What about hexes?

It could seem a provocatory question, but I'm asking it for real!!

What is all that about hexes, in Civ5?
Why lot of people say that this is the main feature that makes Civ5 a great game?
What are the actual differences, and the solved problems, against squares of Civ4 and former ones?

I've played it, all right... I've played all of them (1,2,3,4 and 5), but for me hexes is just an aesthetic touch, I haven't found great differences for this.

What is the opinion of people who like hexes?

Hexes just add a little more flexibility and intuition when it comes to movement. With hexes, a unit can move in all 6 directions in a straight line. Furthermore, all the adjacent hexes are equidistant from the center hex. With tiles, a unit can only move in 4 different directions in a straight line. To move diagonally, the unit must move 2 tiles (ie left and then up). And the diagonal tiles are further away from the center than the other adjacent tiles are. So not all adjacent tiles are the same distance away. It is shorter to move sideways than to move diagonally.

From what I recall (at least in civ 2 and 3) a diagonal move only costs 1 movement point (unless terrain dictates otherwise) so that means that by favoring diagonal movement you gain some advantages in turn travel times. I think that does not work that well with the 1 unit per turn concept, where you need to spread your army and can't just march in line. And actually the 1 unit per turn is the big difference in the new map grid.

This means you are forced to lay out your units and calculate an optimal path for each unit individually, you can't just have 1 path that you take for all units and stack them on a single tile. When you mix ranged and melee units with fast horse units you can get really nice formations, and you have to plan how you place individual units across the battlefield, according to the terrain, and with range units that really makes a difference.

Also the range units vary in range, you start with 2 range units, and by late game you have 1 range, 2 range, 3 range and even 4 range units. This all makes planing unit placement really interesting.

The hex grid helps visualize things better since you have nice symmetry on six axes. I don't even know how a 2 range unit would work in a square grid, should that unit be able to shoot 2 tiles diagonally across? I think that would not be fair, and you might not notice that a unit that far away could cause you damage.

I cannot imagine playing without hexes. They are so natural, and the grid must be displayed, or I am totally lost.

Haha, I can't imagine playing without hexes either. Then again, I haven't played any of the previous civs.
But I'd think using hexes gives more options for movement and strategies, and stuff.

Get rid of them. It should be enough to just click a unit and drag a mouse over any terrain and the game displaying to you how many turns it would take for the currently chosen unit (or army consisting of many units-if the game would permit such obviousness) to arrive to this part of the map, in how many turns and if you'd still have any movements points remaining after your unit(s) get there, see? not complicated at all.

They are much better and offer more balance to movement plus more choices. I remember when it was always best to move diagonally because that covered the most ground. Not exactly balanced.

I like the hexes on. They give me a guideline and I like having a grid while I am playing. Growing up with all of those Avalon Hill games could be the reason behind it. In any case I think they should be kept for Civ VI.

Because they offer you 2 new 'natural' ways to move. Going diagonally between two squares is not really the same as crossing two borders of hexes. Basically: it makes things a lot smoother.

Hexes are a big improvement over the squares of previous versions. I'm still kind of disappointed though that they didn't make the next logical step. Allow for the inclusion of a small number of pentagons to approximate a spherical surface instead of the usual flat world.

It is not that hexes are great so much as squares being terrible!

Traditional war gamers (as in chits on boards) figured out 30+ years ago that a square grid means either forbidding diagonal movement (terribly artificial) or allowing it even though it that means allowing units to move 50% faster (a game changing exploit).

Visually, Civ II/III/IV masked this problem by using parallelograms, but the underlying defect was there. Improved aesthetics are a side effect, but that only makes it harder to go back to CIV!

Almost every war game I've ever played used hexes, going back to the 1970s. Its the perfect spatial shape, nothing else even comes close.

Hexes is one of the few things I like about Civ V over Civ IV.

Hexes works better than squares if you play civ V because "one unit per tile", but in civ IV squares are better because SODs and give more strategic playability. If someone played Pandora you know what im talking about hexes dont go well with SODs and squares dont go well with one unit per tile.

hexes are awesome.

Tiber4321 said:

Its the perfect spatial shape, nothing else even comes close.

Click to expand...

Yet really, it is just a square grid where every other row is offset by half.

Hexes is probably the most natural structure in the nature.
The next step could be a spheric map instead of plane map. Hexes tiles allow it.

Hexes are great. I purchased CiV 4 few months ago to try it (always played V until now!) and squares bugged me. As said above it's the most natural way to move unit and combat stuff. Being able to move between two mountains tiles on a square grid is quite strange.

Hexes seem so similar to the old squared version. I hardly felt a difference in my experience.