I suggest the movement modifier for mountains should be a lot higher and a unit crossing a mountain range should also suffer SEVERE damage, which would indicate the loss of men due to harsh conditions. Roads should of course decrease the damage suffered, but on the other hand building roads on mountain squares, especially in ancient/medieval period, should be very time (and settler!) consuming, a lot harder than it is in Civ 2.

As for rivers, you simply can not cross the Mississippi without a bridge or a boat. Of course you can send 1000 ancient warriors to swim over it and see how many of them makes it to the other side...

One kind of solution could be to make the rivers on the maps more realistic. The biggest rivers, The Amazon and the like, should be displayed with ocean squares. This would be realistic. There should also be two separate river terrain types. Small rivers could be crossed with small movement and damage penalties. Crossing large rivers would be harder, and the unit crossing them should suffer movement and damage penalties similiar to those that you suffer when crossing mountains. The bridge building advace could also be divided to bridge building, which would allow you to build a bridge over a small river, and advanced bridge building would allow you to build bridges over large rivers. Those HUGE bridges, like the one that connects Sweden and Denmark, should require advances like railroad, steel and the like.

Then again I don't play Civ2 or AC anymore anyway.

Diablo 2 on the other hand....

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King Par4!!

fldmarshallpar4@icqmail.com

Par4: ignore Woodmen chief

There should be TWO river types - small river and large river. A large river would be the Danube, Mississippi, etc that units can't cross easily, and ships can move on (small ships however, no subs because they need to be low to be hidden, nothing huge like battleships because they're too heavy). Can be crossed once Civ discovers advanced bridge building.
Small rivers like the Darling river in Australia would be small rivers, no ships can enter a square containing it (apart from ports) and no unit can cross until bridge building is discovered.

*There should be thin(civ2 type) and broad (ships, but not subs can travel) rivers. Units'll be able to cross, BUT with a chance of drowning/disappearing/damage.

*A mobile bridge unit should be available (but the AI'll probably go spastic over this )

*Mountains should be crossable, but maybe have different height mountains that are progressively harder to cross.

*Judging by the comments here, CTP probably isn't worth playing anyway compared to SMAC(hi Limey)

*I hate people playing Diablo2 cause my computer's too slow to run it (I'm still on a P166 )

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King Par4!!

fldmarshallpar4@icqmail.com

We can have this accomplished thru Unit Workshop as we already debated (I remember the thread about Romans), to add some engineer ability to common units (at a building price).

Firaxis used this in SMAC to add SAM ability to AI sea transports, just to help it do a better job instead of stacking transports with Aegis like ships.

BTW, I still will like that Special ability only add a partial benefit to a common unit, instead of the full dedicated unit.

I.e. a SAM unit should have more firepower than added SAM special ability to Infantry (you know, ligtht flak on truck and personal missiles like Stinger versus heavy flak and medium missiles on tanks), or some engineer ability like road buildings and trench digging versus dedicated engineers for railroads, main bridges, terraforming, main fortress.

Another example :- Importance of mountain passes.. All invaders who came to India were deterred by the Himalayas and Hindukush.. This made passes like the Khyber Pass very strategically important and well-defended..

Another example :- Importance of mountain passes.. All invaders who came to India were deterred by the Himalayas and Hindukush.. This made passes like the Khyber Pass very strategically important and well-defended..

Another point that should be mentioned is canals. They can let ships go through thin points on continents (i.e. Panama, Suez) or to connect rivers. These canals should come in different sizes since the land around the site is not always smooth and flat. There can be a lock-canal an an actual waterway. A lock canal can be used to transport ships over large hills and the regular canal would be used at flatter points.

DarkCloud: Great idea!!! That's also a civ3 happening. They aren't molehills. However, all units should take damage except for places where there are roads. Even modern ground troops (except partisans and alpines) should take damage. Lets add some realism.

Question: where does an 800 pound gorilla sit? Answer: anywhere it wants.
Question: where does a several hundred ton nuclear submarine go?
Answer:...

All the rivers of Civ3 should be navigable. Any and all boats should be able to move through them. After all, if you are going to have canals in this game, what's the diff?

