Globes or Cylinders

[Mort_Q]

What are peoples thoughts on maps wrapping in both vertically and horizontally? Too big of a change?

Other than the obvious confusion in messing around with the up=north, and issues with the minimap, I have always wondered why this hasn't been done outside of mods (I'm assuming this has been modded in past iterations)

Going over the poles should be hard, sure, but shifting pack ice, and terrain penalties seem more interesting to me than the band of ice on the top and bottom of the map.

Spoiler :

Am I missing something?

 

[SammyKhalifa]

You'd have to have really funny-shaped spaces on the map in order for the geometry to work out correctly.

 

[Mort_Q]

You'd have to have really funny-shaped spaces on the map in order for the geometry to work out correctly.

You wouldn't have to. It's ignored going East-West now. The tiles are just an abstraction in any case. Just got get your flat-earth thinking going.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

A globe would be cool, but it isn't going to happen.

 

[Zaarin]

The technicalities would be difficult to work out, and I'd rather see that time invested in other features personally. Until the 19th century, the poles were impassable and for all practical purposes they remained so until the invention of flight, so it doesn't break immersion at all for me.

 

[JtW]

I would love it if Civ was played on a true, 3d globe map. Passing over the poles isn't the main reason, though. I would love the maps to be more accurate when it comes to the area. An equirectangular projection severely overestimates the size of everything at higher latitudes. If they found a way to make a globe work, I would be a happy camper.

Not to mention the coolness of zooming out and looking at the global situation. This is an example that a globe can be made to work with tiles.

 

[m15a]

I voted "No, not interested", although technically I'd be *slightly* interested. There are some benefits to having a globe or just wrapping the map both directions. But I don't care enough to say it should be that way in the game.

 

[qwerty25]

While we cant have a hex globe, i think a map that wraps both horizontally and vertically would be cool. (Like the most north border would connect back to the south border, exactly the same as how west and east work)

Sent from my LG-H850 using Tapatalk

 

[Novu]

I am fine with cylinder worlds. It is just unneeded complexity since no one really uses the poles. Real life Earth is effectively a cylinder due to all the ice making both the land and sea impassable.

 

[Ryika]

I'm fine the way it's now. Globes, while "cool" don't really add much in terms of gameplay.

And wrapping maps around vertically wouldn't even make sense. The northern end of the map and the southern end of the map don't represent the same area on a globe.

 

[AriochIV]

If the map wrapped vertically, the world would be donut instead of globe. There's no need for vertical wrapping on a globe.

If you're asking that the map actually be a globe, that's not compatible with the flat map that we see, and it's completely unnecessary for a historical game like this when both poles are covered by ice.

 

[Acken]

What you want is not vertical wraping. its that going north long enough make you facing south.

This is absolutely different than horizontal wrapping where if you go east you will never face west.

Vertical wraping means that the north pole and the south pole are the same location.

As for whether or not i want a glibe not really. The tiles wouldnt be able to keep the same shape everywhere to acomodate for it.

Im also not seeing the gameplay benefit outside of the very late game.

 

[ThisNameIsTooLo]

It would actually be possible to create a strategy game that plays entirely on regularly-shaped tiles and takes place on a fully spherical globe. It would just require that we completely rethink the way oceanfaring is handled.

All landmasses would be tiled of course, along with one or two rings of coast around each landmass. However, the ocean beyond the coast would not be tiled at all.

Naval units would control like something of a blend between land units and air units. On coasts, naval units control as they have in all previous installments of Civ. But ocean travel works very differently; when first setting out to discover the fabled New World, you simply sail off the coast in the direction of your choosing, and in a few years, your ship pops up on whatever landmass it first hit by sailing in that direction. Once you have the coastal tiles of other landmasses uncovered, you can command your vessels to sail in a straight line to any of those tiles; and if a yet undiscovered landmass is on that route, it will pop up there instead.

 

[bonafide11]

No, it wouldn't interest me or add anything to the game to me. It would seem kind of silly.

I do wish, though, that on maps of continents we could have the world wrap, or at least have impassable land on the edges of the map. The jagged edges of the world always kills my immersion.

 

[bkn42]

I am fine with cylinder worlds. It is just unneeded complexity since no one really uses the poles.

O rly?

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=JFK-PVG,+LAX-DXB

Plenty of people use the poles every day. It's called commercial aviation.

 

[Loaf Warden]

I would love it if Civ was played on a true, 3d globe map. Passing over the poles isn't the main reason, though. I would love the maps to be more accurate when it comes to the area. An equirectangular projection severely overestimates the size of everything at higher latitudes. If they found a way to make a globe work, I would be a happy camper.

This. My real complaint with the cylindrical worlds this series gives us is that it takes just as long to circumnavigate at a high latitude as it does at the equator. I want a globe so that the number of tiles around would steadily decrease as you approached the poles.

Personally, I'd be just fine with having unpassable "ice cap" regions at each pole that aren't made up of tiles, if slipping in the pentagonal tiles needed to make a hex globe work can't be done within the game. Cap the world at the top and bottom with a small patch of unpassable blob, then have rings with increasing numbers of hexes until you reach the largest ring at the equator. That's what I really want.

 

[Michkov]

I am fine with cylinder worlds. It is just unneeded complexity since no one really uses the poles. Real life Earth is effectively a cylinder due to all the ice making both the land and sea impassable.

It's not just the poles. Moving around on a sphere opposed to a cylinder will give different results as the shortest routes are different.
Also airplanes and missiles dont mind the ice.

You wouldn't have to. It's ignored going East-West now. The tiles are just an abstraction in any case. Just got get your flat-earth thinking going.

You're going to need a couple of pentagons scattered across your globe to make it work with hexes. And you cant place them arbitrarily either, leading to special points along the globe.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Civ IV had vertical wrapping if you turned it on. It had unfortunate impact on maintenance (distance maintenance was highest on toroidal and lowest on flat). It's not a globe per se' though, more like playing on the surface of a donut (not the donut map script, a world shaped like a physical 3d donut).

Otherwise it wasn't too bad and had some convenience to it. I wouldn't be opposed if it doesn't do weird interactions with core mechanics again.