Antarctica

[Ochylski]

Okay, so maybe this has been thrown out, I don't know. How about making it so that a ship, or a man can travel halfway across the map at the poles? This would give a bit more of a globe feeling and really more realistic. There would need to be a requisite technology though. Huge ships travel through the Arctic Circle designed to plow through ice. Steam power or something would enable that. The ice caps on civ 1 always frustrated me because men could walk along it but not through it. I really don't think it'd be hard to code, just instantly travel halfway across the top of the map.

What say you?

 

[10Seven]

It looks like Civ4 either uses a 'real' globe, or it's maps are curved.

Thus, it looks like you get your wish

Unless I misunderstood...

 

[Ochylski]

Nope, that sounds good to me. There really is not much I know about Civ4 yet. But they just posted something on the frontpage that looks interesting. Huge changes being made.

 

[apatheist]

I'd like to see some kind of Icebreaker ship. All it does is destroy ice tiles so other ships can pass. The ice reforms after one turn. If your non-Icebreaker ships are caught in the ice when it reforms, they either die, suffer damage (just one or per turn), or are simply immobilized. Submarines would be able to travel under the ice pack. Perhaps they could surface at some point, perhaps suffering minor damage in doing so.

 

[Superkrest]

i like the idea of being able to make bombing runs over the arctic or antartic poles...to nuke your capatilist pig enemy on the other side.

 

[alms66]

But they just posted something on the frontpage that looks interesting. Huge changes being made.

The perception of 'huge changes' is just like the perception of beauty...

it's in the eye of the beholder

 

[Xia]

i like the idea of being able to make bombing runs over the arctic or antartic poles...to nuke your capatilist pig enemy on the other side.

The Capitalists will sell us the very rope we use to hang them comrade!

 

[Superkrest]

...lmao..its good to see that not all have been fooled by capitalist propaganda

Using the artic has become quite common for transport and was a very important stratagy to both sides during the cold war. i would be bumbed out to find that the artic is again off limits in this game(lets just hope that the AI's great wall of the antartic doenst come back)

 

[Ramalhão]

What do you think about adding polar circles (latitude 66° 33' 38") to the game? Maybe adding high shrinking chances, slower speeds or maybe unabling using these area until the research of a certain tech.

Well, I think Firaxis will say it is already in the game. It may be those ice caps which don't allow any crossing .

 

[Superkrest]

i dont know if support crossing with army or ships..but i do support being able to fly over them. flying is very practical and has been for a while...but land or ship crossings are still incredibly difficult.

 

[apatheist]

I want a truly round world, but having a round globe would make terrain tiles weird. Civ3 had cylindrical worlds, not round ones. I don't see a way to construct a spherical world using just square tiles. Geodesic domes use both pentagons and hexagons (like a soccer ball/football), and, even then, there's still a degree of irregularity. The map engine can gloss over those irregularities, but having two different shapes of tiles would be messed up. It appears it's possible with just pentagons, but a game board made of pentagons would be odd. Any topologists in the house?

 

[Superkrest]

that would be another reason i would support only flying....with flying you can simpily take a way a certain amount of movements and just pop them out on the equilivent side...now on the map this would apper as
1. the unit going straight up
2 the unit coming straight down some 50(for example) squares over..in all realitiy...the plane flew over and hit the other side of the world..just simple repersentation. thats all you need...this would be especially nice when attacking with airborn or helicopter transported units. or using tatical nukes

 

[apatheist]

You would still have unrealistic things like the arctic circles having just as much area as the tropics. A truly spherical game world would be a very nice thing, but it doesn't work with square tiles that are fixed in size.

 

[Superkrest]

you wouldnt have to show the artic area. just allow a certain amount of assumed movement across it.. it would be like on the civ3 map except the arial range would be include across and beyond an imaginary area of the map(how big would depend on map size) lets say you count the artic as 5 squares across. and you have a bomber that is 3 squares from the artic with a range of 16....you could penetrate 8 squares into the othere side of the map in a straight line.

 

[Ochylski]

Superkrest, that's what I was thinking with land or sea units. Land units would be able to appear a varying amount of spaces away, they could move directly up or diagonally left or right. I don't think land units could use this method of travelling until the modern age though... or whenever you get mechanized transport. Something similar for sea units.

Granted, apatheist, the movement would still be unrealistic as would the map (maybe a one turn penalty could help??), but you could grant some realism by being able to use the poles.

But they are using a globe it would seem...take a look

 

[apatheist]

I've seen the screenshot. I don't understand how that would work unless it's just visual trickery. Or, I guess, tiles at northern/southern latitudes could be secretly smaller than ones at tropical latitudes. i.e., the world looks round, but it doesn't behave like a round world.

 

[Markus6]

The world is the same shape it always has been. When the camera zooms all the way out you see the map wrapped into a tube and pinched and the tops to make it look like a sphere. But zoomed in at game level there won't be any difference.

 

[Superkrest]

air transport over the poles is super important to the strategy of air war.. i just think even a goofy reperesentation would advance game play..its really no more weird the not having poles( a giant cylinder floating through space.lol)

 

[Ochylski]

well, I guess that makes sense markus, it does look a little stretched out, a curved cylinder really. A man can dream though, a man can dream...

 

[apatheist]

That would do interesting things to game play. All else being equal, the tropics would be larger and the arctic smaller. But all else wouldn't be equal; I'm sure they'd fiddle with the "height" of the map to rejigger it. Plus, Civ3 didn't really have an Arctic anyway.