Customizable districts and armies for CIV7

[BuchiTaton]

For CIV 7 the hexagonal tiles have the potential to show one of many designated graphical variation for districts and armies based on the customized selection of 6 buildings by district and 6 units by army (all this based on the division of one hexagon on six triangles).

So the idea is not to remplaze hexagonal tiles with a bigger number of triangular ones, but to add the option of customize dristricts with different buildings as better suit us instead of the fixed kinds of districts. On the same way armies would be formed by 6 units of the same or different unit kinds with the potential to add a tactical layer depending of the relative position of each unit inside the hexagonal tile (6 positions).

The rest of the properties like terrain and resources of the hexagonal tiles would be like current CIV6 (just one kind by hexagonal tile), the same with the adjacencies their effects would apply on any/all of six the buildings on given tile.

This way the city plannning and army management would be more deep and personalized in addition to more realistic proportions between elements on the map like the size of the natural features vs the cities and armies.

Image of the idea

What do you think?

 

[Zegangani]

I also thought of that, but this would bring a lot of Issues:

- Unit Combat would be complicated and not realistic: If you have 6 different Units on a Tile that are attacking an Enemy in an adjacent Tile there won't be much Tactical Terrain Combat (like archers more useful when on high ground against enemy on flat terrain without Forest), because all the 6 tiles of the hexagon would have the same Terrain/Feature (Imagine 6 Ranged Units on Hills Tile against a CC). One could keep the one Terrain for all of them and make each Tile can have it's own feature, but that won't make much difference. Add more adjacent Tiles and Tiles 2 Tiles away that get involved with Range Attacks, taking in account all their respective Terrains/Features, and everything will get further complicated.

- Adopting this Systeme would make Civ Maps even smaller, because the more you add to the map, the less the Game Engine can handle.

- It would be a MOUNTAIN of work for the Devs to programm Unit movement/Pathfinding to work properly for this Systeme, especially for AI. And it would hinder this latter even more. Yes, it sounds that more Units per Tile would solve the issue of AI Unit movement, and that's actually true, but subtiles in 1 Tile isn't the Solution IMO. Allowing different Types of Units in 1 Tile is more optimal IMHO.

I think that Humankind's approach to Unit Combat is very good, and adds more realism to the Battles. While a Turn in a Game can take 1 Year to Decades, making Battles take some "battle turns" before the actual Game Turn ends, makes it more realistic. Especially with the option that other Units could join the Battle (reinforcement).

For Districts/Buildings, I think the best solution is what Alexander's Hetaroi has already suggested: Making a different Map for the City Center, where you can build some Districts and their respective Buildings. But some Disticts would still require their own Tile, like Encampment, IZ, Aerodrome, Dam...etc, aswell as Improvements like Farm (I suggest making a Pasture buildable inside a Farm), Plantation, Mine...etc.

 

[mitsho]

Yes, I love it. The details may need refinement - Zeganganis points are well made - but that's not up to you to solve.

But since proposals in that direction have been brought up time and time again, I think it's clear where the demand of the fanatics in here is headed. The counter-argument that the game not only needs to play more easily, but also look good while doing it, is an inmportant one. Not sure your arms style does it yet - but again, those are solvable details.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

For CIV 7 the hexagonal tiles have the potential to show one of many designated graphical variation for districts and armies based on the customized selection of 6 buildings by district and 6 units by army (all this based on the division of one hexagon on six triangles).

So the idea is not to remplaze hexagonal tiles with a bigger number of triangular ones, but to add the option of customize dristricts with different buildings as better suit us instead of the fixed kinds of districts. On the same way armies would be formed by 6 units of the same or different unit kinds with the potential to add a tactical layer depending of the relative position of each unit inside the hexagonal tile (6 positions).

The rest of the properties like terrain and resources of the hexagonal tiles would be like current CIV6 (just one kind by hexagonal tile), the same with the adjacencies their effects would apply on any/all of six the buildings on given tile.

This way the city plannning and army management would be more deep and personalized in addition to more realistic proportions between elements on the map like the size of the natural features vs the cities and armies.

Image of the idea

What do you think?

I have to agree with @Zegangani that the combat array will probably cause as many problems as it solves, and a 'blow up' tactical map array is probably a 'cleaner' solution. That also has the advantage that we will be able to see how well such a system works in Humankind before Civ VII gets rolling in development, so there will be bad and good examples of what to do and what not to do to guide us.

