Air Units

[MektonZ]

One good thing about hexes is when you move units to cover ground. If units move along the diagonal they cover 41.4% more area. With hexes every space is equal distance from every other space so that doesn't happen.

Easy enough to fix by multiplying movement rates by 2 and using a 3/2 movement cost. Foot, wheeled and tracked units all have different rates of movement in different types of terrain and when you have a rule that any unit with 1 movement point left can gain a 200% movement bonus in bad terrain, you're going far more abstract than an occasional 41% bonus.

The real problem with hexes is hex grain. In a line of units going along the grain, each defender has two hexes it can be attacked from. Against the grain, you alternate between having 3 adjacent hexes you can be attacked from and 1 hex. This becomes a pretty big to massive consideration in defensive tactics in hex based wargames depending on the rule set in question.

[Modo44]

The real problem with hexes is hex grain. In a line of units going along the grain, each defender has two hexes it can be attacked from.

The effect is similar to what you get at area corners when using squares, but without the map distortion that squares force. So less of a problem IMO.

[MxM]

The effect is similar to what you get at area corners when using squares, but without the map distortion that squares force. So less of a problem IMO.

By map distortion I assume you mean that it is distance distortion. Why is it a problem? And as somebody else mentioned, that could have been solved by assuming the diagonal distance = sqrt(2). Or, I would simply assume it to be 1.5 for simplicity. But think about possibility for the variation in units you could get. You could have units that can not attack diagonally. You could have units which can move only 1 cell distance (horizontal and vertical) or 1.5 cell distance (diagonal as well)
Most of the board strategic games played by thousands of years are on square grid, why do you think it is so?
Squares are simply more natural for human beings. Hexagons just create ugliness without solving any real problem.
(Hoping that Civ 6 has square grid)

[Modo44]

By map distortion I assume you mean that it is distance distortion. Why is it a problem?

Imagine a map that allows you to quickly judge real distances just by glancing at it. Would be great, eh?

And as somebody else mentioned, that could have been solved by assuming the diagonal distance = sqrt(2). Or, I would simply assume it to be 1.5 for simplicity. But think about possibility for the variation in units you could get. You could have units that can not attack diagonally. You could have units which can move only 1 cell distance (horizontal and vertical) or 1.5 cell distance (diagonal as well)

How are skewed distances and weirdly moving units simple? Get over it: Hexes remove the diagonal/no diagonal problem altogether without adding side effects (apart from some whining).

Most of the board strategic games played by thousands of years are on square grid, why do you think it is so?

Sorry to be Captain Obvious: Board games don't have to model a globe (and usually don't), or keep distances visually recognizable (and usually don't, having abstract movement rules anyway). War games, on the other hand, do, and guess what, they use hexes.

Squares are simply more natural for human beings. Hexagons just create ugliness without solving any real problem.

You're back to your personal aesthetics again. This is getting circular.

[Jaybe]

Squares are simply more natural for human beings. Hexagons just create ugliness without solving any real problem.

Squares are for ancient games like chess, checkers, professional wargames (for military staff use) of the 19th & early 20th century, Tactics II, ... and Civ 1-4!

The hexagon shape is used much more in nature than the square is. Hexagons are the closest you can geometrically get to a circle and still have interlocking shapes (unless you also use other polygons of different number of sides).

In Civ4, if they didn't SHOW you the range of a stealth bomber when the target was not in a cardinal direction, it would be very difficult to know where to base it. With Civ5, it will be relatively quite easy to count it out.

[Elok]

Why would you want to count it out when you could simply be shown the range?

[Jaybe]

Why would you want to count it out when you could simply be shown the range?

My bomber needs to be rebased to get in the war zone, dangit!
In Civ4 I select the bomber, count how the range pattern changes (e.g., 1 off center, -1 and 2 up, -1 and 2 up, -1, -1, -1 and 2 left, ...).

What size maps you play on, anyway -- standard?
See sig.

[MxM]

How are skewed distances and weirdly moving units simple?

How is diagonal move equal to 1.5 is complex?
And hexagons are skewed too, they are not skewed in 6 directions only. For example, if you position hexagon greed in such way that left<->right direction is correct, then up <->down direction will happen in snake like route, and it will be 15% shorter than your route. (for comparison if you count diagonal move as 1.5 on square grid, this will give you only 6% error)

Look, for the squares, if you go up/down/left/right only, they are not skewed for those movement, so if you forbid moving diagonally, you have 4 moves with the right distance.

Hexagons give you 6 right directions, instead of 4. So it looks like it is improvement. But still, all other directions are wrong.

