Simultaneous turns?

[Camikaze]

Way, way, way too complicated to be practical. It works in board games like Diplomacy, where there are only a few units, but even then, what you end up with most of the time is stalemate. There would be way too many conflicting orders to figure out which should take precedence.

 

[Sqwerlpunk]

How would you get a stalemate?

And what do you mean, which order takes precedence?

 

[chongli]

How would you get a stalemate?

And what do you mean, which order takes precedence?

You have two units from opposing sides that want to move into the same hex (perhaps a hill, for strategic advantage). If they both move simultaneously, which one gets to move into that hex?

 

[Camikaze]

How would you get a stalemate?

And what do you mean, which order takes precedence?

You have two units from opposing sides that want to move into the same hex (perhaps a hill, for strategic advantage). If they both move simultaneously, which one gets to move into that hex?

Yeah, precisely this. In Diplomacy, you get to go to the tile if you have more units attempting to go to that tile, or more to the point, units supporting your move to that tile. So, if you are trying to move to a tile, and so is the opposition, it'll be a stalemate, whereas if you are trying to move to a tile with one unit supported by another unit adjacent to the tile, you can go to that tile instead of the other side's unit. The problem is that then the other side will bring another unit to the party, and it will be 2 v 2, and there is stalemate. Additionally, that simplified system, which even in itself would be too slow and complicated to add to Civ, does not take into account differing strengths; it assumes all units are of the same strength. If you start adding units of differing strengths, it'll just become more and more complicated.

 

[Shiggs713]

Am I the only one that dislikes the whole idea?
Simultaneous turns are a bad thing from many perspectives.
The greatest of them is that you can see what every other person/ai did in his turn and make a desision based on that.

Essentialy, CIV is like a game of chess. Each player makes his moves and pauses to think.
If you removed that to create some insanity with randomnes and instant reaction time than it would no longer be a turn based strategy game but a real time strategy. Don't make civ into things it is not.

100% agree. Don't add real time strategy to a turn based game. Nuff said. It would be like taking [insert your favorite RPG] and making it turn based. Lame. Keep the game the way it was designed to be played.

 

[Souron]

So just make two enemy armies auto fight if they try to enter the same tile. Just like in real war, not everything goes according to plan, and when two rival armies meet they fight. Two friendly armies could be allowed to enter the same tile without a problem.

A bigger problem is trying to target enemies as they try to move. This is especially a problem for AI attacking the player.

 

[chongli]

So just make two enemy armies auto fight if they try to enter the same tile. Just like in real war, not everything goes according to plan, and when two rival armies meet they fight.

Which side is the attacker and which side is the defender? Which side gains the benefit of the terrain and which doesn't? How do you determine initiative?

The whole thing is messy and throws tactics out the window.

Two friendly armies could be allowed to enter the same tile without a problem.

This would violate the principle of one-unit-per-tile.

 

[Souron]

Which side is the attacker and which side is the defender? Which side gains the benefit of the terrain and which doesn't? How do you determine initiative?

The whole thing is messy and throws tactics out the window.

The details can be worked out. For instance, give neither army the defensive advantage, since both are caught on the move. Initiative can be random.

But I don't think it's a good choice for Civ.

This would violate the principle of one-unit-per-tile.

So? It does not undermine the goal of spreading units out. You can give an attacker a choice of which unit to target if he's at war with both civs.

 

[chongli]

The details can be worked out. For instance, give neither army the defensive advantage, since both are caught on the move. Initiative can be random.

In other words, it throws tactics out the window and the whole thing becomes random.

But I don't think it's a good choice for Civ.

I agree!

 

[Souron]

In other words, it throws tactics out the window and the whole thing becomes random.

Only if both sides have armies on the move. The tactics would be to try to position your units in dependable positions, and force your enemy to attack you.

 

[chongli]

Only if both sides have armies on the move. The tactics would be to try to position your units in dependable positions, and force your enemy to attack you.

Except that you don't usually know where your enemies are and with simultaneous turns you don't get a chance to react to such information until it is too late.

It also makes artillery fire completely unpredictable and unreliable.

 

[Sqwerlpunk]

You have two units from opposing sides that want to move into the same hex (perhaps a hill, for strategic advantage). If they both move simultaneously, which one gets to move into that hex?

Like I said, I'm not convinced of that system. All I wanted was the minor change to the current system, IGOUGO but all my moves are made simul (allowing you to plan out greater over-all movements more carefully, allowing multiple units to attack a single hex simul, ect.).

 

[Souron]

@chongli
I'm sure a system could be worked out to resolve such problems, but since we both agree that it's not for civ, there's not much point in discussing it here.

 

[chongli]

Agreed.

 

[spammikone]

On the contrary. AI's would think when you think too, so ai computation wouldn't drag you along indeed. But then you must resolve all movements and fights at once. And that would take a lot of time, so you would end up waiting between turns. The ai would probably have more time to think, though, so it could be better, but I don't think it would change much.

