A real globe?

[Mylon]

When I switch to the globe view, it suggests that about 50% of the land mass is ice caps (and unexplorable). I think it would be neat if some method of mapping a sphere was used to make the sphere-shape more apparent, and the globe view proper.

For example, keeping the square based grid, some squares would, as the poles are approached, be rectangular. They would be as wide as two squares visually and adjacent to two squares in the direction of the equator. For movement and harvesting purposes, it's only one tile. Two cities at the southern or northern edges of the map would be very close to each other. The optimal path for long journeys would be an arc: moving to the poles to take advantage of the wider tiles and then returning south to complete the journey, from the flat representation. This is how planes travel in real life.

Other possibilities would be triangles or hexes, though I'm not quite sure what shape a city would be in. The current square arrangement is designed such that cities must have overlap or dead tiles. It is not possible to have a uniform tesellation.

[Martin Gühmann]

Well the globe isn't a real globe, the earth like world is again as in all previous game a cylinder. And like in CTP2 you can start a game on a doughnut world.

-Martin

[duodecimal]

It's called a torus, you insensitive clod.

[Harovan]

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
And like in CTP2 you can start a game on a doughnut world.

[homer_mode]mmmmmmmm....doughnuts[/homer_mode]

[Harovan]

Re: A real globe?

Originally posted by Mylon
When I switch to the globe view, it suggests that about 50% of the land mass is ice caps (and unexplorable).

You can navigate under the ice with your subs btw.

[GeoModder]

Nautilus mod anyone?

[alva]

Not that ice Sir Ralph (unless i'm very much mistaken, never tried it) but the you can pass the floating ice caps.

[Harovan]

Well somewhere to the N or S there is a hard map limit of course. But under the floating ice your subs can go.

[duodecimal]

I wonder if we'll be able to mod-in a teleport for Y-axis movement, not so that going north throws you to the south end of the map, but so that going north sends you to the same Y coordinate but with a new X position:

if((X+MapWidth)>MapWidth,MapWidth-X,MapWidth+X)

Submarines would go north under the world from Hudson Bay and wind up watching the nuke tests on Novaya Zemlya.

... huh. Those ice floes... do they disappear with Global Warming in the game? Maybe intentionally set off gobal warming so you can send a huge invasion force across the north pole...

[alva]

Yeah, I figured you saw it like that, just wanted to make sure. A misunderstanding is easily made.

[Nailfoot]

And, of course, changing the tile set to rectangles or hexagons or triangles would fundamentally change the game structure. Would the AI be able to adapt?
If the north and south poles were explorable as suggested, would the AI be able to account for THAT?

Interesting ideas.

[duodecimal]

Well, the AI may be brilliant, but it's inexperienced. Their movements clearly indicate two-dimensional thinking.

Anyhow, I don't expect most humans to know where they'll wind up if they try to head north under the north pole.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by duodecimal
It's called a torus, you insensitive clod.

According to Meriam Webster a torus is a doughnut-shaped surface generated by a circle rotated about an axis in its plane that does not intersect the circle.

And as it is the CTP2 name of such a world I go for doughnut.

But back to topic, I could swear that I have seen such XWrap and YWrap flags, but after a search in all these Civ4 files they are not there.

Of course a real globe would be pritty cool at least for reality.

-Martin

[duodecimal]

Not all donuts are torus-shaped though. Earth is donut shaped, but only because it has the same topology as a jelly donut.

You didn't find them in the scenario settings? There are maps where the wrap flags are set to "off", so that the map becomes a region instead of global. I haven't toyed around with scenarios yet though...