Civ5 & Earth maps

[killerkebab]

Could a compromise be something like One Unit Type per Tile? So one couldn't stack 15 main battle tanks, but you could stack say a single pikeman and a single swordsman to help with logistics or tactics?

 

[Baldyr]

I'd like to see fewer units but you could "merge" units instead.

So if the "core" unit is a infantry unit but you merge armor units to it, it then effectively becomes a motorized infantry unit - with tank support. Add artillery and AA and you have a combined arms assault force.

Then do the same thing with a armored unit - add infantry, artillery et cetera to it and get a armored unit with support elements. Each "element" would give bonuses and new abilities, like attacking multiple times, holding defensive ground or defend against air strikes.

But they would still be one unit - not several stacked units. The unit graphics could represent the composition, though. Like the infantry unit has a tank, a cannon and a AA gun in its ranks.

This is in fact what I always wished they would have done with the Panzer General franchise...

 

[Leoreth]

Hearts of Iron does something along these lines, except the graphics, which HoI didn't do at all

 

[Mxzs]

Well, ya know, if Europe is too crowded, it's always possible to get rid of most of the players in that area.

I know, that goes against every RFC player's instinct, which is to add playable civs: the Catalans, the Basques, the Austrians, the Alsatians, the Hessians, the Lubeckians, the people who live at No. 12 Karlstrasse in Bonn ...

But seriously, if you didn't add the Portuguese and the Spanish and the Dutch (and the Catalans, the Basques, the Austrians, the Alsatians, the Hessians, the Lubeckians, etc.); and if you got rid of the English, the French and the Germans; in other words, if you had just one post-classical "European" or "Western" civilization, it would take care of the 1upt traffic problem quite neatly. If it wouldn't be a problem in China or the Middle East it certainly wouldn't be a problem in a one-civ Europe.

It would be conceptually tidier too. Meaning no disrespect, but how ethnocentric is it to act as though the cultural chasm between the Germans and the Dutch is as wide as that between the Inca and the Babylonians; but that everyone between the Gobi and the South China Sea is exactly alike?

Rhye also mentions a speed issue with even so few as 12 civs. So, if people are going to insist on Spain, France, Germany, England, and the Netherlands (at a minimum; they'll also insist on Portugal, I'm sure, and probably the Vikings as well; and then come the Catalans and the Basques and the Austrians ...) what does that leave? Apparently, it leaves five to seven slots before things get problematic. Be conservative and pick only three ancient civilizations and one New World civilization; that still leaves only one to three slots for: the Greeks, the Romans, the Russians, the Japanese, the Khmer, the Ethiopians, the Mali, the Ottomans, the Arabs, the Persians, the Mongols, the Americans, the Carthaginians and others I'm sure I'm forgetting.

Even if the game is redone, so that there are no more than 12 civs in play at a time (which I guess might be one way of keeping things manageable), is it really balanced to restrict half of those possibilities late in the game to a somewhat largish peninsula on the back end of the Asian landmass?

Put in only one Western civilization—not the "French" or the "Germans," but "European" or some such—and a lot of choices do not get closed down.

....

Look, okay, it's a suggestion that has to be made, even if it's not to be implemented—and even if it gets me flamed. Otherwise, I like Baldyr's "mergable units" suggestion, though it loses much of the "tactical" element that is the 1upt rule's only saving grace. I like better his suggestion made in another thread that units be stackable, but that battles take place on a minimap where they aren't, but that's almost certainly not technically doable.

 

[killerkebab]

The reason we include (or wish to enclude) as many Euro civs as possible without doing the same for every other geographical "cluster" of civilizations is because the Euro civs colonised practically the entire world at one point or another. Why remove them or represent them with a single civ?

 

[Rhye]

do cities in civ5 really reach 3 tiles wide city border, city tile itself excluded?

 

[Mxzs]

The reason we include (or wish to enclude) as many Euro civs as possible without doing the same for every other geographical "cluster" of civilizations is because the Euro civs colonised practically the entire world at one point or another. Why remove them or represent them with a single civ?

There's hardly any point in arguing, because my suggestion is not going to fly. Even I'm not fond of it. But to answer your question "why": because including most of the following--the Portuguese, the Spanish, the English, the Scots (who had overseas possessions before the Act of Union), the Dutch, the Belgians (remember the Congo?) the French, the Germans, the Swedes (who also held overseas territories), and the Italians (Abyssinia)--in a game where 12 civs strains the processor and where there is not much room to maneuver in a 1upt map would put a severe strain on things. And the brightest line to draw (so that no one asks "If the English and the French, why not [insert favorite European ethnicity]?" is to put everything west of Russia and north of Greece into one civilization, which would be to put it on a par with all the other civilizations in the game, which do not get represented by their discrete political units.

