This isn't as wild as it sounds - ask any Dutch person! Around one third of the Netherlands has been reclaimed from the sea.

This could be implemented in Civ3 in a variety of ways, ranging from quite simple to quite complex:

The simplest would be to allow workers/engineers to turn a single fully landlocked sea tile (i.e., single-tile lake or lagoon) into land (maybe as an extension of the 'I' command - the reverse of irrigation!).

Extending it a bit further, you could maybe transform more than a single landlocked sea tile - say up to a maximum of 3 or 4 adjacent tiles. Any body of water larger than that would be regarded as an inland sea, and could not be terraformed.

The most complex setup would be to allow workers/engineers to build dikes across narrow stretches of sea (as in real life). A dike could probably not extend further than a single tile-width. Then the water enclosed by the dike could be terraformed into land (if not more than 3 or 4 adjacent tiles). The fun side to this would of course be that the dikes would be vulnerable to attack during war - resulting in inundation of the reclaimed land by the sea. They could also have a maintenance cost, which, if not met, would result in the collapse of the dike and flooding of the reclaimed land. If there were a city on that land, it would either be destroyed or suffer severe damage (destruction of improvements and population loss) - and the damage would continue to accumulate until the dike was repaired.

I don't know whether this level of complexity with dikes would be practicable, but it certainly should be possible to allow one or other of the simpler terraforming options I suggested above.

And if this is modelled on the Dutch historical example, it would not be an engineer transform, as engineers only appear later in the game - whereas the Dutch have been building dikes from very early times. That's why I suggested earlier that it might simply be treated as 'reverse irrigation', so it can be done by workers in the earlier stages of the game. Therefore a sea tile could go through 3 sets of 'irrigation': initial reclamation as land (becoming plains?), normal irrigation, then further irrigation to become farmland.

Furthermore, some "city" improvements would only be accessible if the terrain around it supported that type of city improvement. For instance, a dam could be constructed to provide more energy to the city (providing more shields). That dam could be destroyed by either spies or military action, causing the resulting flood to wash out some of the cities down stream...

quote: Originally posted by vgriph on 04-16-2001 04:10 PM I also think that the workers should be able to build canals (for ships)... In Civ and Civ II I always build a City on a spot between to sees to be able to take that shortcut, but those places isn’t always very well suited for Cities.

Yes, I do the same, and have the same problem! I like the idea of canals as well, and your suggestions about prerequisites and charges for use.

quote: Originally posted by airdrik on 04-16-2001 04:36 PM Dikes would be more like ocean tile imps that have a certain amount of hp's, allow the reclamation of land behind it (up to 4 tiles worth), act as land squares, and can be destroyed by enemy units. Canals work generally the same way, except that you can't reclaim land behind them, and they act as both land and sea squares...

Yes, I like that way of looking at it. My only disagreement would be about dikes "allowing" reclamation of land behind them, if by this you mean that you can't reclaim land without a dike. There I would disagree - I would rather say you can reclaim any inland body of water up to 4 tiles in extent; but dikes, being land tiles, would "allow" that to happen simply by cutting off the inland water tiles from the rest of the ocean. But maybe that's what you meant...

(Allowing enemy units to destroy a dike - which would simply be an 'improved' terrain tile - raises implications about other 'improved' terrain, e.g. forts: they should then also have HP and be able to be destroyed... but that's a different topic!)

quote: Originally posted by Roman: Sorry Ilkuul...

Apology accepted! There's so much stuff here we all have to skim sometimes...

quote: airdrik: Another way of putting is that a dike acts as a land square when calculating if you can reclaim a certain area of land.

Right, then we agree!

quote: SerapisIV: I think that technology for this should be available with steel technology, not explosives (if following CivII model) as steam shovels would then be available technologically.

This would not agree with historical precedent, e.g. the Netherlands: they were building dikes long before steam shovels were available! (See my earlier post.) I'd rather have dike building / land reclamation available from a much earlier stage, maybe Masonry, or at the latest Construction.

quote: Originally posted by SerapisIV on 04-16-2001 07:21 PM The Netherlands land expansion also wouldn't be allowed under your surrounded mini-pond/one-square ocean limitation, it is just part of the European coast.

