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Ilkuul
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of Thame (UK)
Mar 2000
time: 05:12
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I don't know whether this topic has been discussed before, but wouldn't it be great if your workers or engineers could transform sea tiles into land?
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.
What do you think?
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Ilkuul
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of Thame (UK)
Mar 2000
time: 05:12
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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...
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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...
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Apology accepted! There's so much stuff here we all have to skim sometimes...
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SerapisIV
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Hartford, CT, USA
Feb 2001
time: 00:12
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Nice idea Ikuul. I especially like the limiting capability. Sid has come out saying that this game is only going up to 2020 or so, which means current technology and fusion energy (feel free to debate that one) I think the filling in of the one square ponds is very realistic while eliminating filling in something like the Great Lakes, or Caspian Sea. 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.
About your canal idea. I'm all for it. And it appears to be an idea that Firaxis will include in some form as the Great Canal is being considered for Wonder status. I'd definitely like that kind of wonder. However, it shouldn't create a canal itself per se, (just as a landlocked city can build Magellan's Voyage), it should be a trade-boosting wonder (faster and more efficient transportation) that also opens up the capability of building canals in places like Suez and Panana specifically, that is once advanced technology (steel+explosives) has been achieved.
[This message has been edited by SerapisIV (edited April 16, 2001).]
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Ilkuul
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of Thame (UK)
Mar 2000
time: 05:12
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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.
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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!).
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It is a very good idea because right now this day the Chinese are filling in the Pacific/South China Sea to build a new Hong Kong Intl. Airport.
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airdrik
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Nampa, ID, USA
Oct 2000
time: 22:12
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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
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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.
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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).
Besides, all reclamation of land is is terraforming of ocean tiles, we're just putting restrictions on it so that you can't terraform the entire world into land (if you had the time and enough engineers).
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SerapisIV
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Hartford, CT, USA
Feb 2001
time: 00:12
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I forgot about the whole mountain leveling thing in Civ, nice point Ikuul. Well, maybe I speak for myself alone, but I'd rather not have the terraforming free-for-all of SMAC, I say this because once land is reclaimed, how do you define that as expanded land versus regular land? Lakes are one thing, ocean is another, at least in my eyes. Maybe if Civ actually allows differences between ocean shelf and deep ocean (did CTP do this?) 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. 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.
With that said, I'm all for eliminating (or limiting) mountain destruction. I don't see many people cutting down the Himilayas, Andes, or Rockys and rolling plains. I forgot all about that bit of surreal technology. (with the note to WV, the Appalachians are rolling hills in comparison to the Rockys)
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Ilkuul
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of Thame (UK)
Mar 2000
time: 05:12
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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.
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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?
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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.
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Ilkuul
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of Thame (UK)
Mar 2000
time: 05:12
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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.
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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).
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16-04-2001 23:45
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