To make my suggestion more palatable--though, as I say, no one will go for it--perhaps it should take a page from RFC IV, with an early start and a late start. Early start only leads to a "European" civilization. Late start (c. AD 600) cuts the number of playable non-European civs to the bone and puts back the French, Germans, Spanish, etc. The emphasis in the UHVs would be on colonial expansion; perhaps city defense factors could be dramatically upped in such a scenario so that there wouldn't even be a temptation to try conquering Europe.

do cities in civ5 really reach 3 tiles wide city border, city tile itself excluded?

Maybe I misunderstand your question. But I just finished a game in which I think cities acquired tiles that were even outside the 3-tile limit.

 

[Elenhil]

do cities in civ5 really reach 3 tiles wide city border, city tile itself excluded?

Potentially, yes. 3 tiles left, right, up, and down. Actually, it depends on whether the outer tiles are worth it. However, a cultural powerhouse should eventually auto-expand even to the worst tiles.

Take Egypt again. A single city placed East of the Nile and the Stone tile would expand to flood plains first, covering them all (because that portion of the Nile is 7 tiles long). It wouldn't expand 3 tiles West into the desert, of course.

 

[Elenhil]

Like where would a 7 land tile Greece put its 25 units?

Aha! That's the reason Alexander went rampaging through the world!

 

[blizzrd]

Maybe I misunderstand your question. But I just finished a game in which I think cities acquired tiles that were even outside the 3-tile limit.

Cities can work tiles that are up to and including 3 tiles from the city tile, once the city's culture covers these tiles.

Cities can acquire any tiles even further than the 3 tile limit if enough culture is produced in the city. Great Artists can also 'bomb' tiles that are outside of the current city borders to reach beyond the 3 tile radius. Although these tiles can't be worked, they can connect resources that are say 5 tiles away. In this way, I used a Great Artist to connect an Aluminium resource that was 5 tiles north from my northern-most city.

 

[SalmonSoil]

do cities in civ5 really reach 3 tiles wide city border, city tile itself excluded?

No, I always found cities around 4 tiles away from each other, and if they are not cultural powerhouses they will not grow large enough to take 3 tiles in every direction.
The AI also founds cities with an average distance of 4 tiles between them, I even saw AI Elizabeth founding with an average distance of 3 tiles.
The only time one of my cities has ever expanded to it's 3 tiles is when I did an OCC cultural victory as Egypt on the second easiest difficulty.
So yes it is possible to expand to 3 tiles, does it happen often? No.
Also in cIVs RFC cities were often founded closer than normal, my impression has been that ciV is even better optomised for closely packed cities. The only problem is large European armies. Perhaps 1UPT should be allowed inside cities and fortresses?

Also to answer Mxzs, the reason most European civs are represented is because we live in a Western society. They are more well known to us. People simply wouldn't enjoy RFC if England and France were the same civ. Also everything from the Gobi to the south China Sea has been united politically and culturally for most of the past 2000 years. And quite frankly the divisions between European nations are more important historically than the divisions between Mughals and Dravidians.

 

[blizzrd]

No, I always found cities around 4 tiles away from each other, and if they are not cultural powerhouses they will not grow large enough to take 3 tiles in every direction.

This is false, because you can just buy the extra tiles and don't need to wait for culture.

So yes it is possible to expand to 3 tiles, does it happen often? No.

I disagree. I wasn't even going for a cultural victory (eventually won Domination in 1800s) and my 3 cities had all expanded to every one of the 3 radius tiles well before the end of my game.

 

[Elenhil]

No, I always found cities around 4 tiles away from each other, and if they are not cultural powerhouses they will not grow large enough to take 3 tiles in every direction.

The example of Egypt served to illustrate that in cases when lucrative tiles extend on one direction (North-South in case of Nile) they will be among the first the cities acquire, so settling 4 hexes away will very soon produce overlapping interests.

 

[nody]

do cities in civ5 really reach 3 tiles wide city border, city tile itself excluded?

Yes, and because of that the Civ V map should be at least 1.5 times the size of the Civ IV map.

 

[killerkebab]

Yes, and because of that the Civ V map should be at least 1.5 times the size of the Civ IV map.

Why do you pick 1.5 and not 2.25 as the multiplier?

do cities in civ5 really reach 3 tiles wide city border, city tile itself excluded?

Yes. This happens a lot faster if the civilization in question controls Angkor Wat. Culture isn't particularly hard to come by if your cities have decent production (remember to get culture you need to build the buildings ).

Also note that cities can purchase any tile within a 3 tile radius, as long as there is a continuous line, i.e: you can't settle a spot 3 tiles away from gold and buy the tile and build a mine on it - you must buy multiple tiles to create a "path" to the deposit

 

[civ_king]

I wanted to inform you of a few things:

- I've opened a new section of the site, for Civ5.

- For now it just comprehends the "unofficial" conversion made by another user.

