Make it like the earth so, if you travel to the top of the map you teleport to the bottom and vice versa

Hmm...
So if I travel north to the North Pole and keep going in that direction, I'll suddenly appear in Antarctica? :p No, sorry, I know what you mean, and it's a pretty good idea, although it would make it more complicated and more intensive for the CPU.

first, that's not the way the real world works, second, just about every game on the planet plays on a cylinder, i say no, for the sake of gameplay

I don't like this idea, I like the flat world, pesonally.

Black_Hole9: the current civ3 map IS a globe, you weirdo :-)

no, it's a cylinder, what he's saying (i think) is if there was a row like this

1234567890

with each # representing tile, if i sailed nirth from 2 i would land on 7

Well, it would be good for Cold War scenarios so you could send air strikes over the North Pole, and it would be better than the current y-axis wrap that is available with C3C.

ohhhh.....air strikes, ahven't thought of that, now THAT would make the game interesting

my comment on bieng a badidea still stands thoguh

The current flat maps are fine by me.

How about a pole square at the top and bottom. Entering the pole square enables you to move to any square adjacent to the pole square. For obvious reasons no city could be built on the pole square, or the top/bottom row of squares.

------------------------------------ <---- north pole
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz <---- squares on the top row.

in this example, the pole square is represented by the dashes.
you could move from 'w' to the pole square and out to any other top row square.

Of course, current flat maps are fine with me, also.

playshogi's idea makes most sence to me

Except that nobody really uses the poles as a fast way to get from one part of the world to another. The only exception is submarines, which might travel under the arctic ice... travel across/through artic ice by sea or land units, or overland across antarctica by land units, is just too difficult for it to make sense to have the poles be shortcuts. I like the current system where the top and bottom of the map is impassable, it seems more realistic to me.

And before someone reminds me that airplanes do fly great circle routes and sometimes thus take advantage of shortcuts across the arctic, just remember how airplane movement works in the game. With instant re-basing rather than movement from tile to tile, airplane movement is another whole story, and the effects of the poles don't really apply to planes.

Maybe that for the very top two rows of the map , you can move a unit anywhere in the rest of the top two rows for one movement point , then the third row for three movement points , and from then on , normal movement . Also applies to the bottom .

I think a spherical map should be included as an option. People can play on Flat, Cylindrical, toroidal or spherical maps.

On a spherical map the tiles can be a combination of pentagons and hexagons. It is possible to tessalate this pattern on a sphere.

It would be much more interesting IMO. We really don't need another board game played on a computer.

I like the pole square idea. That really sounds solid. It's far easier to program and could be a simple option. I'd probably play with that setting by default.

I would be a huge fan or spherical maps. Just think - melting ice caps due to global warming would actually open up more trade routes!

Anyway, the map would actually have to be a sphere of hexagons and we would abandon the isometric view of the world in exchange for a real 3D view. You would not be able to represent a sphere on a flat map - our grid would have to follow lines like this, which would be extremely complicated:

It's not possible to create a normal 3D sphere from hexagons alone. To get curvature, you need to add pentagons. Which will create new problems when you want to see those parts of the sphere on the screen.

Basically, there are three ways to go.

[1] Abandon the tile system altogether and use coordinates instead (easy but very new)
[2] Use local tiles that are created dynamically (closer to Civ3)
[3] Create an abnormal sphere from hexagons only (fun, but you can't have an Earth map)

Personally I vote for option A. Lose the grid. No city grows in a grid anyway. Everything follows landforms and roads.

I don't like the pole square idea.
there are much more sensible ways to do it.

first off: The normal setup is a cylynder, with no caps on the ends, the pole square works as an end cap but why make it just one square? why not just build on caps, they don't need to be circular (hard to divide into tiles) and they don't need to be a seperate section of map that you jump to, if you made them conical just having the cylynedr shrink down in the far north and far south, something like this:

......1
....101
..10001
1000001
1000001
1000001
1000001
..10001
....101
......1

with the ones being connected horizontally to eachother
and remember since it's symetric you can very easily reorient the map so that like in civ 3 you never jump from one side to the other but just move smoothly through.

of course there's no real reason to try to keep a cylyndrical base

if you want to kep a square grid you could play on a cube, it's a lot closer to a sphere than an open cylynder, either play with the poles as the centers of top and bottom squares or with the cube balanced on a point so the civ map would be like this

