The maps a bit odd

I saw something today and it made me realise something was wrong with the map, it took me a while to put my finger on it but there are 2 things wrong one it's a cylinder not a sphere and moving diagonally is the same as moving in a straight line, anyone else noticed this? does it even really make a difference?

 

Yeah, I don't like this design. Having a ship on the far north boarder, you would think that if the game were set up on a global playing map, you could sail a little further north and wind up south in a turn or two, but to get that ship to a far southern port, you have to sail south across the entire map.

 

It is possible to have it that way in the editor.

 

You have a strange image of our globe

 

I didn't know that, thanks for the info.

Still, it's a design flaw IMO that they didn't bake that logic into the original game.

 

Now seriously, why is it a flaw in design? Am I misunderstanding something?

 

Well, theoretically if the map represents a globe, it would wrap around on all sides so that the north part of the map would connect with the south part of the map.

At least that's how I was thinking - but then if that ice strip represented the poles, then ships would use less movement to sail around it.

Like Padma said, there's no easy way I guess.

 

That wouldn't make a globe, and doesn't make ANY sense. A ship traveling north through the Atlantic Ocean into the arctic can't suddenly appear in the south Atlantic.

Take a sheet of paper, and make a cylinder, then try to connect the top and the bottom, you can't do it.

 

Thank you Gosnork!

 

Exactly. If tere is to be any "wrap", a ship traveling north through the Atlantic Ocean into the arctic would come out north in the Pacific. Or in general, half the map width to the East (or West that is).

You can imagine different projections of the map, for example one where the top and bottom edges of the map actually are the equator, and the poles are in the middle of the map. On such a map there should be a wrap from the upper edge to the bottom edge and vice versa (as the edges represent two sides of the equator), but it would be incorrect to call the edges poles.

 

You REALLY lost me here matey...

There is an inconsistancy which is most obvious near the poles. A CIV map has the same number of square's both at the poles and the equator. Going on the assumption that all squares represent the same distance/worldsurface then there should be less squares near the poles. But making a map that way would involve weird shapes and i know of no empirebuilding game which factors this in.

But going from the northpole to the southpole????? No way Going of the west side of a map and coming out the eastside... yeh that's doable (as many a sailor have proven a few hunderd years ago)

 

Sure you can. You just get a torus instead of a sphere. A toroidal map would be quite interesting, actually.

kk

 

We would have a diamond shaped map in such a case. Question is, would players like it better?

 

The cylinder could go north to south instead of east to west.

In games like Final Fantasy VII, traveling continues north/south like it does east/west and I guess that's ultimately how I would prefer Civ III.

 

Can't you just rotate your compass 90 degrees and imagine map connects north-south rather than east-west?

 

A diamond shaped map, hmm, someone should try to make a mod like that.