Google Earth Civ4

[TimeTraveler]

Originally posted by sophist Which I've always found annoying, but I've been unable to come up with something game-appropriate that works better.

I haven't been able to think of anything better, either, without the number of tiles on the map limited to 120 skinny triangles.

Originally posted by sophist Seriously? I've had zero luck coming up with a scheme that meets the following requirements:

1) roughly spherical
2) all tiles have roughly the same size
3) all tiles have the same number of neighbors
4) the frame of reference is absolute, not relative
5) all tiles have roughly the same orientation

I can see dropping #5, but even with 1-4, I'm not sure it's possible.

I'm not even sure what's meant for requirements 4 and 5. o.o ...and I don't know if 2 is possible. However, I think I have an idea that meets requirement of 2 and sort of meets requirement 1.

For the layout of the tiles, I decided to start with an icosahedron, then split each of the triangles into smaller triangles. I personally chose the left method of the image below, but there are a lot of other potential choices for how the triangles are split up, as long as it's the same way on every triangle on any one map.

Going even further than that, I figured that maybe triangles aren't the best shape in the world for the tiles. ...but when going from tiles, and when trying to avoid pentagons when there are hexagons elsewhere, the shapes would be stuck with roughly 60 degree angles on them somewhere. xP My idea was this:

I then just decided to place the map on a disdyakis triacontahedron and added some small bits of terrain.

[sophist]

By absolute frame of reference, I mean that a given tile has the same shape, size, and location regardless of where you are in relation to it. It's the same whether you're next to it or on the opposite side of the world. The poles aren't treated any differently from the equator, besides the weather aspects. That sinks non-quantized or in-discrete (haha) schemes.

By orientation, I mean that you can move in the same directions from each tile. In civ, with the exception of the edge squares, you can always move in the 4 cardinal and 4 (um....) non-cardinal directions, and those directions are the same from square to square. In a pentagonal or mixed pentagonal/hexagonal, that's not true. The point in one case may, um, point north, while in another case, it points west. That's not insurmountable, but it's sub-optimal. Not that I think it's possible to meet the conditions I have stated; it's probably provably impossible.

[Xorbon]

That brings up a question that I have about Civ 4. Since the map will be rotatable, how will the number keys work to move the units?

[TimeTraveler]

Originally posted by sophist
By absolute frame of reference, I mean that a given tile has the same shape, size, and location regardless of where you are in relation to it. It's the same whether you're next to it or on the opposite side of the world. The poles aren't treated any differently from the equator, besides the weather aspects. That sinks non-quantized or in-discrete (haha) schemes.

By orientation, I mean that you can move in the same directions from each tile. In civ, with the exception of the edge squares, you can always move in the 4 cardinal and 4 (um....) non-cardinal directions, and those directions are the same from square to square. In a pentagonal or mixed pentagonal/hexagonal, that's not true. The point in one case may, um, point north, while in another case, it points west. That's not insurmountable, but it's sub-optimal. Not that I think it's possible to meet the conditions I have stated; it's probably provably impossible.

I think one can come close with the frame of reference thing. ...except things could get warped where, say, five tiles share a corner where six normally do. ...or something like that.

I don't think the second of those two is possible. If at the north pole, one can't go further north. Likewise, one can't go south when already at the south pole. Um... if that's not what you meant, then I guess you could ignore that. However, there's still the issue of trying to get the tiles to get the same number of neighbors. ...but even if so, there could be an issue of determining which arrow key will get you where. ...especialy at the poles. ...so the way I see it, the arrow keys may end up being abandoned in terms of movement by the time a move to a sphere map is made.

[TimeTraveler]

Originally posted by Xorbon
That brings up a question that I have about Civ 4. Since the map will be rotatable, how will the number keys work to move the units?

That's a very good question and gets me to wonder if the arrow keys will work at all when trying to move units on the map. o.o

[Commy]

Points and circles, points and circles...

Movement points would represent radii...lets save we have a sphere...okay, and we also have a cavalry...the cavalry has 3 movement points, so lets say that the horsies can move in place within 3 inches of their current position...you could measure the distance in the game (using some program) from where you are to where you want to go...for example, you tank might be able to go 300 miles in one turn, and since it is 700 miles from Pico Town, it will take 3 turns to get there...once you are there you can move another 200 miles to attack or do whatever...

Territory works the same way...your territory extends, say, 500 miles in all directions from your base...as bases get closer and closer, equations calculate the culture of the cities and whatever to form a boundary...

Improvements work as well...you irrigate 300 square miles, roughly, in whatever shape you choose...a triangle, a square, a circle, or against the edge of a forest or river...

[TimeTraveler]

Originally posted by Commy
Points and circles, points and circles...

Movement points would represent radii...lets save we have a sphere...okay, and we also have a cavalry...the cavalry has 3 movement points, so lets say that the horsies can move in place within 3 inches of their current position...you could measure the distance in the game (using some program) from where you are to where you want to go...for example, you tank might be able to go 300 miles in one turn, and since it is 700 miles from Pico Town, it will take 3 turns to get there...once you are there you can move another 200 miles to attack or do whatever...