..............1............1............1
.............11..........11..........11
............101........101........101
...........1001......1001......1001
..........10001....10001....10001
.........100001..100001..100001
........100000110000011000001
.......1000000100000010000001
......1100000110000011000001
.....1010000101000010100001
....1001000100100010010001
...1000100100010010001001
..1000010100001010000101
.1000001100000110000011
1000000100000010000001
.100000110000011000001
..100001..100001..100001
...10001....10001....10001
....1001......1001......1001
.....101........101........101
......11..........11..........11
.......1............1............1

with the '1' in this case reprisenting the edges of the larger squares and the '0' reprisenting the tiles, those diamonds would be square of course

the tiles near the corners will be a little strange only having seven tiles surronding them insted of eight like all the others
so your city radius will look like this:

..11
111
11011
11111
..111


although you could go through the trouble of building a various sized geodesics of hex and pentagons directly why not bulid something out of equlaterial triangles and, it's easy to do, map hex's onto them, and you'll end up with different shaped tiles right at the corners depending how many of the uber tiler meet there.

if you made a tetrahedron:

..............1
.............11
............101
...........1001
..........10001
.........100001
........1000001
.......11111111
......110000011
.....1010000101
....10010001001
...100010010001
..1000010100001
.10000011000001
111111111111111

you'd end up with triangles at each corner,

a dodecahedron:

..............1............1............1
.............11..........11..........11
............101........101........101
...........1001......1001......1001
..........10001....10001....10001
.........100001..100001..100001
........100000110000011000001
.......1111111111111111111111
......1100000110000011000001
.....1010000101000010100001
....1001000100100010010001
...1000100100010010001001
..1000010100001010000101
.1000001100000110000011
1111111111111111111111
.100000110000011000001
..100001..100001..100001
...10001....10001....10001
....1001......1001......1001
.....101........101........101
......11..........11..........11
.......1............1............1

would give triangle tiles at the poles, pentagons at the other corners and hexigons everywhere else.

but personally I prefer the icosahedron 20 sided and only needs hex and pentagon tiles, and is a much closer approximation of a sphere


and from the orrigional civ 4 ideas thread:
3d world map (http://www.globalshareware.com/Home-Education/Teaching-Tools/3D-World-Map.htm)

Suki,

It does not work at the edges. You will always have tiles that have less neighbouring tiles than other tiles, and you will have problems with vision at those points if they are projected as well.

@Ribannah

yeah i know I was just pointing out where and how those problems would express themselves.

It sound innoative, but I think that would give players like me a headache! :ack: :)

How about a dynamic "rotation" of the globe? The minimap centers on the tile you're looking at. Naturally, there will be some nasty distortions beyond the center, so the programmers will have to choose a global flat projection to use, preferably one that emphasizes area as much as possible. Then there's the problem of the computer needing to redraw the minimap every time the view shifts. Perhaps there should be a "center minimap" button?

The only other possibility I can think of is setting up a "teleportaion" point to simulate travelling over the poles. E.G. The poles could be set up like this:

012345543210

With each number representing a different tile. If a unit goes north from a tile, they "warp" over to the other tile of the same number. It's not a perfect simulation, and the LoS gets really screwy, but it's a possibility.

If a projection and dynamic tiles are used, the trick would be to keep any distortions just outside view.
That would require small worlds to always be zoomed in, if they're supposed to represent an entire globe, so a nice option would be to have small worlds represent only a part of the globe.

yep I agree with Ribannah. If you had a small representative view of a large globe it would be fine. I think a massive global near spherical map would be great. It would encourage massive maps...

It's possible to make a globe out of just hexagons without using pentagons: Just take a look at that picture there, with the globe made of triangles. Combine 6 of the triangles and what do you have? A hexagon! They're just a little curved is all. And on a 3d map, that curvature is easy to emulate, and you can easily cover a sphere in hexagons. Not only that, but hexagons make a hell of a lot more sense than squares.

Originally posted by Bilko
It's possible to make a globe out of just hexagons without using pentagons: Just take a look at that picture there, with the globe made of triangles. Combine 6 of the triangles and what do you have? A hexagon! They're just a little curved is all. And on a 3d map, that curvature is easy to emulate, and you can easily cover a sphere in hexagons. Not only that, but hexagons make a hell of a lot more sense than squares.

Sorry, but no, look at the picture at little more closely. Most of the triangles can be combined into hexes, but not all. Start at the very top of the sphere and follow the line of bars that is very nearly vertical. About a third of the way down, you will see a point where only 5 triangles come together instead of six, i.e., a pentagon instead of a hexagon.

Since Civ4 will likely be 3D, it should be possible to implement it.

If it were me doing it, I'd use it as triangles.

I can just hear the moders complaining about this one!