Well, we seem to be a little at cross-purposes here. My point in referring to the Netherlands was not as an example of what might actually happen on a civ real-world map: I agree it would be far too small an area. The point was just that they provide a historical example of actual land reclamation that has been going on for 100's of years.

Also, you speak of my "one-square ocean limitation", but in my original post that was just the first and simplest option I envisaged; the second option, which a number of posters have referred to, was to allow a maximum area of 3 or 4 adjacent inland ocean tiles to be reclaimed. This, I think, would make reclamation more attractive in the game; but not being any kind of engineer, I would have to bow to superior knowledge if experts tell me that kind of area could not be reclaimed without sophisticated modern machinery.

How about a compromise? Single landlocked ocean tiles can be reclaimed after the discovery of Masonry (or Construction) - with the possibility of a dike being built to enclose a single ocean tile, as per previous discussion. Then after the discovery of Steel, larger areas can be reclaimed (with the possibility of increased unhappiness in neighbouring cities due to environmental concerns!).

quote: Okay, try the Great Lakes then, wanna fill in Lake Ontario (and thats only 2-3 tiles)? Filling in 4 tiles of land on a Civ-sized map is too much a stretch of near-future technology to be feasible. It's fine for SMAC, not for CivIII

Actually it all depends on how big your map is.

quote: think about it, from the discovery of Explosives in Civ2 you're able to transform mountains into hills - and how often do we see that happen in real life? Technically possible, but prohibitively expensive.

Exactly. If you say no to reclaiming land from the ocean, then you have to say no to terraforming because there has been just as much (if not more) reclaiming of land from the ocean than there ever has been terraforming of land (which amounts to about none).

quote: Originally posted by Ilkuul on 04-17-2001 03:41 AM Sounds like people don't want too much realism here, Serapis! After all, think about it, from the discovery of Explosives in Civ2 you're able to transform mountains into hills - and how often do we see that happen in real life? Technically possible, but prohibitively expensive. Yet I've done it several times in civ games. Maybe land-reclamation would be another area where we'd be happy to accept a little 'unrealism' in exchange for more fun playing...

They do it all the time in West Virginia, even the state gov is happy about it. There are more hills there than people.

If you're gonna simulate an earth history (even as abstracted as Civ) there must be some immovable object in the way of expansion, The ocean has always been that. It is either a barrier (the Atlantic, pre-1492, that is by frequent visit, ignoring Vikings, etc) or its your livelihood, the Vikings, Phoenicians, British.

quote: Originally posted by SerapisIV on 04-17-2001 01:57 PM I definitely don't want the chance to fill in the Marianas trench... If you're gonna simulate an earth history (even as abstracted as Civ) there must be some immovable object in the way of expansion, The ocean has always been that.

Like Roman, I think you've maybe not read my original proposal carefully enough, Serapis. To quote my reply to him: "I'm not saying we should be able to terraform all sea tiles - only those mostly surrounded by land, and only up to a certain maximum area (perhaps 3 or 4 tiles). It should definitely not be possible to start building your land out into the sea along a normal sea-coast! Dikes, if allowed, should only be able to bridge the narrowest of gaps, i.e. a single tile. To my mind, this would place acceptable limitations on how much sea you can turn into land." So, to answer your objection, the ocean would still very much be an "immovable object in the way of expansion". It would only be a few landlocked tiles that could be reclaimed - which IMO models nicely what is possible in real life.

quote: ...how do you define expanded land versus regular land?

This is a good point. In some way the game would have to retain the information that the reclaimed land was originally ocean, so that when dikes are destroyed or collapse through lack of maintenance, it knows which tiles must now become sea again. (That's assuming dikes: if there are no dikes, the problem wouldn't arise - once land is reclaimed from the sea it remains land for the rest of the game...) Perhaps land reclamation could be encoded as a sea-tile improvement, so that destruction of an adjacent dike - or just simply finding itself next to a sea tile - would trigger destruction of that improvement, causing the tile to revert to sea.

quote: Originally posted by airdrik on 04-17-2001 05:28 PM If you stop the reclamation process after finishing at least 1 tile, but before completing the reclamation, then tiles are changed back to ocean squares at a rate of 1/turn, likewise if a dike touching a reclaimed square is destroyed.

