Elevations and terrain features

[trickofthehand]

@ Civmyway

I like it, makes good sense. Defensive positions were always non-existent in civilization. Your defensive position was simply the tile your stack of doom happened to be occupying at the moment. This will also GREATLY enhance combat when you've researched riflemen and your enemy attacks you with swordsmen I think. Do you still plan on keeping a hex or square based layout to maps, such as each unit moves x-amount of squares or will it be completely free of hexes or squares?

The latter would be extremely interesting, and usually reserved for RTS games. I think if you give units a 'movement bar', where the unit can move until the bar is depleted it would be do-able for a turn based game. This would make combat much more challenging and smart players will be rewarded greater (aww sorry your infantry 'just' missed getting to that hill on time).

I really like the direction you're taking this.

 

[Camikaze]

But not true of luxury resources that could be utilised after calendar.

And planning to get future resources (visible or not) is exactly what any intelligent player does. You claim terrain that is likely to have future tactical use.

Players plan, it's the essence of a strategy game. You use your knowledge to plan for future events - a city surrounded by hills to get an excellent construction centre to power your military even before you can build anything past a warrior.

Whether or not flooding would make good gameplay mechanics is a valid question... But ruling it out because it might require advance planning is not.

But this represents more a fault with being able to see luxury resources than an excuse for allowing planning based on global warming. It makes sense to minimise the amount of strategic planning that can be done due to being able to see the future.

 

[CivMyWay]

There will be no hexes or squares. Unit movement will be you select a point on the map and your unit will move to that point (or as close as it can within its current turn). Graphically, this will be displayed by a multi-coloured line which path-finds the optimal path. Eventually with waypoints, and different path finding routines (e.g. get me their fast, or take the most defensive route within a reasonable timeframe). Also toggle-graphically will be the movement radius of enemy units (as in how far they can move in one turn) and attack radiuses.

MovementPoints (speed) is converted into action points, which means you don't have to waste any of it. You can move a fraction of a distance and then spend the rest on fortifying etc. If an improvement is 90% complete, and you tell another unit to help, it will only use the amount of ActionPoints required. All unit actions use ActionPoints. (Different operations can therefore become cheaper)

These will likely be unknown in combat until you have either faced them a number of times, or have stolen the "specs" (or some easier method of uncovering - e.g. penetrated military command). Individual spies will be able to infiltrate an enemy unit and give more detailed feedback.

 

[Atrebates]

It makes sense to minimise the amount of strategic planning that can be done due to being able to see the future.

Well this is a fundamental difference that explains why we're disagreeing. I like being able to do strategic planning in civ, strikes me as one of the fundamental tenements of a strategy game.

I'd feel very strongly that strategy is about more than 'now' - it's about the future as well. It is bad game design to restrict a player, I don't understand why you want to restrict the amount of strategy in the game...

 

[Camikaze]

Sure, the game is all about strategy, and you should definitely plan for the future. But you shouldn't be able to plan for the future with knowledge of things that you haven't researched yet.

 

[Takhisis]

What would actually be nice is that you could have terrain that is accessible only from a certain direction, like in AOE or Starcraft. You can still bombard but not move into the other square. I guess it'd be very hard to implement, but it's a thought anyway.

 

[Hail]

What would actually be nice is that you could have terrain that is accessible only from a certain direction, like in AOE or Starcraft. You can still bombard but not move into the other square. I guess it'd be very hard to implement, but it's a thought anyway.

i do not think it would be hard to implement on the current tile-based map: it's a matter of generating tile elevations and creating some more terrain types to graphically display them and adding a rule that from elevation <some number> you can only move to any elevation between <some number> - <elevation delta> and <some number> + <elevation delta>. allowed and forbidden movement should be visible on the map

 

[Atrebates]

Sure, the game is all about strategy, and you should definitely plan for the future. But you shouldn't be able to plan for the future with knowledge of things that you haven't researched yet.

Okay, fair enough mate. I don't mind that (being able to plan) but I can see the other viewpoint.

