A finer grain hex?

I'm enjoying the game (which makes me a heretic to 50% of you) but I think I've settled on what bothers me a bit about 1upt - as others have mentioned it seems to lack a certain epic scale of battle and presents weird (imho) requirements like archers and cannons having the same range.

I was thinking that for purposes of argriculture and mining/resources that the current sized hexes present a suitable scale to a city hex but relative to a combat unit they are huge and illogical (my swordsmen are at the city gate and my archers are firing from the mountains - given any scale at all, miles away).

For purposes of combat it seems each hex should hold somewhere between 4 and 6 smaller subhexes (I didnt bother to figure out if thats strictly geometrically possible).

I dont want CIV to become like a table top game where facing and stuff matters but it just seems that there needs to be a finer grain to combat placement.

So if you had a front line of 3 swords backed up by 2 archers they wouldnt be spread all over the countryside but instead located in the same hex.

You can also dial in ranges a bit more - archers might be able to shoot over one line of their own troops and two subhexes deep into the next hex, where as cannon would be able to reach from backline of one hex to backline of the next hex.

I realize that a change like this would basically require a complete new game - or at least a serious change well beyond what CIV V could become in a patch but I think it would go a long way between changing game play from SoD to something more in line with what they may have envisioned. I wouldnt want the subhexes used in anything but combat (I dont want to have to think about a few hundred different subhexes to work or not work) keep that scale for workers but get more detailed for combat.

I agree with the wrong scale.

Yet, your proposed solution has other inherent problems. Either way you put it, you are changing the scale again but now have other things not fitting to it.
One worker now immediately works six of your "subhexes"? You are moving your units now effectively through 12 (combat) subhexes? Or would military units and civilians only walk on the subhexes? But how long would it take then to move your worker from one city to the other?

If development time and cost and system requirements didn't come into it, I would love to see a Civ game where stacks are allowed at the strategy level, but when combat is initiated it switches to a tactical scale map with 1upt and sensible ranges for ranged units etc. Kind of like the Total War series but much better than their recent efforts.

But your idea would also work, and is probably a lot more practical than what I just said. If anyone ever makes a game like that I would be very interested to see how it plays.

EDIT:
Movement allowance would be measured as number of 'big hexes' per turn. E.g. a spearman can move 2 'big hexes' across open terrain in a turn, as long as the destination 'big hex' has at least one empty 'little hex/square/whatever' within it where the unit can go. Unlimited civilian units per 'big hex' and workers work on an entire 'big hex'. Once you have moved your military units into a 'big hex' you can re-arrange them into combat formation. Would it need some limit on how much re-arranging you can do per turn?

This is actually a really cool idea. Would solve all of your problems with unit moving Istnarch.

Have units stack in a hex, but during combat, they zoom down and each hex breaks up into a several hex size 1 upt battlefield!

Omg that would rock.

LegionSteve said:

If development time and cost and system requirements didn't come into it, I would love to see a Civ game where stacks are allowed at the strategy level, but when combat is initiated it switches to a tactical scale map with 1upt and sensible ranges for ranged units etc. Kind of like the Total War series but much better than their recent efforts.

But your idea would also work, and is probably a lot more practical than what I just said. If anyone ever makes a game like that I would be very interested to see how it plays.

EDIT:
Movement allowance would be measured as number of 'big hexes' per turn. E.g. a spearman can move 2 'big hexes' across open terrain in a turn, as long as the destination 'big hex' has at least one empty 'little hex/square/whatever' within it where the unit can go. Unlimited civilian units per 'big hex' and workers work on an entire 'big hex'. Once you have moved your military units into a 'big hex' you can re-arrange them into combat formation. Would it need some limit on how much re-arranging you can do per turn?

Click to expand...

This would be fabulous!

I wanted to build a game that played out basically exactly like this, years ago. IIRC, the math worked out that on the overview maps, you could treat hexes as 20mi across, where in the tactical map, they were 100yd across. The tactical map would grow in size as the game progressed, based on the maximum range of the ranged units in the hex, which would both simplify combat and provide a sense of progression. It'd also give a pretty satisfying sense of how far you'd come when you engage *bowmen with your riflemen. Once you got to modern artillery and ship's guns that can fire over 20mi, you'd have bombardment options.

Civ V has really rekindled my interest in exploring the concept again.

A finer grain hex?

Click to expand...

Dammit. Here I thought this was going to be about food resources.

Hmmmmmmm... "subhexes"

It's definitely an interesting concept. If the hex was visualized as 6 spokes in a wheel or a Trivial Pursuit wheel, you could maintain 6 units within the hex, with the center reserved for non-combat units (GC bonus goes to all units in the hex, you can escort workers and settlers much more efficiently). Water tiles could use the center hex for ship units, escorting up to 6 units in the spokes. City tiles could use the center hex for the garrison, with up to 6 additional defensive units in the spokes.

It has some serious potential, I think. Not quite stacking, not quite 1upt. More of a hybrid, which could potentially appease both parties.

One big problem I see in this type of implementation is the manner in which the terrain at the finer, tactical hex level is generated. You don't want it to be terribly uniform throughout the tactical level, i.e. if the strategy level is plains you don't necessarily want every tactical level hex to be pancake flat, so there would need to be some variability there. So, would you have the fine scale hexes randomly generated each time a battle occurs with a strong weighting towards the large scale terrain type? Or would you save the fine scale hex terrain for each large scale hex so each time a battle is fought in that same hex, the tactical level hexes remain the same? Hope I've explained that well.

The latter would be preferred but it seems like that would be a lot of memory overhead.

This doesn't need to be a tiled hex system like the overland. It's just an added layer of strategy.

Set up like this, you could have 2 "frontline" units, as each edge has 2 subhexes in contact with an adjacent hex.

Ranged units have increased range in subhexes rather than large hexes, and there is an increase in the strategy of protecting them in the "back line" but that also immediately becomes a legitamite target for your opponent, as they need to get around to the back side of the hex to attack from behind.

Natural flanking occurs because every subhex (except for the center) is in contact with two adjacent large hexes.

This has the potential for formation movement too...
Say you could zoom out, and move the whole group of units 1 hex...
To actually see your units all laid out, just zoom it, and the hex splits into the sub hexes.

This idea has some nice potential for some imagination.

I'll be honest here...I pee a little every time I think of something like this being implemented into the game.

vandyr said:

I'll be honest here...I pee a little every time I think of something like this being implemented into the game.

Click to expand...

Inorite!

Can you imagine that hex above filled in with a GC in the center, two longswordsman in the bottom two subhexes, two pikemen in the left/right subhexes (protecting the archers from horse units and flanking), and two archers in the top subhexes??

Jharii said:

Inorite!

Can you imagine that hex above filled in with a GC in the center, two longswordsman in the bottom two subhexes, two pikemen in the left/right subhexes (protecting the archers from horse units and flanking), and two archers in the top subhexes??

Click to expand...

Only in my wildest dreams.

Jharii said:

Inorite!

Can you imagine that hex above filled in with a GC in the center, two longswordsman in the bottom two subhexes, two pikemen in the left/right subhexes (protecting the archers from horse units and flanking), and two archers in the top subhexes??

Click to expand...

Then imagine the same thing on the ocean, but spread over 3 - 4 of those hexes, with destroyers around the outer edges of the group, capital ships and embarked units in the inner segments.

The more I think about this, the more it seems like it would be the most awesome game ever.

The OP should get some kind of an award for even thinking up this and stirring up this hornet's nest... Maybe some kind of title for the Best First Post from an Account in the History of the Internet.

Fizpez2
Chieftain
Join Date: Oct 2010
Posts: 1

My coworkers and I were just talking about this with ranged units. Archers are shooting their arrows hundreds and hundreds of miles.

Those are some badass archers.

Rystic said:

My coworkers and I were just talking about this with ranged units. Archers are shooting their arrows hundreds and hundreds of miles.

Those are some badass archers.

Click to expand...

Yea, and towering swordsmen that stand as tall city skyscrapers. Have you seen that praetorian standing next to Sparta?!

This would be a great idea. It would please both "traditional" stack/army Civ fans, and the new Civ 5 system Civ fans.

I would also recommend removing the worker unit all together. You can instead, apply your city's production for a few turns to a nearby tile in the fat cross to make an improvement. Or you can buy improvements out-right, similar to buildings. This would prevent having to move workers around your lands, while still keeping some strategy on when to build improvements.

MuonConspiracy said:

One big problem I see in this type of implementation is the manner in which the terrain at the finer, tactical hex level is generated.

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The concept I'd worked on used fractal landscape generation for the tactical map. All it needed to know were the parameters for the current and all surrounding hexes, which would already be in memory. The rest would be generated using a known seed, then discarded when done. Since the seed was preserved, the tactical hex would be identically generated the next time you entered it.

Edit:

Duraska said:

This would be a great idea. It would please both "traditional" stack/army Civ fans, and the new Civ 5 system Civ fans.

I would also recommend removing the worker unit all together. You can instead, apply your city's production for a few turns to a nearby tile in the fat cross to make an improvement.

Click to expand...

Get out of my head!

Duraska said:

This would be a great idea. It would please both "traditional" stack/army Civ fans, and the new Civ 5 system Civ fans.

I would also recommend removing the worker unit all together. You can instead, apply your city's production for a few turns to a nearby tile in the fat cross to make an improvement. Or you can buy improvements out-right, similar to buildings. This would prevent having to move workers around your lands, while still keeping some strategy on when to build improvements.

Click to expand...

Also an excellent idea. Kind of like Call of Power style, as, if I recall, there were no workers in that version.