Strategic View!! Screenshots!

Sorry if this was pointed out already...
I was looking mainly at the roads and firstly I noticed they look a bit silly from the strategic view going straight over the top of several mountains. Look at the Late_Large screenshot in particular.

Also, it looks like roads are built between two cities in much the same way that civ rev does it. I wonder if we'll also see a return of the civ-rev game mechanic where roads between two cities allowed a unit to instantly travel from one to the other?
 
There shouldn't be any roads on mountains; you might be getting the mountains and hills confused.
 
The answer rhymes with muppet
Is the answer a two word description which ryhmes with Muppet Plates? ;)

The Strat Map is awesome! Elemental has also gone this route.
I'm glad to see that more TBS games are adopting a playable global map.
It just seems natural to be able to scan out and play board-game style. Good move!


Elementals version:

Spoiler :
cloth_map_chess.jpg
 
I think the strategic view looks ugly. At least if this mode is something which can be played on permanently, I think an effort should be made to make it prettier, something like Battle for Wesnoth.

That will almost definitely not happen. The entire point of strategic view is to make all of the information as clear as possible, and part of that is making it very clear what each and every hex is.

In regular 3d view, you'll notice that the terrain beautifully blends together, creating a much more "flowing" look. :)

That's a designer choice then, not something which is simply impossible. I once again point you to Battle for Wesnoth as an example of pretty 2D.



That can be done with a grid.

Spoiler :
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For what it's worth, I think the strategic view already looks better than wesnoth's. In the wesnoth screenshot it would be hard to tell where the grid is if you turned off the hex grid. In the civ screenshots even though the grid is turned off the terrain and features are very clear. This is one of the only things I think civ1 did better than all of civ2,civ3 and civ4. civ1 had the clearest "strategic" view. It looks like civ5 might manage to displace civ1 for that title. :)

The idea of it not requiring any 3D to render sounds fantastic - a design decision to be congratulated! I've long called for games like civ4 to have an alternate view where pretty 3d is done away with and instead the player is shown the information visually in the most clear but not necessarily pretty way possible. For example, civ1 had very clear distinguishable unit graphics compared to civ4. In civ4 if you zoomed out enough that the camera angle was a bit steeper (i.e. nearly a bird's eye view) you pretty much couldn't tell any units apart until you hovered over them.

There shouldn't be any roads on mountains; you might be getting the mountains and hills confused.

Yes you're quite right. Still, it looks rather odd for roads to go straight over the top of what look to be big hills. Usually engineers build roads that go around or between hills rather than straight over them in straight lines, but since this is only an aeshetic nitpick and for a strategic view no less, it doesn't bother me too much. However I suspect the roads are doing the same thing in the standard view - something which no doubt people will complain about. ;)

If you take the Late_Large screenshot as an example, the road between Kyoto and Osaka looks particularly silly.

I like the way rivers look in this view, by the way.
 
More detective work...

twohexview.jpg


The two fragments above are from the top and close to the top of screens 1 and 3, cut so they show exactly the same area of the map.

Why did I do this? :confused:

...because in screen1 something just off screen is fogbusting those hexes close to the top of the screen, and I wanted to compare with the third screen so I could draw the outline (extrapolated) of the area the unit could see and find the hex it occupied (a plains tile).

Why did I do this? :confused:

...because it seems on turn 29 a land unit was stood on that plains tile and appears to have a 2 hex line of sight in all directions. :eek:

Am I missing something (quite possible) or is this unusual compared to IV?
 
More detective work...

twohexview.jpg


The two fragments above are from the top and close to the top of screens 1 and 3, cut so they show exactly the same area of the map.

Why did I do this? :confused:

...because in screen1 something just off screen is fogbusting those hexes close to the top of the screen, and I wanted to compare with the third screen so I could draw the outline (extrapolated) of the area the unit could see and find the hex it occupied (a plains tile).

Why did I do this? :confused:

...because it seems on turn 29 a land unit was stood on that plains tile and appears to have a 2 hex line of sight in all directions. :eek:

Am I missing something (quite possible) or is this unusual compared to IV?

I noticed that as well. Probably scout units will have a 2 hex line of sight (blocked by forest, hills and mountains). Imagine that you have a squadron of scouts and they send out small detachments to explore the surrounding tiles.
 
To have a line of sight of 2 hexes is just logical when even a normal archer will have a movement rate of 2. A lower sight would not make much sense.

In Panzer General most units have a 2 hex line of sight but 3-6 hex movement range. Having a movement range larger than the line of sight makes for some interesting tactical decisions that you have to make (or of course you could just get a reconnaissance unit with a 4 hex line of sight to help the rest out).
 
To have a line of sight of 2 hexes is just logical when even a normal archer will have a movement rate of 2. A lower sight would not make much sense.

You are right of course there is clearly a logical reason for this.

My concern with this is a little selfish in that my absolute favourite part of the game is the initial exploration phase, and, unless the maps are considerably larger than civ4, 2MP and 2 hex LOS may mean that the exploration phase will go by too quickly for my liking.
I hope I am wrong.
 
You are right of course there is clearly a logical reason for this.

My concern with this is a little selfish in that my absolute favourite part of the game is the initial exploration phase, and, unless the maps are considerably larger than civ4, 2MP and 2 hex LOS may mean that the exploration phase will go by too quickly for my liking.
I hope I am wrong.

If they see twice as far, but you have 1/4 as many of them, I wouldn't be too worried about exploring.
 
In Panzer General most units have a 2 hex line of sight but 3-6 hex movement range. Having a movement range larger than the line of sight makes for some interesting tactical decisions that you have to make (or of course you could just get a reconnaissance unit with a 4 hex line of sight to help the rest out).

Or leapfrog your units forward.
 
It's not out of the question to have a unit with a move and bombard range of 2 but a sight range of 1, as it would increase the importance of being on a hill and/or having a melee unit between the archer and the proposed target. But you're probably right, it makes sense that most units will probably have a sight range of 2.

This will no doubt make the exploration phase go much more quickly. That's an excuse, I suppose, to play on larger maps. :)
 
On the Late screnn, under Nara, a road leads to... nowhere? or to the lake? :confused:

Hmmmm... That is odd.

I think for me the hardest thing to get used to is that roads are apparently no longer needed to hook up resources. A lot of time and effort was spent to do this in IV, especially in the early game. I got rather good at it! Now there's no need...
 
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