Hexes are more fun!

Tutankamun · March 21, 2001, 02:51

Civ III should be played on hexes instead of diamonds! Just ask any bee!

Nenad · March 21, 2001, 02:56

quote:

Originally posted by Tutankamun on 03-21-2001 01:51 AM
Civ III should be played on hexes instead of diamonds! Just ask any bee!

I could not agree more. In adition, i think that game should take place on a globe, instead of flat map. To go aroung the world high to the north take same amount of turns like around the middle. It is not logical.

Henrik · March 21, 2001, 04:25

I've never played a game with hexes, but if they do that they would have to make sure it looks good with terrain.

Sean · March 21, 2001, 07:06

This is a rather marginal issue really. As long as it looks good and plays well, I couldn't care less.

jglidewell · March 21, 2001, 08:35

I agree with Sean, if there is a preference i'd have like Sid's Gettysburg

Pingu: · March 21, 2001, 08:53

The cool thing about Hexagons is that if you inlcude a few pentagons in the map, the hexagons fold up naturally into a perfect sphere. This is a bucky-ball. Some dome structures are built like this, and a football(soccer ball for americans) is also built like this...

Have a look at:
http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum6/HTML/001935.html

for an explanation.
Once done, the graphics would be tricky, and it might confuse the AI's pathfinding.

Pingu:

Sparky · March 25, 2001, 14:39

You have one BIG problem if you pick hexes. The fastest way to move the units in the game is to make a console-like control pad out of the number pad on the right side of the keyboard (turning off number lock, of course). If you have hexes, you can't do that any more. You would have to use the mouse for all moves, and that would be far, far slower.

GaryGuanine · March 25, 2001, 15:59

Why does everyone like hexes more than squares? With hexes you only have 6 ways out and with squares you have 8. I suspect there's a good reason for it, as many games use hexes, but I just don't know it. Somebody please fill me in!

Gary

carioca · March 25, 2001, 23:20

quote:

Originally posted by Sparky on 03-25-2001 01:39 PM
You have one BIG problem if you pick hexes. The fastest way to move the units in the game is to make a console-like control pad out of the number pad on the right side of the keyboard (turning off number lock, of course). If you have hexes, you can't do that any more. You would have to use the mouse for all moves, and that would be far, far slower.

No problem, just use 7-9 and 1-3 for NW N NE and SW S SE.

carioca · March 25, 2001, 23:24

quote:

Originally posted by GaryGuanine on 03-25-2001 02:59 PM
Why does everyone like hexes more than squares? With hexes you only have 6 ways out and with squares you have 8. I suspect there's a good reason for it, as many games use hexes, but I just don't know it. Somebody please fill me in!

Gary

Whith squares you have a 'cheat' by using the corners. You move a distance of 2^(1/2) but only use 1 movement point.

With hexes movement is closer to reality.

GaryGuanine · March 26, 2001, 01:12

But then with hexes, you lose the ability to move East/West perfectly in order to retain the move 1 space thing. I guess it's just a matter of personal preference.

Gary

Nenad · March 26, 2001, 01:26

With hexes you can't actually go north/south. If a game should take place in a globe, as I think it should, than it would be one hexagon for a north pole, than 6 hexes around it, than 12 around them, etc. Maybe it is really a marginally question, maybe just 6 ways out are really bed thing, but I like that globe idea too much.

GaryGuanine · March 26, 2001, 04:42

Nenad,

If you can have a full globe with just hexes, that's a great thing. I would gladly trade in two ways for a real globe, I just didn't think you could do it, I thought you had to have pentagons in there. I don't know, I'm not a mathematician. Maybe someone here is?

Gary

Captain Nemo · March 26, 2001, 11:15

Sorry to disagree, but you cannot make a "globe" with hexagons anymore than you can with squares... A assembly of hexagons just creates a flat "honeycomb" pattern that expands endlessly. You can make a globe-like structure with 12 pentagons but of course laying that out flat on a screen results in gaps between the pentagons and that's not what you want for a Civ map.
I have looked at both the hexagon maps (Used in most wargames) and the squares of Civ2 and I think both have advantages. The 8-directional moves possible with the squares is far superior to the 6-directions of the hexes but of course the diagonal moves are unrealistically fast.
One possibility would be to make "diagonal" moves cost 1.5 move point which would be especially effective if the map scale is such that most units have 2 or more move points. A two move pt unit would only be able to take one diagonal step and be left with .5 move pts for a half strength attack?
3 Move pt units could take 2 diagonal steps or 3 straight line steps etc.

