Anyway, I found this great forum and read all about Civ 3, so after spending an hour searching without success, I decided to post my idea for Civ 3 as a new post instead. Sorry if this has already been discussed, but all I found were topics about *crossing* rivers and movement of *ships* along rivers.

What I want to point out is the massive importance rivers had for movement of people, during most part of history. Railroads were the first means of transportation that was faster than water. Now, in Civ 2, rivers count as roads when you move along them, but you have to spend a whole movement point to enter the river tile. This means you in most cases will build a road beside the river and walk along this instead. And because you can't build roads in river tiles before Bridge building, you will see rivers more like obstacles than fast ways of transpaortation for most of the time.

So I have some simple suggestions for Civ 3.

1) Make river movement for ground units faster than road movement. I suggest 1/6 movement point. Looking at history, rivers were *always* used whenever available.
2) Make it possible to build roads into river tiles before bridge building. However, before bridge building, crossing a river will always cost 1 movement point even if there is a road in the tile.

This would lead to rivers having an important strategic importance, just like they had in real life.

What do you think?

On the other hand, if you wanted a unit, you could make it so certain boats could travel up rivers... you wouldremove the ground bonus, and normal sea units could ferry troops up and down the river. The downside would be your boats would be open to attack from the shore, and would kind of be trapped if they blockaded the river mouth.

quote: Originally posted by Hurricane on 05-08-2001 08:37 AM 1) Make river movement for ground units faster than road movement. I suggest 1/6 movement point. Looking at history, rivers were *always* used whenever available.

Perhaps it is enough to simply tweak the rule-files, once your personal copy of Civ-3 is installed?

quote: 2) Make it possible to build roads into river tiles before bridge building. However, before bridge building, crossing a river will always cost 1 movement point even if there is a road in the tile.

quote: Originally posted by Mokael on 05-08-2001 01:32 PM an interesting point. but I have a slightly different approach. Instead of building a "river boat", or doing all that complicated road/bridge-bidling thing, there should be a much simpler way. For example -- Settler unit (or is it now Laborer?) should have ability to construct a small port/station on a river tile, that would allow your units to enter that tile without losing a movement point.

That would be identical to a bridge.

The note about rivers shifting to tile edge is an interesting one. If the screenshot is accurate then it looks like they are more interested in the combat and border effects of rivers than movement. Unfortunately if the screenshot is accurate it looks like irrigation results in ugly squiggles rather than a fertile landscape look

Anyway, I still think my idea is vaild. But I see some problems. Take the screenshot as an example, and look at the part of the river running from Washington to the lake (between the forest and the lake). Now, a unit that wants to move from Washington to the forest tile two hexes south of the city can take two ways: river or road. Looking at history, an army would have taken the river route. Thats 4 steps. The road is 2 steps. I would say my 1/6 movement point for rivers (road 1/3) is valid.

However I think it's importatnt to have different types of rivers... (this has been mentioned before, so thanks to whoever it was that thought it up...)

You have small rivers, that are crossable without bridges at fords where the river is relatively shallow (although with a big movement penalty). River transport down this is still good though, and probably better than roads. Bridges over these get rid of the movement penalty, and connect up roads on either side of the river.

There should be lots more small rivers than currentlty in Civ2, just look at any map and from just about every group of hills, in every plain, there's a small river.

These rivers flow until enough join up to become big rivers, these are uncrossable by conventional units (although spies should be able to swim them with a risk of dying?). Also Ships can sail up these rivers up until the point where they become small rivers (so acting as ferries if you want).

To build big bridges accross big rivers you need engineering, not just bridge building.

(canals woudl be a good idea too, effectively you should be able to turn small rivers into big rivers, and perhaps build big rivers from nothing (at great expense...., you'd need explosives for that???)