You can think of it as a line in the sand or simply that if he goes too far, he won`t come back. Just like triremes and oceanhexes...
Exploration and explorers
- Thread starter Osama Bin Davis
- Start date
You can think of it as a line in the sand or simply that if he goes too far, he won`t come back. Just like triremes and oceanhexes...
Chalks
The blue pieces
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This is still pretty arbitrary.
The issue here is that explorers aren't directly controlled by the leaders of their civilization and they don't instantly report back what they find.
To resolve this, you would need some sort of automated exploring unit that you cannot see what it discovers until it makes it back safely. If you tell it to explore too far, it may be killed and never return so you will usually explore in a more staggered way to prevent wasting units.
This seems like a bit much for such a minor mechanic though. With standard unit movement speeds being so comparable to explorers such restrictions are more likely to result in using direct control units to explore - unless the explorers had some massive benefit like rapid movement speed. But if that was the case, you would be back to exploring the world too fast because it really isn't all that big.
KrikkitTwo
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If it is a fixed Distance ie 5 hexes, then it is arbitrary, but if it is 3 'movement turns' then it is not. It has to cut through mountain passes/slowed down by hills/jungle/forest, gets sped up by roads or going over water.
Explorers should have the advantage of using a longer distance.... so My explorer can go 5 'standard moves' out (5-10 hexes depending on terrain.. 20? if its a water connection), but my normal units can only go 3 'standard moves' out (3-6 hexes, 12? with a water connection).
so your 'supply borders' would be on the map just like your cultural borders
Somethings you can only do inside the borders (workers only build things in cultural borders, most units only move in the supply borders)
@ Crazymaxy
Having a MEMORY is not cheating (otherwise all humans cheat all the time) civ should not be a "memory" game... that's why you can see the stats on techs you haven't discovered yet
Explorers should have the advantage of using a longer distance.... so My explorer can go 5 'standard moves' out (5-10 hexes depending on terrain.. 20? if its a water connection), but my normal units can only go 3 'standard moves' out (3-6 hexes, 12? with a water connection).
so your 'supply borders' would be on the map just like your cultural borders
Somethings you can only do inside the borders (workers only build things in cultural borders, most units only move in the supply borders)
@ Crazymaxy
Having a MEMORY is not cheating (otherwise all humans cheat all the time) civ should not be a "memory" game... that's why you can see the stats on techs you haven't discovered yet
I think honest players would like the option. Like Sid Meir said, there are always people that will reload when things goes wrong and not play honestly. Some people would take screenshots and feel immense frustration at not being in total command.
That's why I said it should be an option. I would certainly play with it. Other OC people would hate it because it would drive them up the wall. So they simply don't have to use it.
The inaccurate map thing, I already thought of. I think that would end up being more complicated than its worth.
Ahriman
Tyrant
This would be incredibly confusing. Units with different movement speeds have different sets of tiles they can and can't enter?
How do you include features like "double moves in forests" or "double moves in hills"?
How robust would such a system be, say to effects in mods (like FFH Haste or Slow spells) that changed movement speeds - and left units unable to move because they were too far from the enemy.
And you have to trace a pathfinding route to any particular tile to find out if you can reach it or not, with a given unit? From where do you trace the route?
What if a couple of new forests appear, that blocks the old pathfinding route you had; this could strand your unit.
Such a mechanic seems too complex to solve what is a fairly low priority design goal.
I think any hard-cap on where you can move your units is pretty un-fun. There are better ways to make exploration less trivial, by increasing danger of losing units to barbarians, and changing how/when map-trading works.
I'd prefer this mechanic instead:
Allow tiles to flip back from explored to unexplored, sort of like fog of war. So tiles are revealed only for a certain number of turns after a unit has them in view.
Warrior: 1 turn.
Scout: 5 turns (maybe more to make them more useful)
Explorer: Permanently in view.
I would also add a promotion "Map Making" that is given to all Explorer units when they are created. Might allow for it to be obtained by a scout through promotions. This would probably be tied to a technology in the age of exploration.
I think this would really slow down exploration (and expansion too).
If there were a supply system, I would probably also work that in, so the scouts and explorers could survive in wilderness and barb territory without supply.
Early ships should perhaps need to return to a port every so often, sort of like air planes in later ages.
Didn't read the rest of the comments so apologies if this idea has been thrown out there. I'll probably try to make a mod like this if no one else does.
Edit: Guess I should have read the thread fully...
awesome
Meme Lord
yeah, i don't think limiting the number of spaces you can go from your home is either realistic or fun. i'd hate something like that.
Yes. I like your ideas very much. Especially the explorers getting the map making promotion.
