water tiles with more diversity

[Can-ned_Food]

I'm developing a map … not that anybody likes my maps anyway … which will have a land versus sea theme.

To do so, I need to make some more diverse water tiles, especially the deep ocean — Wo* — ones. The flatness of deep ocean tiles is rather restrictive for what I could do, but I'm thinking of things like

• kelp forests
• hot vents
• whirlpools — probably with [event]s used to move them around
• sunken ships
• huge empty shell of a dead, ancient clam-god

Does anyone have any more ideas? Any suggestions on what to do with the movetypes?

Things like underwater caves would probably only be good for aesthetics.

[The_Gnat]

Does anyone have any more ideas? Any suggestions on what to do with the movetypes?

I would say probably most movement types would struggle equally on the various water terrains. What you could do is base each new terrain off of an old terrain so that it gives out defenses equivalent to the units current defenses. For example Kelp Forests might be a type of 'fungus' terrain and therefore give out the same defenses as fungus.

Whirlpools, Sunken Ships, and other underwater terrains the 'land' dwelling creatures would probably be unable to enter and gain no advantage from the obstacles that lie well below the surface. These terrains could then give the same defenses as Deep Water.

For Hot Vents or Jagged rocks you could impact automatic damage to units that spend there time on those terrains.

Also some other terrain ideas could be:

- Swamp Forest (gives good defense to units with either water movement or forest movement)
- Rock pools (potentially water tiles could be found at the tops of mountains or in forests allowing 'water' units to have good terrain there)
- Algae fields (healing +4 HP or something? Potentially it could give equivalent defence as Shallow Water does)
- Water Fall (really low defenses like 10% on the 'falls' for everyone because it is so dangerous)
- Currents (you could have some terrains, that looks the same as other hexes of shallow water, but when you move through it has almost no Movement cost, these terrains would allow land units to move quickly in the water if they follow the currents.)
- Cliffs in the middle of the ocean would also be fun

Things like underwater caves would probably only be good for aesthetics.

True, but they would also be very cool Though potentially you could have underwater caves always chaotic time of day, that would be an interesting addition.

I would actually recommend some things that are only used for aesthetics. For example wrecks, rock formations, caves, beaches, islands, bridges, springs, and dried out riverbeds would all be very interesting to look at.

Also most water maps just have great large open expanses of water which is boring so if you throw in some different water depths, rocks, and coral reefs it would make it look more interesting.