Hexes vs Squares
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Doctor Phibes
Prince
Well, you can't tile the plane with octagons. Or, if you're saying the diagonals connect, they've simply reverted to squares.
I'm not saying it's easy. But it's already been done, and at no small scale either. In the Combat Mission world, each unit could be given almost infinite orders (go there, turn that way, target this, move there). Translating such a system to CIV to a "light" version shouldn't be too hard, as you would only allow one order pr. turn. Of course, the challenge remains to make the strategic game as good as the unit-pushing game.
wurstburst
Prince
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2009
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- 301
Trying to justify keeping one part of a system broken by saying that another part is also broken is pretty weak.
Psyringe
Scout
That's not what he said. He said that this "other part" is broken to a degree that it doesn't matter whether the first art is fixed or not (unless the other part is addressed as well, which he does by suggesting tile-less movement). You can agree or disagree with it, but it's a valid way of looking at the problem (imho).
jpinard
Martian
Hexes are so much better than squares. No incongruity. Love them.
I'm a topologist, which basically means "someone who has too much time on their hands". The best explanation is there's no corner movement. It makes things much... nicer. With corner movement, 2 units can move in such a way that they would have to cross paths with each other just to move to adjacent spaces. It's very very messy.
o1derfull1
Libertarian Elitist
I am new to the hex vs square discussion, and I must be missing something.
I dont understand how diagonal movement allows you to move 'further' in an unrealistic way that is exploitive.
I get that the center of a square diagonal to the center of another square is further than the center of two squares that are adjacent.
What I dont understand is why allowing such movement is considered inaccurate or unrealistic or broken.
It seems that opponents to this (from my limited perspective) are arguing for that movement to be 'fair' and 'right' and accurate' in a square tile system, movement must be along 90 degree angles only.
To me, THAT is what seems artificial and unrealistic and broken. The shortest distance (at least in newtonian physics) between two points is a straight line. Why would you call moving along this non-90 degree line, unrealistic or broken? It happens all the time in the everyday world. Moving along the hypotenuse of a triangle from one end to the other is quicker and easier, and takes less time as well as less energy, as well as being a shorter distance than moving along the other other two sides of a triangle from one end to the other (assuming it isnt equilateral
).
You have a open space 1 km square. you need to get from one corner to the opposite corner. do you walk down one side of the square and then up the other, or do you cross diagonally through the open space? Yes if you move diagonally it takes a shorter time to travel a 'greater' distance. but it's only a 'greater' distance if you compare it to taking a longer route. Obvious is obvious? But thats just a factor of linear math and spatial relationships. Its not broken or unfair or inaccurate. Such movement in a game makes sense, mirrors movements possible in the real world and is un-restrictive, rather than rigid, inflexible, and annoying.
Could someone please dumb themselves down enough to talk to me on my level and explain how this is broken/wrong/inaccurate/exploitive?
I dont understand how diagonal movement allows you to move 'further' in an unrealistic way that is exploitive.
I get that the center of a square diagonal to the center of another square is further than the center of two squares that are adjacent.
What I dont understand is why allowing such movement is considered inaccurate or unrealistic or broken.
It seems that opponents to this (from my limited perspective) are arguing for that movement to be 'fair' and 'right' and accurate' in a square tile system, movement must be along 90 degree angles only.
To me, THAT is what seems artificial and unrealistic and broken. The shortest distance (at least in newtonian physics) between two points is a straight line. Why would you call moving along this non-90 degree line, unrealistic or broken? It happens all the time in the everyday world. Moving along the hypotenuse of a triangle from one end to the other is quicker and easier, and takes less time as well as less energy, as well as being a shorter distance than moving along the other other two sides of a triangle from one end to the other (assuming it isnt equilateral
).You have a open space 1 km square. you need to get from one corner to the opposite corner. do you walk down one side of the square and then up the other, or do you cross diagonally through the open space? Yes if you move diagonally it takes a shorter time to travel a 'greater' distance. but it's only a 'greater' distance if you compare it to taking a longer route. Obvious is obvious? But thats just a factor of linear math and spatial relationships. Its not broken or unfair or inaccurate. Such movement in a game makes sense, mirrors movements possible in the real world and is un-restrictive, rather than rigid, inflexible, and annoying.
Could someone please dumb themselves down enough to talk to me on my level and explain how this is broken/wrong/inaccurate/exploitive?
Square or hex? Who cares. It is another 'innovation' in this game that isn't an innovation at all. A real change would have been to move to a hex less or grid less map, like most good strategic or tactical games have been trying to do for the last ten years.
Years ago we had games like V for Victory now we have games like Airborne Assault, a huge step up in these types of games. I love my hexes but in computer games they are as much a new thing as looking up in an FPS.
