Different terrain types

[acs121]

Hello,

Recently, I was playing Advance Wars, an old Nintendo turn-by-turn strategy game, where the movement of military units is affected by the properties of the terrain.
Thinking about it, I was telling myself there could be different land / water tile types, each with different properties, that'd make the game more realistic if the player wanted it.
Here's a non-exhaustive list of the terrain features I'd suggest. Of course, you can make the list much shorter or much longer, and change some types for others if needed - it's here mainly here so that readers can visualize better what'd be the intention behind this.


Land (Temperate) :
- Meadows / Cleared land : the most basic OpenTTD land tile. Would be suitable for the construction of infrastructure and would allow for farm fields to be generated. Becomes Forested land if you plant trees on it, and takes the name "Cleared land" if it used to be a Forested land tile where the trees were cut.
- Forested land : Meadow tiles become such tiles whenever more than one tree is present. Gives a small penalty in infrastructure building. As such, towns would grow at a slower pace on these tiles.
- Heaths : Basic tiles where trees don't grow that gives a small penalty to infrastructure building. Towns would also grow at a slower place on these tiles. If infrastructure is build on it, such tiles become Cleared land.
- Rocky terrain : Basic tiles giving an average penalty to infrastructure building.
- Rocky land : Mainly on mountainsides, giving a high penalty to infrastructure building.
- Marshes : Mainly near rivers and their confluence. Towns won't build there, but the Demolition tool, or placing infrastructure can convert it into a Meadow tile at a certain cost.

Arctic variants :
- Meadows : same as in Temperate.
- Steppe : Meadow tiles where trees cannot be planted and fields cannot generate. Gives a small penalty to town development, but not to infrastructure building.
- Taiga : same as Forested land. Becomes Tundra if infrastructure is built on it.
- Tundra : same as Heaths, except roads and rails can be placed on it without converting the terrain, with a small penalty. If the Demolition tool is used on it, it becomes Meadows.
- Rocky terrain : same as in Temperate.
- Rock land : same as in Temperate.

Tropical variants :
- Shortgrass meadows : same as in Temperate and Arctic.
- Tallgrass meadows : same as Tundras. Becomes Shortgrass meadows when demolished.
- Forested land : same as in Temperate. Becomes Shortgrass meadows when demolished.
- Rainforest : High penalty for infrastructure building. Gives a bad reputation in a large area if demolished. Becomes Tallgrass meadows when demolished.
- Wetlands : same as in Temperate, except trees could grow on it.
- Desert : basic tile.
- Rocky terrain : same as in Temperate.
- Rock land : same as in Temperate.




Water (Temperate) :
- Open sea : the most basic OpenTTD water tile.
- Sea shore : Docks can be placed there.
- Shallow waters : Located along some coastlines and on some lakes. Ships cannot enter these waters, and raising this land or building bridges on it is much less costly.
- Reef : Slows down ship movement. As such, they'll avoid those tiles when possible.
- Rivers : basic river tile.
- Waterfall : river tile that cannot be crossed by ships, unless the Demolition tool is used once on it.

Arctic variants :
- Open sea : same as in Temperate.
- Sea shore : same as in Temperate.
- Ice cluster : same as Reefs.
- Icy waters : same as Shallow waters.
- Ice floe : generates far from coastlines. Cannot be crossed by ships, and demolition of these is costly.
- Iceberg : generates near Ice floes. Cannot be crossed by ships, and demolition of these is very costly. Bridges cannot be built over it.
- Rivers : basic river tile.
- Icy river : whenever it snows on a River tile, it becomes icy and it cannot be crossed by ships. Canals and Locks wouldn't be affected by this.

Tropical variants :
- Open sea : same as in Temperate.
- Sea shore : same as in Temperate.
- Reefs : same as in Temperate.
- Coral reef : Cannot be crossed by ships. Removal of this tile would be very costly, and could give you a bad reputation to the towns around.


Because these features are limitating, there could be a setting at world generation that determines if the world will be generated with only basic tiles which don't give penalties to construction, or with such tiles, and another setting that would determine their distribution - the higher the distribution, the less basic tiles there'd be.

The goal of this would be to make the game more realistic if the player wanted it. In real life, railway engineers were sometimes forced to make railway lines winding through the landscape because of the terrain, and towns avoid developing on unsuitable land. In OpenTTD, apart from height variations and presence of trees, terrain doesn't vary very much and cities generally grow in a circle radius around the center instead of having a more "organic" shape. This could bring a challenge to the player as well.

I don't have very much confidence in this suggestion, this being said. Not only because of savegame compatibility, but also because players probably don't have a big interest in it. Nevertheless, I find this idea interesting.

[odisseus]

This idea would have very little impact on the actual gameplay. Basically, there are two types of players: 1) those that try to respect the terrain and even take the effort to decorate the map; and 2) those who raze the terrain in order to build a perfectly straight and level track. The latter style is definitely more common; however, you can discourage it just by raising the terraforming costs — no need to invent any new types of terrain.

Now, it would be nevertheless nice to have a more varied landscape just for aesthetic reasons, if not for the gameplay. However, to get sensible results you'd have to define a set of complex ecosystem rules and, more importantly, rewrite the terrain generator. The current one has problems placing even the limited selection of terrain types that's currently available; for example, it often makes large rivers that empty into tiny lakes.