter as well. Units can be 'deployed' to bases.
forts act as a scout unit and stop the first enemy unit to step on it. also offer some defense bonus.
sonar acts as a fort in the water.

economic TI's:
Farms / modern farms, built on any plains, grassland or desert.
irrigation, built on desert or plains, makes it act as the next stage better, whithout changing it.
mines / modern mines, built on any hills or mountains. Farms can also be built if it is a grassland/plains square.
fisheries can only be built in coneinental shelf, which usueally only extends one square from land, but some times more.

transport TI's:
Paths, built by and most military units as well, MP/2 move
roads, MP/4 move, and give a trade bonus (and allow resource sharing) when connectig cities.
Highways, modern roads, MP/8 move, more resource sharing.
Rail-roads, MP/8, take 50% longer than highways to build, but enemy units act as if on path (or road?) when using.
Tunnels, connect two squares of land under a shallow ocean square. Allows land units to cross water.
Cannal, connect two ocean squares over flat land. Can connect a city on a river to the sea if 1 square away.
When a unit enters a tunnel/cannal it uses 1 full MP and goes diredtly to the other side, units cannot rest in a tunnel/cannal. Both can only be used by the owner. Neither can be pillaged by sea units.
A tunnel is built by having an engineer on each end of the desired location. Both then build the tunnel. To use you press a key.

posted August 13, 1999 13:18            

code:

---

one square:
OOO
OOO
OOO

---

Landform is the average of Z. I recommend 3 more landform types: Shelf, basin, and trench- for underwater terrain.

Temperature and Moisture, OTOH, are computed on a rendered-square basis. This means that the vegetation graphics vary _within_ a tile.
(as a tangent, I suggest a moisture value of "underwater". This is not satisfied by the new Landform value because some subsquares will be rivers.)

Advantages: very natural looking terrain. The vegetation sprites could be very simple (forest=1 tree, for example)
River navigation now becomes simple: If a river is 2 subsquares wide, a boat may navigate it.

Vegetation underwater should be simple: 'shelf' level terrain has a high enough temperature to support kelp, basin perhaps fish, and trench, nothing. Since the moisture value is constant (underwater) it reduces variables a lot.

TI consequences
Mines could be built anywhere the landform type was hill or mountain.

Farms, however, would require that the square be leveled. You could raise or lower to level, depending on what temperature you wanted. Raise would make the 3x3 grid level with it's current highest vertex, lower would make it level with the lowest vertex.

Another appearance advantage is that roads would level out the rendering squares they crossed:

code:

---

N/S   E/W  NW/SE  NE/SW
O|O   OOO   \OO    OO/
O|O   ---   O\O    O/O
O|O   OOO   OO\    /OO

---

Rivers, though they would have different sprites, would look similar to roads from the 3d perspective.

posted August 13, 1999 14:08            

I've always found it immensely peculiar how civlike games treat tiles so absolutely. That there tile is either a *grassland* or a *plains*. The entire zone, however many square miles, functions uniformly throughout it in a precise manner, producing the exact same quantities of raw materials as, say, that grasslands tile over yonder -- and exactly twice as much as the plains tile sitting right next to it. No more; no less.

If you have an engineer etc. transform that land, he works on it for years and years (turns and turns )... then suddenly one day, magically and mystically, the entire area is transmogrified into an entirely different type of area, and produces an entirely different set of resources with the appropriate quantity.

Bizarre! Why must tiles be so uniform? Why must every grassland always produce exactly twice the food of every forest or plains? There is no differential, no curvature. Either it's grass, or it's not grass.

I propose instead that we approach tile production from the other extreme. Each tile can produce X food, Y shields, Z gold, or whatever you want them to produce; that's not important now (I love being abstract ). The random world generator assigns production quantities to various tiles, grouping tiles of high/low production of various resources together (the same as it does now, only based on the numbers, not on the "tile type"). Naturally there will be proportionality limits; if a tile produces a lot of food, for example, it can't produce quite as much shield or gold or whatever.

Then the game goes back and says well gosh, look, this tile produces lots of food and very little of anything else. So I'll use a grassland tile icon to represent the general area, since that's pretty much what most of the area looks like. When the user holds the mouse over the tile, a corner of the display window will indicate what that tile's exact production is. But that's only for number-crunching. The layman can simply point and go, "Mmm, look, grassland. Good spot for new city. Lots of food."