- However, I will release a "official" version too.
I'm gonna take the old one to the extremes, enlarging various portions near starting locations, because of criticity of 1UPT gameplay. So, the map will be slightly bigger (I think 128x72). I will not directly convert the RFC one in the World Builder, but rather make the new one with the old bitmap files and convert it.

IMO 240 wide is better (with scaling height too) so we can represent everything

Will you enlarge Europe up to Ukraine instead of up to Western Germany?

You really wants 1UPT in RFC:V?

Yes please, I want Poland to at least be a city state

Pardon me for doubting you, Rhye, but are you sure 128x72 will be enough?

You see, while you, of course, can try to compensate for 1upt by enlarging starting locations, it will probably become rather problematic further down the road.

I suppose, as more and more civilizations become available (either as separate DLCs or shipped together with an add-on, as is the common practice), they will be difficult to fit in. For example, currently we have Rome and France, but, sadly, not Spain. Suppose you squeeze the Iberian peninsula to make more room for Rome and France (surely you won't, but that's just an example). Then they release a well-crafted Spanish civ pack that no-one could resist to play. What will you do next? Edit the map again? And again for the Vikings? And again for Carthage? And so on. You're going to corner yourself, that's what I'm afraid of.

Why don't you use a larger map instead that would be more suitable for adding more civilizations later on and compensate for the extra stress it puts on CPU otherwise? After all, isn't RFC the fastest loading mod, huh?

Big map is good because computing power is cheap these days and when Civ V is fully optimized that $100 Quad core will be able to handle the whole map

It's great to see you starting with the first steps for RFCV, but I have to agree with the posters above.

Civ5 seems to support much bigger maps with good performance. Why not make use of it?

By the second expansion pack Firaxis will probably eliminate the tile limit because of how much computing will have progressed

Also, keep in mind that CiV performance will probably improve with patches. Not to mention the ever more affordable quad-core CPUs.

On a side note, take yields into consideration. Old map sizes worked fine for fat cross city borders. With new 3 hex wide borders each city will potentially have a lot more tiles at its disposal. To (apparently) accommodate to that tile yields were lowered (because otherwise you'll soon have overpowered cities).

If you use the same cIV scale you'll have to increase tile yields because you won't have enough free space for each city to have a full 3 hex wide area to potentially work. And increasing tile yields back will inevitably have repercussions for the whole balance that you'd have to compensate. Too much work.

Better increase the size and scale of the map by at least 50% instead. Think of Egypt. Apart from the flood plains, there's not much to eat there. With the old scale you will either have to dramatically increase output of flood plains or stick a whole bunch of Oases around it to keep Egypt from starvation. And probably double it to make provision for other cities nearby. But if you make the map larger there will be more space and more opportunities to fine-tune Egypt's bread basket without introducing magical bonuses.

OMG quad cores are too expensive. No they aren't, you can get one for $100

Increase size is better, because computing will catch up soon enough

I'm seriously concerned about lag. It's already quite slow with a huge map and 12 civs. It's not a coincidence that the world builder offers 128x80 as maximum size. The "everything is 2x" promise proved to be untrue. It's the number of cities who decreased.
The best thing would be making some tests with different sizes and see how they work.

I suppose neither are fewer hammer yields and more costly, heavy-duty units - to keep down unit numbers.
But I am really hopeful regarding further engine optimizations. It is not cIV, it is already multi-threaded. Common sense (and reviews) tells me that most contemporary games are not even 50% multi-core optimized. There is plenty of room for future optimization. With single-thread cIV there was little to none, and what there was was restricted to mere fine-tuning. Apparently not so with CiV.

Still, it would be much more interesting to test what is the real AI performance bottleneck - is it pathfinding, perchance? Then keeping the number of units low with yields, plagues, and whatever else you think of should be the way to go.

Civ IV was horribly coded, but they vastly improved it, I feel the same thing will happen for Civ V. Also since Civ V is already multithreaded they have a lot more to work with regarding optimizations

do cities in civ5 really reach 3 tiles wide city border, city tile itself excluded?

Yes, by the end of the Renaissance they start filling out their hexes

 

[deanej]

You really want people to be forced to buy new computers for RFC? Intel processors require a new motherboard every time you upgrade. And you can't upgrade at all if you use a laptop.

 

[civ_king]

You really want people to be forced to buy new computers for RFC? Intel processors require a new motherboard every time you upgrade. And you can't upgrade at all if you use a laptop.

play in the strategy layer, and simply have patience, it is that easy!

 

[deanej]

I cound never imagine playing in the strategy layer. And that's not going to do anything for the calculations the AI must do for cities, units, etc. All it does is lessen the graphics load, which is in no way related to the CPU.

 

[civ_king]

I cound never imagine playing in the strategy layer. And that's not going to do anything for the calculations the AI must do for cities, units, etc. All it does is lessen the graphics load, which is in no way related to the CPU.

I said patience, weak CPU simply means longer wait times. Surf the internet on your smart phone or other computer if you are that impatient