Playing on hexes: Notes from Battle for Wesnoth

[EmpireOfCats]

As we're not exactly drowning in new information about Civ V, and the Steam discussion is going in circles, I got bored here and went off to find some way of playing around with hexes. It turns out there is a free (GPL) game called Battle for Wesnoth that runs on Windows, OS X, and Windows [Firaxis: That's a hint]. It's a Lord of the Rings like world, and yes, you move on hexes.

Summary: Hexes are strange. This is going to take some getting use to.

See, the number of directions you can move in is smaller. This feels very limiting at first. You are surrounded with only six units, not eight. In the mountains, it is easy to get confused about where you can go or not. There are more "choke points" where you have to funnel your units through one-by-one. You end up shuffling units around a lot to get the right ones in the front line because you can't stack them. You have to micro-manage movements to a degree that can be annoying. You have to think every little movement through.

I'm not saying hexes are better or worse (yet). That will depend on lots of other things. But this will be a major, major change for Civ. I hope they know what they are doing.

(For the record, Wesnoth is great. It is challenging, funny, well thought-out and the graphics, though not flashy, have been created with lots of love and humor. To be honest, I find myself slightly addicted. Now I know what to do until the Mac version of Civ V comes out. Recommended.)

 

[LDiCesare]

Also note that Wesnoth is a tactics game, and maps are designed to have chokepoints. It's likely that a Civ map may be more open than most Wesnoth maps (like those with lots of swamps where only flying units can move freely while the others crawl on the few solid roads, or the cave ones).

 

[Osama Bin Davis]

I love hexes, but then I have been playing wargames since I can remember. I think this will be a great step for civ, it just adds more directions, makes the city spread better and allows the world to be a globe!

 

[Mercade]

As we're not exactly drowning in new information about Civ V, and the Steam discussion is going in circles, I got bored here and went off to find some way of playing around with hexes. It turns out there is a free (GPL) game called Battle for Wesnoth that runs on Windows, OS X, and Windows [Firaxis: That's a hint]. It's a Lord of the Rings like world, and yes, you move on hexes.

Thanks for this link, EmpireOfCats. I'm going to try it out and see how hexes work (not having any personal experience with that yet).

 

[The_J]

Yeah, Wesnoth is a great game .
I've only stopped it because the last campaigns became to difficult and the version i had had some problems with managing all the savegames.
Will maybe later in the year try it out again.


@chokepoints + mikromanaging units: They've already said, that units can move through plots where a unit is present (but not stay there), and that neighbours can switch their positions. this will make the whole thing a lot easier.

 

[Ahriman]

I think BfW is a great example of what *can* be accomplished with a 1upt hex system - and a cautionary tale for the danger of weak AI.

1. BfW does a great job of showing how 1upt really makes terrain of massively higher value than in a stack system. You set up a defensive line behind a river, or on the border of a forest or hills, so that you are on good terrain while the enemy attacking you is on weak terrain.

2. It shows how 1upt encourages sensible unit specialization. You use your ranged units against their melee, your melee against their ranged, your magic against their undead, your Impact weapons against skeletons, your piercing against their cavalry, etc.

3. It shows how having units that don't die from a single attack make positioning really important. With a solid line, any given unit can only be attacked by 2 enemies - which isn't enough to kill them in a single turn unless they're massively stronger. This means that outflanking becomes massively important, because its on the flanks where you can surround units and get clean kills - and then roll up the line.
We get good tactical incentives, and use of cavalry *inherently* in this system.

And we get some relatively complex tactical incentives from a very simple tactical ruleset.
To me, this is a strong argument *against* the kinda of extra combat mechanics that many want to add (morale, supply, ammunition, etc.).

4. It shows the value of chokepoints in a 1upt system. Chokepoints act as a fantastic delay mechanism, particularly when you have reserves to rotate into the front line.

5. BfW AI is not great. AI is overly aggressive, and does a poor job of preserving its force. Consequently a human player is able to defeat the AI even when significantly outnumbered through clever tactical play.
This poses a problem for Civ4; the easier it is to gain a large military advantage over the AI from superior tactical play, the higher the game will have to push the AI cheats in order to make the AI competitive as an enemy.
So the AI had better be up to the challenge.

6. For me hexes feel very natural, so there is no adjustment period, and I am never confused in BfW about where I can or can't move, or which tiles are adjacent. I disagree with the OP on this point.

*edit*
2.5 Forgot to add; it shows how important it is to think ahead; you have to consider when moving a unit up to attack not just what that unit can accomplish now, but what you are exposing that unit to on the enemy's turn.