Only normally, we think about map in terms of north/south/east/west, which is SQUARES.

And if 4 directions are not enough you can add diagonals, just count that move as 1.5, so you could have 8 "right" directions instead of 6 AND be on squares. Such system would have been superior - more natural for maps, and more accurate in terms of distance.

I think they were solving the wrong problem by hexagon. If the distance calculation needed to be corrected then they should have done it on squares, without changing the square grid itself.

The problem with distances appeared simply because they have allowed traditionally to move diagonally, but decided not to have penalties for that! Because they did not think that distance distortion is any problem in strategic game of this kind, where everything is so abstract anyway. So, honestly I do not see the problem to begin with. But if it is a problem, there is easier and more natural fix, then going to hexagons.

[Elok]

My bomber needs to be rebased to get in the war zone, dangit!
In Civ4 I select the bomber, count how the range pattern changes (e.g., 1 off center, -1 and 2 up, -1 and 2 up, -1, -1, -1 and 2 left, ...).

What size maps you play on, anyway -- standard?
See sig.

I actually don't have Civ4--never got around to upgrading my PC, ludicrous as it sounds. I'll probably finally get a new one soon so I can play 4, as 5 looks like it's going to be a repeat of 3: silly, pointless gimmicks mixed with a few good ideas implemented in a terribly sloppy way. So, I admit, I have little experience with the ranged-flight model. I have no problems counting tiles in 2 (I actually rarely need to count; after a while I can just "feel" what's about right). But if you're having that much of a problem, it shouldn't be too hard to have the computer show how the range changes with different basing. They're bragging about how they have the computer display info in eight hundred different layers, I assume that or something like it will be one of them.

[wodan11]

How is diagonal move equal to 1.5 is complex?
And hexagons are skewed too, they are not skewed in 6 directions only. For example, if you position hexagon greed in such way that left<->right direction is correct, then up <->down direction will happen in snake like route, and it will be 15% shorter than your route. (for comparison if you count diagonal move as 1.5 on square grid, this will give you only 6% error)

Look, for the squares, if you go up/down/left/right only, they are not skewed for those movement, so if you forbid moving diagonally, you have 4 moves with the right distance.

Hexagons give you 6 right directions, instead of 4. So it looks like it is improvement. But still, all other directions are wrong.

Only normally, we think about map in terms of north/south/east/west, which is SQUARES.

And if 4 directions are not enough you can add diagonals, just count that move as 1.5, so you could have 8 "right" directions instead of 6 AND be on squares. Such system would have been superior - more natural for maps, and more accurate in terms of distance.

I think they were solving the wrong problem by hexagon. If the distance calculation needed to be corrected then they should have done it on squares, without changing the square grid itself.

The problem with distances appeared simply because they have allowed traditionally to move diagonally, but decided not to have penalties for that! Because they did not think that distance distortion is any problem in strategic game of this kind, where everything is so abstract anyway. So, honestly I do not see the problem to begin with. But if it is a problem, there is easier and more natural fix, then going to hexagons.

That's better stated than your other posts, which came off as purely subjective opinion.

Thinking about it, I suppose my own feeling is that, within the context of the game, I do not think in terms of North/South/East/West. In fact, I can't think of anything at all in the game that uses the cardinal directions.

What I think of is in terms of a unit that has to go from A to B. It's irrelevant what angle B is from A... it's simply relational movement.

In those terms, it's artificial and distracting that diagonals on a square grid don't work the same. And, even if the math was changed to 1.5 or whatever, it still wouldn't look the same, so that I could not gauge the distance simply by looking.

Therefore, the square grid would have to be changed to prohibit diagonals, which would give only 4 directions of movement. To go from A to B if it's not along one of those 4 directions will require a considerable zigzag. Hexagons reduce the incidence of zigzag, so are an improvement.

[MxM]

Thinking about it, I suppose my own feeling is that, within the context of the game, I do not think in terms of North/South/East/West. In fact, I can't think of anything at all in the game that uses the cardinal directions.

Interesting, I do think in directions, not North/South/East/West, but up, down, left, right, and their combination. I think, this city is up from this city, and so on. Is not it the same for you?

In those terms, it's artificial and distracting that diagonals on a square grid don't work the same. And, even if the math was changed to 1.5 or whatever, it still wouldn't look the same, so that I could not gauge the distance simply by looking.

