A way to make movement realistic?

[civver_764]

Seriously, it should not take 40 years to travel through one forest, no matter how primitive someone is. One turn in the ancient era should logically be able to explore at the very least half the landmass. It's a bit upsetting when it takes hundreds of years just to move your army to an enemy city.

So, is there a way to make this more realistic? Like maybe you could choose a certain tile for that unit to travel to, but once it left it turned dark again? And if you wanted it to appear permanetely on the map you could tell that unit to map out the region(like everything withing two tiles of the unit) which would take a turn. This way traveling would be more realistic, but you still wouldn't be able to have a map of your entire continent before the ADs roll around.

I understand why the turns are so long at the beginning. Research was obviously slower back then and building couldn't be done as quickly(although it is bull that it would take 15 turns(600 years O_O) just to build a single monument.)

So, any better ways of a movement system than is already in place?

 

[ahmedhadzi]

No, because it is not real! It is a game, with "time" used just as a refference rather than time in a way we look at it. If you would preffered it like that, the game should have weeks or days for turns, and could only cover short periods of time because of the obvious limitations.

 

[Big_I]

In order to do something like that, you would have to slow things down much further than Marathon speed. I would foresee a slower speed than marathon being even more warmonger friendly, having massive armies by 400 BC or so. While it would be cool for your warrior to take a day in the game move a couple squares, it would take forever, maybe a couple weeks for even the most hardcore civfanatic to play one game. I would probably get bored with a game before I passed the medieval age.

If you really want more realistic movement time, try playing a scenario, because scenarios focus on a specific time frame and in WWII scenarios for example it will take your ships a few days to get across the Atlantic.

 

[civver_764]

They wouldn't have to slow it down at all, just give the unit more movement.

 

[Continental Op]

They wouldn't have to slow it down at all, just give the unit more movement.

That would not be enough to make it realistic, though. As you yourself pointed out, it don't take hundreds of years to build monuments, libraries and stuff like that. So the only way to make the game realistic in this aspect would be to slow it down considerably - maybe half a year per turn. In that case one game would be 12 000 turns long - maybe more, if you wanted to slow it down even further towards the end. 15 - 20 000 turns maybe? That would be some game.

 

[6K Man]

I suppose one way to rationalize movement would be to consider that "scouting units" (as distinct from the specific Scout unit) aren't able to venture very far from their home base without food, water, supplies, etc. Thus, even if it logically makes sense that a scouting unit should be able to cross the entire map in 40 years, from a practical point of view, they'd never venture that far due to logistical issues. And certainly not in the BC Era. An argument can be made that Settlers did that, but not scouting units.

A couple other points to consider: You, the ruler of the civ, have instant knowledge of everything that your scouting units reveal. This is hardly realistic, either - if they took 40 years to reach the tile they just uncovered, it should take 40 years for the news to get back to you.

And how realistic is it that one scouting unit could explore every inch of territory on a medium sized continent, even over several hundred years? That's what the game would have us believe - all visible resources (even some offshore ones!), water sources, and tribal villages on an entire continent can be accurately mapped by 3000 BC. Take a look at maps of, well, anywhere from 1000 AD to see how ridiculous the idea of accurate maps in the BC era is.

 

[Elukka]

It's a gameplay convenience. Unit movement and building/research are really on completely different timescales, simply because it just wouldn't be very fun for a year to take fifty turns.

 

[Ramesses]

Everything should just run in months, not turns. Then a tiny fraction of those months become playable (i.e. turns). I say months instead of years because wars (with a few exceptions) are decided in 60 months, not 60 years.

You can give special instructions to your units that will dictate their movement between turns. For example, if you start with a Scout, and the next turn is in 30 years, you can give him special instructions on how to explore the land between now and then (explore unexplored tiles closest to civ (default), explore away from civ, visit all tribal villages (default), follow rival civ units, adhere to the coast, etc.).

There is no tactical disadvantage brought on by this system, since everyone must use it to explore unfamiliar territory.

 

[TLF]

Why the obsession with time, real or game?

If you want realism then the game should take 6000 years.
You'd pass the game along generationally to your children.

 

[smackthewise]

I agree its just necessary as a game mechanic. However.....

I read somewhere here a while ago that a tile in the game is representing an area around the size of France in RL (dunno if my memory is failing me here), so realistically, for a scout to map out every part of France would take a VERY VERY long time. If the the tile has wheat as a resource, for example, the scout would have found a resource some where in 'France', as opposed to wheat covering the entire country!

 

[PieceOfMind]

Why should a turn-based game be realistic?

It's like arguing about the rules when playing the board game Monopoly .

 

[Ramesses]

Why should a turn-based game be realistic?

It's like arguing about the rules when playing the board game Monopoly .

Don't get me started on that.

 

[JujuLautre]

So, is there a way to make this more realistic? Like maybe you could choose a certain tile for that unit to travel to, but once it left it turned dark again? And if you wanted it to appear permanetely on the map you could tell that unit to map out the region(like everything withing two tiles of the unit) which would take a turn. This way traveling would be more realistic, but you still wouldn't be able to have a map of your entire continent before the ADs roll around.