The avantages to civ is that it has always been sprite based, making it mre easy to mod than 3D games. One person can mod civ, while you would need a larger team to do a 3D game

Judgement:
I'm not 100% sure, but it looks to me as if you could just enlarge the sphere's surface area by 6/5 while keeping the same size triangles, and that would solve the problem of having a pentagon there.

But, even if I'm wrong and that wouldn't work, there are only two pentagons there anyway (the one seen, and one opposite it on the backside,) so they could just be used as the poles.

Originally posted by croxis
I can just hear the moders complaining about this one!

The avantages to civ is that it has always been sprite based, making it mre easy to mod than 3D games. One person can mod civ, while you would need a larger team to do a 3D game

This may be true, but Firaxis has said that they are going that direction and hired the people to do it.

It'd look something like this:
I didn't bother to finish the whole thing, but you can see that there would only be the two pentagons on the whole sphere.

Originally posted by Bilko
It'd look something like this:
I didn't bother to finish the whole thing, but you can see that there would only be the two pentagons on the whole sphere.
Actually, since you can't see the entire sphere in the picture, it is not possible to see that there would only be two pentagons. More importantly, there would not only be two: there would be 12!

All geodesic spheres have 12 pentagons, no matter how many hexagons they have. In the picture, there is one at the very top of the dome, and 5 arranged around the upper half: the one that is clearly visible, 2 more which are quite hard to see because they're near the edge of whats visible (where all the beams blur together because you're not looking at the surface straight-on) and 2 more on the backside. If the dome was a complete sphere, the bottom half would have the same six pentagons as the top half. Its pretty hard to tell what I'm talking about from the picture, but if you go to Epcot center and walk around the dome, you'll see what I mean.

If a trip to Florida is out of the question, just do a google search for "geodesic sphere" or "Buckminster Fuller." Its mathematically impossible to make a sphere out of hexes without also having 12 pentagons. Sorry to disappoint.

I see three redlined already.

Bilko, it's not possible. Ask a math teacher, the proof isn't that hard. You need pentagons to create the curvature, and since (minimum) total curvature is fixed, so is the (minimum) number of pentagons.

Now, it IS possible to create a sphere from hexagons alone, but not in plain 3D. You wouldn't get normal planets and you would be unable to create an Earth map.

How about just adding the pentagons and living with the results? So some places you have only 5 (instead of 6) choices of direction, so what?

Well, I wish I'd taken geometry. Almost any kind of math is really interesting to me. I'll probably be taking it next year though, I'm pretty sure it's a second year engineering course.

What if you create a globe as minimap and when you scroll the map the globe turns to the current view. Of course when you want a flat view of the world it would look a little stretched here and there, but you can have a perfect round world in this way.

And I do hope Civ4 will stay 2D, that's the strength of Civ! 3D will only look ugly, lot of work for nothing and it won't run on slower pc's.

Why is 2D a strength?

Why do you think 3D will look ugly? How 3D looks has more to do with the quality of the artists rather than the technology.

True, but that's the experience I have with games that are implemented in 3D, just to be 3D. There is no need for Civ4 to be 3D. Most games that go 3D, just to be 3D will lose gameplay.

Of course Civ4 can be an exception, but I fear the worst.

No, going 3D I think would improve it quite a bit: It allows for possibilities like a round globe, plus it will look more realistic, etc. Normally, I prefer 2D games to 3D ones, but I think civ is an exception here, considering the nature of the game

Originally posted by rcoutme
How about just adding the pentagons and living with the results? So some places you have only 5 (instead of 6) choices of direction, so what?
Then which five keys would move you? One thing I like about squares is that movement is very intuitive using the numeric keypad: 8 moves you north, 9 northeast, 6 east, and so on. Its bad enough that with hexes, two of those wouldn't do anything, but for the occasional pentagon, there'd be another button that did nothing, and there's no obvious answer for which one that should be.

Furthermore, look at the pic of Epcot center again: on a geodesic sphere, not only are there some pentagons, but the hexes don't all face the same direction. For the hexes immediately underneath the pentagon that's clearly visible, you can go due north/south, but not due east/west, i.e., the intuitive movement keys would be 7-8-9-3-2-1 (for NW-N-NE-SE-S-SW). But the hexes above the pentagon are oriented differently: the intuitive keys would be 9-6-3-1-4-7 (for NE-E-SE-SW-W-NW). Even worse are some of the hexes to the side of the pentagon: none of the hex faces are directly N, S, E, or W, and there's no easy, intuituve keyboard commands for motion. I can guarantee that people would complain bitterly anytime the mean to go to one hex and accidentally moxed to a different hex because the proper key wasn't the one they guessed.

For the last time: a round globe is only a good idea if they eliminate discrete tiles completely. As long as there are tiles, they should stick to a flat map of regular squares, diamonds, or hexes. Round maps with tiles simply become a geometrical nightmare.