If you talk about the forgetting of what's on the map, then I disagree. Remembering is not cheating. There are games where you only see what you see "right now" and you have to remember or take screenshots to remember who is where etc. This just plain sucks. There's no reason why you could draw a map and why the leader of your civ and all his map makers couldn't.
Thanks for implying I'm not honest. Insult welcomed. It has nothing to do with honesty. Explain me why my map makers would be dumb enough not to keep maps. There's no immersion there, I think it's totally unrealistic in the first place.
A bit like in King of Dragon's Pass? You decided to send a scouting party, picked a location on the map, and it would come back after one year. Or not.
Fall from Heaven II has a very long exploration phase because scouts died by droves and you had to concentrate on actually protecting your cities earlly on rather than sending scouts everywhere. Killing the scouts (through damage in the desert, animal attacks, whatever as long as later explorers become more adept at avoiding it) is a good way to make exploring last longer.
A warrior band or even a scout wandering around in the years 4000 BC to 1000 BC is not going to be accurately mapping anything. That is totally unrealistic.
Please show me some accurate maps that explorers made before say 1000 BC for example. I'd be very interested in seeing them. Please back up your argument with facts.
After map making is discovered, units should be able to *shock* *gasp* make maps. This seems to be a pretty logical step here. Preferably by explorers or specialized units only.
As far as early world maps and cartography goes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartography
Ahriman
Tyrant
Why do they have to make maps? They can still convey information that is retained in the knowledgebase through oral history: "Past the plain there is the great river, and the the foothills leaading up into the mountains. Through a mountain pass between two great peaks lies the lands of the Germans, and their tribal camps Berlin and Munich."
More to the point though is gameplay. Exploration just isn't valuable enough to be wasting scout units constantly re-exploring tiles every 5 turns - particularly when we have fewer units in the first place.
Is it just me, or might this problem get solved by itself with the fact that units are more expensive and you will have fewer of then, and so you really can't afford to be building multiple suicide units to send out into the void to get eaten by animals and barbarians?
If you look at my first proposal, I advocated the knowledge disappearing after not visiting an area for 1000 years. I think 5 turns is too quick except for warriors or military units. Perhaps somewhere in the middle for scouts.
I think knowledge should generally be retained in areas that are in close proximity to your borders. If it an area outside your borders is easily reached by say a river, then the knowledge there wouldn't decay as fast either as it could be easily reached.
Oral history about geography will work fine for areas close to your borders I think.
Perhaps you could be right about units be more expensive and therefore they won't get sent vast distances mapping all the way and then dying. That could help curb this ridiculous early exploration.
This has nothing to do with my arguments. I am all for an emphasis on later exploration. I don't think the ends is bad.
I just keep saying that the "forgetting map" means is a bad idea. It can be circumvented by just drawing some info on the map (which is available in-game and very useful in cooperative MP for planning out attacks, drawing frontiers, etc.).
The fact that maps dating back 2 or 3 millenia are still available tends to prove maps don't get lost/forgotten.
I proposed solutions for better exploration different from the loss of knowledge which, gameplay-wise, is a game-killer to me:
I agree that fishboats should be unable to explore the map (not leave cultural borders for instance, the inability to unveil the fog of war and move into fog of war also fits the bill).
Units far from home could suffer attrition in terrains like open ocean, deserts, tundras...
Animals, barbarians, storms could make scout life expectancy shorter.
Map trading providing inaccurate information.
I don`t advocate for an absolute number of hexes units can move away from your capital before it is stopped by an invisible line in the sand. But please tell me, why don`t you get bothered by the game-mechanic that prevents galleys from entering oceanhexes? Surely a stupid captain could sail out into the ocean and sink if he wanted to. It just that we find it fustrating to loose a unit every time you clicked on an oceanhex by mistake.
I like the idea that desert and jungle hexes should be impassable until you reach a certain tech. Natural obstacles were hard to cross, thats why we had to wait until the 1800`s before Livingstone, Stanley et al explored Africa.
Perhaps a great explorer could replace the great spy if espionage is less important in CIV5. We had plenty of great explorers in Leiv Ericsson, Amundsen, Scott, Stanley, Livingston, Columbus, Magellan, Cortez, Vasco Da Gama etc. When I think of it, these guys implies that exploration has been very important, sadly it isn`t in CIV so far.
I like the idea that desert and jungle hexes should be impassable until you reach a certain tech. Natural obstacles were hard to cross, thats why we had to wait until the 1800`s before Livingstone, Stanley et al explored Africa.
Perhaps a great explorer could replace the great spy if espionage is less important in CIV5. We had plenty of great explorers in Leiv Ericsson, Amundsen, Scott, Stanley, Livingston, Columbus, Magellan, Cortez, Vasco Da Gama etc. When I think of it, these guys implies that exploration has been very important, sadly it isn`t in CIV so far.
