Google Earth Civ4

[TimeTraveler]

Originally posted by 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.

...which I guess is why we're still stuck with the cylinder. >.<

I wonder if anyone would be able to mod Civ4 into having a sort of global map. That, itself, could be a real challenge. o.o

[sophist]

That would be pretty hard, for sure. Nobody's responded to my question regarding world-scale computer games that use a spherical map.

[TimeTraveler]

Originally posted by sophist
That would be pretty hard, for sure. Nobody's responded to my question regarding world-scale computer games that use a spherical map.

Are there any world-scale computer games that use a spherical map? o.o

[Addled Platypus]

thanks for the link

[Darkstar]

You mean, other then Populous 3 and SuperPower 1 & 2? Oh, let's not forget Traveller's Invasion. And the Civ1 clone, Destiny. I'm sure there plenty more.

Firaxis has gone with the cylinder because it is easiest. They won't leave the cylinder until we make them. Or another world empire game embarasses them into it, I suppose.

[sophist]

I don't know those games. What did the map look like in those and how well did it work? What sort of mechanics did they use? i.e., how did they answer the various questions posed in this thread?

[Darkstar]

Depended on the game. Populous 3 was all 3D, and used the traditional RTS model of that everything had a particular model, and whever you put it, that's where it was. It was typical RTS... a building MADE things. No production needed.

SP uses a mercantor projection, but you can go polar on it as I recall. Need to load it up and try it out to make sure I recall it. SP has fixed world borders (being based on the RL earth), and each part of a country has certain characteristics (which you can improve).

Destiny is a Civ clone which was set on a true 3D world. It worked by radius. You build a mine, and it gave its bonus to a city within a city's trade/work network. (IE, 1 set of distance for just feet, double that for horses, double if you had roads, double if you had cars, double if you had train tracks, etc etc etc).

I presume that Civ 3D would use a simple radius system with a transportation network (IE, Imperialism or Destiny).

Different games use different techniques to do things. But Destiny is a game older then Civ2 (AIR). It's main downfall was that you had to have the highest tech and education level throughout your empire before you could advance any further in tech. This means that you couldn't conquer a neighbor, nor expand. This was the critical flaw for the game, as the AI didn't have that failing (ie, you always got your butt kicked, no matter what).

[Darkstar]

I just checked... it's so old, Google doe not have a listing for it! I'm going to have to pull it down from my shelf, and see who its publisher was, and who the development studio was.