For now, planets are primarily categorized according to the climatic zones on Earth.



The optimum, of course, is represented by Paris and called terran. :-) To the North, the deteriorations are called tundra and arctic, leading to barren. To the South, they are called arid (representing Mediterranean, which in my opinion is definitely more preferable than Paris ;-) and desert, leading to lava. Not clearly related to this scheme are the planet types jungle and ocean.



The main series of planet types is governed by the input of solar energy, i.e. heat. This factor can't be changed to a considerable amount as long as you do not affect the distance to the sun. In reality. Maybe there once will be methods to increase the greenhouse effect to such an extent that a primarily arctic planet will be transformed into a tundra world. But how could you turn a frozen planet directly into a hot desert? Or even into a lava planet?



I would like to have those options more realistic. There should be two distinct paths (naturellement chacun conduit à Paris ;-):



Lava --> desert --> arid --> terran/jungle



Barren --> arctic --> tundra --> terran/ocean



Of course, I can obey these rules by myself, and I do. I just want to have the option to tell the AI to do the same. This should be very easy to implement. Anyone else interested?

You could do this in a mod: in the planetimprovement.xml file, you would adjust the path prerequisites:

($(PlanetTypeArid) or $(PlanetTypeTundra) or $(PlanetTypeArctic) or $(PlanetTypeBarren) or $(PlanetTypeLava)) and $(PlanetStatusColonized)

Here you would remove Tundra, Arctic and Barren for instance.

The only thing about terraforming that bothers me is... Cravers. For a species that completely deplete a planets output with locust - they sure are "ecological" about it. I would love to see planets degrade into barren planets as the locust consumes it (sorta like in the opening movie for Cravers). Just a visual thing... nothing too fancy.

Well even the cravers need to brethe (Occasionally), and a well terraformed world does produce more life....to then be liquified and drunk though their "emergancy induction ports".