 

[Zhahz]

Been suggesting people check out Wesnoth for a while now to see what can be done with hexes, as I think it uses them well, has a great rule set, and has pretty good AI (mercilessly unforgiving even on easier levels, actually). It's overall an excellent game. And it's free on top of being excellent.

In particular I like how ranged vs melee is done in wesnoth and think the way it's being suggested for Civ 5 is a BIG mistake. No unit should ever be able to attack for free (attack over tiles).

In wesnoth you might get a free attack if the unit you're attacking has no ranged to counter your ranged or no melee to counter your melee but it's far more likely it'd be strong vs weak, and in all cases it would be due to poor strategic/tactical setup/placement and no due to cheeseball rules like ranged shooting over tiles.

 

[Earthling]

Hexes are a great move. The Battle for Wesnoth should have just about 0% relevance to civ 5 though, mechanics should not even be close to the same as it's an entirely different game. The Panzer General series only makes a basic comparison and civ 5 really won't be like it either, but it's a better starting point, since they did try to implement ideas counterintuitive to the civilization franchise to mimic those games.

the easier it is to gain a large military advantage over the AI from superior tactical play, the higher the game will have to push the AI cheats in order to make the AI competitive as an enemy.
So the AI had better be up to the challenge.

Yes, this is why one-unit-per-tile is a poor idea, because it will be absolutely brutal against the AI, and I'm not looking forward to two extremes of "steamroll" or "massive cheats." Then again it will be funny to see many of the same new/inexperienced players whining endlessly about the AI cheating on random combat odds...happened in every previous iteration and I highly doubt that will change. "My unit lost at 90% odds" indeed

 

[civ_king]

You are a sadistic jerk, now I wont even have enough time to properly sleep

 

[Ahriman]

Yes, this is why one-unit-per-tile is a poor idea, because it will be absolutely brutal against the AI, and I'm not looking forward to two extremes of "steamroll" or "massive cheats

I'm not convinced that it is not possible to make a good 1upt tactical AI.
BfW never tried to do it, but it was a small production made by volunteers.
It was also aimed at:
a) Single player campaigns where the AI had much bigger armies, and was designed to lose and
b) Multiplayer

It was never trying to create a single-player experience like Civ where the AI would play to the best of its ability. Half the fun of BfW is using superior tactics to annihilate the AI foe.

Professionals could conceivably do a much better job of programming a 1upt AI.

 

[smithx2]

Try www.hexwar.com You can play from Napoleon to WWII.

 

[the343danny]

You cant really say the system is bad because the AI sucks with it. The AI with stacks suck too. After early medieval, when I can start making good amounts of men, nobody is a threat anymore in a 1v1 because it is really easy to defeat AI stacks.

 

[Ahriman]

You cant really say the system is bad because the AI sucks with it. The AI with stacks suck too. After early medieval, when I can start making good amounts of men, nobody is a threat anymore in a 1v1 because it is really easy to defeat AI stacks.

There is a difference. The potential for the human to outperform the AI is larger with 1upt than it is with stacks.

With stacks, a dumb AI strategy ("build big stack of mixed unit types, move to nearest enemy city, bombard walls, attack with collateral damage units and then successive highest survival chance units you have") still works reasonably well. Yes, its outperformed by a human player, but not by that much.

Whereas with 1upt, a dumb AI strategy (eg like that in BfW, where they basically just attack-attack-attack) is massively outperformed by a smart human player. The difference is larger.

 

[Trias]

5. BfW AI is not great. AI is overly aggressive, and does a poor job of preserving its force. Consequently a human player is able to defeat the AI even when significantly outnumbered through clever tactical play.
This poses a problem for Civ4; the easier it is to gain a large military advantage over the AI from superior tactical play, the higher the game will have to push the AI cheats in order to make the AI competitive as an enemy.
So the AI had better be up to the challenge.

Player handicaps are not cheats. Playing with a handicap is a time honoured tradition for matching opponents of different skill. It is common in games ranging from Golf to Go. It is not like anybody would call playing on settler level cheating. (OK, maybe some people would)

I always find it surprising that find how little the AI in civ actually really cheat. There are some minor thing where the AI routines take short cuts. (For example, the AI can "see" blue circle in FoW) But most of those just level out the (experienced) player's advantage of understanding of how the iner mechanics of the game work. (For example an experienced player can guess the presence of resources near his capital from the absence of forests.)