Then have the geodesic sphere move the pentagon when you are dealing with an area near it (I realize that this would take some serious computing skills, but hey, we're just suggesting). In other words, whereever you are, you see hexagons. The global view would (by necessity) have 12 pentagonal representations, but the larger (played) map would show all hexagons near you. This would allow you to move correctly. This would require, however that the global map be reconfigured each time you go to a different hex.

Either that, or warp the whole thing so that the pentagons are out and hexagons are in (thus not truly globular--more oblong--which would be the case with a bunch of flat surfaces anyways).

Can someone please show me where I can find a proof that any sphere made from hexagons has to have at least 12 pentagons?

I really don't see why a map can't be based on a icosahedron (same shape as a 20 sided die) and the triangles filled with hexagons.
Yeah, sure, you'll be pressing 1-6, instead of the eight keys around the 5, but distances between differenct locations will be more realistic.
Spherical worlds look ugly? I much prefer to use a globe for looking at a world, than a top and bottom distorted rectagular map.
I've taken my rectangular maps from civ and projected them onto a spherical shape. I've found the spherical world to be much more realistic looking and far more appealing than the rectangular representation.
As for playing in the game, how much of the wold do you see at a time in a close up. For a mini-map, they could easily give options of viewing the world as a rectangle or a sphere, probably having the sphere free spinning or manually manipulated as you wanted.
The closeup map would have little, if any distortion because you would be only viewing the the map as if someone handed you an almanac of the region you were viewing.
Real-planet mock ups would be less distorted than their flat projection mockups, even if you did only include a portion of the world. (Unless, you just couldn't get a decent almanac or globe, which seems to occur quite frequently.)

Makes the logics of warfare more complicated?
In what way? Being able to slip by the enemy, if there was a hole in their wall of units, made combat far more complex than conversion to a hex-grid would.

Even if there isn't a way to avoid the 12 pentagonal spaces, it would be very easy to just make those spaces non-useable terrain, or to merely categorize them with special properties as if they were special terrain tiles. It would be less difficult than adding six more terrain tiles, or doubling the amount of resources, as some modded games have done.

As for the directions available to move from the hex tiles surrounding the pent tiles...RTS games don't even have the option to move units with the keyboard, so making a minor adjustment to the ridged 'this key always goes left' thinking should be much easier than the adjustment to moving pieces with the keyboard was.

As far as that goes, a lot of RTS games use a square grid for building/city placement, while still using an apparent hex-based or real distance movement for units. Some even go so far as to show which route the units are going to take, and even allow you to set waypoints for each unit, if you wish to take a specific route.

Sooner or late Civ is going to have to evolve beyond the Square grid system, I'd like to see it happen before turn-based games go the way of the board based strategy games...on the shelves next to Hi-ho, Cherry-O! and Chutes and Ladders.

In my opinion.

I must say again, no offense, but this is a bad idea. It goes against years of civ policy. If a round globe is instituted in Civ4, it will make the game so much less enjoyable.

Originally posted by Denarr
I really don't see why a map can't be based on a icosahedron (same shape as a 20 sided die) and the triangles filled with hexagons.

Take a look at your icosahedron if you have one handy. There are twenty sides, each with 3 corners, for a total of 60 corners. The corners come together in groups of 5, for a total of 12 "points" on the icosahedron. Now, if you subdivide the triangles into more and more triagles, you can get more and more places where 6 triangles intersect, i.e., more hexagons. But you're always left with the original 12 points where 5 triangles intersect, i.e., 12 pentagons. You can't get rid of them, no matter how many times you divide up the original triangles, and no matter how many hexagons that results in. It is precisely because a geodesic sphere is based on an icosahedron that it always has 12 places where 5 triangles meet instead of 6.

As to the rest of your post, "RTS games do it" is not a very compelling arguement for those of us who don't care for RTS games.

Originally posted by Bilko
Can someone please show me where I can find a proof that any sphere made from hexagons has to have at least 12 pentagons?
Well, sphere's full of hexagons don't necessarily have 12 pentagons: they could have other shapes intersperced instead of pentagons: squares, triangles, octogons, etc. But, its relatively simple to prove that spheres made entirely from hexes are impossible.

Here (http://www.andrews.edu/~calkins/math/webtexts/geom09.htm#PS) is a page I found about this topic. Read the parts about Platonic solids and Archimedean Solids. Here's another document (http://www.math.ubc.ca/people/faculty/cass/graphics/text/www/pdf/ch15.pdf), if you're more mathematically inclined.

