The Earth is round!!!!!! (maybe...)

[22bebo]

I feel the irrational urge to design a geometry-based civ spinoff where the tiles are all random shapes with numbers of sides ranging from three to six.

Cool, I'd play, but only if I could be King Triangulon, from Polygonus 3.

Edit:

 

[Valkrionn]

Honestly, I'm all for this. Pentagons wouldn't be that bad, there need only be a few.

 

[Supervisor84]

I guess judging from everyone's logical observations about spherical hex worlds absolutely needing a few pentagons mixed in with all the hexagon tiles to work (and the game definitely will be based on hex tiles), it will be quite interesting to see what Firaxis are going to do to get this to work. I'd be surprised if they actually put pentagons in, since it seems like something weird to do "just to be able to have a spherical hexagon tile map".

My uneducated guess is: Hex tiles are in the maps, but bye-bye possibility of spherical "planet" world with intercrossable poles in this release. I could be wrong though, personally I was delighted to hear that games would play something similar to Earth; race to the North and South poles.. Move your intercontinental expeditionary force more efficiently and not just West to East or vice versa.. My two cents after having sneezed at the idea of hexagons at first, but then taken a liking to them.

And here's one that nobody got yet...
Would you get some kind of reward for completing THE PENTAGON in a city built on one of these few pentagons? LOL!

 

[Kissamies]

On the other hand, wouldn't the poles be covered by ice? By Civ IV requirments, at least, you'd have to have a submarine go under the icecaps and to get to the poles. I think they'd have to make more viable ways to find the poles.

Or you can fly over them on the way to bomb a country on the other hemisphere. Remember Dr. Strangelove?

Truly spherical world would be worth a few pentagons, I'd say. I doubt they'll see it the same way at Firaxis, though.

 

[Wodan]

One possibility that nobody has mentioned is that it is not truely necessary to have a perfect 3D sphere. Because of a simple fact:
the game is always presented from the perspective of one player.

So, it may be possible to use a pure hex grid, and have any "rounding" needed to accommodate the hexes always appear on the "dark side" of the earth.

 

[Silv Something]

But satellites reveal the terrain of the entire world!

 

[Wodan]

But satellites reveal the terrain of the entire world!

You're thinking too small. We shouldn't force ciV into the cIV implementation.

If the minimap showed a globe instead of everything (and you could scroll the minimap to rotate it), that addresses your concern.

 

[Gabriel dCF]

hmmm... "Dr. Buckminster Fuller, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Pentagon."

LMAO

And sorry Taalan, nobody but you has noticied it before
Yet Sava is right, it's only speculation. I hope Firaxis will provide us a globe map, but it's quite likely that the hex map will be flat indeed.

 

[axi]

I feel the irrational urge to design a geometry-based civ spinoff where the tiles are all random shapes with numbers of sides ranging from three to six.

In fact you can. Just plot a number or random points (optionally with a few rules for minimum and maximum distance from eachother), do a Voronoi tesselation and presto you have an irregular grid. The edges of a Voronoi polygon are vertical to the middle of the edges of the Delaynay triangulation for the same set of points. Voronoi polygons are unequal in size and shape but are connected only with their natural neighbours. Crystals grow in such a fashion. If you use centerpoints arranged on a hex grid, a hex grid is produced.

 

[Silv Something]

You're thinking too small. We shouldn't force ciV into the cIV implementation.

If the minimap showed a globe instead of everything (and you could scroll the minimap to rotate it), that addresses your concern.

You're right, I shouldn't assume the techs are the same.

Your method seems a little complicated, though.

 

[J-man]

I'm not a programmer but I can imagine that the amount of programming work for a spherical world isn't justified by the amount gameplay won by it.

 

[Andrew_Jay]

Just for fun, I mocked-up a small-ish world map (well, I only did Africa/Asia/Australia/Europe) just to see what it would be like with hexes. I realise now that we don't know if hexes are arranged in rows (as they are in my map) or in columns. Map is a little skewed - I traced it from the old Axis and Allies board.

Some initial thoughts - hexes create some interesting opportunities for unusual angles that may have looked a little ugly with a grid, though at the same time also make other shapes hard to work with. Japan and Britain were especially hard to form. However, I like how hexes make for slightly more realistic little islands - ordinarily a three-tile island (e.g.: Tasmania) would allow a city to act as a canal, sailing right through an entire island, now it would just be a more sensible port.

 

[Onagan]

I would like to see a round earth, but i don't think it would happen.

 

[exorbit]

it's too complicated and maybe even a waste of time ... i'm sure that 90% of the players won't see the diffrence between a round earth and a fake round earth if the poles are inaccessible in both versions .

 

[deanej]

One possibility that nobody has mentioned is that it is not truely necessary to have a perfect 3D sphere. Because of a simple fact:
the game is always presented from the perspective of one player.

So, it may be possible to use a pure hex grid, and have any "rounding" needed to accommodate the hexes always appear on the "dark side" of the earth.

That's actually not true. The game renders all of the tiles on the map every turn, regardless of weather you can see them or not.

 

[playshogi]

It seems to me there are 3 possibilities:
1) cylinder maps like now except the squares are hexes
2) toroidal maps like now except the squares are hexes
3) spherical maps with 12 pentagons or "holes" that could be buried in the oceans or large lakes, with an impassable terrain feature (mountain).

I don't see how #3 is any more complicated than the first 2.

 

[deanej]

It's from a coding perspective. I don't know how to explain it, but I imagine it would be quite difficult to code in two different tile shapes.

 

[playshogi]

But the pentagons would not be part of the map except visually.

 

[Wodan]

That's actually not true. The game renders all of the tiles on the map every turn, regardless of weather you can see them or not.

Actually it is true. However cIV is rendered, it is still "presented from the perspective of one player".

And furthermore, unit order actions are always presented from that unit's perspective.

So, if CiV overlaid a hex grid (with no pentagons) with the current active unit as the center, then that might be all that's necessary.

Unit positions anywhere on the map are calculated by a lat/long (or whatever) coordinate, rather than forcing them into a fixed grid. As long as no two units are allowed to be closer to each other than the minimum distance plus the rounding error (by not having pentagons), it'll work just fine, I expect.

 

[Supervisor84]

It seems to me there are 3 possibilities:
1) cylinder maps like now except the squares are hexes
2) toroidal maps like now except the squares are hexes
3) spherical maps with 12 pentagons or "holes" that could be buried in the oceans or large lakes, with an impassable terrain feature (mountain).

I don't see how #3 is any more complicated than the first 2.

Amen. #3 is kind of what I wish would be put in the game. How many pentagons would have to be placed around the world map, 12? It's not that many considering the size, and I see it as a totally viable solution to have the map generator make those pentagons a lake, part of the ocean or, an impassable mountain. Since there will be a ton of those tiles out there, one might overlook these easily! However, then again there's the programming ambition.. Would "they" absolutely want this kind of map if it means more work? Well many of us sure seem to want it!

Edit: Actually if that pentagon happens to be in the city radius, won't it be an advantage/disadvantage to have it around? Perhaps an impassable peak is the best, as it renders no yield (?)