[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Chunnel

[Andrew McGuinness <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sean Connor writes:
 > On Fri, Mar 24, 2000 at 05:02:00PM +0100, Reinier Post wrote:
 > > I don't think underwater roads or cities are a good idea, but bridges are
 > > interesting, because they would be vulnerable.  (Bombers must be able to
 > > destroy them, for instance.)
 > 
 > In Civ:CTP, underwater tunnels are not vulnerable to attacks by bombers,
 > but they are subject to being pillaged by sea units.  Moreover, if a 
 > section of tunnel is pillaged, it destroys any land units which happen
 > to be in the tunnel, presumably because the tunnel gets flooded.

I've been thinking about tunnels and ship canals for a while.  I was
thinking of first building a tunnel as a city improvement.  A coastal
city with a tunnel improvement would "potentially" be passable by land 
units on any adjacent square, provided that that square was adjacent
to an equivalent "potential tunnel" square of another city on a coast.

The reasons for this (odd) approach are:
1) Tunnels will need shields (lots of them!) to make - this seems more 
appropriate than just lots of engineer-time
2) Tunnels are effectively limited in length to 2 squares of tunnel.
This is realistic - a tunnel under the Channel or between islands of
Japan is one thing, tunneling under an ocean is something else, and
would require a whole different technology.
3) You need to have a city at each end - I think this is reasonable -
a size 1 city (10K pop) is effectively what you need for the terminal
anyway.
4) To destroy a tunnel you have to get in at the end - either by
sabotage, or conquering the city.  You can't just pillage it from a boat.
5) Tunnels have upkeep cost.

I haven't really come to a conclusion over whether the tunnel itself
automatically exists given the appropriate cities with tunnel
improvement, or whether it still needs to be built with engineers.
Also the exact situation regarding trade. 


As others have commented, reclaiming costal waters as land are another 
possibility - perhaps we have Dutch friends who could enlighten us?


--
Andrew McGuinness     andrew_mcguinness@xxxxxxxxxxx