 

[Ahriman]

Player handicaps are not cheats. Playing with a handicap is a time honoured tradition for matching opponents of different skill. It is common in games ranging from Golf to Go. It is not like anybody would call playing on settler level cheating. (OK, maybe some people would)

On high difficulty level, the AI gets free units (extra worker, settler at highest difficulty levels), and bonuses to production, science and gold, that are unavailable to the player.

This is a necessary evil that should be minimized whenever possible. We want the AI to be as powerful as possible and to be able to play on a level playing field whenever feasible.

It is NOT ok to just accept a weak AI and then boost it with bonuses that the player doesn't get.

Yes, we have to do that to some extent, but if the AI has to get built-in 50% bonuses to everything to be competitive then the AI or the game is poorly designed.

Its much less satisfying to win a war when you did so by having a dumb AI throw its forces repeatedly and in vain against your heavily fortified defenses.

 

[Shurdus]

On high difficulty level, the AI gets free units (extra worker, settler at highest difficulty levels), and bonuses to production, science and gold, that are unavailable to the player.

This is a necessary evil that should be minimized whenever possible. We want the AI to be as powerful as possible and to be able to play on a level playing field whenever feasible.

It is NOT ok to just accept a weak AI and then boost it with bonuses that the player doesn't get.

Yes, we have to do that to some extent, but if the AI has to get built-in 50% bonuses to everything to be competitive then the AI or the game is poorly designed.

Its much less satisfying to win a war when you did so by having a dumb AI throw its forces repeatedly and in vain against your heavily fortified defenses.

So basically you say that the AI should be as good as possible, and then the points where the AI is obviously failing or not coping as well as a human could, then it is fine to give them bonusses?

So basically from there on endthe rest of your post becomes moot. If the AI does everything reasonably possible to keep up with the player and still it needs 50% bonusses then the AI is poorly designed? How so?

It can very well be that this is the edge that a human gets where it is not possible to write an algorithm for the AI that works across different games and maps. You yourself acknowledge that, then you quantify a cutoff point where it stops being acceptable. This seems contradictory to me since you say it is needed to fix the AI somewhat in the area's where the AI fails. It seems nonsense to me to then proceed and say 'oh is the AI compensates with this amount then it is a poor design of the AI. Less cheating is acceptable.' It all depends on how good the AI can reasonably get.

While I see your point in the AI being poor department, it is only poor when compared to elite players who know what to expect from the AI and who know how to exploit it. That is, for the rare players that actually go through the trouble to learn the finesses and intricacies of the game, the AI is poor. For those who just play and worry little about becoming elite players, the AI puts up quite a fight, even on noble. To have an AI that can put up a good fight even for the best players out there is quite a feat, especially considering how varied different maps can be.

 

[Trias]

On high difficulty level, the AI gets free units (extra worker, settler at highest difficulty levels), and bonuses to production, science and gold, that are unavailable to the player.

The player gets those same bonuses (mostly*) when he plays on settler. It is just a handicap, not really cheating.

I do however, full-heartedly agree, that ideally it should be challenging to play against the AI at equal advantage. But even if, the AI is better, the game will still have to rely on varying levels of handicaps to achieve a spectrum of difficulty levels. This is simply because AI routines for a game like civ do not have parameters that you could easily tune to make the AI play better in worse. (Unlike chess AIs, where varying the search depth nice scales how well the AI plays.) Changes, you make to the AI will rarely make the AI play better in ALL situations (unless the AI is really very bad and any change will make it better). This means that improving the AI, is a continuous process of patching holes in its game.

-----
*Mostly, there are some slight differences. In particular, I think the AI pays less upkeep and lower upgrade costs at high difficult level, than the player would at low difficulty, but I'd have to check.

 

[Ahriman]

So basically you say that the AI should be as good as possible, and then the points where the AI is obviously failing or not coping as well as a human could, then it is fine to give them bonusses?

Yes.

But it is much more satisfying to play against a good AI with a 15% bonus than a bad AI with a 50% bonus, even if both provide equal "challenge".

You yourself acknowledge that, then you quantify a cutoff point where it stops being acceptable.

I did? Where? All I said is that AI bonuses/handicaps are not a good substitute for AI work.

While I see your point in the AI being poor department, it is only poor when compared to elite players who know what to expect from the AI and who know how to exploit it.

That's really not true.

Have you played Battle for Wesnoth? The AI is pretty terrible. It has no understanding of creating a defensive line, or using terrain to its advantage, or not overextending units, or of unit preservation, etc.
But that's ok in the context of that game; BfW is not designed to create a level-playing field environment for the human, where the human is one of several competing players in a sandbox environment. Its all about scenario play or multiplayer.

