Visual Displays for Civ5 Ideas
- Thread starter Gamemaster77
- Start date
Trias
Donkey with three behinds
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2008
- Messages
- 594
CTP1 did that one and it was boring as hell. It did not make a return in CTP2.
This would not be the only decision made in the entire history of developing Civ-like games with which I disagree. I can see lots of ways of making orbit more interesting, starting with the obvious "build your starship there".
I think it depends greatly on how you want the mechanics of handling altitude to matter.
There wouldnt be any steep steps, and modeling thin air in 3d is somewhat pointless. You go higher up in the sky or deeper in the sea. The landareas are unaffected by all this. What you are suggesting is something like Alpha Centauri did - only altitude that basicly affects grounded units.
Modern aircrafts would be able to go higher than early aircrafts, and modern submarines would be able to go deeper than early submarines. Just a thought.
Will that really contribute all that much to gameplay, though? I mean, it's a nice extra thing that would affect one or two situations in the late game, but a lot of players don't get to the late game, and the different layers would only be a hindrance until that point, at which time they would only have limited impact.
Eklabiaan
Chieftain
Can you make grid diagrams for the fat cross on both gridsystems?
The max number of worked tiles per city is smaller on the hexagonal grid. This will influence gameplay/ game balancing.
The max number of worked tiles per city is smaller on the hexagonal grid. This will influence gameplay/ game balancing.
Gamemaster77
PC > Mac
Good idea. I will try to make that.
I can see there being problems if you want lots of air units, lots of land/sea units, and lots of underwater (or indeed underground) units on the same tile being harder to keep clear/visible/distinct on a single map.
Gamemaster77
PC > Mac
Any idea how this would work with cultural expansion?
That's possible, although it would be much easier to simply change the visuals to make the altitude difference more obvious than to implement more maps. And when would a sea and land unit be on the same tile, unless the land unit was in fact in the sea unit, or the sea unit was in a city (in which case the visual display wouldn't be an issue)?
Hans Lemurson
Prince
One possible "advantage" of the hex-system is that for the cost of 20 pentagonal tiles(and locally shrunken area), you can create an icosahedron, the "Fuller-Projection"(named after the famed Buckminster Fuller), for modeling a sphere with a polyhedron. Those pentagonal junctions would be weird though. 
The problem of the area of city Radii is actually not that great; a radius-2 "circle" in a hex-grid has 18 tiles around the central one.
That said, grids are easier to use and understand, since you can apply a simple Cartesian coordinate system, and we work with grids every day.
I wonder if it would be possible to mod a hex-grid (or something equivalent like half-shifting every other row). I'm really not sure what would be involved, but it probably goes to tinkering with the engine itself. (Maybe you could pull-off the ugly approximation of simply forbidding NE/SW movement, but you'd have to apply that to everything, like cultural-border calculations and city-radii. The graphical issues would be minor compared to the uglification already rendered.) However, I know nothing about tinkering with this.
The problem of the area of city Radii is actually not that great; a radius-2 "circle" in a hex-grid has 18 tiles around the central one.
That said, grids are easier to use and understand, since you can apply a simple Cartesian coordinate system, and we work with grids every day.
I wonder if it would be possible to mod a hex-grid (or something equivalent like half-shifting every other row). I'm really not sure what would be involved, but it probably goes to tinkering with the engine itself. (Maybe you could pull-off the ugly approximation of simply forbidding NE/SW movement, but you'd have to apply that to everything, like cultural-border calculations and city-radii. The graphical issues would be minor compared to the uglification already rendered.) However, I know nothing about tinkering with this.
Trias
Donkey with three behinds
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2008
- Messages
- 594
Modding it into civ4 would be very tough, but FreeCiv actually has a hex-grid option, which you can try.
Hans Lemurson
Prince
Cool. How does it rate compared to Square or Isometric? I don't suppose it can manage a Fuller projection though, as any decent application of it requires a 3d engine.
Trias
Donkey with three behinds
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2008
- Messages
- 594
Just try it. (and no obviously no Fuller projection)
Sorry, my inclarity; I was not thinking a land and sea unit would be in the same tile (except for land units carried in transports).
I meant, if you had an air unit AND (a land OR sea unit as apt) AND (an underwater OR undergound unit as apt) on the same tile, it might get cluttered looking. Even without an orbital layer.
As much of traditional Wargamers, I carried out the maps graphically my games with the hexagonal system which offers enormous advantages of simulation. I acknowledge that was very tiresome to realize
until the day when I realized that one could obtain the same result practises quite simply by shifting of a half-square a column on two of a grid of squares. 
Does this bring also an advantageous solution to your difficulties of programming?
Does this bring also an advantageous solution to your difficulties of programming?
Similar threads
