battleships: Round the world in 45 years

[Phutnote]

180 x 180 size maps! wow. that's huge. 16 civs. amazing.

Gives rise to an interesting problem tho: at that size, a battleship (movement 4) would take 45 years to circumnavigate the globe. So much for doing it in 80 days.

I wonder if movement rates on larger worlds (say earth map, large) are boosted?

Even with nuclear power, it would take 36 years to round the globe. With Magellans as well, it would take 25 years. I guess that's getting into the acceptable range . . .

I guess it doesn't really matter; the editor can change the movement values. But perhaps the default movement rates for ships are a little on the low side?

Phutnote

[Adagio]

I sure hope they have done something about that, but I don't think so..."Hey honey, what'd ya think, shouldn't we spend our last 45 years taking a cruise around the world?" Damn, then I'm never going to take a trip to Australia

[dainbramaged13]

dude... thats one of the most important things that anyone MUST realize about civgames... of COURSE its not realistic.. but how fun would it be if a. you had really small maps or b. you had to play months upon months to finish one game because turns are only a few days long.... its not realisitc, but this is THE prime example for gameplay over realism, and i think it NEEDS to be accepted

[Darkknight]

Why dont you mod the game so that the game lasts a year and that every turn is called a day?

Why not stop in at Aussieland on the Round the world trip?

[Skanky Burns]

Yes, come here. Youll enjoy it

[Phutnote]

Rather thought I'd get the standard response about it being a game and not being realistic.

And sure, I accept that there will be a lot of abstractions in the game to make it work and be playable. But the extreme to which you take what I am saying is ridiculous. I am simply saying that the default movement value is low, too low for large maps.

As a gameplay issue, you start a war in 1930 and send out your fleet to do battle. The fleet doesn't arrive at its target until 1960. Its not so much the years but the number of turns it takes: 30 turns to arrive at the enemy is a heck of a long time, game wise, year wise, any way you look at it.

When you use a metaphor for a game, you are allowing players to apply their real world/historical/sci fi scripts to the setting.

Battleships that are sunk by phalanxes don't follow a real world script either.

Obviously, you would not have complained about such an odd result because you accept that its just a game, and not realistic. Fine. But I always found phalanxes sinking battleships stretched the metaphor Civ was using a bit too much.

I see nothing wrong with commenting on various aspects of the game that don't seem to fit. Sure, there are many things that would be ridiculous to do. Doing the whole of human history using day by day turns would be silly.

I did not suggest this, however. I am suggesting that the movement rate of a battleship is too low. It is equal to a 1860 era ironclad.

By your reasoning about realism being silly, I'm surprised you aren't arguing for a return to the sailboat sinks battleship dynamic. After all, it's a GAME, it's not reality.

And I still think the battleship could do with a speed boost.

Phutnote.

[Rakki]

phalanx sinks battleship/phalanx sinks battleship are like, erhm, obsolete. I don't think I've seen it happen in civ 2 and even if it does, they must've had some damn good bonus so we can assume it's a random feat of heroics or plain good luck. (along with fortifications and....)

Anyway, nowadays with the bombardment thing, phalanxes will just have to sit there and take it like sitting ducks

As for speed and movement, I don't think there's much call for repeating Magellan's feat. The movement of naval units should remain relative to that of the land units, and while it's unrealistic that footsoldiers take an entire year (or more !) to slog through 200 miles of terrain, it's certainly a lot better than if one phalanx suddenly crossed 8 squares of wilderness - it'd be like playing chess except all the pieces are queens !

[crmeyer]

The trick isn't to look at specific representations of reality, but rather to determine whether the various representations provide a good systemic "flow."

Time and movement in turn-based games is always abstracted, so consider whether all the abstractions work, that is are well represented in the flow of the game--not whether each individual abstraction is realistic, etc.

I must confess that this troubled me for a while in Civ2 as well ... however, I was unable to think of a solution that fit the system better.

Of course, mild adjustments to movement rates of particular units can be made by each individual player to better suit his or her tastes.

[Saint Marcus]

Spearmen: 1-2-1
Hoplite: 1-3-1
Battleship 24-20-4

BOOM

[JellyDonut]

Scenario makers for Civ 2 were confronted with this problem. The solution: change movement rates. For instance, if you're going to play on a huge map, set the Battleship movement rating to 12 or something. Fifteen turns to circumnavigate the globe sounds good to me.

Your speculations on Nuclear Power and Magellan's are assumptions that they're going to be in the game and/or serve the same function. Maybe Firaxis put in a different way of speeding up ships or none at all.

[PGM]

Re: battleships: Round the world in 45 years

Originally posted by Phutnote

Not the "unrealistic" thread again! Yes, it's unrealistic, blablabla, but it's fun. Otherwise it wouldn't be fun, it would be boring or too complicated. And if we wanted to have something that's realistic, complicated and not fun, we already have our own lives, Jesus!

[Skanky Burns]

Does anyone know just how many moevment points modern units have?? I get the general impression that more modern units have greater movement points than their equivalents in Civ 2. The Chinese rider, for example, has 3 movement points.

[faded glory]

yes this is a unrealistic problem in CTP PBEM that makes role playing difficult. "The 3rd panzer crossed the border this year". Or "Our MiG fighters are patrolling the middle of the ocean this Year, miles from land, without airbase in sight"

Kind of annoying...So we just ignore it all together

Ahh, just ignore it guys. No big deal. How many of you actually take not what year the game is?


This is a painful reality of TBS games.

[Madine]

The years are there for general historical reference. Of course it doesn't take 50 years to travel 100 miles

I think that naval units should have higher movement rates, but not because of the time thing.

[Stuie]

I ended up increasing the ship movement rates in my Civ2 files. Can't remember exactly how much; I felt the ships better reflected the abilities of ships (while still "unrealistic" in terms of direct comparison to life) and the game didn't ever seem unbalanced.

So, I'll probably end up doing the same to my Civ3 files. To each his own.