See what I am imagining as a canal is something a settler can build after x amounts turns. Now say you build a canal to reach a city built alongside a lake, that would otherwise be landlocked. That would even increase the revenue, because there would be no other way to reach it by ship.

Though I suppose the nation in questions economic strenght would also have something to do with it. If you have a canal, and no wants to trade with you, and no one uses it, its not going to generate much money.

In response to , "They knew where they were going" There is no need for a survey, because, after the first unit has traversed the mountains that land becomes clear and no longer black space on the map.

Christantine the Great:

I believe that engineers should be the only ones to build canals. For, canals though some were made in olden times have been best utilized in this century. How about the engineers take 10-15 turns to build a canal on plains?

The rivers should be able to be navigated by a new kind of boat- The canoe or skiff, both with low attack ratios and defense but they would be perfect for early navigation (canoe) or troop transport (skiff) (1-2 units).

Phunny Pharmer:

How about having the damage be relative. Such as when on Plains damage (deserters) the chance will be 5% when you are not in a war, and 10% when you are in a war. Or in the hills 7%- no war 12%-war

I think that a 10% penalty for square of mountains crossed wouldn't be that bad...it would just encourage civs to go around them. That's all we want, right. Putting fancy bonuses for movement and stuff would defeat the purpose of the game.

Certainly, there should be no penalties for any other square crossed. Putting penalties for crossing PLAINS!?! That would kill exploration in multiplayer.

A few exceptions to the mountain-crossing penalty:

1) Alpine troops- no penalty at all
2) Gunpowder and later armies- 10% chance of getting the 10% penalty if there are no roads.
3) Roads with early unit- would do the same thing as #2.
4) Roads/Improved roads with late units- no penalty.
5) Railroads- no penalty.

Mountains would also act as SMAC xenofungus: only a certain percentage of the time can you cross them. However, if you can't cross, you still take the penalty!!!

Moral of the story- go around the mountains, or build roads.

That's what Explorers and Diplomats are for.
(They are greatly underused in the game) They should be able to cross anywhere without penalties for desertion (They WANT to explore)

On your 5 conditions I wholeheartedly agree. The same would go for hills I expect.

For plains if you build a road or achieve gunpowder or conscription there will be no peanalty on plains or anywhere except mountains.

However if you are in a democracy, communism or fanaticism since you are fighting for your beliefs you wouldn't desert.

Christantine:

well we don't have this problem in CIV . all Great Britain is About 25 tiles and it is 3 tiles wide so ......

Dalgetti

Hey FIRAXIS. Look again at some of these ideas above here.

Canals? Don't even think about not including them.
Also the idea that SMALL RIVERS are crossable, LARGE RIVERS are not crossable without a bridge of some sort. Please, PLEASE tell me that these river rules will be included in the Civ 3 design...

Canals: Yes.
Navigable Rivers: HUGE yes.
Two kinds of rivers: It would be cool, but not really necessary.

Canals: Canals only served to move goods. I defy anybody to find an example of division-scale military units being moved on canals such as built in England and the US in the early 1800s.

Trans-shipment canals: Traverse by ocean-going (deep-keel) vessels requires a very much larger waterway than a "goods canal." Panama, Suez, Kiel, and maybe a couple fresh water examples qualify. Very rare geographical arrangements make these possible. Allowing cities on one-tile-wide ithsmi to become trans-shipment canals is only workable because the movement rates are so ridiculously low anyway.

Rivers: How hard is it to build rafts and small boats? That's what the river movement bonus represents, and that's how big rivers are crossed in the absence of bridges. Crossing a major river only poses a problem in the presence of an enemy force (e.g., Roman palisade and patrols along the Danube prevented the Germanic tribes from crossing in force).

Navicable rivers: Very few rivers are navicable to ocean-going (deep-keel) vessels for any significant distance inland. Compared to the typical 50-100 mile wide map tile I can think of one river that would be navicable for more than that distance. Civil War riverboats were built on the river. American revolution/1812 naval conflicts on the Great Lakes were likewise between ships built on the lakes.

Bridges: So far, bridges over deep waters have proven to be engineering challenges exceeding all possible cost benefits. NO OCEAN BRIDGES!