There are only five Platonic Solids possible, 3 with triangular faces (tetrahedron, octahedron, icosahedron), 1 with square faces (cube, aka hexahedron), and 1 with pentagonal faces (dodecahedron). A solid comprised entirely of hexagonal faces doesn't exist.

There are 12 possible Archimedean Solids (in which the faces are all polygons but not necessarily the same polygon). Of these, 5 involves hexagons. The {5,6,6} solid (the "truncated icosahedron") has one pentagon and 2 hexagons at each vertex (think of a soccer ball: each corner touches 1 black pentagon and 2 white hexagons). This solid has 20 hexagonal faces and 12 pentagonal ones. To make a geodesic sphere (like the picture of Epcot center shown) you can start with this shape. Chop each hex into 6 triangles and each pentagon into 5 triangles. Then chop all the triangles into smaller and smaller triangles, and finally, reassemble into hexagons and pentagons. The more triangles you chopped into, the more hexagons there will be, but there will always be 12 pentagons, because there will always be 12 places where 5 triangles intersect instead of 6.

Now, like I said, if you wanted, you could try making a sphere with hexes and squares (start with the {4,6,6} solid), hexes and triangles (start with {3,6,6}), etc. But its all academic, since I really doubt Civ 4 will have a grid system where the tiles come in different shapes, just so that it can be on a sphere.

Originally posted by Denarr
Sooner or late Civ is going to have to evolve beyond the Square grid system, I'd like to see it happen before turn-based games go the way of the board based strategy games...on the shelves next to Hi-ho, Cherry-O! and Chutes and Ladders.

Well, it has been a couple decades since I played Chutes and Ladders, but my family and friends still play boardgames relatively regularly. I even know some people who play board games more often than computer games, if you can believe that. Are you saying that a game like Chess is extinct? I'd consider that a "board-based strategy game" and I think it has a little more staying power than any of your FPS computer games. Speaking of chess, when was the last time you heard someone suggest that new chessboards should all have hexagonal tiles (or be spheres?) because chess must "evolve" or become obsolete.

Turn based games are not going to disappear, because there is a segment of the gaming public that prefers them over other types of games, and will continue to buy them, antiquated square-grid pattern or not. I don't mean to sound too agressive here, and I do admit there are some advantages to a hex-grid. But your arguments that civ "needs to evolve" are very far from convincing. Having 12 pentagonal tiles on a mostly hexagonal map, and giving those tiles special properties? How is that possibly a good solution? IMHO, a good solution is a regular grid that's easy to understand, and on which the same commands always do the same thing. A flat grid of squares is my preference, and a flat grid of hexes would be an acceptable alternative. I'd be in favor of a spherical map if it was possible to do it with a regular grid, but it isn't, simple fact. To me, a regular grid is more important that a round globe: one is good for playability, the other adds very little to gameplay and is purely for "realism."

Originally posted by judgement
Turn based games are not going to disappear, because there is a segment of the gaming public that prefers them over other types of games, and will continue to buy them, antiquated square-grid pattern or not.

And I am one of them.

I think that it would help but maybe in an expansion pack after they improve the ai.

This is the kind of feature that is designed into the game, not put in an expansion pack. It is too hard to make that kind of sweeping change after a code base is established.

Sorry, folks, I had a lot of thoughts to put to type, and some of those thoughts may have overlapped or been incomplete.

I am very familiar with a icosahedrons, and had noticed all the five pointed corners. I am more than willing to concede that it's impossible to make a sphere entirely out of hexes.

I am also a fan of turn based strategy games, I only used the RTS games as an example of how a hex based system for movement could be simulated, even with the problems presented with trying to use a fixed shape for terrain tiles.

I have no problems with board games, in fact I still play them on occasion. I was trying to point out that I don't know of any people who still play civ style board games, most of them preferring to play the electronic versions, rather than deal with hundreds of piles of unit pieces and trying to keep track of which pieces had been moved and which still have moves left to them.

Sooner or later spherical worlds will be used for civ style games, and I'd like to see it happen before I lose interest in, or the ability for, playing these types of games.

Chess would not be chess if it were played on a differetly shaped board. Even 3-D chess isn't really chess. There are, however, chess style games that are played on differenly shaped boards, and there have even been a few versions that use a spherical board. (On computer of course.)

Classic games don't become obsolete. Some people prefer the classic versions of games, as has been said, while some people like to see new things, or are required to wait until someone can find enough of a market for the more innovative versions of games they already enjoy playing.

I never much cared for chess, but I loved All the King's Men, which was a chess variant.

Maybe Civ 4 won't have a spherical world, but I look forward to a day when Civ works out the problems for making it happen.

