Terrain

Core characteristics:

• • Elevation

  • Precipitation

  • Flatness (Synonyms: unevenness, roughness, ruggedness)

  • River

Resource locations:

• • Oil

  • Coal

  • Iron

  • Stone

  • etc

Note that whilst all resource sites are determined at the start of game, they are only available to players with a particular tech level. For example, there might be Oil Resource Location Level 1 – 10.

Core characteristic determine base land usage:

• • Barren

  • Grassland

  • Shrubland

  • Woodland

  • Rainforest

  • Marshland

Civ II terrain types:

• • Desert

  • Forest

  • Glacier

  • Grassland

  • Hills

  • Jungle

  • Mountains

  • Ocean

  • Plains

  • Swamp

  • Tundra

Land usage and core characteristics determine tile name and icon:

• • High elevation + low flatness → Mountain

  • High elevation + high flatness → Mountain plateau

  • Low elevation + high precipitation + high flatness → Marsh

  • Elevation below sea level → Ocean

Infrastructure takes a land usage:

• • Housing

  • Farms

  • Managed woodland

No two tiles are alike to begin with as they have different values of elevation, rainfall and flatness.

What happens when you destroy infrastructure, what does the land usage revert to? Derelict land usage

Key challenges

Managing interaction between resource sites and other land usage

Option 1

The infrastructure built on resource sites does not consume any land usage

Option 2

When player selects to build on a resource site, a existing land-use is randomly assigned and the player is given the option of clearing that land use. (Even if they decline, the association is still kept in the game data.)

Option 3

Maintain a dataset per tile of all locations, and track land use per location.

Other challenges

Derelict land usage should revert to the base land usage after a period of time. For example, woodland regrows.

Non-resource site infrastructure is always first-built on derelict land usage, then over the base land usage

What happens to the population when residential infrastructure is destroyed? The population moves to another tile, or residential infrastructure is automatically constructed in future turns.

Attacks limited to a particular terrain type

Spell where plants hold or strangle the enemy wouldn't work on sea, desert or mountain tiles

Spell that causes an avalanche only works on snowy mountains

Spell that causes a landslide only works on hills and bare mountains

Spell that causes a volcano to erupt only works on volcano tiles

Spell that causes a tsunami only works on ocean tiles

Spell that causes a sandstorm only works on desert tiles

Spell that causes a crevasse to open only works on glacier tiles

etc

Terrain type affecting chance to hit

e.g. harder to hit in dense vegetation

Terrain type affecting damage done

e.g. an artillery attack against a tile will a base may be on-target, but the damage is limited