Danger Bird
gravity's angel
What will the time and distance scales be like in Civ V? (And a more worrying question, from what I've seen so far... Are the developers thinking about scale?)
If there are units that can use ranged attack across 2 hexes, how far is that? (probably 100~200 metres(?))
How far apart will cities be? (500 metres apart)
If a planet is represented by a map 200 tiles wide, how big is the planet? (20 km in circumference, about the surface area of a large metropolitan area, smaller than Luxembourg)
What about time?
(Let's assume, for the moment, that movement will be like it has been in Civ 4, 3, etc. and that turns in mid-game are 5 to 10 years long.)
How long would it take the archer to go fetch his arrows? (10 to 20 years)
If battles involve some initial ranged attacks, some melee fighting, then re-positioning and more ranged/melee attack the next turn, how long will battles be? (perhaps 20 to 30 years or more, and this is battles, not wars)
I know that Civ 4 also has problems with scale, and that we have to consider many of the units/events in the game as abstractions. But it is much easier to consider them as abstractions if the game doesn't attempt to represent too much detail.
The conflict here is between a grand strategy game and a close-up tactics game. Since Civ spans millennia and a whole planet, it makes sense that it stay in the realm of grand strategy. Instead, the developers seem to be trying to build on-the-field- tactics into it as well. I don't think this is feasible if you want to have a sense of plausibility to what is going on in your game.
Probably too late, but I wish Civ would keep a far-out strategic view. A tile is a patch of land 100s of kilometres across, a unit (or stack) on that tile represents regiment(s) stationed there for several years, and a stack-on-stack battle is a large battle of many stages - ranged weapons, melee fighting, cavalry flanking charges, etc. (but we don't see that, we just see the result). I'm fine with that.
On-the-field tactics games are great, too. But I don't think Civ was meant to be one of those, and I don't think you can have the two at once.
Of course, many may not be bothered by this mismatching of scales. But for players like me, we cannot avoid imagining what the game represents in an alternate world, and being conscious of things like, 'Hey, that group of axemen have been out there on the front line for 60 years! Must have called home to get their grandsons to join them.'
What do others think?
If there are units that can use ranged attack across 2 hexes, how far is that? (probably 100~200 metres(?))
How far apart will cities be? (500 metres apart)
If a planet is represented by a map 200 tiles wide, how big is the planet? (20 km in circumference, about the surface area of a large metropolitan area, smaller than Luxembourg)
What about time?
(Let's assume, for the moment, that movement will be like it has been in Civ 4, 3, etc. and that turns in mid-game are 5 to 10 years long.)
How long would it take the archer to go fetch his arrows? (10 to 20 years)
If battles involve some initial ranged attacks, some melee fighting, then re-positioning and more ranged/melee attack the next turn, how long will battles be? (perhaps 20 to 30 years or more, and this is battles, not wars)
I know that Civ 4 also has problems with scale, and that we have to consider many of the units/events in the game as abstractions. But it is much easier to consider them as abstractions if the game doesn't attempt to represent too much detail.
The conflict here is between a grand strategy game and a close-up tactics game. Since Civ spans millennia and a whole planet, it makes sense that it stay in the realm of grand strategy. Instead, the developers seem to be trying to build on-the-field- tactics into it as well. I don't think this is feasible if you want to have a sense of plausibility to what is going on in your game.
Probably too late, but I wish Civ would keep a far-out strategic view. A tile is a patch of land 100s of kilometres across, a unit (or stack) on that tile represents regiment(s) stationed there for several years, and a stack-on-stack battle is a large battle of many stages - ranged weapons, melee fighting, cavalry flanking charges, etc. (but we don't see that, we just see the result). I'm fine with that.
On-the-field tactics games are great, too. But I don't think Civ was meant to be one of those, and I don't think you can have the two at once.
Of course, many may not be bothered by this mismatching of scales. But for players like me, we cannot avoid imagining what the game represents in an alternate world, and being conscious of things like, 'Hey, that group of axemen have been out there on the front line for 60 years! Must have called home to get their grandsons to join them.'
What do others think?