Originally posted by Denarr
I have no problems with board games, in fact I still play them on occasion. I was trying to point out that I don't know of any people who still play civ style board games, most of them preferring to play the electronic versions, rather than deal with hundreds of piles of unit pieces and trying to keep track of which pieces had been moved and which still have moves left to them.
I'll concede that point... haven't played Shogun or Axis & Allies in years. Although I recently did get invited to play some game that my friend said was sort of like a board-game version of Master of Orion. Couldn't make it, oh well...

Sooner or later spherical worlds will be used for civ style games, and I'd like to see it happen before I lose interest in, or the ability for, playing these types of games.

Yes, that's undoubtedly true, the question is whether spherical worlds will ever be used in the Civ franchise itself. Using the chess example again, there are two types of new games that can occur: variations on chess (that are similar but have "new" features) and new implementations of chess (i.e., computer chess games with smarter AI, different user interface, etc.). The former can incorporate hexes or spherical boards of whatever, but the latter never will.

Are new Civ versions more like the former or the latter? To me, they're somewhere in between. The do change the rules (its not just cosmetic and AI improvements) and even add new features, but at the same time, they also try to be pretty faithful to the original. There are plenty of other games out there that are inspired by Civ, and I'd prefer tp leave the more radical changes (which includes spherical worlds) to those games.

Maybe Civ 4 won't have a spherical world, but I look forward to a day when Civ works out the problems for making it happen.
I think the only really simple and logically consistent way to do it would be to scrap the tile system alltogether. Would I like to see this happen in Civ? No. Would I buy a Civ-type game that had a spherical world without discrete tiles? Yes - or at least, I'd consider it if other aspects of the game were also good. In other words, I don't think a spherical world is a bad thing, and I'm sure we'll eventually (probably even soon) see a Turn-Based Strategy game with that feature. I just don't want it to be Civ itself, since I don't like the inelegant options for doing a sphere made of tiles, and I think a tile-less system isn't faithful enough to the classic concept of the original Civ game.

I've got Axis&Allies at home, as well as the Civ board game. They both don't use a tile system, but countries where units can be in.

When I posted my arguments for a round world, hex tiles etc, I didn't had in mind that the num keypad couldn't be used the same way and I really think a lot of people use it, it's easy to use, logic and prevents RSI :)

Although a hex map would be more realistic, I prefer to use the num keypad as it is right now, if they can make a way with the hex to use it just as easy and logic as it is now, I say use hex. Perhaps only keys 7,8,4,5,1,2 or keys 7,8,9,4,5,6 or 4,5,6,1,2,3. I'd prefer one of the last two possibilities.

The one thing that kind of erks me, is the lack of a sense of scale. Having an Empire that spans a hemisphere would be kind of nice, as would knowing that the enemy is just beyond the curvature of the planet.

I know it would be difficult to draw a grid on a globe (at least at the poles anyway), and this would greatly increase system requirements, but I feel it may give more depth to the Civ gaming experience.

A globe is simple if you go to 3D (which I think Firaxis is).

To me this has no importance at all! Like the resources spent on units, better warfare/trading/diplomacy-systems and more cultural spefisic civs!

Didn't SMAC have a globe view? It could switch between globe and flat view.

There is already a thread about a Round Globe (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=84841), please take the time to look around before starting a new thread.
Some of the difficulties and suggested solutions for using a round world have been posted here.

My bad, I looked through the first 3 pages and did not see a thread.

Just because the game area is a grid, does not mean that the display has to be flat, the areas on the side would have to be streched/shrunk when not in the center of the view.

I think the best solution to permitting polar movement would be to leave the tile system, allow the jump to any n/s tile by ground at all movement cost/by air at half. This would require far less reworking of the mechanics and allow for more of the game being dedicated to strategy (read AI) than graphics.

Not yet really mentioned in this thread is the significant game play changes that would occur with a hex based map. A hex city would have 7 hexes (less) to start and 19 (more) after cultural expanison. Not a real biggie by itself but then with the overlapping added it is.

Plus I'm a keyboard mover, I don't like moving the units by mouse -- so I would prefer the tile system

Globe.
No tiles or hexs, use points.
3d and deformable.

No big deal really as far as hardware goes - by the time Civ4 comes out - most current office systems have enough graphical processing power to do this with ease...

At the start of the game you should be able to choose between round planet, x wrap, or x wrap and y wrap

Here is my take (as I posted earlier):

Leave it like it is in Civ3. You can't manage an entire globe from one view.
Have squares.
Have an option of X and Y wrap.

I think civ should definatly have a globe view.

WHen I buy civ4, I don't want just a tweaked civ3. I want it to have new challenges etc.

