communication + map making

[nebuchadnezzar]

in early ages, we send a scout and he discovers + makes map of discovered areas as he travels. if this was that easy, why marco polo's travel so important?
i think scouts + units should come back to home in order to reveal the map (until a certain age, or any unit returning home could "carry" map). of course, for this to happen, map making should be discovered.

if map making isn't discovered, the returned maps could be wrong. (see ptolemy's world map) after a late-medieval tech (could be cartography or navigation) maps could be revealed instantly.

this would let the game more realistic i think. if ancient civs could send units to "far far away kingdoms" , i think the world would be very very different.


communication shold be thought again. may be post-offices, colonies, forts could be build to create a communication network.

comments?

 

[T-Money]

It's a pretty good idea, I would like to see scouts having to "report back" with their maps......Your idea got me thinking, and maybe it would be good if your military units could steal maps from other scouts returning to their motherland....eh.

 

[nebuchadnezzar]

this way, the maps we get from villages would be really valuable.

 

[nebuchadnezzar]

this could be combined with supply idea. units will need (also send back) food, equipment and information from the motherland. food and equipment will be transferred along roads/railroads/harbors/airports and information by forts/post offices/harbors/radio towers/satellites/the internet

 

[Jon Shafer]

If you can't see the map how do you know where to move the units?

 

[Colonel]

Maybe the explore button could be used. You could say explore for X number of turns then it would come back if you sent out units unable to explore they would be lost like early ships. This is would allow this idea besides it would make expansion early on much more diffcult so you couldnt just mass expand like so many do.

 

[Gargantutron]

this would give the AI a massive advantage as it knows the entire map.

otherwise, i like it.

 

[Colonel]

but the AI could lose there units if they went to places they have never been to before without exploreing first

Also maybe you could catch, kill,or other things to scouts and explorer

what about The Age of Sail how would that work explorer ships or something

 

[nebuchadnezzar]

only scout units and primitive warrior units could be used for exploring. when they (or their maps) return home, you see there.

 

[Sirian]

Marco Polo's exploration did not take 600 years. With each turn in Civ lasting decades, some forms of realism are not only impossible, but undesirable. I would rather see the game be fun to play than to see it twisted into pretzel shapes in vain and fruitless attempts to reconcile all of its gameplay logic with the real world. Of course it should be realistic where possible, but clearly it cannot be realistic in all ways all the time.

- Sirian

 

[nebuchadnezzar]

i didn't mean it took hundreds of years. it was hard. marco polo was an explorer, in civ3 explorers are available with navigation, and navigation was "invented" before marco polo. i just want ancient and dark ages be "closed". in present way of gameplay, we discover america in 1000 bc !!! this is an historical game, units and civs are selected through history, but gameplay doesn't fit in.
do you ever use explorers? no, because you have already revealed entire map before navigation tech.

exploration in present gameplay is not good. (zulus build cities in scandinavia in a real-world map, because "a friendy settler joins them")

after mid ages, the age of discovery is underrated in civ3. that era is the base of european wealth.

everyone wants the game be fun, ok, but sometimes historically correct.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

I like the idea

Pook has written some about the exploratinpart - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=89343

 

[biggamer132]

It sounds good on the surface, but there's always a balance between the fun factor and realism. Something like this would make the game so complicated that it'd be undesirable.

 

[Pook]

I had a random neural firing last night- what if the maps you obtained from a minor tribe or another civ weren't entirely accurate? Until the invention of modern cartography using a Cartesian grid system roughly 500 years ago, map making was often more art than science. This resulted in distortions of where terrain features and cities really were, and often omitted rather important features. What they didn't know, they sometimes made up. I'm thinking specifically of:
1) Columbus' idea that the earth was only 18,000 miles in circumference, skewing the locations of continents.
2) Columbus' maps showing Cuba as part of a continent and Florida as an island.
3) The search for the Southern Continent and the Northwest Passage, neither of which existed.
4) Adel Tasman, who found and named Tasmania, but somehow managed to miss Australia both coming and going.
5) Maps of the late 1700s showed Pitcairn island 360 miles away from its true location. This allowed Flecther Christian and his Bounty mutineers to escape detection for years, because the island wasn't where it was "supposed" to be.

One thing I don't know is how hard this would be to program. Could the programmers write code so that when you received a map, it:
a) deleted some terrain features and/or cities.
b) changed the distance between some features.

 

[mitsho]

I like this idea and would include it with supply lines (this unit can only go x tiles away from your terrain or outpost and y (less) tiles from friendly cities). Of course by the time the units develop and at the end you can go everywhere. Perhaps the numbers would be based on how big the map is.
This system would simulate the age of discovery (sail, etc) more AND it's not complicated nor difficult to understand.

But we still have the problem of inaccurate maps. This can be done by making map trading inaccurate (and you only see it accurate if you move a unit near!). WOuld this be realistic? I think yes because the home (country) was pretty much known (with the exception of the first ages, but we have to live with this inaccuracy). The accuracy of maps would develop with the tech: map making allows map trade, but with an awful inaccuracy, education, astronomy and last but not least Satelittes would make it better. I left some techs out, this is balancing issue.

mfG mitsho

 

[sir_schwick]

I do not like the inaccurate map idea. It is realistic and a neat idea, but it would probably distort gameply too much. AS for exploring, fog of war applies except around your cultural borders until map-making. Before map-making, you could move through un-mapped territory except for settlement projects and 'military expeditons'. That is another concept tying in the concept of more accurate wars and suply. AFter Map-Making you fund 'exploration expeditions', those go out and map small areas adjacent to your empire. Further maps have to be bought, found, or traded. THese expeditions probably uncover about 3 cities of space and last about 3 turns. With better technology exploration will get better. Printing Press would allow you to map beyond adjacent territories. Navigation would give you supe-exploration expeditions. The same goes for sea-charting, except that does nto require map-making.

 

[mitsho]

@sir schwick Your idea IS nice, but too complicated for my opinion. We need simple things. and that's why I wrote down my idea above (which is in fact as simple as it can be).

mfG mitsho