If an engineer works the land, and is say assigned to improve its shield output, he'll slowly increase that tile's +shield, and reduce its +food. If left there for long enough, the shield output will equal the food output, and the tile will appear as a plains. If left for longer, it becomes a forest. Or whatever.

Tiles that produce decent shields and gold and little food look like hills. Tiles that produce lots of shield and little else look like forests. Tiles that don't produce a god damn thing will be desert or tundra. If an engineer is assigned to work on a desert and irrigate it (i.e. give it more food) it'll eventually look like a grassland. Someday.

If a river flows through a tile, the river will affect the tile and give it some sort of bonus to its resources. Consequently the tile type appearance will change. So if a river flows through the desert, for example, you'll likely see a strip of grassland tiles where the river is, but beyond the river will be desert. Other "specials" might work similarly.

Which I'll now take even farther: Engineers could tap a source of water and BUILD a river through land. This could have all sorts of nifty effects on tile production and tile appearance. I won't point out at this point that you can't really irrigate with sea water... We can get into water types found in rivers at a later date.

Bah, there's that tangent. Okay, so that's my abstraction: tiles are places which produce stuff, and appear like what they produce; rather than, tiles have appearances, and produce based on what they look like.

posted August 14, 1999 01:41            

THE WHOLE VILLAGE/CITY THING: Any of you ever play Lords of the Realm? That had the concept that your population was housed in villages outside of the main town, and an invading army could pillage the villages and reduce your population. I like that idea. I also like the idea of multiple workers being able to farm/mine/whatever a single square for diminishing returns. I loathe the idea of villages spontaneously turning into cities.

FUTURE TI's: What's this about never being able to turn a mountain into a grassland?!? True, no technology in our foreseeable future could accomplish this (without creating enough fallout to wipe out life on this planet), but if future techs are available I'd still like to be able to squeeze blood from a stone through ecological + geological engineering marvels. However, this is totally irrelevant to the first 6000 or so years of the game.

MINES: I still like the idea of mines increasing the damage caused by bombers + artillery, to the point that the artillery (and bombers, if they attack as artillery) can actually destroy units. Reason for this is that a unit stuck in a minefield can't move around much while the bombs are falling. I wouldn't raise too big an outcry if ANY military unit were allowed to mine a square, but I'd still like to see Engineers get a bonus at this (let's say that it takes a tank 2 turns to sweep a square while it takes an Engineer 1 turn).

posted August 14, 1999 01:43            

VILLAGES

If I said any of this before, I can't find it. So, here goes. I favor the idea of special Village TIs for other uses. For example, an inland city with shore tiles in its radius could use a village on a shore tile to serve as a port. The city could then build ships, but not port improvements (other than Harbor). If some improvements are necessary for ship production, an idea I favor, then building the improvements would confer only the ability to build that type of ship; no other ship effects (vet status, fast repair) would accrue.

I prefer the idea of special TI's rather than Supply Crawlers. A Village TI could be used to assign the resource to a city if connected via road or rail. Road would offer some partial utilization of the resources, and rail the full value. Could coexist with mine, fortress, airbase, etc. Or a Depot improvement could serve the same purpose by a different name (especially after RR).

posted August 16, 1999 23:38            

quote:

---

I'd want to see something a little more innovative for handling terrain use and improvement. Allow more than one pop unit to use a tile, with some kind of diminishing returns depending on terrain. For hills only one pop unit could farm at the highest productivity, but for a fertile grassland several could. Then Civ3 could actually use a linear population scale for the city size… but maybe I'm asking too much.

---

I like the idea of Engineers (terraformers) being distinct from population expansion (colonies). However, I disagree with the whole idea of changing basic land types. A possible exception is deforestation, which could result in grassland, plains, or desert (but should reap a substantial bonus of timber/shields in the process). Reforestation should be a tech developed late in the industrial age of technology after huge tracts are denuded and the consequences hit the pocketbook!

posted August 17, 1999 15:32            

Auto TI building. No, not auto-settler/engineer working the land, but have the people who're actually using the land transform it.

You place a citizen, in the City Screen, on a tile. After several turns if you haven't used your engineers to upgrade the land then the people do it instead. They'd go by you're Preference list to decide what to change 1st, up to the maximum possible changes. Perhaps flagging a tile will be necessary to indicate what should be done 1st, if different from your Preferences.