And a sphere, will maybe trickier than a cylinder, would still be easy compared to current FPS games graphically and compuationally.


I also think, there should definatly be the option of playing on an old style civ board. And also the option of playing on a flat world, like how the old civ's actually believed the world was like.

Go toArtic and appear on Antartic? LOL

No. What you can have is to appear in another artic location. Other than that is compromising the concept...

Personally I agree the current version (you can always go the side, but there is a top)

Draw a grid on a square piece of paper. Curl it around into a cone, with the point of the cone centered on one of the edges rather than a corner. Make two of them and cut the edges so they can be fit together. While not literally spherical, that would be topologically spherical.

It sounds like a lot of people hating on the idea of a 3-D globe for Civ4 are just afraid of change. You also probably haven't downloaded and played with this:

http://www.globalshareware.com/Home-Education/Teaching-Tools/3D-World-Map.htm

It's really cool. Posted a few pages back with the first large picture of the epcot-style globe sculpture. Gives a sense (but only a sense) of how easy to use a 3-D globe would be.

Clearly this is the holy grail of Civ gameplay and what we will sooner or later be playing on. After all it's a 3-D world we are simming, not a 2-D one. All you stodgy conservative gamers who are afraid of change can just keep playing CivIII, or maybe they will be nice enough to give you an option to play on a flat, square-tile based map. But the rest of will be in 3-D and thank god, because I've been waiting over a decade for this to be a reality in Civ.

If it's a hex based map, moving will still be simple. Just use these keys:
O K , P ; .
For pentagons, leave out the P. Subtle indicator letters can appear on the screen to show which key will put you where, and/or the orientation can adjust as you move to guide you.

Anyway, I am sick of you 3-D haters. We give you good reasons why it'll work, and all you give us is: "But I like it the way it is! Waaah!"

Call the Wah-mbulance.

well I'm sure the CIV4 team has mathematicians and experts on this issue...the question is: will CIV4 have spherical maps indeed??

I'd love to see it but does anyone know for sure this option will be implemented in CIV4?

An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.

Here is an icosahedral projection of Earth (http://quicksitemaker.com/members/theds/icoearthpics.html) and a blank sheet that will help the discussion. WARNING: LARGE PICTURES! You may want to download them and use something like ACDSee to reduce their size to fit on your screen.

This free view of Earth in 3D (http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/uncgi/Earth?imgsize=1024&opt=-l&lat=35.5833&ns=North&lon=88.7917&ew=West&alt=392933&img=learth.evif) is much better than the link Capitan tried to shleff off on you. Not as fancy, but it's still beautiful.

Anyway, back to the ico-Earth discussion. As the pictures show (well, except 5 and 6, where I colorized the edges and it looks like crap), a whole globe can be split into 20 large triangular areas, each of which, at its point, forms a pentagon arrangement with 4 other triangles. These large triangles can be divided up into as many hexes as you like. In Pic #4, you can see that the base of each triangle is 8 hexes wide, meaning that each hex gives a diameter of about 1000km (600 miles), or about 10 degrees at the equator. Each hex can also be divided up however you like, such that each tiny hex might be like 10km across, giving each large hex a diameter of 100 hexes. With 640 of these hexes on this map, and 750 10km hexes each, this gives a large area.

Note: I am treating the pentagons as hexes for all intents and purposes in the above figures. Additionally, I wouldn't dream of inflicting 480,000 spaces on a gamer, but some one else might.

I know pics 5 and 6 are a bit ugly, but I have since made a much MUCH better version of this map; I just haven't posted it yet, nor have I posted a sub-divided hex, which I described above. (This may change in the near future.)

In the game, I would expect the computer to "cut out the ico-projection and fold it into a D20 shape and always display it that way". Naturally, when I have to look at an edge or corner, the computer will flatten that part out a bit so it doesn't look so distorted.

Alternately, if the world is divided into enough triangles, and we use the TRIANGLES as the spaces, well, there's ALWAYS only 3 directions to go then, even when occasionally we find 5 triangles grouped together instead of 6. Pic number 7 gives just the barest glimpse at what this might look like.

On the other hand, the team COULD go with a radial-projection coordinate system. This would be a longitude angle and a distance from the north pole. The computer will have to reemmber that as one gets closer to the pole, a mile covers more degrees of longitude than it does at the equator, so the range of 100 miles for my Harpoon missiles will go 100 miles no matter how many degrees of longitude it winds up being.