Yes, that seems a good way of formalising it. I like your gradation between workers, engineers, and engineers + steel. I also like the idea of reclaimed tiles reverting to ocean at 1/turn if adjacent ocean tiles are not also reclaimed (up to the maximum) - I assume that's what you meant.

Where I would disagree, tho', is that there would also be this gradual change when a dike is destroyed. If, as in most cases, the dike separates the reclaimed land from the open sea, then inundation would be virtually instantaneous! So destruction of a dike, IMO, should be a special case causing all adjacent and linked reclaimed tiles to revert immediately to ocean (with catastrophic effects on any city built on the reclaimed land).

Sorry to have to say this, but I can see you haven't got a clue of what it is like to build a polder. That's how we call our reclaimed pieces of land, a polder. As far as I know anglo, french, german and danish use the same word, allthough I get the feeling here that none of you seem to know it. In dutch we have a word for the whole proces of reclaiming land: building dikes, digging canals, building mills/pumping stations, namely inpolderen, in anglo that would be something like to polder in (sounds funny to me).

The reclaimation of land, as being spoken of here, should only be possible on a new type of tile, shallows, lands which are being flooded and left by tidal waters. Because shallow coastal lands and waters, that's what the Netherlands are all about. And Florida, and the northern part of Germany, Poland, Holland in Lincolnshire, Flanders in België, the delta's of the Nile, Missisippi and etc.. There are even parts on the french coast where Dutch in the mid 18th century, on invitation by the french king, have poldered shallows in. You can't reclaim lake Tahoe, Windermere, the Chiemsee, lake Väner or Väter (Sweden) as lands because there not shallow. The Wash or parts of the mouth of the Severn or huge parts of the coastal waters from Virginia, the Carolina's, Georgia. If Kape Hatteras had lain in the NL, it would have had polders lying right behind it, that's for sure. What a waist of silt !! (to say this must be a typical dutch "reflex" ).

Coming to the game.
It should only possible to build polders on shallows, even if this means that a tile is only on one side adjacent to land, or not adjacent to land (though I don't think a situation like that, if all this is going to be possible, won't occur in the game).
To keep things simple we should only have to two things:

1. use the command R (=reclaim land) (I would like to say P for polder but I don't think Pillaging is going to be changed in R = ransack). That would include all the work on infrastructure like dikes, and canals and mills or pumpingstations.
   
2. use the command I (though this mean seem a contradictio in terminus) to cultivate the land, we don't want to live in a mudpool, do we ?!.
   

What you say about not being able to reclaim deep lakes does put a different complexion on the whole issue, and reveals a serious weakness in my original proposal. Obviously to be true to life we would have to have a new terrain type, "shallows", as you suggest. And in fact this would neatly solve another problem we were discussing above, i.e. how the game is to 'remember' that certain land tiles were originally ocean. This won't arise if they are a completely different terrain type that can have the characteristics either of sea (when not improved) or of land when improved, i.e. reclaimed.

Then, to build on your proposals, all reclaimed shallows would have to have a maintenance cost attached (maybe shared between the nearest cities?); if this is not met, they would progressively revert to unreclaimed shallows, as Airdrik proposed earlier. Also, I feel it would add interest to the game if dikes could at least be assumed to exist in polder tiles adjacent to the ocean, and if they had a certain number of hit points - so that they could be destroyed in war time (either by attackers or defenders! - as I believe the Dutch blew up their own dikes in the early years of WW2 to inhibit a German land invasion...). This would result in immediate flooding of all adjacent polder tiles. What do you think?

