Huge maps seem the word of the day

[kivanc]

I'll bet that the huge map size is comparable to Civ 4's huge map size... serious doubt it will be bigger, since the combat system will not handle it. And number of cities will not handle it.

One of the biggest complaints Civ 4 vet's give is the stupid high number of cities in Civ 3... I like huge maps and large numbers of cities, but Civ 5 won't be it. Civ 4 lovers should be thrilled over tiny maps, tiny number of units, single tile units only, and smaller number of cities, no micromanagement.

Tom

i agree with u. unfortunately i don't expect larger worlds. we will probably have a "huge world" selection but huge of civ5 will be like a large world of civ4, i bet.
so yes, the trend tends to decrease world size. i don't expect it to be as large as i would hope it to be.

even some of the posters of this forum can be proud with their cultural wins with 4/5 cities. well, even if the game calls it a win, i wouldn't be satisfied with a few cities.

so very less gamers seem to care about world size and the developers benefits that very well. civ3's gigantic maps were much more reasonable, gave an exact state feeling for the gamer.
managing 4-5 cities has nothing to do with civ saga.

 

[Magma]

I like having big cities and less of them. It often becomes a pain to control all of that. I often ended up having to steamline my production with mayors in huge CIV3 maps because else I would only get ten turns done per day.

Fewer cities can represent greater areas - France for example can be represented by just Paris and Denmark by Copenhagen. Fewer units make for less decisions for the AI - meaning less clunky turns. I like that part a lot and I have played Civ all my life.

Hell I would even prefer an improvement system like in Call to Power 2, where you had points you could spend and not just used workers. It felt like you actually had limited resources.

 

[Tomice]

We have to wait and see how you control unit movement in the new single tile approach, because that is the most important limiting factor to satisfiying huge map gameplay.

Modders should always be able to increase map sizes, I'm pretty sure about that, the question is whether it will be fun.

Just imagine a fight between 2 huge empires for a single strategic city, each nation fielding 50 units! It could be a nightmare, both from visuals and from control. Look at the screenshots, where would you put this amount of units?

System requirements might limit world size, but that depends on your rig, so no real limitation...

 

[thungrim]

1) it's already been said units will be very expensive, each unit will be precious. Therefore, there will be less units than in Civ games we have come to know.

This speaks to military sizes, not map sizes. Its equally likely that maps can be enormous but the model for combat has changed.

2) Each unit takes up a tile... therefore unit's need to be limited to avoid unit spam. Civ does not work like PG does. PG has big maps and lots of units, Civ cannot act in that same manner.
3) Civ is not a pure wargame, so combat is not made primary emphasis, therefore less unit's is expected.

Neither of these points logically lead to smaller maps.

4) Huge maps would end up making huge tracts of land empty, because I seriously doubt they are going to reverse the current trend and go back to 512 city maps like in Civ 3. And it would become tedious and cumbersome moving units in a single file line across behemoth maps to take a heavily fortified city.

I can't imagine how one-unit-per-tile policy would be any more tedious in this regard than stacks-of-doom. I still don't see how unit movement management logically leads to smaller maps though, especially when movement rates have been increased.

5) Game speed is a high point sales pitch... so map sizes around Civ 4 scale or smaller are probably more accurate.

But we have no insight into the game engine. For all we know the amount of processor usage necessary could have vastly improved. Perhaps there's an assumption that the average PC is more powerful than at the release of Civ4.

6) Huge maps are not considered casual gameplay. Firaxsis has switched gears to aim the Civ franchise towards the money piles of the casual gamer.

This is more a statement of your pessimism, than any actual fact.

 

[kivanc]

yeah. it wouldn't be fun. we should be able to multi-select units and move all of them 1N. but assuming one of the units might have a lake in 1N of it, then you wouldn't do that as well. puufff moving each one by one would be just silly.
there is a slight difference being boring and being tactical. it willbe just boring.
during war and face to face combat, it is not a problem. but while moving the units towards an enemy city then moving all one by one is not reasonable.
but i guess, firaxis seems to have solved this by limiting the unit number possible.

do we have to have less of everything? less cities and less units. in civ2, i used to have maybe a thousand units during late game.

EDIT: @thungrim, it is not pessimism, it seems real. the gfx are better than civ4. and the city plots have 3*3 hexes. so i don't think we will be able to have the same number of cities.
well even in civ4 on noble difficultu and huge map, u could have practically 100cities at most, which was very less than civ3.