On the other hand, the idea of 'devolving' the Districts into Holding Pens for buildings is one I've also proposed. I went with 5 buildings, because that way you could 'specialize' a District by having a majority of Buildings being of a particular type and thus get extra Bonuses. All Districts would start as 'generic' except the City Center (with required Administrative Center Building like Palace or Satrap/Governor/Viceroy's Mansion or City Hall/Rathaus, etc) and would become specialized or general City Districts based on what you built in them.
ALL Adjacency bonuses would be by Building, not District, so that cities could be built in a tight group instead of spread all over the map unrealistically, and Walls would surround the contiguous Districts, not just the City Center and some gamy Encampment.

Many Wonders would also go inside Districts, most of them taking up more than one 'Building' Slot, but not necessarily all 5 in the District (or 6, in your scheme). Many later Buildings might also take up more than one 'slot', like Factories or Research Parks, and all Buildings would be Replaceable, so that your original dinky little Library could be replaced by a later University which, if next to a District containing a Research Park and in a District also containing a Technical College, would give massive multiplication of Science bonuses (and neatly recreate the IRL areas of Cambridge, Massachusettes or Silicon Valley, California)

 

[mitsho]

Hey, that was my model. You stole it. ;-)

Yeah, I guess there is common agreement that if you want to have "the cities on the map", you'd need more tiles per city or split up the tiles. It gets to the same place, but the decisive question here is computer performance. How do you have to design it, that it's still playable like that. I'm really curious what their answer will be for civ7.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Hey, that was my model. You stole it. ;-)

Yeah, I guess there is common agreement that if you want to have "the cities on the map", you'd need more tiles per city or split up the tiles. It gets to the same place, but the decisive question here is computer performance. How do you have to design it, that it's still playable like that. I'm really curious what their answer will be for civ7.

Right now, most of the Districts in Civ VI have 'room' for three Buildings each, while the Quarters in Humankind (at least in the Open Devs so far) have had a collection of buildings complete with tiny animated inhabitants carts, animals walking the streets but no 'additional' Buildings added during the game (all their Infrastructure seems to be invisible on the map, like Pre-Civ VI versions of Civ). Both games work fine on my several-year-old computer, which is what led me to believe that 5 'unique' Building slots in a District should be workable. Not being a computer animation artist or programer, I could be completely wrong about that of course . . .

There's also the point that in the Lucy Open Dev I saw some screenshots of in-game Humankind cities that were several times larger in numbers of Quarters/Districts than anything ever seen in Civ VI. I don't know what computers those were built on (if the word 'Cray' was involved, all bets are Off), but I regard that as another indication that the (average) computer will not limit a redesigned District/City system that much.

 

[mitsho]

Of course it's doable, it simply is a question of balancing visuals, gameplay and UI against each other. Because 5 buildings on a tile means quite a busy map, hard to do with distinct visual clues. It also may increase the number of tiles which would be a good thing gameplay-wise, but not performance wise. Point is, there's no point in debating that here, I just believe thoughts on that will be more important more development than musings about the optimal gameplay rules.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Of course it's doable, it simply is a question of balancing visuals, gameplay and UI against each other. Because 5 buildings on a tile means quite a busy map, hard to do with distinct visual clues. It also may increase the number of tiles which would be a good thing gameplay-wise, but not performance wise. Point is, there's no point in debating that here, I just believe thoughts on that will be more important more development than musings about the optimal gameplay rules.

Been thinking a lot this weekend about 'distinct visual clues' because I've had a chance to play 12+ hours of the Humankind Victor Open Dev, and that game's Quarters and cities have NO visual clues as to what has been built in them other than Emblematic Quarters and Wonders and Holy Sites - none of the other city infrastructure: the libraries, fountains, charcoal kilns, etc show up on the map. Walls show up on the map, but in general, as beautiful as the Humankind maps are, they leave a lot of information missing that we've gotten used to seeing 'on the map' in Civ VI.

But that just means that the 'perfect' Civ VII map will have to fall somewhere between Humankind's extremely realistic but lacking in in-game information and Civ VI's cartoony graphics. I'm convinced that there is a 'sweet spot' between the two, and making the infrastructure visible is possible using defined building types and color-coding, and possibly other visual graphic 'cues' that, not being a professional animator/graphic artist, would never occur to me.