Steph's next great project announcement

[Sir John]

Oh and another idea : What about making a platou (Im not sure how to write this...)

If u had mountains going all the way around an area the area on top could be a flat area like the plains platou in Turkey (it covers like 50% of the country). in civ3 its just represented with desert wich is lowsy.. What could be cool with the platou would beeing able to build new mountains on top of that again.. If u get my point.. but thats not really necererry but it would be neat to be able to have a spesific terrain on the platou.. (that could make some interesting maps to say it like that )

I hope ur able to implent some of this... If this game goes on as it look now then firaxis might sure u for stealing from them.. stealing players that is

 

[Steph]

Originally posted by Sir John
what u mean by in tactical map??

On the strategic map( ie standard map), you can move units, discover lands, build units, etc.
When to ennemy units are going into the same tile -> battle, but instead of an abstract one a la Civ, a new tactical map is opened (small one, 9x9 tiles), with random terrain based on the one the units are in on the tactical map.
Then they fight on this map, where they have a bigger range, facing is important, they can retreat...
A bit like Call to Power, but with more control over the units.

 

[Steph]

Originally posted by Sir John
Oh yeah.. and a important thing... WE NEED TO SAIL RIVERS!!!!

please make this doable.. make something like small river and large river.. (smallriver on the sides and large river in the middle of the tile...)

It's not so easy, because unit sprites are in the center of a tile, but rivers are on the border.

Originally posted by Sir John

It would be possible to go up a river with certain boats (a river flag for boats) This would make the vikings with there longships a lots more fun and realistic to play..

Also rivers should function as roads when it comes to resources.. it should be possible to be resource conected by rivers...

This river thing would give the game more realism and more fun. Civ3 really lacks this... I really hope u can implent this. I know a lot of people who would be glad...

I agree it's interesting, I'll check later if it can be done.

 

[Steph]

Originally posted by Sir John
BTW: Maby u should make a new thread for this as the game is coming more on now... I think more people would look into the thread then... i got here by your link in another thread so it might be an idea making a new thread called SSS so that more people would look into this.. also it would become more neat

I should have a dedicated forum and website at CDG. I personally prefer CFC, but CDG offers more possibilities for this kind of things.

 

[Steph]

Originally posted by Sir John
Oh and another idea : What about making a platou (Im not sure how to write this...)

If u had mountains going all the way around an area the area on top could be a flat area like the plains platou in Turkey (it covers like 50% of the country). in civ3 its just represented with desert wich is lowsy.. What could be cool with the platou would beeing able to build new mountains on top of that again.. If u get my point.. but thats not really necererry but it would be neat to be able to have a spesific terrain on the platou.. (that could make some interesting maps to say it like that )

I hope ur able to implent some of this... If this game goes on as it look now then firaxis might sure u for stealing from them.. stealing players that is

I've thought of the plateau idea already. But due to some constraints, like the possibility to see behind a tile, it won't be possible to have moutains over a plateau.

I see plateau like a 5th kind of relief, but I'm not sure of the impact they could have in game, and thus of the interest to have them.

 

[Steph]

I've created myself a small signature

 

[kryszcztov]

Originally posted by Steph

On the strategic map( ie standard map), you can move units, discover lands, build units, etc.
When to ennemy units are going into the same tile -> battle, but instead of an abstract one a la Civ, a new tactical map is opened (small one, 9x9 tiles), with random terrain based on the one the units are in on the tactical map.
Then they fight on this map, where they have a bigger range, facing is important, they can retreat...
A bit like Call to Power, but with more control over the units.

A bit like Heroes of Might and Magic !!! I played Heroes III a lot some years ago, and really enjoyed it. Would you be able to move units like in that game ? Maybe not as detailed, but still, will there be tactical moves ? If so, I think a human would beat the AI in a battle more often than with the current RnG !!! What about it ?

 

[Steph]

Not as detailed as heroes of might and magic.

My idea is that you cannot mix correctly unit abilities and empire buildings : the scale simply do not match.

So on the main map, you move units around the world almost instanstly during the strategic phase, but only in frendily territory, build new units, discover techs, etc.
then you have the operational phase, with several turns, where you can explore or enter ennemy territory, use air mission and long range bombardment. There your units are much more slower. If you encounter an ennemy, you move to tactical, on a new random map.
There you can move, shoot, attack in melee... And there, you have a lot of different bonuses, includign unit facing, terrain, bonus against unit (like pike against cavalry), etc.

 

[Kal-el]

this sounds a lot like something I was working on a while ago. Too bad real life commitments got in the way.

