dunkleosteus
Roman Pleb
I've been turning this over in my head for a while now. I remember when Civ V came out, I was unsure whether hexes would be better than squares but I've come to love hexes. I think Civ6 could use a similar revolution in the way the map works and is structured. Originally, this idea came to me while I was sitting in a lecture for a history course that focuses on how water was used in history, specifically in Sumeria, ancient Rome and the Middle East.
Right now, [land] tiles can be either mountains, hills, or flatland with features such as jungles, forests, etc. This is certainly a simplified idea of geography and this is where I want to expand the game.
Civilization doesn't have a good way to express differences in height. Virtually the entire world is at sea level or one hill height above this and I want to change this. I think the solution is to use a hex grid with a height value for each vertex.
If Civ6 used a system like this, I think these would be the most significant differences: rather than hills, terrain could be sloped: this happens when their are differences in height between the vertices. A slope also has a direction. A unit moving uphill takes a movement penalty as in Civ V when moving through hills but does not take a movement penalty going downhill. Sloped tiles must have a difference in height of no more than 1 for a unit to be able to travel up or down. A difference of 2 makes the tile a mountain tile. This means mountains are no longer single tiles, but instead form snaky mountain ridges. This change is comparable to moving rivers from being tiles to existing between tiles as they do in Civ V.
If two adjacent tiles share a vertex that doesn't have the same height, their is a cliff that is impassable in either direction. The tile above has vision below but the tile at the bottom of the cliff has no vision.
If a tile borders the ocean but does not have a height of 0, there is a cliff. Units cannot disembark up a cliff and so must find a suitable location to disembark.
The number of height units used doesn't really matter, although I'd recommend at least 6 or 7 to allow for enough variation to make the game interesting.
The reason I had this idea in the first place was a discussion we were having about the founding of Cairo, which sits near the Nile flood plain. 10 km on each side of the Nile would flood annually, and so the city of Cairo could not be built on the river, instead on a nearby hill. I found this idea really interesting, that settling on a flood plain would be impossible, but that it was excellent for farming. In my mind, having differences in height allows such a process to be possible: the flood plains would be the land tiles adjacent to the rivers, with the whole area being a depression in the land.
Overall, this has a huge impact on the game though: hills can no longer be a single tile, instead the smallest hill would be at least 2 hexes across, with a small ridge line in the middle. Large hills could have plateaued flat land on top, but most interestingly, it is only difficult to change your elevation: once you attain elevation, you don't need to expend movement points to travel.
One of the consequences of this change would be that the world itself would be sort of zoomed in. Terrain features that used to only occupy a single hex would now occupy multiple hexes, but I don't think this is a bad thing. It allows for more interesting ways to use the landscape strategically.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, I think it should still be possible to have single-tile mountains if we say they are volcanoes. Volcanoes don't as often have ridges because they form as a cone of varying gradients over a single point.
EDIT2: I also forgot to mention that a river that meets a cliff must form a waterfall. It's possible that this could be useful when building a hydroplant.
Right now, [land] tiles can be either mountains, hills, or flatland with features such as jungles, forests, etc. This is certainly a simplified idea of geography and this is where I want to expand the game.
Civilization doesn't have a good way to express differences in height. Virtually the entire world is at sea level or one hill height above this and I want to change this. I think the solution is to use a hex grid with a height value for each vertex.
If Civ6 used a system like this, I think these would be the most significant differences: rather than hills, terrain could be sloped: this happens when their are differences in height between the vertices. A slope also has a direction. A unit moving uphill takes a movement penalty as in Civ V when moving through hills but does not take a movement penalty going downhill. Sloped tiles must have a difference in height of no more than 1 for a unit to be able to travel up or down. A difference of 2 makes the tile a mountain tile. This means mountains are no longer single tiles, but instead form snaky mountain ridges. This change is comparable to moving rivers from being tiles to existing between tiles as they do in Civ V.
If two adjacent tiles share a vertex that doesn't have the same height, their is a cliff that is impassable in either direction. The tile above has vision below but the tile at the bottom of the cliff has no vision.
If a tile borders the ocean but does not have a height of 0, there is a cliff. Units cannot disembark up a cliff and so must find a suitable location to disembark.
The number of height units used doesn't really matter, although I'd recommend at least 6 or 7 to allow for enough variation to make the game interesting.
The reason I had this idea in the first place was a discussion we were having about the founding of Cairo, which sits near the Nile flood plain. 10 km on each side of the Nile would flood annually, and so the city of Cairo could not be built on the river, instead on a nearby hill. I found this idea really interesting, that settling on a flood plain would be impossible, but that it was excellent for farming. In my mind, having differences in height allows such a process to be possible: the flood plains would be the land tiles adjacent to the rivers, with the whole area being a depression in the land.
Overall, this has a huge impact on the game though: hills can no longer be a single tile, instead the smallest hill would be at least 2 hexes across, with a small ridge line in the middle. Large hills could have plateaued flat land on top, but most interestingly, it is only difficult to change your elevation: once you attain elevation, you don't need to expend movement points to travel.
One of the consequences of this change would be that the world itself would be sort of zoomed in. Terrain features that used to only occupy a single hex would now occupy multiple hexes, but I don't think this is a bad thing. It allows for more interesting ways to use the landscape strategically.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, I think it should still be possible to have single-tile mountains if we say they are volcanoes. Volcanoes don't as often have ridges because they form as a cone of varying gradients over a single point.
EDIT2: I also forgot to mention that a river that meets a cliff must form a waterfall. It's possible that this could be useful when building a hydroplant.