 

[thungrim]

EDIT: @thungrim, it is not pessimism, it seems real. the gfx are better than civ4. and the city plots have 3*3 hexes. so i don't think we will be able to have the same number of cities.

If there's no concrete reason to assume the worst case, then it is pessimism. Please be clear that I don't say this as a personal slight against you. Just trying to establish some perspective.

- Graphics are a more or less subjective. Several parties, including myself and more importantly game reviews seem to think they're much better.
- You assume more potential plots per city means less cities. Its equally likely that its simply a mechanic to account for competition between cities, or having cities have a much larger reach. There's nothing that logically leads to less cities by changing the cities' reach.

These are potential realities that you adhere to because of a generally pessimistic view of the game. I'd encourage a more balanced "wait and see" view, but that's just me.

 

[Rupe]

Do you really want to explore 30,000 tiles that you know you can never settle or do anything in?

Yes

Do you want your workers to have to build a road for 1500 tiles to the middle of nothingness in order to get a resource?

Yes

In a good chunk of the world that is how it is. The planet is not covered with human habitation. The wold is not covered in roads and farms and mines.

I would like to see vast stretches of unused wilderness with some way of claiming them for your nation without building a city there. Look at Canada, parts of the US west, Russia, africa and the outback. Sparse habitation but they all have resources that there are railroads or roads going out hundreds or thousands of miles for.

Sure there are places like the US north east, europe and japan that are well developed but alot of us want places where we can "never settle or do anything in?"

 

[Trias]

do we have to have less of everything? less cities and less units. in civ2, i used to have maybe a thousand units during late game.

Well, the only thing that we really know is that units will be more valuable/expensive, which means that the unit to city ratio is going to lower than in previous games. As for the number of cities, my best guess is that they are aiming for a similar number of cities per player as in civ 4, which means that on a map there will be room for about 10 cities per player. Since the area per cities is going to be bigger is most likely means slightly bigger maps.

Back of the envelope guestimates suggest that the largest map size (with 18 players) will be around 20,000 tiles. Terra style maps (with 70% ocean) will be bigger than that.

 

[kivanc]

Do you really want to explore 30,000 tiles that you know you can never settle or do anything in?

Yes

Do you want your workers to have to build a road for 1500 tiles to the middle of nothingness in order to get a resource?

Yes

In a good chunk of the world that is how it is. The planet is not covered with human habitation. The wold is not covered in roads and farms and mines.

I would like to see vast stretches of unused wilderness with some way of claiming them for your nation without building a city there. Look at Canada, parts of the US west, Russia, africa and the outback. Sparse habitation but they all have resources that there are railroads or roads going out hundreds or thousands of miles for.

Sure there are places like the US north east, europe and japan that are well developed but alot of us want places where we can "never settle or do anything in?"

i completely agree with this

civ3 had that a bit. u could play in a real large world. and u didn't need to settle for any resource. well, it is possible in civ4 with maps of some modders. but most don't work very good and/or the game works dramatically more slowly.

really, there should be other ways of claiming land, so that u don't want other AIs to pass and u don't want to settle there neither.

 

[tom2050]

Just posting here so I can sign my post like Tom, because my name isn't right to the left of my post or anything.

thecolorblue

You would be surprised how many people are incapable of reading (although they can and just don't, sometimes I'm one of them), or have no clue that the name is directly to the left... and now it is just a habit. I may even leave my name at the bottom twice.

About the tiles, although Civ 4 initially didn't have maps as big as Civ 3 (or did it? ), 4 can support a larger map than 3. 3 was maxed at something like 30,000 tiles, but 4 can surpass this I believe. I haven't messed with 4 in quite some time, so this may not be correct.

With 5, since everything can be modded, even with the game shipping with small maps, would mean 90,000 hex maps will probably be possible, limited by computer capability only. Hopefully they don't hardcode anything like this; but it sounds like hardcoding days may be gone.

Tom-Tom

 

[Camikaze]

I certainly hope that all the maps are bigger. I like big maps. But I can see the more logical conclusion from bigger unit movements and city radiuses is that there are less cities in the game, on the same sized maps as before.

 

[Thormodr]

They could still have big maps. The big wide open spaces will be gone though. They'll be filled up with City States and Barbarian Cities probably from the get go.

