Round Globe

[Black_Hole]

Make it like the earth so, if you travel to the top of the map you teleport to the bottom and vice versa

 

[toh6wy]

Hmm...
So if I travel north to the North Pole and keep going in that direction, I'll suddenly appear in Antarctica? No, sorry, I know what you mean, and it's a pretty good idea, although it would make it more complicated and more intensive for the CPU.

 

[ybbor]

first, that's not the way the real world works, second, just about every game on the planet plays on a cylinder, i say no, for the sake of gameplay

 

[Gogf]

I don't like this idea, I like the flat world, pesonally.

 

[wlievens]

Black_Hole9: the current civ3 map IS a globe, you weirdo

 

[ybbor]

no, it's a cylinder, what he's saying (i think) is if there was a row like this

1234567890

with each # representing tile, if i sailed nirth from 2 i would land on 7

 

[G-Force Junkie]

Well, it would be good for Cold War scenarios so you could send air strikes over the North Pole, and it would be better than the current y-axis wrap that is available with C3C.

 

[ybbor]

ohhhh.....air strikes, ahven't thought of that, now THAT would make the game interesting

my comment on bieng a badidea still stands thoguh

 

[RegentMan]

The current flat maps are fine by me.

 

[playshogi]

How about a pole square at the top and bottom. Entering the pole square enables you to move to any square adjacent to the pole square. For obvious reasons no city could be built on the pole square, or the top/bottom row of squares.

------------------------------------ <---- north pole
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz <---- squares on the top row.

in this example, the pole square is represented by the dashes.
you could move from 'w' to the pole square and out to any other top row square.

Of course, current flat maps are fine with me, also.

 

[wlievens]

playshogi's idea makes most sence to me

 

[judgement]

Except that nobody really uses the poles as a fast way to get from one part of the world to another. The only exception is submarines, which might travel under the arctic ice... travel across/through artic ice by sea or land units, or overland across antarctica by land units, is just too difficult for it to make sense to have the poles be shortcuts. I like the current system where the top and bottom of the map is impassable, it seems more realistic to me.

And before someone reminds me that airplanes do fly great circle routes and sometimes thus take advantage of shortcuts across the arctic, just remember how airplane movement works in the game. With instant re-basing rather than movement from tile to tile, airplane movement is another whole story, and the effects of the poles don't really apply to planes.

 

[aneeshm]

Maybe that for the very top two rows of the map , you can move a unit anywhere in the rest of the top two rows for one movement point , then the third row for three movement points , and from then on , normal movement . Also applies to the bottom .

 

[mad-bax]

I think a spherical map should be included as an option. People can play on Flat, Cylindrical, toroidal or spherical maps.

On a spherical map the tiles can be a combination of pentagons and hexagons. It is possible to tessalate this pattern on a sphere.

It would be much more interesting IMO. We really don't need another board game played on a computer.

 

[Flak]

I like the pole square idea. That really sounds solid. It's far easier to program and could be a simple option. I'd probably play with that setting by default.

 

[Pirate]

I would be a huge fan or spherical maps. Just think - melting ice caps due to global warming would actually open up more trade routes!

Anyway, the map would actually have to be a sphere of hexagons and we would abandon the isometric view of the world in exchange for a real 3D view. You would not be able to represent a sphere on a flat map - our grid would have to follow lines like this, which would be extremely complicated:

 

[Ribannah]

It's not possible to create a normal 3D sphere from hexagons alone. To get curvature, you need to add pentagons. Which will create new problems when you want to see those parts of the sphere on the screen.

Basically, there are three ways to go.

[1] Abandon the tile system altogether and use coordinates instead (easy but very new)
[2] Use local tiles that are created dynamically (closer to Civ3)
[3] Create an abnormal sphere from hexagons only (fun, but you can't have an Earth map)

 

[Pirate]

Personally I vote for option A. Lose the grid. No city grows in a grid anyway. Everything follows landforms and roads.

 

[Suki]

I don't like the pole square idea.
there are much more sensible ways to do it.

first off: The normal setup is a cylynder, with no caps on the ends, the pole square works as an end cap but why make it just one square? why not just build on caps, they don't need to be circular (hard to divide into tiles) and they don't need to be a seperate section of map that you jump to, if you made them conical just having the cylynedr shrink down in the far north and far south, something like this:

......1
....101
..10001
1000001
1000001
1000001
1000001
..10001
....101
......1

with the ones being connected horizontally to eachother
and remember since it's symetric you can very easily reorient the map so that like in civ 3 you never jump from one side to the other but just move smoothly through.

of course there's no real reason to try to keep a cylyndrical base

if you want to kep a square grid you could play on a cube, it's a lot closer to a sphere than an open cylynder, either play with the poles as the centers of top and bottom squares or with the cube balanced on a point so the civ map would be like this

..............1............1............1
.............11..........11..........11
............101........101........101
...........1001......1001......1001
..........10001....10001....10001
.........100001..100001..100001
........100000110000011000001
.......1000000100000010000001
......1100000110000011000001
.....1010000101000010100001
....1001000100100010010001
...1000100100010010001001
..1000010100001010000101
.1000001100000110000011
1000000100000010000001
.100000110000011000001
..100001..100001..100001
...10001....10001....10001
....1001......1001......1001
.....101........101........101
......11..........11..........11
.......1............1............1

with the '1' in this case reprisenting the edges of the larger squares and the '0' reprisenting the tiles, those diamonds would be square of course

the tiles near the corners will be a little strange only having seven tiles surronding them insted of eight like all the others
so your city radius will look like this:

..11
111
11011
11111
..111


although you could go through the trouble of building a various sized geodesics of hex and pentagons directly why not bulid something out of equlaterial triangles and, it's easy to do, map hex's onto them, and you'll end up with different shaped tiles right at the corners depending how many of the uber tiler meet there.

if you made a tetrahedron:

..............1
.............11
............101
...........1001
..........10001
.........100001
........1000001
.......11111111
......110000011
.....1010000101
....10010001001
...100010010001
..1000010100001
.10000011000001
111111111111111

you'd end up with triangles at each corner,

a dodecahedron:

..............1............1............1
.............11..........11..........11
............101........101........101
...........1001......1001......1001
..........10001....10001....10001
.........100001..100001..100001
........100000110000011000001
.......1111111111111111111111
......1100000110000011000001
.....1010000101000010100001
....1001000100100010010001
...1000100100010010001001
..1000010100001010000101
.1000001100000110000011
1111111111111111111111
.100000110000011000001
..100001..100001..100001
...10001....10001....10001
....1001......1001......1001
.....101........101........101
......11..........11..........11
.......1............1............1

would give triangle tiles at the poles, pentagons at the other corners and hexigons everywhere else.

but personally I prefer the icosahedron 20 sided and only needs hex and pentagon tiles, and is a much closer approximation of a sphere


and from the orrigional civ 4 ideas thread:
3d world map

 

[Ribannah]

Suki,

It does not work at the edges. You will always have tiles that have less neighbouring tiles than other tiles, and you will have problems with vision at those points if they are projected as well.