PolyCast Episode 195: "That's a Different Argument"

megabearsfan said:

Sorry to res this post. I'm going back through some of these episodes that I missed, and

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Hey MBF -- no apologies necessary. Better late then never when it comes to PolyCast episodes...

I have a comment regarding the tesselated sphere map: one gameplay change would be that it would allow the world to wrap vertically and it changes the distance between tiles near the poles. Imagine an earth map in which aircraft (or nuke, paratrooper, etc) in Canada could fly over the north pole to bomb/attack a unit or city in Russia. I think it would be a subtle, but significant change, especially at higher levels of play, since it forces players to change how the defend their borders.

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To me this is a matter of ensuring that map wrapping is both north/south as well as east/west, not whether or not a map was tessellated or not.

Furthermore, if systems were implemented in which anti-air units could shoot at planes in transit (rather than at their destination), then finding different routes to a target has strategic value.

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So then you would like to see an expanding of the capacity of CivV's Anti-Aircraft Guns. For instance, in addition to its present ability of automatically attacking any air unit bombing a tile within 2 tiles (and one intercept per turn), you would like to see it be able to automatically attack any aircraft in that vicinity regardless of its action and type (i.e. fighters as well as bombers). I could see that being implemented as practical as well as meaningful in gameplay.

DanQ said:

To me this is a matter of ensuring that map wrapping is both north/south as well as east/west, not whether or not a map was tessellated or not.

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Well, the vertical (north/south) wrapping is one thing, and that's a subtle change. But if it's still a square or rectangular map, then it's not that big of deal. But on a spherical map, the distance between points changes based on the latitude on the map. The equator of the map is wider than at the pole.

DanQ said:

So then you would like to see an expanding of the capacity of CivV's Anti-Aircraft Guns. For instance, in addition to its present ability of automatically attacking any air unit bombing a tile within 2 tiles (and one intercept per turn), you would like to see it be able to automatically attack any aircraft in that vicinity regardless of its action and type (i.e. fighters as well as bombers). I could see that being implemented as practical as well as meaningful in gameplay.

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Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing such a feature, especially if AA guns are treated as installations (buildings or improvements) rather than mobile units, or if AA guns are treated as stationary units that need to be set up. A close comparison would be with some versions of Axis and Allies board game in which you have to map the route of a plane, and if it crosses over a territory with an AA gun, then the gun gets an opportunity to fire at the plane.

The damage that can be done to a plane in transit should be minimal, since planes generally travel at higher altitudes than AA can effectively attack. The damage done by intermediate AA guns could be a function of the distance from the target. This might be too complicated for the purposes of Civ though.