 

[Trias]

You would be surprised how many people are incapable of reading (although they can and just don't, sometimes I'm one of them), or have no clue that the name is directly to the left... and now it is just a habit. I may even leave my name at the bottom twice.

You are aware that signing your name at the bottom of a forum post is generally considered bad netiquette?

About the tiles, although Civ 4 initially didn't have maps as big as Civ 3, 4 can support a larger map than 3. 3 was maxed at something like 30,000 tiles, but 4 can surpass this I believe. I haven't messed with 4 in quite some time, so this may not be correct.

Civ 4 terra maps were larger than Civ 3 terra maps from the beginning.

With 5, since everything can be modded, even with the game shipping with small maps, would mean 90,000 hex maps will probably be possible, limited by computer capability only. Hopefully they don't hardcode anything like this; but it sounds like hardcoding days may be gone.

There is a change that you might find a hard coded limit of ~65000 (256x256) for code optimalisation reasons. But even that is likely to be in the SDK exposed code.

 

[tom2050]

You are aware that signing your name at the bottom of a forum post is generally considered bad netiquette?

Civ 4 terra maps were larger than Civ 3 terra maps from the beginning.

There is a change that you might find a hard coded limit of ~65000 (256x256) for code optimalisation reasons. But even that is likely to be in the SDK exposed code.

Bad etiquette to who? You? It's a blog here, I don't really care if it's bad, good, or neutral. Most people's attitudes, including my own, are far worse than a name at the bottom.

Civ 3's was limited to 326x326, whatever that comes out to. Can't just multiply it with the way the squares in the game were placed.

A map of 65,000 hexes would drag on most comp's anyways, so w/e they have, I'll be forced to be happy with. My computer is just mid-range dual anyways, so with the nice graphics, I will be playing mid and large, probably not huge.

Tom2050 (is this less or more etiquette than just putting Tom? what if I bold it, and make it size 13?)

 

[Trias]

Tom2050 (is this less or more etiquette than just putting Tom? what if I bold it, and make it size 13?)

What about if you just don't do it?

 

[ori]

Moderator Action: what about you just don't discuss other users' posting style but the posts' content instead?
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Newcomer24]

i agree with u. unfortunately i don't expect larger worlds. we will probably have a "huge world" selection but huge of civ5 will be like a large world of civ4, i bet.
so yes, the trend tends to decrease world size. i don't expect it to be as large as i would hope it to be.

Now that would be disappointing. I'm expecting to see at least Civ4 sized maps, but I'm hoping for a little bigger in truth, something like 50% bigger than Civ4 huge maps is perfet according to me. This is Civilization 5 and not Civilization General, I'm sure they won't reduce the maps size more than what they already did in Civ4.

 

[kivanc]

ori pointed a good issue. i was just writing sth about this. well, i don't understand why it shall be a bad etiquette to sign with your name.

for example, i have been chatting in this forum for years and i sometimes regret why i picked this nickname camarilla instead of using my name. in the beginning i just thought it would be possible to change later and i even didn't know i would stuck to this foum for years

and after some time passed, i just thought creating a new account would be bad as i have a reputation (good/bad, big/small doesn't matter) and i am known as camarilla. so why not sign with my name? Tom's case is different as his nick is already tom. still he can do as he likes.

Kivanc

 

[LiDDiS]

Bigger maps will have more resources. More resources equals more units. So military size will scale naturally to the map size really.

 

[kivanc]

hey friends. the issue is being able to run largest maps possible and fastly! a slow working game on huge map should not be a criteria.

1 thing is for sure. civ4 works dramatically more slowly than civ3 and every new civ saga will work more slowly as well. so in civ5, i doubt we will be able to play on a world at the size of civ4 huge world terra map. even with a i7 processor the turns in late game of civ5 on huge terra map will be a burden. gfx is better (and will maybe get even better than what we see on pics now)

so even i7 won't work the game as fast as we like. and if we consider the huge maps of civ3, i really doubt we will be able to play (fastly) on that much large maps again in our lives. no new civ will work fast in such maps. playing slowly on huge maps is not counted as "playing", it is a burden.

what i mean, pc hardware tech and OS tech isn't improving as fast as improvements on gfx. as long as we have so many gamers in the world who care mostly about gfx and not much about gameplay, and as long as the monopoly on operating systems continues to exist, the issue will be similar, or even worse.
alternative software developments must be widespread. this is the only solution to the case.