 

[Sir John]

I like the tactical map idea and im very curious how u will do that.. its not to easy to make it work very good (ive seen it done or more like badly done in a ton of startegy games) The thing about tactiak maps is that they are either really awsome or they completely suck...

I see why u cant have terrains on top of the platou.. But the platou itself should be there.. it adds both realism and fun to the game..

About the rivers: As I said the rivers that would be sailable would have to be in the middle instead of on the edges.. It cant be to hard to make another kind of river that is in the middle can it?? It would have to be a little wider I guess as well... Im sure somone could make the graphics for that... The whole river thingy is really needed as it adds lots of fun to the gameplay... The reason the vkings were so good was because theire boats could go far up rivers.. when u take that away the vikings kind of suck...

 

[Steph]

1- You can use coast in a tile to represent major rivers, if they are to be in the middle of the square
2- The idea with a river at the border is to give a bonus to the unit that is on the other side of the river ie : defending.

If I put the graphixs in the middle of the square (and it has chance to be easier to do, and give better results), how can we determine if there is a bonus? Simply considering the unit in the square is on the correct size of the river?
But what if this unit is attacked by an ennemy unit from the left square, and another one from the right (the river runs from top to bottom)
From what attack is it protected?

That's why I'm not very happy with this solution of a river in the middle.

 

[Sir John]

if u have a river in the middle it would be a larger river and would need a bridge to be crossed by normal units (that doesnt have like a amphibius thingy ability) So that would mean that the unit cant get a attack or defense bonus becasue he cant attack all the way over to the other side...

The coast in a tile make it look bad since it doesnt look anything like a river and it doesnt give u the opportunity to make only certain ships go up a river.. u wont see many supertankers going up rivers

BTW: Maby u dont want to implent this since then the vikings can finally sail into paris and kick ur behinds..
j\k

 

[kryszcztov]

No, I'm really in favor of those wider rivers. I want Vikings to be able to crush Paris if they want to. My berserks in GOTM 22 were crippled by the fact that they don't do very well once they fight in the inland. I enjoy Civ3 rivers a lot, it adds realism to the combat system, but I wish some boats could go along rivers. Tiles with wider rivers in the middle could provide a +2 gold bonus to their tiles, and units defending there would always get a bonus when attacked from another tile than the wide river (think that wide rivers could actually be several smaller rivers together, or have islands in the middle...). What is hard is to make both kinds of rivers compatible on the map... That would require some drawing to see the problem. If this idea is implemented, we could also think of canals : they would be some kind of wide rivers (in the middle of tiles) built by workers at a slow pace. Maybe they could give money from ships passing by (think of Suez and Panama).

 

[Kal-el]

one of the (many) things I miss from civ2 is the road movement along rivers.

 

[Steph]

First screenshots of rivers.

As you can see, you can make some combination that civIII doesn't allow, like having river on 3 sides of a tile.

I need to work again with the moutains and hills to make it nicer.

 

[aaminion00]

One thing that always annoys me, but I'm not sure if it could be done, is that the river was always on top of the forests and hills. Is there any way to make it dissapear as soon as it reaches the edges, and then reappear at the other edges?

Otherwise, looking good.

 

[kryszcztov]

Also one thing I don't like in Civ3, but it is pretty rare : those rivers that end up in the sea with the delta looking to be "part of the sea", you know. Consider a 2x2 set of tiles ; one of the 4 squares is coast, the other 3 are land ; the river would cut this 2x2 square in half entirely ; so we get a river that runs along the coast, which is dumb. Do you see that ? I once had a game with some weird geography, I could find my pics if you want.

I think you've already thought of having rivers going from mountains to flat land, not the other way up ! Could add realism, but might need some effort to code (for randomly generated maps), I just don't know.

 

[Sir John]

yeah those deltas are useless more often the they fit in the terrain... maby it would work better if they were smaller...

 

[Steph]

Originally posted by aaminion00
One thing that always annoys me, but I'm not sure if it could be done, is that the river was always on top of the forests and hills. Is there any way to make it dissapear as soon as it reaches the edges, and then reappear at the other edges?

Otherwise, looking good.

This would extremely easy, much more easy than painting it above moutains and forest.
I will give it a try and show you the result. However, there's a big flaw : how can you tell the river is crossing the forest if you can't see the river?
This would need complety new graphics, with fewer trees, so you can see behind them

 

[Sir John]

isnt it possible to just see the rivers somtimes... that would be a neat graphic...