Civ4 AI has weak AI too (and its poor compared to a lot more than "elite" players!), but Civ4 uses a stack system where even weak AI provides a decent challenge, because there are a limited number of tactical decisions to make.
Quantity is much more important in a stack system - stacks are relatively "forgiving"; how you use the units becomes more important when you shift to 1upt.

Which doesn't mean 1upt is a bad thing, it just means that they'll have to have a better AI.
And they've specifically said that they've placed more emphasis on AI work in Civ5 than in previous Civ games. So hopefully we'll be fine.

The player gets those same bonuses (mostly*) when he plays on settler. It is just a handicap, not really cheating

This is meaningless semantics, though I would say that its commonplace to refer to AI bonuses that the player doesn't get "cheats" and its common for players to get frustrated when the AI can do things (especially Wonder construction or beelining religion foundings for eg) in a way that they can't.

But even if, the AI is better, the game will still have to rely on varying levels of handicaps to achieve a spectrum of difficulty levels.

Yes, this is true. But this isn't an argument that says "AI doesn't matter".
AI handicaps should be minimized; they're a necessary evil.

The player gets those same bonuses (mostly*) when he plays on settler.

I've never played settler, but AFAIK the player never gets free settlers or workers, and the bonuses even on settler are far lower than the AI gets on Demigod or Deity.
Which is fine. There is no need for these to be equivalent. Difficulty levels are designed to provide a range of possibilities so the human player can have fun. There's really no need for the AI player to have fun (well, at least until they start reloading savegames when you pull off low probability combat wins against them).

 

[Trias]

This is meaningless semantics, though I would say that its commonplace to refer to AI bonuses that the player doesn't get "cheats" and its common for players to get frustrated when the AI can do things (especially Wonder construction or beelining religion foundings for eg) in a way that they can't.

It is partly semantics, I agree. But,
1) I get annoyed by players whining at this and calling it cheating, while nobody calls playing at level lower than Noble cheating.

2) To me there is a world of difference between the computer/player having a handicap in the for of a bonus/penalty that the other player does not have, and the AI cheating by simply ignoring some of game rules. (Like an AI playing with the complete map revealed.

I've never played settler, but AFAIK the player never gets free settlers or workers, and the bonuses even on settler are far lower than the AI gets on Demigod or Deity.
Which is fine. There is no need for these to be equivalent. Difficulty levels are designed to provide a range of possibilities so the human player can have fun. There's really no need for the AI player to have fun (well, at least until they start reloading savegames when you pull off low probability combat wins against them).

At settler you do get an extra settler at the start, and maybe a scout as well. (There is actually an XML file that controls this, it is quite easy to check what extras the player/AI gets at what level.

But indeed, it is nowhere as extreme as what the AI gets at deity. (I think it basically gets free archery, extra settler and works, a couple of scouts and a couple of archers.) Which I agree is fine. The skill gap between elite players and the AI is much bigger than between the AI and nwb players. I think the advantage the player gets at settler is similar to the advantage of the AI at Emperor/Immortal.

 

[Earthling]

Changes, you make to the AI will rarely make the AI play better in ALL situations (unless the AI is really very bad and any change will make it better). This means that improving the AI, is a continuous process of patching holes in its game.

No, this isn't true at all, and there is no indication the AI in civ 5 will be close to this ideal. In civ4, some clevers modders made the AI perform multiple difficulty levels higher, by changing exactly one thing - part of the horribly broken diplomacy system (that the AI also "cheats" at). Making them ignore previous hard-coded preferences to like each other and behave at Pleased or Friendly or whatever. The AI still is complicated and it definitely got better over the course of civ4, from the original vanilla through BtS. But it's very easy, and also very possible, the new game will have an AI that purposefully plays stupidly and then messes around with handicaps because no alternative was created.

Still, I agree it's not the AI being potentially bad alone that makes the new warfare system rough, though that is part of it - it's the fact that it's also designed for smaller, simpler gameplay, which is hugely detrimental to those who prefer longer/more "epic" games. I don't even play Marathon on custom maps and all and I'm not sure how those civ fans will stand it.

And they've specifically said that they've placed more emphasis on AI work in Civ5 than in previous Civ games. So hopefully we'll be fine.

I gotta say again that I agree here - I really hope everything does work out. But the number one priority of anything possible in civ 5 that will determine if it really succeeds is a solid AI. Sure, new graphics or new civilizations or whatever may be cool, but the challenge replayability is really the essential part of civ.

Also, nerf the Immortal.