Lords of Ether (20th Anniversary Edition) Planetary Terrain

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1. Creating a Nation
2. Creating a Transtellar
3. Creating a Hero
4. Advancement
5. Armies
6. Air Forces
7. Navies
8. Agents
9. Weapons of Mass Destruction
10. Fortifications
11. Mages
12. Types of Magic
13. Production
14. Trade
15. Operations & Logistics
16. Planetary Terrain
17. Reference Tables

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Introduction

This is a way to loosely represent your nation's geography and handily quantify where things are when regional events occur. Your national infrastructure and population has to be able to fit inside your terrain regions and you also need to assign how much of your infrastructure is in each one. This will also apply to various military formations and garrisons.

A nation gets one terrain region by default and additional ones for every 10 housed population units. Also you get one terrain point for every 5 SP spent on population units to spend on modifying terrain. If you so desire you can spend 2 terrain points to get another terrain region.

Population, Industry and Ether must be assigned to regions. Wealth and Research in a given area are proportional to the population. For Transtellars, they only receive terrain in zones of elevated risk (Calculated Risk or Danger Zone) and the terrain points are based off of the Members in those zones. If you're a Space Dweller, none of this applies to you. You live in space. It's very same-y.

Geography

You can choose a theme for your nation's geography:

• Undeveloped: Vast and empty. You have double the number of terrain regions. Total Population and Infrastructure in each is reduced by half.
  
• Bread Basket: Total Population is x2. Difficult or Very Difficult terrain costs double.
  
• Average: Ho hum.
  
• Overdeveloped: You have half the number of terrain regions. Base Population and Industry are doubled.
  

By default a terrain region is open fields, savannah or gentle rolling hills and can house 15 Population and 40 Industry/Ether. Difficult terrain is a region with some intervening major feature such as a large river, bog, forests and the like. Very difficult terrain is mountainous or wholly composed of jagged cliffs, mountains, marshes, jungles or swamps. Very difficult terrain also reflects islands surrounded by oceans or lakes, or widespread dense urban development.

For each terrain you can spend points to modify it in the following ways. It should go without saying, but you cannot take any trait more than once and you cannot take more than one trait in a given category (population, industry, difficulty).

• Moderately Populated - +25 population - 1 Point
  
• Densely Populated - +50 Population - 2 Points
  
• Industrialized - +25 industry/ether - 1 Point
  
• Heavily Industrialized - +40 industry/ether - 2 Points
  
• Difficult Terrain - Adds 1 to the defensive value of a particular region. It costs (1 + N) Points where N is the number of terrain points invested in population and infrastructure.
  
• Very Difficult Terrain - Adds 2 to the defensive value of a particular region. It costs (2 + 2N) Points where N is the number of terrain points invested in population and infrastructure.
  

Difficult terrain reflects a major feature such as a forest, large river that divides the area. Very difficult terrain reflects mountains, islands, rocky cliffs, dense jungles and also horizon-spanning high rise cityscapes. Difficult terrain reduces mobility of forces within the region (including yours) and adds a bonus to units in defensive positions.

Advantages

Nations that have one of the Creature Advantages (Magical Wildlife, Mystic Haven, or Terra Incognita Magica) gain defensive advantages. Magical Wildlife increases the defensive value of Very Difficult to 3. Mystic Haven increases Very Difficult to 4. TIM increases the value of Difficult terrain to 2 and Very Difficult terrain to 4.

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