FE, You put a worker on a unaltered grassland tile. Your Preference list says 1)road, 2)irrigate, 3) RR, 4)farm (using civ2 TI's). 10 turns go by and you haven't done anything to the tile, so your people build a road. Another 10 turns and you do nothing, they irrigate. And so on. Once everything is done (up to tech level) and more time passes the people will build a village (assumes villages as city TI). If you wanted to do somthing different you'd have to "flag" the tile to change from grassland to forest or to irrigate 1st, etc. This only works as long as the citizens remains in the same tile for all turns involved.

Pros: Reduces micromanagement. Somewhat more historically accurate as citizens almost always built their living areas.

posted August 17, 1999 18:04            

I also said that the basic landform could not be changed, but the type of terrain on the land form could (with a bunch of limitatiions)

posted August 19, 1999 19:12            

I disagree about building roads, irrigation, etc. In general, the populace will only invest the minimum effort to make the land useful. They may clear winding dirt paths, but they won't build paved military roads. It does take some kind of effort and organization to do tile-scale projects, which means player mgmt or automated governor scripts.

Your idea really just points towards the Public Works mechanism used in CTP. Someone already suggested both terraforming units for speedy completion of jobs well outside city radii and PW for inside the city radii.

posted August 20, 1999 19:59            

This is regarding villages, my idea coming from Lords of the Realm (I've spoken of something similar elsewhere, but not in any detail).

I don't know and I don't care about the economic aspects of villages--I'll leave that to you (although I am opposed to villages spontaneously becoming cities). My thoughts on villages are that a village will pop up whenever workers begin to work a square. They will be represented by a small house or something, nothing too large that it would conceal other terrain improvements. If multiple workers are working a square, the village will grow in size. Again, nothing so large that it would conceal the other TI's in the tile.

When an enemy army enters the city radius and moves on top of a village square, the villagers will remain in the village under "house arrest" (instead of being kicked off the land and made into specialists, as is now the case). The village will not be able to supply the city, though, but it can still feed itself. If the enemy army attempts to pillage the village, the city's population will be reduced and/or Refugee units will be made and/or Partisans will be formed, depending on tech + SE choices + city improvements (barracks etc.) + movement TI's (roads will help refugees escape) + whatever other factors are involved. Also, if the Civ is warlike enough, Fanatic/Partisan type units might spontaneously form when the enemy army enters the village square.

This will also address the "reservists" idea that many have been expounding upon.

OTHER THINGS WHICH ARE MADE POSSIBLE BY THIS:

posted August 22, 1999 00:57            

This message is a condensed form of all the ideas presented on the CivIII General Forum "Nature's Wrath" thread. The basic idea is to add random natural disasters in CivIII. They were present in Civ but didn't make the cut for Civ2. Here's what we have so far:

- Specific disasters should target specific land types, i.e.: Tornadoes hit grasslands & plains, Tsunamis hit coastal squares, Landslides hit hills & Volcanoes hit mountains. Earthquakes would be either truly random or fall along predetermined fault lines.
- Certain disasters destroy specific city improvements, i.e.: Tsunamis take out ports & harbors, floods wreak havoc on aqueducts & sewer systems.
- Two levels of disasters, Major & Minor, one of which is somehow preventable.
- Present disasters as Wrath of the Gods, i.e.: Fundamentalist gov'ts get hit less often (though it seems to me they get it pretty good already...)
- New technologies & improvements which would either prevent or lessen the effects of disasters, i.e.: Seismology tech could reveal the predetermined faultlines, if used, or allow a Seismology Center improvement to warn of coming Earthquakes.
- Disasters could kill off a certain number of population points which varies depending on Major or Minor status of the disaster.
- An evacuation order which allows a city to be spared loss of pop. points (but not city improvements) at the cost of stopping the city's production (trade, shields, everything) as long as the evacuation is in effect. This order should probably become available when and only when a disaster warning has become available, thus preventing any possible abuse, i.e.: evacuating cities with 150 shields in their production boxes until Manhattan Project is finished... just a little unfair.

My thanks again to Icedan, who directed my attention to this forum as the "serious" one, and to Theben for helping me figure out the Rules to posting here.

posted August 24, 1999 17:25            

Villages should definatly not spontatniously turn to cities. A settler can build a city there and the villages there will be added to the city pop.

posted August 25, 1999 13:23            

irrigation
paths
farms
villages

posted August 25, 1999 18:24            

You would but the TI and it would take 2 to 4 turns to build itself.