World Map - Starting Latitude Known!

[Tormund]

Do you always start a game and look at your world map on the bottom left hand side of the screen?

Your location on the map clearly tells you what your latitude is. This I find biases the direction of expansion that I will then take.

My suggestion would be to have the world map always show my civ in the centre of that world map until I have obtained information to cause me to think otherwise. (Maybe when map making is discovered.) However, I can see how this might be more trouble than it is worth.

Thoughts?

[ixnay]

I don't usually notice. I'll usually explore until I hit tundra and then focus on exploring in the opposite direction.

[Nym]

Knowing one's approximate latitude is effectively a quite useful indication at the beginning, but I especially use exploration to determine how to develop my empire : of course it depends on the type of terrain, but also on neighbours and available ressources (especially luxuries).

[cephyn]

Me caveman Og. Me know that land me live in is cold. To south, gets colder. Me avoid south. Me know that cousin Ug in cavetribe to north live by coconut tree. Me expand Og tribe in Ug-erly direction.

Latitude shmatitude, even geese know what direction to migrate when it gets cold -- to the less cold place. I'm not too worried about the latitude thing...i think it gives a 'natural' advantage on which way to expand. Besides, if you randomize the weather properties, for all you know it could be a warm world and there's plenty of grassland at the high latitudes. 8)

[Spiffor]

But it would be cool if the minimap was centered on your starting position : if you look at world maps in the US, they're America centered, they're Europe centered in Germany, and east-Asia centered in Japan. I suppose it's India centered in India etc. Every Civ enjoys to think itself as the center of the world I guess.

[Jaguar]

I knew this, and I consider it intended by firaxis.

[Thrawn05]

Sounds similier to the idea to drag the mini map around on some other thread.

It would help a bit to move the mini map around.

[Ninot]

knowing your starting latitude actually makes quite a bit of sense....

say you start close to the south pole, and you can see this on your map. any IRL civ that started close to a south pole would, 10 times out of 10, settle further and further north... because they rather get to a warmer climate.

Knowing Longitude isn't really a factor in any way... cuz it doesnt have a whole lot to do with anything (other than keeping track of time). But for latitude, any barbarian could care how close to the equator they are.. and im guessing by 4000 B.C., a human was smart enough to figure out they weren't exactly in the best place if they were freezing 10 months of the year.

So, it is very natural to have a feeling of what latitude you are at... and its very natural to want to migrate in a certain direction because of that feeling.

[The Rook]

Personally, I'd love to see Civ4 played on a globe instead of a map. They could make it so that it toggles to the map. Of course the map would look differently than it does now.

###################
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Civ3 Map

OOOOOOO##########OOOOOOO
OOOO################OOOO
O######################O
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O######################O
OOOO################OOOO
OOOOOOO##########OOOOOOO

Civ4 Map

O = unplayable square

That way, the map can properly wrap around a globe.

[Thrawn05]

You know Rook, I've been playing with that idea for a long time. It's a good idea. The problem is trying not to overload current systems. More and more 3d games are only playable on $3000 computer systems.

But still, it would be the hard to work to get it to work. That would be a big improvement to the current "Age of Empires" view of many strategy games, without takeing to the extrem of a Force Commander 3D flying camera.

[The Rook]

Yeah, but Civ4 probably won't be out for another 3 years anyway. By that time, the PC's should be able to handle it.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by cephyn
Me caveman Og. Me know that land me live in is cold. To south, gets colder. Me avoid south. Me know that cousin Ug in cavetribe to north live by coconut tree. Me expand Og tribe in Ug-erly direction.

Og like cold weather. Play real sport Hockey.

Og Og

[Nym]

Originally posted by Spiffor
But it would be cool if the minimap was centered on your starting position [...]

I agree, but only horizontally centered, in order to keep the latitude information.