One disadvantage of having a new terrain type is that it would probably be a lot less likely to be included in Civ3 at this stage - whereas simply allowing ocean tiles to be changed to land under certain conditions seems a lot more feasible; but then I'm no programmer, so I may be wrong about that! But I like the idea a lot, I think it would be a significant improvement on my original proposal.

quote: Originally posted by Vrank Prins on 04-18-2001 01:01 PM use the command R (=reclaim land) (I would like to say P for polder but I don't think Pillaging is going to be changed in R = ransack). That would include all the work on infrastructure like dikes, and canals and mills or pumpingstations.

There's a small problem with using R - i.e., (build) Road or Railroad! (At least in Civ2.) How about D (= drain shallows)?

quote: Originally posted by Ilkuul on 04-18-2001 03:25 PM There's a small problem with using R - i.e., (build) Road or Railroad! (At least in Civ2.) How about D (= drain shallows)?

And yo would tell it to dispand the Worker?

I think that the game is case sensitive, but I don't what commands that use both upper and lower case. I think P but not R, but as dispand is a UPPER D you might use a lower D for drain.

quote: Originally posted by Roman on 04-18-2001 07:36 PM YES! I think more terrain differention would be very helpful indeed.

So from the suggestions on this thread, we'd be looking for two completely new terrain types in Civ3, "shallows" (= sea or lakes that can be reclaimed as land), and ?"highlands" (for want of a better term, = land higher than hills but lower than full-scale mountains).

Any ideas on how easy or difficult it might be to implement such modifications at this stage of development - or are we indulging in wishful thinking here?

quote: Originally posted by Ilkuul on 04-18-2001 02:45 PM as I believe the Dutch blew up their own dikes in the early years of WW2 to inhibit a German land invasion...

quote: Originally posted by Ilkuul on 04-18-2001 02:45 PM Then, to Also, I feel it would add interest to the game if dikes could at least be assumed to exist in polder tiles adjacent to the ocean, and if they had a certain number of hit points - so that they could be destroyed in war time (either by attackers or defenders! ..... ..... This would result in immediate flooding of all adjacent polder tiles.

You’ve made a very good point there.

Pillaging or attacking a polder would mean cutting the dykes and flooding the polder. It should be possible to do this from adjacent tiles if the dykes are not properly defended. That would mean that, in that situation, a choise is given, in a the rolldown menu or a screen which pops up, to either pillage the square you’re in or pillage the dykes in the adjacent square. A dyke should give a defense bonus.
From advanced flight on it should be possible to bomb them*. The english have done so during their campaign in our country late 1944 with quite some effect, the germans were just “drowned out” there. (*though in CIV it is not yet possible to attack a specific infrastructural tile-improvement).

Pillaging shouldn’t turn a polder immediately into it’s predecessor, a shallow. even if the dykes are repaired instantly, that is within 2 or 3 terms it should mean loss of yield for about five terms (usually it takes quite some time for flooded polders to recover and get back to their normal production).
Second leaving the dykes damaged should have a deteriorating* effect, first complete loss of yield, second loss of infrastructure and at last the turning of the tile into its old status (*deterioration of “left” improvements on tiles, which has been discused before in other threaths, is not yet a feature of CIV).

If a unit has to stay over between terms on a shallow tile it should mean loosing hitpoints.

quote: Originally posted by Vrank Prins on 04-19-2001 07:25 AM Pillaging or attacking a polder would mean cutting the dykes and flooding the polder. It should be possible to do this from adjacent tiles if the dykes are not properly defended. That would mean that, in that situation, a choise is given, in a the rolldown menu or a screen which pops up, to either pillage the square you’re in or pillage the dykes in the adjacent square.

I like your suggestions in the previous post. My one question, tho', is why you speak of "adjacent tiles" in the above quote? Are you assuming that the dike is sort of the 'edge' of an adjacent ocean tile? I had rather envisaged them as a special kind of polder tile, i.e. one that adjoins the ocean. By pillaging that tile you would therefore be pillaging the dike.

But that's a detail. I fully agree with your main point, that dikes should have hit points, be able to be attacked/pillaged and destroyed - and also that in Civ3 it certainly be possible to bomb not only dikes, but also forts, mines, bridges, and other tile improvements outside the city.