You only repeated my words, except with the "a lot of time". It is drastically faster and even the wait can be put to good use with showing results on the run for example.

You are forgetting a tiny little detail: the AI would need to recalculate everything from the start everytime you moved a unit , because the situation would not be the same This would make all this equivalent to making the calcs in the end of the human turn

Did you ever play Sid Meier's Gettysburg? Fire your cannons and the simulturns means they fire at empty space, because the enemy moves their men. Same thing would apply here: Try to bombard the enemy with your artillery and you'll miss...

100% agree. Don't add real time strategy to a turn based game. Nuff said. It would be like taking [insert your favorite RPG] and making it turn based. Lame. Keep the game the way it was designed to be played.

(for the RPG part: )


Others at least have some clue or aren't mentally ********, because most dicussed areas here are gameplay/game mechanic issues which are not set in some mystical stone by Zeus.

For those last comments in this thread gotta say randomness has always played big role in Civs, if that would be the method to resolve things. Personally I would like to see initiative/ambush/experience/speed/whatever values mixed with randomness in these kind of situations. And with PG style warfare and hex maps "X is not for civ" isn't really an argument anymore.

 

[r_rolo1]

You will have to explain to me in what you disagree with me

I simply pointed you to the fact that everytime you move a unit, the board changes and thus the situation becomes diferent. As any game of civ has a huge number of possibilities for units change, change of governements and whatever in every turn, the only way of you doing significant calculations IBT of the computer turns ( in the human play ) would be calculate taking in account all of this possibilities, because otherwise the AI can be responding to a situation entirely diferent of the real one. This is simply not possible with the current processing speeds in any decent sized map unless you start chopping stuff out ( say, cut the possible states for units, like make fortify binary instead of various states or stuff like that, cut the number of possible city builds, stuff like that... ) to cut the number of possibilites ( and even then it would still explode the number of possible states, just a little slower ... ). In the end there would be probably no gain in performance compared with simply waiting for the end of the human turn and then work on the situation, unless you want the AI players to simply ignore the current situation and proceed with some kind of internal plan regardless of the situation ( don't on me, but that is the typical aproach of RPGs exactly because of that reason ).

Now ,instead of calling ****** to someone that wasn't offensive to you, could you care to actually show your hand and respond to my argument?

 

[LDiCesare]

You only repeated my words, except with the "a lot of time". It is drastically faster and even the wait can be put to good use with showing results on the run for example.

I coded a game like this, and I saw other games where it's done that way. In-between-turns is long. Maybe it's because combat systems are deep, though.

the only way of you doing significant calculations IBT of the computer turns ( in the human play ) would be calculate taking in account all of this possibilities, because otherwise the AI can be responding to a situation entirely diferent of the real one. This is simply not possible with the current processing speeds in any decent sized map

You can make some abstractions. It's not necessary to take into account the result of military moves to decide to change government or policies. It's possible to think about unit movements at a strategic level, using power projection maps for instance, which, although expensive, can be done fast enough. I maintain that resolving moves and fights would take more time than thinking about them unless the ai actually simulates the fights in order to guess its odds of success.

 

[r_rolo1]

You can make some abstractions. It's not necessary to take into account the result of military moves to decide to change government or policies. It's possible to think about unit movements at a strategic level, using power projection maps for instance, which, although expensive, can be done fast enough. I maintain that resolving moves and fights would take more time than thinking about them unless the ai actually simulates the fights in order to guess its odds of success.

First, it is necessary to take in account the military moves to decide governement of policies atleast in war times , because you might start the next turn with a diferent territory than the one you ended last turn and that has a huge influence in what political line pays up. About thinking on movement in between ... ok, I might conceed that movement in non-danger zones could be relegated to the IBT ( but even then... this is a turn based game for the AI as well, and they might wake up in the next turn with a war they didn't had in the previous )

About simulating combat odds... hum, sliperry terrain ... without knowing the Civ V combat mechanics it is hard to tell if it will be feasible or not to do that on the IBT. But in the previous Civ versions the thing had the issue of becoming highly unpratical as soon as we had a handful of units in both sides ( the quantity of calcs exploded hard ... )

 

[spammikone]

I don't get what point you are trying to make. Do you mean that AI players have to react for every change human player makes during his planning phase? Why? That's inefficient, useless and makes the AI cheater. If AI would do that to other AI player aswell, wouldn't that end up in infinite loop?

You understand how the simultaneous turns concept work? Your units don't move at all on the planning phase, they move on the execution (end turn) phase.

 

[Shiggs713]

everything you've said is a mooch point. Go build your own game if you want simultaneous turns, its not happening in the Civ series. Judging by your comments you don't know squat about it so good luck.