Civ 4

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Dissident
3D is okay- as long as it is done well. Civ3 is 3D isn't it?

Isometric, more or less. Helps give the illusion of 3D-ness.

[Admiral PJ]

I think hexes are good for land management.. working out city location and resoure/food gathering etc.
They are bad for millitary units though, it would be good to have movement values of 0.5 ( a half) and take 2 turn to move across a hex.

Hex Civ has bad points and good points.. if we work out the good and bad points in a forum, maybe we can help Firaxis decide if they should be scrapped.


BENEFITS OR NOT OF HEX PLAN:-

GOOD POINTS:
1.Easy and fast for programming purposes ( easier to calculate if 2 units can go into battle with a=x than having to calculate their ranges to each other)

2. Great for hundreds of Civ units and less micromanagement maybe.

3.Useful to plan distances quickly. Helps understand easily when your units are in enemy range or near borders.

4.No crowding problems of units not being able to share the same space.. like in many RTS games.

BAD POINTS:
1.Unrealistic, rigid and restrictive movement and appearance.
2.You can't have units in any position , with a more natural arrangement on the map.
3. (continues from 1) You can't move units in fractions of a hex. This is bad, as you can't have slow moving siege engines now.. unless you bring back civ1 style movement, where you need 2 turns to move a unit of 1 movement into mountains.

Lots of other points here..



Something else important.. give us more control over units, don't reduce micromanagement and reduce our control over units. There should be more RPG game style things for millitary.. they don't have to apply to individual units, but could be a Social Government choice for millitary civs... like getting a HP bonus if Defencive tactics training is used.. but this reduces all attack values by 1. I think this could be great, make the game more interesting and deeper.
Civ is a very broad game, but its not always deep enough.. as its so broad the depth in many areas is pretty shallow :P (broad NOT board-game) the coders don't have time to spend on Social Government options as they are trying to make too big a game. Maybe civ should concentrate less on somethings like terrain management ( do we need to manually change city laboreres to build things?), and more on important gameplay areas such as combat.

I think civ4 should use the same engine as civ3, but improve upon it to make it the Real ultimate strategy game .. from a coding view it makes sense, you don't waste lots of money and time rewriting things to work in 3d.. polygon graphics are not always as detailed, though there are more advanced ways than polys.
Even licensing an engine means you have to do a lot more work.
Big changes might mean making it easier just to rewrite the entire code of course.


Time to have abath, something i've been forgetting since Civ Conquests came out
I wish there were plastic Civ ships to play with in the bath... slightly off topic

[Vince278]

I like the idea of a hex based Civ. I remember a thread on this almost a year ago.

[Admiral PJ]

In my last post I was assuming Civ 3 WAS a hex based game, it's a hex game , but uses square tiles rather than 6-sided hexagons. Theres no real difference.. civ units move diagonally in the same way anyhow.

I was talking about getting ride of tile squares, and having units like in RTS games, with floating point coordinate locations.

There at least should be a limit to how many units can share a tile.

[Rasputin]

dont forget guys we got the civ4 list threads for discussion of things we want in civ 4.... pop down to Civ 4 discussion threads


thanks

[Peter Triggs]

There's some heated discussions about how CTP2's system of stacked combat is better than the Civ system. But very few Civ3 players are turning up to express their opinion.

[sabrewolf]

it has been mentioned before:
the only ABSOLUTE MUST: keep SP turn-based!!!


then, don't fall for too fancy graphs.
eg.prince of persia was a wonderful game and kept me playing it through several times. PoP2 was nice, prettier, but lost the neatness... PoP 3D is something completely different, and lacked all fun.
same happend with a lot of other games.

so: graphics may sell, but only a great GAME will keep people playing again and again and again and again...


make it a MODDERS PARADISE.
let everything be customizable. different terrain, more flexible worker actions (eg. 5 custom actions which lead to different outcomes, including terrain changes (like hills==>grassland)).


and last but not least:
let the railroad-travel-time be limited! i know it's tradition, but at least let it be moddable!
it's a joke that roads take you 3 tiles, ships 6 tiles, airlifting 3x the range, but railroads lets you travel the world faster than light

[Brent]

But if people play the same game again and again and again and again, the next game may not sell, so what do you think is in their best interest?

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Admiral PJ
I was talking about getting ride of tile squares, and having units like in RTS games, with floating point coordinate locations.

I would see that as an absolute nightmare to implement in Civ.

[WarpStorm]

Originally posted by Vince278


I would see that as an absolute nightmare to implement in Civ.

No harder than it is to implement in RTSs.

[Sarxis]

I wouldn't mind seeing a change here in the tile patterns. We had talked about other schemes for Civ3; hexagons for example.

But the isometric squares don't bother me IN A TBS GAME LIKE CIV. Right Imran?

(He knows)

[Vince278]

Originally posted by WarpStorm
No harder than it is to implement in RTSs.

Think of every aspect of the game in Civ3 from top to bottom, start to finish, and think of how each part can be implemented. After you are done go ahead and take an asprin for your headache.

I was wondering. Is there an RTS game out there now that is similar to Civ3?

[Peter Triggs]

Is there an RTS game out there now that is similar to Civ3?

It's called 'Rise of Nations' and was designed by some rather familiar folks: Brian Reynolds, Jason Coleman, Tim Train, Doug Kaufman and maybe more.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
It's called 'Rise of Nations' and was designed by some rather familiar folks: Brian Reynolds, Jason Coleman, Tim Train, Doug Kaufman and maybe more.

Oh. Tried the demo, didn't like it. How close to Civ was it?

[alva]

It has some crossover elements but I wouldn't call it a civ game.
It's a good game but not a civ game.