The gains to be made from using a globe are impressive. First, we can FINALLY make an accurate projection of the Earth! Second, we can play on Mars or Venus if we want, or even the Moon; we just import radar altimeter data from a space probe and then tell the game what sea level is. We might even get to watch it while we adjust the elevation, looking for just the right amount of land and sea. And thirdly, there will finally be no more overwhelming advantage to being placed in Asia, with it's ridiculously oversized distortion of its landmass. Heck, even the Pacific might be a challenge to cross!

And since you should all be using a mouse by now anyway......

I would prefer a globe, where tiles further north would take less MP, or fractional MP, and the top line would be completely free movement.

However, a rectangular map is preffered, for sake of beauty. Any other shape would seem odd... regardless of the accuracy of it's projection.

The computer could play a round map with your play appearing on a flat map. What we are talking about is the ability for the pieces in the game to be able to move on a spherical board rather than a flat board. conducted in the grid pattern now this could possible be by offsetting the grid rows on the top and then the bottom from each other. Allowing the piece to have the potential to move onto 6 adjacent spaces instead of 8.

Of course, if it's in a true 3d world, it may be a true 3d map. That would be neat.

A 3d map? Everyone knows that the world is REALLY flat!

But still it would be pretty cool though.

And since you should all be using a mouse by now anyway......

The original Civ won awards for its accessibility for people with disabilities. I hope the designers don't screw up this by requiring a mouse.

Oh, and some people use laptop computers.

With triangles or hex tiles I already see Civ in a round globe. But any one are capable of explain how we can get a round globe with square tiles?
If same expert say me I apreciate.

With triangles or hex tiles I already see Civ in a round globe. But any one are capable of explain how we can get a round globe with square tiles?
If same expert say me I apreciate.

All that matters is what is displayed. A global map does not necessarily even have to appear rounded, just the edges fade quickly into a mist. It can still look quite flat, alot like you only see part of the map when playing civ III.

The only purpose of make a round globe would be to actually include the north & south poles. It is not worth it, considering how much work has to be put in.
(This might have been mentioned before^)

Go and play a cheap, old game called Populous: The Beggining. It is an RTS game on a round world map. It uses squares. (want a screenie?)

Sure.

(10 characters)

Those who want a round map to include the poles are missing an important fact about the poles. They aren't noted for being the home to great civilizations.

If you really want polar movement, how about this...

A cuboid world!

Each face of the cube would be a square of say, 100x100 tiles (for total tile count, that would correspond to a 256 tile world map in current versions of civ). Six such squares would make the entire world. The only issue would be that on the corner tiles, diagonal movement in certain directions would be impossible. Also, if you are on the 'north' or 'south' face of the cube, there is the issue of which way to orient the screen and consequent keyboard mapping.

I played one PC game where the action occurred on a GENUINELY spherical map. Specifically, the Hype/Telecon battle control system in the sci-fi adventure game "Mission Critical".

Combat occurred in orbit around a planet. All starfighters and capital ships were placed in orbit at a mostly-fixed altitude, and you could rotate your view of the planet at will. Simple, intuitive, functional--and w4y c00L.

So a spherical game model is definitely possible.

Thanks Neomega.
If is possible have squares on round globe, then we can have 2 options round and flat world.
Thescaryworker a screenie would be nice.

Heeres the screenies you asked for:

So, there is a way to do it with a 3d model.
(please discuss this in my new thread)

Thanks Thescaryworker.

If they had a whole world view that showed everyting on that side of the world, (on that game you press return, and it sure helps with navigating) you might be able to manage the squares.

You have here your old tiles now think of a globe! Take a Greenwich line a put that tiles around the world row per row!
example:
☺(Northpole
☺☺☺☺(equator)
☺(Southpole)
makes a Kubus

☺np
☺☺☺☺☺☺
☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺
☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺
☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺equator
☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺
☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺
☺☺☺☺☺☺
☺(sp)
makes almost a spherical world!

What do u think?

I don,t like this idea. Why? is there a rel poblem with square
Also, square is 4 sides. NO!!!!!!!!!!!!! According to Thetrooper, in "1000 clues you are anticipating civ4 too much" thread, I just lost my diplo win. :cry:

It should be a complete 3d game ? .... just throw in a sphere =)

Being able to go from sea level view, so that all you can see is what is front of you or around you, would be great idea. The altitude of your view could be determined by the extent of your tech research. Eg, getting the balloon and later the blimp you would greatly increase LoS. It would also require your opponents to see things linear than in 3D, which could come about much later as a result of researching flight, satellite technology and even surveillance technology.
I kind of like that idea. :)

I reckon until you discover mapmaking, your world map should be something vaguely like http://www.lajzar.co.uk/virt/out/ddr.html and only change to teh familiar top down view with mapmaking.

cool concept program, rhialto!