Another big change coming this Holiday season for GalCiv players in v2.2 (Ethnology) is a massive expansion of the number of biomes that make up worlds. Today we’ll take a look at some of the new ones.
First, a recap: The humans of Earth have a specific planet layout that loosely matches the continental layout of Earth (minus Australia – you guys didn’t send the bribe money!!).
Earth. Obviously.
We did, however, add a lot of new special tiles that have a chance to show up. I see several in the screenshot above. But still, Earth is the one that is most like previous versions.
Let’s go to a new planet.
Toria (Oceanic)
For fun, perhaps someone in the screenshots could post a link to a screenshot of what Toria looks like in v2.1 so you can see why we needed to improve this. Because we didn’t just add new biomes, we revisited what biomes can show up on which planets.
On this planet there are several new biomes including:
- Marshlands
- Barrier Reefs
- Lagoons
- Tropical Grasslands
- Shallows
- Gold Field (special)
- Coastal
That’s 7 new biomes just for this one planet type.
Iconia (Barren)
This is another one that it would be cool if someone could link a screenshot to the 2.1 version of the Yor homeworld to see how lame it was.
This world has these new biomes:
- Volcanic (which also shows up on Lava worlds of course)
- Barren
But as you can see, Barren is pretty barren now but not necessarily boring. The big change though is just in terms of controlling what kinds of tiles will show up where.
Drengi (Volcanic)
Now, volcanic worlds have some similarities to a barren world. But also some notable differences.
Here you can see:
- Volcanic
- Lava Flow
- Volcano
- Volcanic Plains
Dratha (Jungle)
Jungle worlds are another one that should look quite different.
So on this planet we see:
- Oasis
- Stony Plains
- Flood Plains (updated)
- Giant Mushrooms (special)
Along with some things that were on other planets.
Refuge (Terrestrial)
Not surprisingly, terrestrial worlds saw the fewest changes.
But fertile plains were added.
We felt that since grasslands are a population buff tile, we needed a more common one that was just for food.
Let us know in the comments if you like this direction. Are there other types of biomes you’d like to see?