I guess the question becomes what terraforming options to keep free, and what ones become user-pay, so to speak. And if the current point in the game should have any bearing on the equation. I.e. a farmer plowed and irrigated his fields in 2000 BC because he had to do it in order to survive, there was little if any compensation involved for his effort. Today, farmers are businessmen like anyone else and expect to be paid for what they do. Thus the cost to plow and irrigate that field becomes important.

So here's my $.02 worth: the basic terraforming options, which I'll consider irrigation, roads, planting and removing forests, mining, and fortresses are always free. Farmland, railroads, airbases, and change-terrain options become user-pay, with farmland and railroad being relatively inexpensive, airbases always costing a fixed amount (but only able to build on flat land), and change-terrain being dependent on the terrain -- i.e. grassland to plains would be affordable, mountains to hills would be a significant investment. Railroad would also have a dependence on terrain -- with flat land the cheapest, hills and forests a little more, and mountains more still. Fortresses ... hmm, maybe there should be a cost if they're being built in hills/mountains. Any additional terraforming that Firaxis includes (ie radar stations?) would probably fall in with airbases or railroads.

quote: Originally posted by joseph1944 on 02-10-2001 05:48 PM We can remove small mountain now. I live about a mile or two from a quarry now, and you should see how much of this mountain has been removed. Just think for a moment, if all gravel in northern Calif. was to be removed from our quarry how much of this mountain would be left today. However Napa is surrounded by small mountain (1330 to 4044 ft.) so I guess it is not that big of a deal.

I am aware that today's construction crews are capable of removing the caps off of mountains, leaving flat land that is easier to settle on. However, 1) that only happens to a few mountains at a time, and 2) it's still a mountain, just with a flat top. As far as the game is concerned the tile would remain a mountain. The only things that you might want to add would be the high cost of doing so (although this would be negated as the purpose is to get to all the coal inside), a +1 growth to the tile (easier to settle), and the tile would be automatically polluted (a LOT of runoff into valleys and rivers; in some cases rivers have been destroyed). But the tile itself would remain a mountain tile.