I'd like to also repeat an old idea, which might be doable in a mod.
One way to have explorers be important is to change the map as the game evolves.
Specifically, you start with a map of say 100x100 which is a region of the planet. When you've explored it all or reached a certain stage (conditions would have to be refined), you shrink the existing map to 50x50, merging existing tiles together, and add 3 50x50 tiles around it representing the rest of the world. It's basically zooming out of your heartland towards the whole world as technology allows you to travel further.
Of course, this implies a lot of issues. MP and AI being the most obvious ones: Who changes the scale of the game, and does the outside world even exist when you haven't discovered it?
Besides feasibility issues and the fact that changing scales would also require some astute merging of tiles (two cities might merge into one for instance, and then what if two civs should share one merged tile?), each change would mean your civilization has advanced to a new step and a new era of exploration starts (kind of when america "suddenly" becomes reachable from Europe).
One way to have explorers be important is to change the map as the game evolves.
Specifically, you start with a map of say 100x100 which is a region of the planet. When you've explored it all or reached a certain stage (conditions would have to be refined), you shrink the existing map to 50x50, merging existing tiles together, and add 3 50x50 tiles around it representing the rest of the world. It's basically zooming out of your heartland towards the whole world as technology allows you to travel further.
Of course, this implies a lot of issues. MP and AI being the most obvious ones: Who changes the scale of the game, and does the outside world even exist when you haven't discovered it?
Besides feasibility issues and the fact that changing scales would also require some astute merging of tiles (two cities might merge into one for instance, and then what if two civs should share one merged tile?), each change would mean your civilization has advanced to a new step and a new era of exploration starts (kind of when america "suddenly" becomes reachable from Europe).
Ahriman
Tyrant
Because the invisible line in the sand is arbitrary; the no-galleys-in-oceans is based on a logical in-game differentiation.
I would, for example, have no problem with preventing non-recon units from entering jungle tiles.
Maybe this is another avenue for change; have exploration limited by terrain. Non-exploration units can't enter jungle, desert or polar tiles without a particular promotion, or without the presence of a road.
This feels much more natural to me than arbitrary distance limits, and allows jungles and deserts to be actual barriers, as they were in real life.
The obvious solution for workboats to me is to make workboats have a sight range of zero, so they cannot reveal black tiles.
KrikkitTwo
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It wouldn't be the speed for Each unit but for a 'Standard infantry unit'....ie 2 hexes on land and X hexes on Water (after transportability over water is achieved).
So it wouldn't be different for a Cavalry and a Warrior.
It Would be different for different Terrains though.
So instead of a simple 'circle' around your cities it would be irregularly shaped... your 'limits' wouldn't extend as far into the forest as it would over grassland.
It wouldn't go over mountains. (assuming units can't go over mountains)
Admittedly, it would probably be better if Desert/Arctic took 'more moves' than Forests, but by making it depend on the actual 'movement cost' it keeps it simple
You could extend your borders in a certain direction by building roads in that direction (although it appears they may cut roads.. but the principle would hold). Rivers should extend it
It would basically be a second set of borders, you have
Cultural borders
Supply borders
and
Extended supply borders (Scouts)
And it would also change with technology
ie your "supply borders" wouldn't extend over 'ocean' until 'astronomy', certain techs would just increase the amounts (automobile, steam engines, social 'logistics' techs like bureaucracy)
The point is this mechanic wouldn't only affect Exploration, it would also affect Military. (and even settlers/workers... some limit on how far away those can be, but of course once they founded a city/built a fort that would extend the range.)
It essentially would be the border of where your supply lines reach.... some units could be on the 'long' supply line, some could even be off the supply line altogether.
.......................... Revised Idea................................................................
Perhaps just single "Supply border" (not invisible, based on a traceable line that gose at different distances over dfferent terrains, and is blocked by some, including enemy units?) that if you exit it causes
1. Inability to heal (advanced late game explorers could have a promotion to avoid this)
2. Massive increase in maintenance costs (advanced late game explorers could have a promotion to avoid this)
3. Decrease in combat Strength?
Then add Inability to move into 'hostile'* tiles (including for the supply border)
*possible definitions for hostile tiles
Tiles that are
Outside cultural borders
AND
Jungle/Desert/Tundra/Hill terrain
Have Each (Desert/Jungle/Tundra/Hill) have a separate 'promotion'.. or perhaps 2 promotions
1 promotion lets you enter the 'edge' (so that you can enter tiles of that terrain as long as they are adjacent to a tile that is not hostile.. water/grass/plains/forest)
promotion level 2 lets you enter the 'interior' (that terrain is not considered hostile to you)
So Hannibal can get his 'hill promoted elephants' (hills normally considered hostile terrain for elephants. catapults and such, most other units would normally have the level 2 'hill' promotion)