I agree and disagree with you at the same time. If you draw a circle with radius 10, then the unit that have movement 10 will be able to reach squares very close to where this circle is, if you count diagonal move as 1.5. In this respect you should be able to judge distance very accurately. However, with existing rules of movement, unit of move 1 will be able to reach this circle diagonally in less number of turns, even if you count as distance of 1.5, because existing rule says, if you have any movement left, even if it is a fraction, you still can move from one cell to another. In this respect the distance simply does not translate well into # of turns.

So the movement rules would have to be modified as well. There are several options how it can be done. One way is for the unit to have "movement storage", so that if you want to move through the forest, where movement is cut in half, you would have to do in 2 turns only, if unit has movement 1. I understand that this may be unnecessary complication of the game, but honestly I did not like anyway why scouts who are twice faster than warriors, still move with the same speed in forests, so this "movement storage" would solve this problem as well.

Basically with this "movement storage" you will not be able to move to the next cell, unless you have right amount stored in the storage. If by the end of the turn, you still left with some move points, you can store it for the use in next turn.

[Hauldren Collider]

Or you could just use hexagons and not have stupid, arcane movement rules so people can jizz over it being square instead of the way virtually every other wargame is.

[MxM]

Or you could just use hexagons and not have stupid, arcane movement rules so people can jizz over it being square instead of the way virtually every other wargame is.

If it was just war game, I would probably agree with you (still chess is war-game and going on squares just fine for hundreds of years)

But this is CIVILIZATION BUILDING game, fist and foremost. Most of the time, at least for me, war is just one part of game, and rather small part (if I play peaceful game, which I quite often do). But as civilization game, where you grow your civilization and where, you know, LOOK AT THE MAP of it, hexes are horrible.

When I play civilization 1 through 4 I see a map of the countries, similar to what I expect in real life. When I look at screenshots of Civ V, I do not see map, I see a board game.

For me, it is a deal breaker, it breaks immersion to the game, you do not build empire, you do not govern the people, you just play a board game.

This is why I personally prefer to have the game on squares, rather than on hexes. The problem of distance as measured in number of turns not being very accurate is sooooo minor problem to worry about, especially compared with the problem of the general feel of the game being a board game with ugly hexagons instead of the more realistic map.

[wodan11]

Interesting, I do think in directions, not North/South/East/West, but up, down, left, right, and their combination. I think, this city is up from this city, and so on. Is not it the same for you?

If a city is directly on one of the cardinal axis directions, then yes. But that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The same would occur in a hex system where the city is directly on one of those axes.

I agree and disagree with you at the same time. If you draw a circle with radius 10, then the unit that have movement 10 will be able to reach squares very close to where this circle is, if you count diagonal move as 1.5. In this respect you should be able to judge distance very accurately. However, with existing rules of movement, unit of move 1 will be able to reach this circle diagonally in less number of turns, even if you count as distance of 1.5, because existing rule says, if you have any movement left, even if it is a fraction, you still can move from one cell to another. In this respect the distance simply does not translate well into # of turns.

So the movement rules would have to be modified as well. There are several options how it can be done. One way is for the unit to have "movement storage", so that if you want to move through the forest, where movement is cut in half, you would have to do in 2 turns only, if unit has movement 1. I understand that this may be unnecessary complication of the game, but honestly I did not like anyway why scouts who are twice faster than warriors, still move with the same speed in forests, so this "movement storage" would solve this problem as well.

Basically with this "movement storage" you will not be able to move to the next cell, unless you have right amount stored in the storage. If by the end of the turn, you still left with some move points, you can store it for the use in next turn.

That system is even worse than 1.5. I don't want a rule that "takes me out" of the game. If it feels artificial and contrived.

As you say, it breaks immersion into the game. My thoughts exactly!

I respect that hexes don't "fix" it for you. They're superior, to me, than squares.

Perhaps there's some third option.

[MxM]

If a city is directly on one of the cardinal axis directions, then yes. But that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The same would occur in a hex system where the city is directly on one of those axes.

I am sure that I will continue to think "this city is right above my other city" even if it is not one of the hex directions.

That system is even worse than 1.5. I don't want a rule that "takes me out" of the game. If it feels artificial and contrived.

As you say, it breaks immersion into the game. My thoughts exactly!

I respect that hexes don't "fix" it for you. They're superior, to me, than squares.

Perhaps there's some third option.

Yeah, design of a good game is not easy, especially when different things break immersion of the game for different players.

My personal preference would be to keep the Civ 4 system, I do not have any issue with diagonal move and it does not break any immersion in the least for me.

In fact, from my point of view, the problem of scout moving with the same speed as warrior in the forest is larger problem than whatever problem was solved by hexes.