 

[Takhisis]

i do not think it would be hard to implement on the current tile-based map: it's a matter of generating tile elevations and creating some more terrain types to graphically display them and adding a rule that from elevation <some number> you can only move to any elevation between <some number> - <elevation delta> and <some number> + <elevation delta>. allowed and forbidden movement should be visible on the map

Do you mean the map tiles or the ones? I don't play civ 4, I don't like it, but it wouldn't be terribly difficult to implement on a -like map.
How would you add StarCraft-like ramps?

Spoiler Here's a couple of them :

That's the kind of thing I mean. But, then, maybe tiles could be hexagons instead of squares. It would be... different.

 

[Hail]

Do you mean the map tiles or the ones? I don't play civ 4, I don't like it, but it wouldn't be terribly difficult to implement on a -like map.
How would you add StarCraft-like ramps?

Spoiler Here's a couple of them :

That's the kind of thing I mean. But, then, maybe tiles could be hexagons instead of squares. It would be... different.

i mean any tile-based map. the ramps can be done like in any SimCity2000 map

 

[Takhisis]

i mean any tile-based map. the ramps can be done like in any SimCity2000 map

Well if you look closely, the marines and zealots are placed on some grid.

 

[pesgores]

What would actually be nice is that you could have terrain that is accessible only from a certain direction, like in AOE or Starcraft. You can still bombard but not move into the other square. I guess it'd be very hard to implement, but it's a thought anyway.

Interesting suggestion.

 

[Hail]

Well if you look closely, the marines and zealots are placed on some grid.

well, i am a proponent of a tile-based map

 

[Takhisis]

Interesting suggestion.

Yep, it could certainly do for cliffs and the like, so you could create inaccessible artillery pockets that are only reachable by parachute or by going through some kind of passage or telepad. You can either dislodge the artillery up in those mountains or move on until you've carried the fight beyond their range, back into their own territory, and secured a better route of access.

well, i am a proponent of a tile-based map

Same as in Civ.

 

[wolfigor]

All these suggestions are nice... in a tactical or RTS game.
I've doubts about such system in a strategic and large scale game as Civilization.
Each time in Civilization represent a rather large region with a considerable surface.
That's why elevation differences between tiles is not considered for combat resolution in Civ: in such large scale is non-influential.
If you want to test how civ would be with ranged bombing, defensive artillery coverage, altitude influenced combat then play Alpha Centauri: it implements all of them including modification of landscape.

Also the idea to get rid completely of tiles is a bad fit with the current design of civilization: when a turn (at the beginning of the game) represents 20 years can you really apply such tactical concepts to it?

At the time being civilization is a large-scale strategic game where the user overview the development of a civilization with limited influence on detailed tactic.
It's far from being a combat simulator, that's why combat is so abstracted.

 

[Silurian]

Whats the differance between a 500m hill in Nevada and one in Poland.
It would not make any differance to the unit defending the top.

What matters is how hilly a place is not how high it is.
An area with lots of variations in level is harder to move through and easier to defend.
This is represented by hills.
BtS has hills with ice etc! which represent hills at different elevations

On the scale of civ cliffs that formed impenetrable barriers are quite rare but could be interesting. Escarpments made of cliffs and steep slopes are more common and could be passible to foot units and by road.

 

[bwcbwc]

A lot of these concepts were implemented previously in SM's Alpha Centauri. Elevation (or more accurately, elevation _difference_) would affect bombardment strength from artillery, as well as energy (commerce) production due to use of solar energy. The terrain resource model was similar to Civ4 where there was a moisture component (Rainy=>grass, moist=>plains, dry=>desert) and a "rockiness" component. Rockiness also affected defensive values for non-artillery units. Incidentally SMAC's ranged bombardment model was pretty reasonable, too.

 

[Ahriman]

Some of them are also implemented in the Planetfall mod (=SMAC for Civ4), and the Dune Wars mod for Civ4 (sinks/basins below flatland, mesa above).

 

[KIEJ.MANIK]

sems like a whole lot of work for nothing

 

[KIEJ.MANIK]

Seems like a whole lot of work for nothing