Squares, Hexes, Octagons...

[sabrewolf]

do get me wrong... i strongly dislike the mouse for civ and only use it when i don't know the shortcuts, select a unit, or want to see how long it takes until a worker finishes.

but i'm sure many people DO rely on the mouse for most of the game

[Skanky Burns]

Which is all well and good, but square-type doesn't really affect people using the mouse. Its really an issue where keyboard movement is concerned, and there hexes are clearly superior.

[Rasputin]

as an old board war gamer i do prefer the hexes......

[Max Sinister]

Originally posted by Leland
Not quite regular. In a geodesic sphere for example the triangles are only approximately regular (i.e. every angle is not exactly 60 degrees). On the other hand, dodecahedron for example consists of "non-distorted" regular triangles.

Nitpick (geometry):
1. Yes, triangles on a sphere have angles bigger than 60 degrees, but it also depends upon the size of them: A triangle covering one eighth of the surface would have 90 degree angles, but if we have a sphere covered with several thousand or even ten thousand triangles, the difference wouldn't be noticable.
2. Don't you mean icosahedron? I think a dodecahedron has twelve pentagons, an icosahedron has 20 triangles as its sides.

[Leland]

Originally posted by Max Sinister
Nitpick (geometry):
1. Yes, triangles on a sphere have angles bigger than 60 degrees, but it also depends upon the size of them: A triangle covering one eighth of the surface would have 90 degree angles, but if we have a sphere covered with several thousand or even ten thousand triangles, the difference wouldn't be noticable.

Ah, but you have the pentagons (or the points around which you have only five triangles instead of six) to mess things up. The tiles next to the pentagons will always be distorted noticeably and you can't get away with this. The tiles farthest away from the pentagons (i.e. the tiles that are in the center of the hexagonal sides of the "soccer ball") will be more or less regular.

The difference between adjacent tiles might not be big enough to be an annoyance to the player (in fact I would love to see a game attempt a map like this), but nevertheless it would make map geometry complex enough to warrant a 3d or a vector based graphics engine.

2. Don't you mean icosahedron? I think a dodecahedron has twelve pentagons, an icosahedron has 20 triangles as its sides.

I stand corrected.

[Shogun Gunner]

Originally posted by Rasputin
as an old board war gamer i do prefer the hexes......

here, here! I love the 'ole war games!

I seem to failing this Geometry 101 in the thread.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Leland
Not quite regular. In a geodesic sphere for example the triangles are only approximately regular (i.e. every angle is not exactly 60 degrees). On the other hand, dodecahedron for example consists of "non-distorted" regular triangles.

Its possible to have equilateral triangles whose angles are greater than 180 degrees. I realize this is non-euclidean but its the only way to get triangles to work on the surface of a sphere.

(SG - Hows that for Geometry 101? )

[sabrewolf]

spherical geometry makes everything a bit more complicated than "simple" 2D-geometry

but it partially explains things like why pilots fly transatlantic routes by flying over nova scotia (icy big icy canadian island). (the other reason is global winds)

[Shogun Gunner]

Originally posted by Vince278


(SG - Hows that for Geometry 101? )

I think I'll start a thread about how Calculus can be applied to Civ.



Seriously, this is an interesting thread. I hope someone from Firaxis is reading this.

[Leland]

Originally posted by Vince278

Its possible to have equilateral triangles whose angles are greater than 180 degrees. I realize this is non-euclidean but its the only way to get triangles to work on the surface of a sphere.

True, but the point was not to draw triangles on spheres, but rather how to approximate a sphere with triangles (or penta-/hexagons which can always be thought of as consisting of triangles).

With non-euclidean geometries we could have heptagonal maps and other neat things though...

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner
Seriously, this is an interesting thread. I hope someone from Firaxis is reading this.

I agree, I hope they are watching too. There are alot of interesting thoughts here.
(Thanks for the interesting use of my favorite smilie: )

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Leland
With non-euclidean geometries we could have heptagonal maps and other neat things though...

Heptagonal maps? Not sure how you're going to pull that one off without the world looking like Cthulhu's R'lyeh.

How about something like duodecahedral mapping? You'd have to be able to visualize objects in the fourth dimension use fully utilize that.
(In other words, we typically use a two dimensional object (a map) to represent a three dimensional object (a world). This is just using a three dimensional object to represent a fourth dimensional object. I wouldn't recommend this for Civ or anything else unless we are trying to model the universe. )

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by Vince278
I agree, I hope they are watching too. There are alot of interesting thoughts here.
(Thanks for the interesting use of my favorite smilie: )

even if they are looking, CivIV is fully in production, so whatever has been decided (probably civ3-like squares anyway) is now fixed

[Vince278]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
even if they are looking, CivIV is fully in production, so whatever has been decided (probably civ3-like squares anyway) is now fixed

Too early to start a thread for Civ V?

[sabrewolf]