Chaning models mid game

[Sirotnikov]

I hear many people arguing about htings such as public works vs. workers, preset units vs. unit workshop, known tech tree vs. non-specific research, social engineering vs. preset governments.


I say : why bicker? those are all good ideas and should all be inside, dependant on technology.

Just like in Civ III, you only get the option to enter war weariness after you discover a tech, why not make public works also dependant of some tech? and then it works only in your borders, making your workers, effectively military engineers (for work in hostile terrain).

Why not changing from non-specific to specific tech tree in some fields, depending on technological advancement?

Unit workshop and preset units can go hand in hand, as a unit workshop can be set to produce many good default units.

A tech could change the gaming style, from preset govts (in ancient times) to social engineering (after industrial age, or let's say, after "nationality" research).

Also not all options in the social engineering option are available until certain techs arrive.


We could make a civ game that gives a serious feeling of chaning eras of evolution, if certain game models change mid game.

I think it would become more interesting and make you feel you are "advancing".

[geeslaka]

I too feel that combining all these ideas would be cool. The only problem is the complexity. Some people don't like complex games. Also increased complexity usually means longer turns which means multiplayer games would take longer, so less people would have time to play, so multiplayer would be less fun.
On second thought, there will always be lots of people who have nothing better to do than play civ.

[LDiCesare]

Unit workshop and preset units can go hand in hand, as a unit workshop can be set to produce many good default units.

Yes. ai could build preset units to compensate for its inability to dynamically create good ones.

We could make a civ game that gives a serious feeling of chaning eras of evolution, if certain game models change mid game.

I think it would become more interesting and make you feel you are "advancing".

Yes. What I'd like to see is the game expand as you progress, so you go from cities to nations:
You start working with villages, and then villages group together into cities, then cities into provinces... Think:
Tou play Alexander, and have conquered all cities in the known world except one city near the end of the map, by a river called Indus. Suddenly, when you reach Indus, you realize that there is a whole slew of other civs and a much bigger map beyond: The map scale changes, you must join some of your cities together into regions, and see a lot more of the world. The same would happen when Colombus reaches the West Indies, or when man starts colonizing Mars: You progress from villages to cities, to provinces, to nations, to empires, and the scale of things change. This would work best with a tileless system or irregular-tiles system so you could group regions together into a new bigger region as the game progresses.

[Sirotnikov]

LD that does sound cool. tough I'm not sure how it owuld work game wise...

[LDiCesare]

There are many RTS (argg, I don't really like them but bear with me) that have 'campaigns' in which you move from one part of a map to another, what I suggest is the same, except the maps are just maps inside one another. I think it could be a bit like some civ 2 scenarios (Spartacus) where you save your game, shuffle a few files around, and reload, and suddenly the units, techs, etc. have changed. Except here, teh map would change too...

[geeslaka]

I know a way to implement your idea with C++.

struct tile_map // map is already a C++ type so I can't call it that
{
bool high_map;
vector< vector< tile_map> > lower_maps;
vector< vector< tile> > tiles;
};

[Sirotnikov]

geeslaka, my c++ was never that good. can you tell me more?

[geeslaka]

What specifically do you need explained?

[LDiCesare]

Sirotnikov, This struct is basically an object made of a list of list of (smaller?) maps and a list of list of tiles. The list of list is to allow 2 dimensions (x,y). I miss the point of the boolean. Probably better to have a tile_map motherMap to know if this map is the topmost or part of another map.

The problem is that you don't just need 2 lines of code to implement that, otherwise I'd already have done it in Clash (though I might have asked other people how they felt about it beforehand). You have to tie the content of the tiles. That is, each square in a bigger map will map to a set of squares in a smaller map, and there should be a correspondence between them. It is possible to keep all data at the lowest level of detail and sum up the information when going up to higher levels, but then you'd have to scale the movement of toops so the change in coordinates happens at the correct tile level... You also need code to display the map on a higher level, like choosing which kind of tile you use to represent 4 squares which were previously mountain/plain/forest/hill, etc.

[geeslaka]

The bool is for checking if it is the lowest map. If it is the lowest map, commands to go one map lower are ignored.
I thought about using a seperate type for higher maps, but that created a hardcoded limit on the number of map levels.
I was aware of the other considerations you mentioned, I just didn't want to make a huge post detailing all the things that would need to be done. I meant that example to serve only as the base upon which the other things are built.

[Sirotnikov]

vector< vector< tile_map> > lower_maps;
vector< vector< tile> > tiles;

what happens here??

what is vector? what is vector< ?

what is vector ?

[LDiCesare]

vector is a class part of a standard C++ library, and the < > mean a template. You should check a C++ book for details. More or less, a vector is a list of variable size, and here we're talking about a list of tile_map objects, and a list of such lists. In C, you could do a simple tile_map** and manage the memory size by yourself.

[LDiCesare]

I thought a bit more how changing maps along games would look like:
Think of the following: You start as Britain.
You start in a map that shows Europe, or the northern part of it. Once you managed to conquer enough territory, or you have a good enough logistics tech, your map extends itself and uncovers more of the world, probably all Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
At this time, your initial map, in which English cities each sported its own square, shrinks, and England moves down from 30 squares to 9 squares.
Later, some weirdos pretend the Earth is round and the Spanish build the Colombus wonder. The map then widens again to the West, uncovering whole new territories. Now, England moves down from 9 squares to a single one. Scotland is no longer the wide span of land it was in the early game, but just the square north of England. And the West Indies really looks like a place to go.
Later on, the Magellan wonder is built, and the West Indies are shown to be a distinct continent. The whole map is revealed (England doesn't shrink, but the map widens, allowing to reach China).

Such a game might work better with polygons rather than squares, since scaling would be easier.

[Mr. President]

That sounds fun!

[Panag]

Originally posted by Sirotnikov
geeslaka, my c++ was never that good. can you tell me more?

hi ,

, just wondering , aint there sites where you can learn all the tips and tricks , ......

there are chatrooms around that do provide some info to it , .....

have a nice day