As if people were able to travel so long distances and give the results of their explorations on correct maps to their homeland hundreds of kilometers from where they are in 3000 BC

 

[Ramesses]

As if people were able to travel so long distances and give the results of their explorations on correct maps to their homeland hundreds of kilometers from where they are in 3000 BC

Actually...

Now this is kind of straying from the movement topic, but bear with me.

What if, upon starting, the actual map is shown in super-low resolution, such that an area of 64 (8x8) tiles is averaged into a single giant tile. When you move on a super-tile, the unit is moved to a random tile within it (you don't know where). When you improve a super-tile, all compatible tiles in it are improved (of course this takes several times more years than improving an individual tile).

Then, as your technology improves, these 8x8 super-tiles are broken down into 4x4 tiles. Another tech checkpoint scales it up further to 2x2 tiles, and then finally all individual tiles can be interacted with. Before a tile is upscaled, however, you have to explore it (even if it's been explored before). Naturally, it'll be harder to get better maps of enemy territory than your own territory.

This represents the ability to understand the surrounding area. In the beginning, you can only get a very general understandng of what's around you, but over time, your map-making abilities improve, until you can detail every last mile.

I invite anyone to help work out the kinks in this idea.

 

[Kazbar]

I don't see many real logistic problems with it (Besides improvements and how they would be done) as much as I see playability problems with it.

Having to map areas, exploring them again and again and again? It just doesn't seem like it would be very fun to play.

 

[Ramesses]

I don't see many real logistic problems with it (Besides improvements and how they would be done) as much as I see playability problems with it.

Having to map areas, exploring them again and again and again? It just doesn't seem like it would be very fun to play.

Well I guess that's a matter of opinion. I for one love the feeling of exploration, and I wish there could be more of it.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

The way to do it is to limit Range rather than speed.

Essentially units should act like Fighter planes. in one "Turn" they can 'move' as much as they want as long as they stay in the 'range' from their base.

Now a Ground unit may be able to be based a certain distance away from a city, but if Scouting with scouts was a 'fire+forget' where the scout might return with a map showing their path, or maybe not, then it would be more interesting.


Part of the problem with the realism is the tiles are WAY too big for ancient periods. The entire Babylonian empire=1 city


I'd like to see it where overtime, you merge tiles, rather than breaking them down.

ie Early game Iraq= 1024 tiles
Classical=256 tiles
Mideval=64 tiles
Renaissance/Industrial=16 tiles
Modern Era Iraq=4 tiles (so that 'the Middle East' could be one city)

so the total map size would drop from about 1 million tiles to a few thousand. (but you would only be dealing with a few thousand tiles at any given time)... each time you would be becoming a super power by being able to exert power beyond your 'local region'... at the end of a game you become a super power by exerting power beyond Earth itself.

To go along with this you would have to have 'local' competitors.... ie if you are the Babylonians, you would have to start play against Assyrians, Hittites, Sumerians.... as you extended power you would be able to deal with Romans/Etruscans/Athenians/Spartans, etc. Then Indians/Pakistani and finally Aztec/Olmec/Inca. Ideally 'settlers' wouldn't make most cities, but you would get them through conquest/diplomacy.

A way to do this without overloading the computer is to keep all the area outside your 'sphere of interaction' as abstract... and only provide details as you are able to interact with them.... or they have progressed enough to interact with you.

 

[Ramesses]

ie Early game Iraq= 1024 tiles
Classical=256 tiles
Mideval=64 tiles
Renaissance/Industrial=16 tiles
Modern Era Iraq=4 tiles (so that 'the Middle East' could be one city)

That just strikes me as entirely senseless. Why would the map's resolution decrease as technology improves?

The way to do it is to limit Range rather than speed.

Essentially units should act like Fighter planes. in one "Turn" they can 'move' as much as they want as long as they stay in the 'range' from their base.

Now a Ground unit may be able to be based a certain distance away from a city, but if Scouting with scouts was a 'fire+forget' where the scout might return with a map showing their path, or maybe not, then it would be more interesting.

Now this idea I like.

 

[katipunero]

for me each turn represent a specfic or special milestone in a civ's history in the game.

anyway, there has been a lot of threads talking about how civ 4 could be more realistic or how it is unrealistic. the best way to look at the (un)realism of the game is to understand sid meier's overriding goal in creating games. Fun > Educational. The objective is to have fun iand not make the game a tedious exercise where constant references to history books, making parallels to real life and using common sense more than sense of gaming mechanics for the sake of accuracy interfere with overall enjoyment.

EDIT: hmmm. on topic. solution is to play on small maps on standard speed. you can just make believe that each tile represents land the size sixth of a continent. surely that would take several hundred years to travel even more so if it were a forest tile or tundra.

 

[KaytieKat]

Hi

I think the simplest solution to make it feel more realistic is to just use your imagination and not look at as taking the full 40 years for eveything to get done.

Think of it more like every 40 years you get caught up to date on everything your civ has been doing during that period. So maybe mapping out that tile only took 5 or 10 yesrs or whatever to get done but you didnt find out until you got the 40 year "report". And as time moves on and you can get more things done in less time the blocks of time each "report" covers is smaller.

Kaytie