Features/Civ

From Sedes Draconis

I've been playing Civilization III, and the changes that were made in the terrain system got me thinking about some of assumptions that I have accepted since playing the original Civilization a decade ago, before I knew any better.

So; the new Alluvial Plain terrain is great. It is the historic birth-place of civilization, and it is great that it is now included as a highly productive terrain.

But.

Grassland, the quintessential food production terrain of Civ, is not really such a productive terrain, and in fact I'm not even sure what exactly Grassland is supposed to be as opposed to Plains.

I think what is meant by Grassland is the kind of well-watered, productive terrain common in the American East, and Europe, among other places.

But.

Such terrain is not naturally occuring. Naturally, such productive terrain is covered in forest. The farmlands of the American East and Europe were created by the mass clearing of forests (it always breaks my heart to think about the fact that just 800 years ago, nearly all of Europe north of the Alps was one, single forest).

Grasslands (being much effectively the same thing as Plains) only naturally exist where there is insufficient rain (or at least seasonally insufficient) to support trees. Which likewise means there's not enough water on a year-round basis to support decent farming.

So here's what I think: ditch "Grasslands", keep Plains at one food production, two with Irrigation. Forests should produce two food, three when cleared. Forest should not clear to any independently existing terrain. That is, the terrain you get when you clear Forest should not exist anywhwere at the start of the game (which is why civilizations start in the Desert Alluvial Plains; well, one reason). I'm not exactly sure what this cleared-forest-terrain should be called, but not Grassland.

Another adjustment that might allow for more accuracy, is to increase the number of food units each citizen uses to allow finer gradations of subsitence, on the other hand it's good to keep the system realtively (or at least, usably) simple.

Notice that I didn't give a food production value for Irrigated cleared-forest-terrain. That's because I can't find any evidence that terrain that has sufficient rainfall ever gets Irrigated. Only dryland gets Irrigated. But I'm not totally sure of this, I just can't find any contradicting evidence. With the exception of rice paddies, of course, but that's really totally different. Actually Civ at the moment totally ignores rice.

Early mass-agriculture civilizations (which is the root of civilizations, as such: mass-agriculture) used irrigation, to be sure. But they irrigated mainly by making adjustments in the dynamics of flooding rivers. And they only irrigated very small areas, only what the river could reach. After a little while the focus of agriculture moved to more hospitable climates, where crops could grown on the water they received from rain. This applies to practically all of Europe, for example. The Greeks didn't irrigate, because they didn't have to, and irrigation is alot of work.

The irrigate-everything-in-sight model of agriculture is really a phenomenon of the American West and it's obsession with transforming the Great American Desert (as not just the Southwest, but also the Great Plains, were once called) into something more tame. And even there, it has not been as succesful as it thinks it has.

So in the game Clearing Forest should be easier, Irrigating should be harder. Though if you built in a system where Irrigation was easy directly next to a River, but got harder further away, that would be even better. What would be really realistic would be if there was a limited amount of Irrigation that could be created from any River, but maybe that would be too complicated.

As water is taken out to the fields by irrigation and then drains back into the river, it picks up minerals from the ground. This often leads to rivers with horribly high mineral contents, as well as leading to the eventually depletion of the soil. I don't how this should be simulated in the game, but I think it's important. Farmland that's fertile without irrigation (that is, has decent rainfall) is really much, much better than irrigated land. (The drainage dynamics are significantly different.)

On the other hand there should be more rivers. Cities are overwhelmingly built on, near and in rivers; and not built away from them. Now that Rivers run between squares (another good idea in Civ3) I think that the more minor Rivers should be shown. Perhaps different classes of River could be distinguished, like the different classes of Ocean in Civ3, with Minor Rivers producing less Trade, and easing Irrigation less, but being easy to ford so that Roads cross them without difficulty even before Engineering.

And speaking of Engineering: you should be able to Irrigate Hills, once you have Engineering (a la Rome). It shouldn't be easy, but it should be possible.

It's another good, accurate idea that, with Electricity, you can irrigate anywhere, or near enough. On the other hand, such Irrigation is based on largely non-renewable (or rather, very slowly renewing) underground resevoirs which are eventually depleted, something to think about perhaps.

The Strategic and Luxury Resources are another awesome new idea in Civ3, however I have some problems with how they (and the normal Bonus Resources) work, too.

Currently Resources are not effected by changing the terrain they're on. Which is fine for some Resources, clearing the Forest over a Uranium deposit should not deplete the Uranium, and Mining Iron, Oil, etc. should, if anything, increase their usefulness.

But.

If you clear cut a Silk-producing Forest, how does it still produce Silk? Likewise Game, Rubber, Furs, Spices and Dyes in Forest or Jungle squares. It would be possible to turn a patch of Silk-producing Forest into a Silk plantation of mulberry trees, but that's not going to also convey all the benefits of having cleared the Forest.

Also Game or Ivory in Plains squares maybe should disappear in the presence of Irrigation or Railroad. But Wine, again, should be helped by Irrigation.

Another big problem is the Iron resource. One of the main reason that Iron is so useful, is that it's everywhere. In the Bronze Age, civilizations had to trade over large distances to obtain the copper and tin needed for bronze, but Iron is everywhere. I'm not sure it should be a strategic resource, but if it is it should be much more common, and not one of the most likely resources to be depleted, as it currently is.

Instead Iron and Saltpeter are the only two resources I've ever had deplete and disappear on me in a game, when they're exactly the two that shouldn't.

I think an overall better way of working traded Resources, is that they should be more common, but not infinitely supply a civilization from one occurence, if it could be made to work. It would be complicated to calculate, but it would be great if a resource only supplied so many cities, and then you needed another resource. But there also was another, because there were more resources total.

So those are my thoughts on improvements that could be made on the Terrain system in Civ3. A good reference might be Civilizations by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, which addresses primarily the relationship between cultures and their environment (and it's got a felicitous title!). On the problems of irrigation, I recommend Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner.