The New Great Wall and its implications re: Trade & Industrial Warfare

[moysturfurmer]

1. What we know:
A. China's Great Wall Improvement can span multiple tiles.

B. (Besides presumably costing movement points to cross) The Great Wall confers a defensive bonus to units stationed on top of it.

C. Ed Beach and Dennis Shirk and Pete Murray have been using the word "canal" a lot.

D. Beach was keen on representing WWI in BNW (with Great War Infantry, Bi Planes, Machine Guns etc)

2. What we can assume:
A. The mechanic that makes the Great Wall possible can presumably be used to create canals. Whether or not they would span multiple tiles remains to be seen, but I'd say canals are all but confirmed.

B. Great War Infantry will at some point find themselves back in Civ VI, likely in an expansion.

3. What we can extrapolate:
Industrial warfare will eventually be defined in Civ VI by the lovechild of Great Wall & Canal mechanics. Trenches will be introduced and function similarly to The Great Wall. They will be able to span multiple tiles and will confer gnarly defense bonuses to units stationed within them.

Make the Great War Great Again.™ We're gonna build a wall.™

 

[Plus Ultra]

A. The mechanic that makes the Great Wall possible can presumably be used to create canals. Whether or not they would span multiple tiles remains to be seen, but I'd say canals are all but confirmed.

The mechanic that makes the Great Wall possible is exactly the same that made the Moai, Chateau, Kasbah, Terrace Farm, Feitoria, Brazilwood Camp and Polder possible. As far as we know, the great wall is just another Unique Improvement.

Regarding Canals. Ed Beach talks about them, without confirming they are in the game, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBdl8YVFK4o

I do agree everything points to them being in the game, but there is no confirmation yet.

3. What we can extrapolate:
Industrial warfare will eventually be defined in Civ VI by the lovechild of Great Wall & Canal mechanics. Trenches will be introduced and function similarly to The Great Wall. They will be able to span multiple tiles and will confer gnarly defense bonuses to units stationed within them.

Canals (not confirmed) + Great wall (UI for China, as far as we know) = confirmed Trenches?

Unique improvements already existed in Civ V, and the functionality of trenches was covered by forts. With the new encampment district and their goal of reducing choke-points, trenches seem as unlikely to make an appearance in Civ VI as checkpoints or roadblocks.

This doesn't mean trenches are a bad idea, of course. I would like to see them in Civ VI, especially if trenches could be built, like rivers, between tiles.

 

[Redaxe]

Trenches sound interesting.
Hopefully Great War Infantry can dig their own trenches. It would be silly to require workers for this

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I don't think the inclusion of Great War units in Civ V expansions gives any inordinate evidence that they will be in Civ VI.

 

[Mustakrakish]

Was there some info about the great wall? Did I miss something?

 

[moysturfurmer]

The mechanic that makes the Great Wall possible is exactly the same that made the Moai, Chateau, Kasbah, Terrace Farm, Feitoria, Brazilwood Camp and Polder possible. As far as we know, the great wall is just another Unique Improvement.

Regarding Canals. Ed Beach talks about them, without confirming they are in the game, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBdl8YVFK4o

I do agree everything points to them being in the game, but there is no confirmation yet.



Canals (not confirmed) + Great wall (UI for China, as far as we know) = confirmed Trenches?

Unique improvements already existed in Civ V, and the functionality of trenches was covered by forts. With the new encampment district and their goal of reducing choke-points, trenches seem as unlikely to make an appearance in Civ VI as checkpoints or roadblocks.

This doesn't mean trenches are a bad idea, of course. I would like to see them in Civ VI, especially if trenches could be built, like rivers, between tiles.

No it's not that the Great Wall is a unique tile improvement that's significant, it's that it can span multiple tiles in one contiguous line. The mechanic that would allow for contiguous trench graphics are already in place. Moai perhaps made a case for this mechanic already existing in civ, but as it was limited to coast, any contiguous line made by the moai was already recognized in game as an element of the map. One couldn't create a new "line."

Functionally though, they wouldn't necessarily be the same as forts. Could be that forts provide a overall defense bonus whereas units in trenches would be super weak to flanking, artillery, & armored units. Oh and they'd be build able in enemy territory & would be buildable by infantry units.

The again, Eagle Pursuit is right, there's no guarantee that Great War units will return. I really doubt it they won't though. WWI was such a significant awful watershed when it comes to war. Seem silly not to represent it.

But the takeaway is now there's a mechanic in place that allows for multi-tile map elements (and roads down count since you can have a 3x3 grid of weird looping, branched spaghetti). This mechanic would at the very least, provide modders with the capability of easily creating trenches themselves.

Was there some info about the great wall? Did I miss something?

No new info, but in case you haven't heard: it's now a Chinese Unique Tile improvement.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

No it's not that the Great Wall is a unique tile improvement that's significant, it's that it can span multiple tiles in one contiguous line. The mechanic that would allow for contiguous trench graphics are already in place. Moai perhaps made a case for this mechanic already existing in civ, but as it was limited to coast, any contiguous line made by the moai was already recognized in game as an element of the map. One couldn't create a new "line."

.

The Chinese Great wall is very like the Moai... the moai are built on the preexisting line that is the coast...The great Wall is built on the Preexisting line that is your border.

 

[moysturfurmer]

The Chinese Great wall is very like the Moai... the moai are built on the preexisting line that is the coast...The great Wall is built on the Preexisting line that is your border.

That's fair enough, but the fact that borders grow mean that line is transient.

But it begs some pretty interesting questions. What happens when you've got 2 layers of single tile wall along a deep mountain pass? Do those walls connect into eachother or do they remain separate? What happens when you build a 3 tile wall, pop borders, build another 3 tile wall, and repeat again until you end up with a 3x3 grid of wall?

I suppose now it remains to be seen if canals (which let's face it, have to be in given how coy the 3 firaxis reps/devs are acting) can extend multiple tiles to see if this trench theory holds any... water.

 

[Plus Ultra]

No it's not that the Great Wall is a unique tile improvement that's significant, it's that it can span multiple tiles in one contiguous line. The mechanic that would allow for contiguous trench graphics are already in place. Moai perhaps made a case for this mechanic already existing in civ, but as it was limited to coast, any contiguous line made by the moai was already recognized in game as an element of the map. One couldn't create a new "line."

There are other things that span multiple tiles in a contiguous line... like roads.

 

[moysturfurmer]

There are other things that span multiple tiles in a contiguous line... like roads.

Roads freak out when you've got too many too close to eachother and are "branchable." In wouldn't expect the Wall, Canals, or any potential Trech to be "branchable."

 

[Plus Ultra]

Roads freak out when you've got too many too close to eachother and are "branchable." In wouldn't expect the Wall, Canals, or any potential Trech to be "branchable."

So, to sum things up, you argue that since roads are branchable and Moai's lines are transient... one couldn't truly create a "new line" with the systems in Civ V, and therefore trenches were out of the question.

Now, in Civ VI, the new Great Wall tile improvement, which we haven't seen yet, finally is able to create the non-branchable, non-transient lines required for trenches, and therefore trenches can finally be coded into the game.

I find your logic very hard to follow.

Anyway, I do agree trenches could be an interesting adition to Civ VI, but I would prefer to see them positioned in-between tiles, just like rivers, with similar effects on movement and attacks.

 

[AriochIV]

If it's to operate like a wall instead of a fort, ideally the Great Wall would be built on the border between tiles, like a river, the way it is in Civ V. The reason that this is difficult to do normally is that the worker/builder would have to specify which hex face(s) in a tile get the wall, which is not as clean as they'd like the (ever-more-simplified) Civ UI to be, especially around corners where the wall might cover more than one hex face per tile.

However, this is where the unique nature of the Great Wall comes in: it can only be built on your border. So the builder has to be standing on the tile adjacent to the border, and the wall goes on the same hex faces that mark the border; no additional UI is required, you just hit the build button.

If this is so, then it has no implications at all for canals or other improvements, except ones that can only be built on the border or in certain tiles.

 

[moysturfurmer]

I find your logic very hard to follow.

Well in the interest of complete transparency, I forgot that the Wall could only be built on China's border & am just jerry rigging my position to fit newly discovered facts. But then again, who needs logic when you've got faith?

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I don't know if I like the idea of trenches taking up so much space on the map. GW is a little different being a UI.

 

[happybjorn]

There has been a system in place for this forever, fortify unit. It would be far easier to add a fortify bonus to a unit, instead of creating new assets and new mechanics.

 

[OnceAKing]

Well if the world were a game, the trench system in WWI was game breaking, if there were aliens playing Human History they would have demanded rebalancing.

I mean I guess you could also blame antiquated tactics. But I don't know why you'd want to recreate the SLOW AGONIZING COSTLY WARS thst resulted in little territory exchange in a macro game like CIV. The units cool but recreating that game dynamic with trenches and mines being impenetrable until mechanized warfare sounds like a game design flaw.

For what it's worth I'd love to see them create the dynamic battles out in the field deciding wars in the ancient and classical era. Perhaps wiping out an army in the border zone before even reaching the city should convince an AI to capitulate to war demands.

 

[Plus Ultra]

However, this is where the unique nature of the Great Wall comes in: it can only be built on your border. So the builder has to be standing on the tile adjacent to the border, and the wall goes on the same hex faces that mark the border; no additional UI is required, you just hit the build button.

That would make sense, a pretty elegant solution. It would also allow for the tile to be used for improvements/districts/wonders, just like any other tile, which is very relevant in the new system of course.

Well in the interest of complete transparency, I forgot that the Wall could only be built on China's border & am just jerry rigging my position to fit newly discovered facts.

You had me at branchable-roads

Nice try Sir

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