The World In Hexagons - A CivV Approximation

[ShaqFu]

Curious to see how the world map will look in a 128x80 hex grid, I put a hex grid together (using the spiffy mkhexgrid) and overlaid a Miller projection world map:

The Roughly Hexagonal World

Just to give everyone an idea of what it'll approximately look like if the world map uses the full size. Europe might need a bit of tweaking, given the high civ concentration and tiny size, but I think we can agree that 2-move units are a blessing.

 

[Tylerryan79]

England has like one full hex, if that. Lol

 

[Dearmad]

Bad projection choice and the lines don't follow hexes much at all.

Next.

 

[Slinko]

Bad projection choice and the lines don't follow hexes much at all.

Next.

It was a good idea though.

 

[ShaqFu]

Bad projection choice and the lines don't follow hexes much at all.

Next.

I used the same projection as Rhyes for the Civ4 map, which I assumed to be a good one. If you'd like to go through and adjust a couple thousand hex boundaries, be my guest; you'll be busy until the 21st.

 

[ladedadedum]

Bad projection choice and the lines don't follow hexes much at all.

Next.

yeah yours was much better.

wut?

Moderator Action: <snip>

 

[SevenSpirits]

Bad projection choice and the lines don't follow hexes much at all.

Next.

More constructively, I like the Mollweide projection best myself. It's equal area. The problem is it's not a projection onto a rectangle (it has rounded edges) which for a Civ V map means a bunch of extra Pacific Ocean near the poles, I guess.

 

[Rexflex]

Any projection that has Greenland look a lot smaller than Africa is a step in the right direction.

 

[ShaqFu]

More constructively, I like the Mollweide projection best myself. It's equal area. The problem is it's not a projection onto a rectangle (it has rounded edges) which for a Civ V map means a bunch of extra Pacific Ocean near the poles, I guess.

I wonder if it's possible for a hex grid to fit the curve of the edge well enough to use. Granted, you'd lose a ton of space in the corners, but it's the only way to get an accurate enough map. You can't lose much more space, though, before you're condensing the map too far to really be useful.

 

[SevenSpirits]

I wonder if it's possible for a hex grid to fit the curve of the edge well enough to use. Granted, you'd lose a ton of space in the corners, but it's the only way to get an accurate enough map. You can't lose much more space, though, before you're condensing the map too far to really be useful.

The problem is travelling across the pacific.

The only way to make it truly work is to do the 12 (?) pentagon globe thing as discussed in the globe map thread.

 

[allypower]

not gonna have any pentagon anytime in the next 5 years.

 

[alpaca]

More constructively, I like the Mollweide projection best myself. It's equal area. The problem is it's not a projection onto a rectangle (it has rounded edges) which for a Civ V map means a bunch of extra Pacific Ocean near the poles, I guess.

Mollweide projection is great for viewing but it's not so good for games. The problem is that when you go "north" on the rectangle you go some other direction on the map. For visual applications that's not a big problem because your brain (or mine at least, I haven't actually asked anybody else) maps the landmasses onto a more spherical object subconsciously. However, when zooming in far, like in a game, that's not going to work so you'll get weird "I started in the mid-west, went north and got to the west coast" moments

 

[moopoo]

i personally think any world map needs to have an enlarged europe

 

[Thorburne]

I like the effort... It is prety good and looks to be about to scale as to what we will see in the game. I didn't count horizontally, but vertically looks to be about 73 tiles (give or take a few). It, at least, gives us an idea as to what to expect from earth maps.

i personally think any world map needs to have an enlarged europe

I do agree with this to a point. I would prefer a larger map, overall. Regardless, with this, Europe (including England) is just too small.

 

[V. Soma]

Yes, enlarged Europe and shrinked Pacific is a step for better gameplay,
I think Rhye has done this as well...

 

[Mercade]

Yes, enlarged Europe and shrinked Pacific is a step for better gameplay,
I think Rhye has done this as well...

Fortunately Civ4 maps can be imported into Civ5 world builder as standard feature, so there's a pretty good start on making Civ5 world maps (or maps of any other geographic area for that matter).

Square grids and hex grids aren't that different at all from a mapping perspective. There's only the half a cell offset per row or column.

Btw, it's already been confirmed by a PAX visitor there'll be an earth map in the box.

 

[Tomice]

First, thanks to the OP for the interesting topic! Whether your map is perfect or not is unimportant, because noone else bothered to create something better.

Generally, I don't care about projections and scale. All I want is a playable, halfway balanced map that reminds me of earth. I don't care if Europe is double the usual size. Even if it were, there wouldn't fit more than 10 cities into the whole EU.

The reason why earth maps will hardly ever work, is that Civ doesn't include the theories from "guns, germs and steel". According to the book, the crops and animals found in the old world were far more useful for early humans than those in the Americas for example. In Civ, a grassland tile with farm always gives the same amount of food, no matter how many useful crops your nation knows.

 

[Tylerryan79]

I think we all have hexes on the brain . I know I've drawn a few myself! I also printed about 30 pages of a similar hex grid...... Pretty much wasted 30 pages, well anyways. Good job/effort!

 

[Kid R]

Just for fun here's the above map after half an hour with the "fill" tool in paint.NET




Seems like there's definitely too much space in the arctic and not enough room for details in Europe like Britain and Denmark. But the hex tiles make nice coasts, and it's good how the Red Sea is at exactly the right angle for the grid!

 

[thwump]

Just for fun here's the above map after half an hour with the "fill" tool in paint.NET

View attachment 263543
View attachment 263542

Seems like there's definitely too much space in the arctic and not enough room for details in Europe like Britain and Denmark. But the hex tiles make nice coasts, and it's good how the Red Sea is at exactly the right angle for the grid!

Yeah you could definitely cut the map off just above alaska or so - hardly any arctic ocean and you just get the south end of greenland. It probably also makes better gameplay to expand europe; you can move africa down a bit (I think its not very important how accurate the africa-s. america lineup is). The trickier thing is whether you can shrink siberia and make it look ok.