Great work Civ5, the change from squares to hexes is really no change at all. (oh sorry, the map might look a bit better than the map of the last civ)
Years ago we had games like V for Victory now we have games like Airborne Assault, a huge step up in these types of games. I love my hexes but in computer games they are as much a new thing as looking up in an FPS.
Great work Civ5, the change from squares to hexes is really no change at all. (oh sorry, the map might look a bit better than the map of the last civ)
Dbob
Merchant Prince
Didn't Sid say at some point that he considered using hexes in Civ 1, but wanted to avoid similarities to war based board games at the time? Man imagine if all the past civs used hexes... 
Honestly I like that they use hexes now because I always moved diagonal when exploring in civ 1-4, now I don't have that option and I have to think about where I am going...plus war fronts are easier to set up so the enemy can't get through, especially with ZoC.
Honestly I like that they use hexes now because I always moved diagonal when exploring in civ 1-4, now I don't have that option and I have to think about where I am going...plus war fronts are easier to set up so the enemy can't get through, especially with ZoC.
Rusty Edge
Deity
This is where I remind everybody that in the Civ IV Gold CD interview the creators explained that they experimented in the tiless direction, but concluded that even more than a turn based game, Civ is a tile based game. Players like to know at a glance whether a tile is fish or fowl or furbearer. Tiles aren't only for movement, they matter for defensive, production and improvements purposes, and Civ is about optimizing.
Pointing and hoping you'll get what you ask for and clicking, isn't fun. That's what happens when I've been playing too many hours on high graphics and the machine overheats.
For what it's worth, I much prefer hexes.
Fractional movement solutions sounds like a thread of it's own.
Pointing and hoping you'll get what you ask for and clicking, isn't fun. That's what happens when I've been playing too many hours on high graphics and the machine overheats.
For what it's worth, I much prefer hexes.
Fractional movement solutions sounds like a thread of it's own.
That's absurd.
I see the other problems you're talking about, but in a comparison between hexagonal tiles and square tiles, both systems have those problems, while hexes solve one of the problems that square tiles have (several, actually; they lead to more organic shapes for maps instead of blockier shapes, though that's a minor point compared to gameplay).
"Your solution isn't perfect so it doesn't matter if it's better" is a terrible argument.
And for what it's worth, I prefer a tile-based system over a Total War-style system (granted, they still use tiles, they're just really small tiles with armies with movement ranges of dozens of tiles per turn, but you know what I'm talking about). Much clearer, cleaner, simpler gameplay without losing out on depth.
So in other words, that IS what he said. There are multiple discrete unrelated flaws in a tile-based system's movement calculations. Hexagons have fewer discrete flaws than squares do, and don't introduce any new ones (they have a subset of all the flaws of a square tile-based system). It's a superior solution.
Unless tiles are so bad as to be unplayable (which is a laughable assertion for someone to make on a forum titled "Civilization Fanatics Center"), they simply aren't so broken that fixing flaws isn't worth doing.
Psyringe
Scout
I don't know what's so difficult about understanding the difference between:
"Your solution isn't perfect so it doesn't matter if it's better" (which is how you interpret him)
and:
"Your solution is irrelevant as long as the underlying bigger problem isn't fixed." (which is what he meant, as he clarified above, paraphrased by me to highlight the difference).
Anyway, I don't really have a dog in this race and personally I don't think that tileless movement would be good for Civ (Rusty Edge explained the main reasons above). I don't even agree with the notion that fractional movement is so big a problem that it renders others irrelevant. It just irked me a bit that someone was criticized for an "awful" or "absurd" argument that he didn't even make.
It's funny to me mostly because you lay the 'two' arguments out side by side and they're the same argument. They both concede that hexes are better than squares, and they both say that despite being better than squares, both solutions have a flaw so significant that it doesn't matter that hexes are better than squares. They have the same content; the difference is mere wording.
By that wonderful reasoning, circles would be even better, since they'd allow for an infinite number of directions!
And to those naysayers who say "But octagons don't tasselate!", I reply: "Then le'ts play Civ on the hyperbolic plane!"
lol I like this idea! Whichever tile the camera focuses on appears as the biggest, center tile.
BlizzardGR
Prince
I prefer Hexes personally. Definitely an improvement over squares!
Antmanbrooks
Prince
I don't see much of a difference in terms of gameplay at all. Sure, CiV looks pretty and the tiles all mesh together well, but they don't really change anything at all. They are just a different way of moving from one tile to another.
What I anticipated when they moved to a hex grid was globe's instead of flat maps. Like this, but instead we ended up with the same flat maps? Why move to hexes and change nothing?
What I anticipated when they moved to a hex grid was globe's instead of flat maps. Like this, but instead we ended up with the same flat maps? Why move to hexes and change nothing?
Quagga
Former Dictator
I love hexex, but then, my mother is a bee, so I'm biased.
The Great Apple
Big Cheese
Trouble is, you can't make a sphere purely from regular hexagons. You'll notice that animation has a few pentagons in it!
