[Freeciv-Dev] Idea/suggestion: Different heights

["Adolf J. Winterer" <Adolf.J.Winterer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Idea/Suggestion:
Terrains can have real height characteristics.

Description:
Currently the map (world) of FreeCiv is flat. OK,
with different terrain types (grassland, desert,
forrest, hills), but these characteristics are
only "painted" on tiles and internally accounted for
in certain aspects (e.g. speed of movement of units).
With "real" heights quite new possibilities would
enter the game. The line of sight matters, you could
hide troups behind a hill or behind a forrest or build
your cities on the flat top of a hill (makes for better
defense). Hopefully the locations where cities are
built will be more diverse with that feature. Mountains
could be natural "buffers" between cities of different
players/nations.

Realistic aspect:
Brings the world of FreeCiv a lot closer to the
real world. It is no secret that your life can
be quite hard if you fight uphill. Or that around a
corner there can wait a big surprise.

How to do it:
Each tile needs a new property, the height above the
sea. Painting of the map to the screen should not be
much more difficult, because the isometric projection
of the map is quite good for this kind of display.
It might be good to rotate the map/view in 90 degrees
steps to view things that are behind hills (a function
that is well known to SimCity players).