Planet Earth - Flat cube or flat sphere ?

The tiles in CivIII is only displayed squared but you can move eight ways.

Anyway:

Take two circular maps where the north pole is in the center of map1 and the south pole is in the center map2.

Place map1 on its head. Place map2 on top of this. When u walk out of one map u enter the other where the ends join ...

This makes travelling around the pole easy combined to travelling around the equator. But you cant do it by clicking left_arrow only.

Travelling any direction and keeping that direction from one of the poles will take u directly (shortest path) to the other pole. Everywhere u go u go north or south.

 

this is what i meant by 'transforming'.
when you make a map like this, which is a very good idea btw, the land transforms. But that ain´t no problem since we only see the map.

regarding the user-friendlyness of the map, i say you connect the circular maps horizontally! Like the worldmaps they used in the 17th century. they will have the form of a football flattened out.

this can never be as difficult as making a complete new culture- and trade-system

 

No, what would and should happen is that you appear at the top of the map at the other side of the world, e.g. If you go to the north pole from London you end up going down the Bering Strait, half way round the world, THATS how simple it is!!

 

If that´s true, then what is the problem?

my point: what makes the northpole different from any other point on a sphere (earth)???
Nothing!

so if the north border is continued by the south and vice versa, than a point at the northpole will be treated as the middle of a part of the map.

why is this so hard? why do we have a flat, rectangular map anyway...?

 

I like elslipro's idea of using two circular maps. Mayhaps hexes would work best. And the hemispheres wouldn't have to be N and S, they could be E and W. Or better yet, you should be able to change them dynamically. That might alleviate some of the confusion around "okay, if I move from this point on this hemisphere to the other hemisphere .... where the heck will my unit go?" Just imagining how two circles share a circumfrence in a 2-d game is kinda mind-boggling. Instead of having the poles be the center of the circles, the center should be changeable on command, centering on a unit or city as needed.

I dislike the idea of making the pole areas of a rectangular map special, but that may be better than the idea I outlined above...

- Stravaig

:edited for clarity:

 

All i really wanted to know is if Civ3 will have a spherical world like a real planet or if they still hold on to the Civ1/2 way to do it.

How they do it is really not that important, just if they do it or not. If anyobdy know the answer then please share.

Thanks for trying to understand all my bad explanations. I can cope with english basics, but when I start getting technical .... my choice of words are not that many.

 

Civ3 still has the same cilindrical world as Civ2.
The problem with creating a sphere from tiles (of any shape) is that at any point where you bend your paper sheet in order to create the curvature, you end up with a local area map that has less than 360 degrees vision.
For instance, if you try to build a sphere (approximation) from hexes, you bend the paper in 12 places, ending up with 12 locations where you only have 5 neighbouring tiles/areas instead of 6.
To circumvent this problem there are basically
three solutions:
(a) to dissallow centralizing on these locations;
(b) to use dynamically generated tiles on a perfect sphere;
(c) to do without tiles and use exact locations.
Or you could play on the magical 7-hex globe, which has no trouble spots, and forego the possibility of mapping the real Earth.

 

I think reaching the upper border of the flat map describing a sphere means you can appear on every other square at the... top, since on such a projection the bottom and the top line of fields is exactly one and the same square. I dont see how this could be implemented easy. In gameterms it would be a teleportation device. Go a little to the border and travel hundred squares in one turn.

 

Wow, what you posted has a point, but this is the biggest bump I've ever seen. 5 year old thread!

 

oh, i only noticed the month and not the year. Damn this search function.

although a spherical map would be quite interesting i could imagine, so it was probably worth bringing it back to the surface. A real 3D globe...

 

I've long thought the best way to simulate a globe in 2D would be to have two maps, centered on the North and South poles. The outermost ring would be the equator and would connect the two maps.

 

ugh my head hurts

 

But how to make two maps connected

 

Yes, that does seem quite cumbersome. Frankly I think that the way it is is just fine. All it needs is the slightest bit of imagination. I'm still pleased enough with the fact that going to one end of the map allows you to come out on the other, like in reality. The way it is now is just a cylinder, the top and bottom of which you can't go on.

 

I've always imagined it as, the top and bottom of the map are just polar icesheets, which make them unnavigable. So, I have no problem with how it is setup.

 

*cough* *cough* Flying over north pole is possible *cough*