Territory works the same way...your territory extends, say, 500 miles in all directions from your base...as bases get closer and closer, equations calculate the culture of the cities and whatever to form a boundary...

Improvements work as well...you irrigate 300 square miles, roughly, in whatever shape you choose...a triangle, a square, a circle, or against the edge of a forest or river...

I suppose that kind of movement ought to make sense. Of course, I imagine parts of the 'circle' may shrink in mountainous or otherwise hard-to-get-through regions.

Same with the territory, although with different things shrinking or expanding the territory circle (if anything other than bordering nations).

I wonder what sort of calculatoins we'll see with regards to the placing of terrain and tile improvements. ...like building a farm right next to a circular mine and possibly ending up with some other odd shape or whatever. ...or suppose a space for land was kinda broken up or too small or something because of other improvements... o.o

Edit: Wow, I post a lot here. I wonder if I'm analyzing the issue too much. o.o

[Xorbon]

Originally posted by TimeTraveler
Edit: Wow, I post a lot here. I wonder if I'm analyzing the issue too much. o.o

Nah. It's an interesting topic. There are a lot of people who'd like to see hex tiles and/or a spherical world in Civ. We're just brainstorming on possible ways.

In a tileless system I'd imagine borders would be circular, except when they hit barriers. Rivers, jungles, and mountains would be the largest barriers to boundary expansion. Of the open terrain types, desert would allow boundaries to expand the fastest, and grassland and floodplains would expand the slowest. That way, you could pack more cities into a smaller area where there is more food. Just like in real life.

As far as movement goes, there would have to be some sort of pathfinding algorithms even for slow units. If Mt. Kilimanjaro is in the way and you want to get to the opposite side, a pathfinding algorithm should draw you a path around the mountain instead of over the mountain.

[sophist]

Originally posted by TimeTraveler
I don't think the second of those two is possible. If at the north pole, one can't go further north. Likewise, one can't go south when already at the south pole. Um... if that's not what you meant, then I guess you could ignore that. However, there's still the issue of trying to get the tiles to get the same number of neighbors. ...but even if so, there could be an issue of determining which arrow key will get you where. ...especialy at the poles. ...so the way I see it, the arrow keys may end up being abandoned in terms of movement by the time a move to a sphere map is made.

I should have said "up" instead of "north." If you can't have tiles with the same number of edges, then you obviously can't have tiles with the same orientation. I don't think it's possible to do.

[TimeTraveler]

Originally posted by sophist


I should have said "up" instead of "north." If you can't have tiles with the same number of edges, then you obviously can't have tiles with the same orientation. I don't think it's possible to do.

Ah. Then to try to satisfy that request, hexes would have to be ruled out due to the occasional pentagon. ...and if for each tile, every other tile that shared so much as a vertice counted, there would be no solution with more than 120 tiles, except for those which arebasically two cones on top of each other.

[sophist]

Yeah. I'm being too strict. Something has to give. I guess it's just a matter of choosing the option that sucks least, which is probably why we still have the square tiles with a cylindrical world; that's what Firaxis decided sucked least.

[Darkstar]

Commy, exactly!

TimeTraveller, that is a gorgeous world and map.

Sophist, no, Firaxis did not pick a solution that sucked the least. They didn't bother at all. The cylinder map is extremely easy to do in a computer (it's just a wrapping 2 dimensional array). It's been used since the very first war game way back on the VAX. The only significant advance was the torus (N-S wrapping, E-W wrapping map).

[sophist]

Exactly. It's really easy to implement, which is one form of non-suckage. It's hard to argue it was that wrong a decision given how popular a game it is. How many games are there that deal with world-scale things that accurately model a spherical world? And how successful are they?

[TimeTraveler]

Originally posted by Darkstar
Commy, exactly!

TimeTraveller, that is a gorgeous world and map.

Sophist, no, Firaxis did not pick a solution that sucked the least. They didn't bother at all. The cylinder map is extremely easy to do in a computer (it's just a wrapping 2 dimensional array). It's been used since the very first war game way back on the VAX. The only significant advance was the torus (N-S wrapping, E-W wrapping map).

Thank you!

Anyway, with regards to Firaxis using the cylinder in previous games, they had what I think is an okay reason: They had yet to get themselves into 3D simulating, yet, which is necessary for any map with the equator and the poles, even a cube map. Perhaps they weren't yet able to make a 3d map or didn't think the benefits of one would outweigh the effort. In Civ4, however, they switched to 3D, proving that they're capable of a 3D map. However, they sticked with a cylinder and just rounded the edges a bit.

I guess a future step for them could be switching to something with 4-3-2 symmetry like a cube or octahedron (or something in between), or 5-3-2 symmetry like a bunch of hexes and a few pentagons, or perhaps even something like the map I displayed earlier in this thread. Or alternatively, take a crack at a tileless map if they can.

Either way, we now know that a map more advanced than the cylinder is possible, so it may as well be implemented in a future game.

[sophist]

I'm not sure it's that simple. I think Firaxis places great importance on having the sort of regularity of tile shape and orientation that I describe above, and they've decided that they'd rather have a cylindrical world than one that sacrifices squares (8-way movement), consistent orientation (NESW), and the like.