Civ 5: In the round or still flat?

[Zarthushtr]

Hello

Does anyone know if Civ 5 will use a full globe map, enabling to travel over the poles, or if the map will essentially remain a Mercator projection?

I have been hoping for it to be a globe since Civ 2, only to be disappointed about this feature (or lack thereof) with each new version.

Other games have been using full globe maps for ages, and it makes for more realistic travel.

Thanks.

 

[Ahriman]

No-one knows. However, you can search through the forums and fine MANY threads discussing this, and emphasizing that to create an actual globe with hexes, you must have some pentagons somewhere in the map, or have distorted tile shapes.

For example, this one, only a few threads down: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=354175

 

[Zarthushtr]

Thank you.
It's obvious, in retrospect. :-(
Another missed opportunity, esp if climate change is introduced.

 

[frekk]

Other games have been using full globe maps for ages, and it makes for more realistic travel.

None with discrete, uniform tiles (AFAIK).

It's easy if you have a Risk-like map where the land is divided into blobby, non-uniform territories, or where you don't have discrete portions of terrain at all.

 

[Shurdus]

Welcome to civfanatics, Zarthushtr!

 

[Lord Khorak]

Being able to move over the poles isn't entirely 'realistic' anyway. Aircraft can do it, but when people talk about being able to go over the pole in Civ, it's inevitably going to result in a monolithic military operation that should be utterly unthinkable.

 

[Bezurn]

Only within the last 100 years or so have we been able to fully explore the polar regions. Given the scope of CIV this means a mere fraction of the time you are playing would be reflected in real life. Perhaps in mods it could be useful, but perhaps given the communities ingenuity we will be able to mod this feature into the game. Another aspect about a polar world though is that it would take less tile movements to move around the world in a straight lines (diagonally) than any other method. I guess that's one bit that would be best represented by a spherical map.

 

[Zarthushtr]

An ability to travel over the poles would be invaluable in the latter phases of the game. The area is turning to be of strategic importance, not just the Arctic, but also the antarctic.
Think of the number of planes going over the poles daily to get to and from Japan, potential undersea mining, oil drilling etc.

 

[fdgsgds]

How many people travel north or south right over the poles to get from, say, Alaska to Siberia anyways? It just doesn't work... it's like traveling through deserts, well, because, they are deserts! They aren't very popular to travel on. Well, I'm rambling. So, what's wrong with a flat map? You can go from one side to the other if it's representing the entire planet. That is in all likeliness what will happen... though for all I know I could be totally wrong.

 

[playshogi]

I don't care whether the polar regions are navigable or not--it's the immersion factor of playing on a globe that counts for me.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

I don't see why there should be any problem traveling across the poles. It's not always earth maps... I know you've been able to choose the type of climate before.

If the poles are arctic, should they be "untravelable"? Should deserts and other inhospitable climate zones be dangerous to traverse?



I'd like to play civ5 with spherical maps, but I wonder if it won't be too demanding for the hardware for them to implement it. They have made it clear that it shouldn't be to demanding iirc and I'd rather see large than spherical maps.

 

[Zarthushtr]

For technical discussions, see
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=354175

I was seeking to see the benefits for the game of being able to go over the poles, as we can do in the real world.

 

[Zarthushtr]

A further advantage of having a globe instead of a flat earth, would be the ability of rotating the map to suit our requirements, thus viewing it from a wide variety of perspectives.

It would also allow the viewing of the globe in any variety of projections, similar to what we can see when perusing an atlas, and find those that best suit our needs.

I recall first looking at an atlas as a child, wondering at the wide range of those and seeing their respective distorsions.

As cartographers in earlier centuries identified, map-making was seen as a means to power, and was thus of great strategic significance.

This is not currently possible if the Civ map remains Mercator-based.

 

[Grey Fox]

I was seeking to see the benefits for the game of being able to go over the poles, as we can do in the real world.

It's not like you'd end up in the southern hemisphere if you cross the north pole...

 

[Zhahz]

Not really important to gameplay and very trivial thing, IMO.

 

[Ahriman]

I think a more important feature than travelling over poles is to have east-west distances be shorter at higher latitudes.

 

[eireksten]

I think a more important feature than travelling over poles is to have east-west distances be shorter at higher latitudes.

I haven't looked specifically into solutions for this, but I suspect that if you go there you might as well go entirely global.

edit: Anyway, I find the real topic of this thread interesting What ARE the incentives for a spherical map? Other than realism and coolness, which are pretty obvious.

 

[Steve the Noble]

The absence of any discussion of this in the various reviews of the game indicates to me that it's the same old flat earth.

Sprinkling in pentagons and/or distorting the map near the poles is just a kludge anyway. The distractions outweigh the round-earth benefits.

 

[Ahriman]

I haven't looked specifically into solutions for this, but I suspect that if you go there you might as well go entirely global.

That's kinda my point; the main strategic benefit from going to a globe is the impact on distances, not on polar accessibility.

What ARE the incentives for a spherical map? Other than realism and coolness, which are pretty obvious.

I think its immersion factor to make you feel like you're playing on a planet, instead of on a game board.

The absence of any discussion of this in the various reviews of the game indicates to me that it's the same old flat earth.

I agree that we still probably have a just flat earth, but absence of discussion doesn't necessarily mean it isn't there.

I can easily see this as being a function of only some map scripts for example, and they might not be ready to be demoed.

The distractions outweigh the round-earth benefits.

How so? The "distrations" seem pretty small.

 

[Zarthushtr]

My initial reference to the poles was just a way of bringing up the issue of a round earth.
I want to have the impression, when playing, of being in a real place, with its limitations, but also its opportunities.
The single key feature which would , in a fell swoop, enable this verisimilitude, is to make the planet round instead of flat.
If not, we might just as well live in the Middle-Ages, because that's what most people thought the world was like at the time.

I think we've moved on a bit since then. Current computer technology enables us to do that, so why not?

Incidentally, an extension of this might be a revamping of Masters of Orion and other similar games.