Civ V - Working The Land

[Azuarc]

Umm, lil off topic at this point? And decisions are made because they improve gameplay, predominantly. Marketing isn't to be ignored, but it isn't the focal point of most design choices. The leaders live for 6000 years so you have a continual interaction with the same figurehead. If you don't like it in the literal sense, think of it as the continuing sovereign of a dynasty. I believe that's how the newspapers attributed it in Civ 1.


The tiles each represent a vast expanse of land. Certainly nothing an archer could actually shoot across. One unit per tile certainly wouldn't have been my idea of how to arrange the combat. However, it emphasizes that roads are going to be important if you're to be able to attack a city with more than 2 units per turn. (I sincerely hope we will have at least some minimal "Commando" level.)

[wodan11]

The figureheads themselves are marketing. There's no gameplay reason at all to have a specific person who focuses upon two aspects of a nation, versus "George Washington", "Julius Caesar", or "Rameses". Connecting with the player is the point. The play can identify with a name.

There's also some minor value in the "teach history" aspect of Civ in using real leaders.

Anyway, however anyone feels on this issue, it remains that this is NOT a justification to ignore gameplay realism for hexes. A "normal" sized map scales to each tile being 500 miles wide. So, implementing gameplay that is scaled to 10 miles wide makes absolutely no sense.

[giblets]

The scale is never going to make sense. Why should an ancient army march 500 miles in 20 years? That's ~360 feet a day...

[wodan11]

That's an exception, which they made for gameplay reasons. That doesn't mean that other aspects of scale don't or shouldn't make sense.

[Ming]

Sure... but unfortunately, many aspects don't make much sense because of the scale

[Blaupanzer]

The key has been to have the units work in scale with one another, not with the map itself. So long as the keep with that, archers that shoot 50 or 100 miles and armies that march > 500 feet a day don't bother me. Hopefully they can keep that sense of scale from ancient to modern that roughly exists in CIV IV.

[Felch]

Blaupanzer hit the nail on the head. The combat is always going to be out of touch with the strategic map. But as long as it makes sense in its own context, I don't mind that the hex they're fighting over is the size of Missouri. It's all just an abstraction designed to reward you for playing thoughtfully.

[Ming]

True enough... It's always been that way in Civ. You can't have a global view and move/fight in a size that's realistic. (I always laughed that early in the game, it would take a 1000 years to walk from one side of a big island to the other)

[wodan11]

What if Civ 5 changes things so that there's a "strategic" turn level and "tactical" subphases?

e.g., Strategic turns much like we have them now, except there's no build queue and no movement. Every strategic turn, we then have an "inner loop" of tactical phases. In a tactical phase, each player can move units and build stuff. Tactical phases repeat until each player "passes". (And, we'll have a command "Pass remaining tactical phases this turn unless something changes, in which case zoom to there.") We could have effectively an unlimited number of tactical phases in each turn, or maybe there's a limit but it should be very high, like 100, to prevent infinite loops of units moving back and forth to block each other's passage or something stupid.

What this does is give units effectively unlimited movement rate, and cities unlimited build queue.

Movement would be regulated by expense (it costs money to move a unit), upkeep (it costs extra money outside your borders), etc. Build is likewise limited by resources (it costs hammers and money to make stuff).

But I could move a Warrior to the other side of the continent in the same turn if I wanted and had the money to pay for it.

This not only is more realistic, it sounds fun too.

[Quintillus]

Re: Roads, the primary topic of this thread. I find rah's ideas to be sensible. A 1 coin/food/shield penalty per road does seem severe to me, and it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Building a (rail)road to my coal mine should make it easier to move the coal, increasing commerce, and should allow me to more easily get the machinery in there that I need to extract the coal, increasing shields. It certainly shouldn't make my mine less productive. Sure, if the feds decided to build a 12-lane highway right through my cornfield, I won't be able to grow as much corn, but by and large, roads are going to be good for farms, mines, whatever.

On the other hand, maintenance is required to keep roads in a usable state. And it does depend on the road. Dirt roads, as long as they're used, generally will stay in existance. Modern asphalt roads need to be redone every few years if they're used a lot, or they degrade. Brick roads tend to hold up pretty well, but still need some maintenance. From what I understand, ancient Roman roads in general held up very well, but still need some maintenance. Railroads need a good deal of maintenance to be usable at high speeds, but they're certainly beneficial to commerce if they are on high-demand routes.

In general I'd say our modern roads are probably higher-maintenance than dirt roads or ancient Roman-style roads. Thus, an adjustable scale of maintenance may make sense. The railroad issue is also there - while more expensive per mile, in an urban area you'll probably be paying more for maintaining your roads than railroads simply due to there being so many more roads. Still, assuming urban dynamics are handled by the cities, I wouldn't mind seeing railroads be more expensive to maintain (especially if we assume there will already be roads where there are railroads). A Modern Age maintenance of 1/6 a coin per road and 1/3 a coin per railroad per turn would be enough to prevent spamming roads/rails everywhere, but not cancel out the benefits of them where they were used. Earlier eras should probably have less maintenance due to road style and the lack of heavy automobile traffic wearing down the roads. Actually having the roads be upgraded (beyond perhaps an automatic upgrade of visual appearance) from dirt roads to stone to brick to asphalt probably is too much micromanagement, but differing maintenance costs may be feasible.

[Sir Og]

There is a new interview with Dennis Shirk from a Russian game magazine. (Страна Игр/Gameland.ru)

http://civgames.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B2%D1%8C%D1%8E-%D1%81-%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%BC-%D1%88%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BC-%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%B8%D0%B3%D1%80/

The interesting part is that production, food and commerce are going to be replaced by production, food, gold and science. There will be no more generation of commerce and distribution by sliders but instead money and science will be collected in separate ways.
Also land, air and naval units are in separate map layers (with slightly different rules probably) wich allows to have multiple air units per square for example.

Also roads will cost support. This should ultimetely lead to fewer roads. Players are encouraged to only build and maintain the most important roads.

[Krill]

I like the removal of the sliders, but again, it depends on implementation.

So many people are going to loathe CiV, it is going to be hilarious, but so far I haven't heard anything that sounds retarded...

[Lancer]

Depending on the scale of the tile having major roads increase the trade of surrounding tiles while decreasing the trade of the tiles its on wouldn't be too hard to swallow while removing the spaghetti effect of tons of roads all over the place. Rt 80 certainly increases trade anywhere there's an on/off ramp but where its at...lousy burgers.

[Sir Og]

RE: Roads.
They also say in the interview that connecting two cities by road will provide a nice boost to income. Also roads will speed up movement of units.

[Provost Martin]

Didn't Civ2 roads increase trade on the tiles they we're built? I always liked that feature.