Wazell · March 26, 2001, 12:42

It's just as easy to make great graphics with hexes as with squares. That's no problem. Many games use hexes as a base, for example in Fallout the movement goes in hex grid. That is simply to get movement realistic, though it looks quite funny when running north the character runs NE then NW and so on. So it's understandable people want to keep their diamond squares. Maybe in the future games will have absolutely realistic movement, when there's awful lot of CPU power. Meanwhile, compromises have to be made.

GaryGuanine · March 26, 2001, 17:52

Anybody remember an old Civil War game, where the movement on the campaign map was actually real? You could move your armies anywhere you wanted, and then depending on size and distance from other armies, battles may ensue. The game was way too easy, after playing it twice I was able to get a decisive victory as the South by 1862 on the hardest difficulty, but the map was really good. Not that this could be applied to Civ without changing it so it barely resembles Civ, but anyone remember it?

Gary

Nenad · March 27, 2001, 01:36

It does not matter if there are hexes or whatever (octagons, triangles , I don't know/care...), only if they could give me the globe. I am sure that something could be invented. I thought that hexes would solve the whole problem, but if not, put anything else. It's time to abandon that table game aproach any more. If Sid took civ as a table game (as I've been told) and made it more realistic and fun, then he somehow missed to fix the most unrealistic detail.

Dan Magaha FIRAXIS · March 27, 2001, 02:52

Let me do you all a favor and chime in here:

Civ III will be using the same kind of square, grid-based system that its predecessors did. We will *not* be using hexes, nor will we be using any kind of 3D "buckyball" style globe.

Both are interesting ideas with considerable merit, but keeping it simple allows the user to concentrate less on figuring out how to move and more on just playing the game =)

Dan
Firaxis Games, Inc.

Adm.Naismith · March 27, 2001, 04:01

Thank you Dan, this is the kind of info I always asked: simply tell us when a line of discussion is "dead wood".

May be I like what I read, may be not, but at least I stop wasting my provider subscribtion hours (no free web surf for me)

Now, if I can find enough place to hide away all my globe and hex dreams, or at least stop tearing...

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

Captain Nemo · March 27, 2001, 11:05

I think the movement cost multiplier of 1.5 for diagonal moves really is worth thinking about. I like the square map better because of the 8 directional movement capability anyway. In Civ2 there were numerous movement multipliers already (Road, Rairoad, Rivers, Terrain, All as road Flag etc.) so I don't think a diagonal movement multiplier would be a big deal to implement and it would eliminate the main (and only?) complaint about Squares vs Hexes: The unrealistic speed of diagonal moves.

Roman · March 27, 2001, 14:49

Thanks for clearing this issue up so quickly, Dan. Squares are fine by me and we can spend our time discussing other aspects of the game.

Ribannah · March 27, 2001, 15:35

quote:

Originally posted by Captain Nemo on 03-26-2001 10:15 AM
Sorry to disagree, but you cannot make a "globe" with hexagons anymore than you can with squares...

Sure you can. And you can do it with squares, too (5 is enough!). Only, it would be an approximation of a globe, but so what?

In fact it's already possible to make a fair approximation of a globe with just 7 hexes, the distortion would be less that the 42% diagonal movement distortion present in Civ so far.

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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

Captain Nemo · March 27, 2001, 17:28

Ribannah:

I guess I didn't understand the globe approximation idea?

Sure you can make a cube with 6 squares but then they are layed out as a "cross" with movement off the edges jumping to another unconnected square?

Regular hexagons cannot form a "spherical" volume as 3 touching by the corners become a flat surface (3 x 120 degree angles)

Pentagons can do it however as their angle is less that 120 degrees and they assemble into a perfect dodecaedre (12 sided "ball") which was my point.

I assume in your idea you are "bending" the 6 perimeter hexagons to make them attach to a "South Pole" hexagon.

Anyway this is just theoritical BS since the Civ3 map is going to be a cyclinder without North or South Pole...

Ribannah · March 27, 2001, 17:50

quote:

Originally posted by Captain Nemo on 03-27-2001 04:28 PMSure you can make a cube with 6 squares but then they are layed out as a "cross" with movement off the edges jumping to another unconnected square?

I said 5 squares, not 6!

quote:

I assume in your idea you are "bending" the 6 perimeter hexagons to make them attach to a "South Pole" hexagon.

Not quite. All 7 hexes are equally "bended", so the selection of one pole hexagon is random. See my "The Globe in Seven Hexes" thread for more information.

quote:

Anyway this is just theoritical BS since the Civ3 map is going to be a cyclinder without North or South Pole...

There is always Civ4, right?

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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

Rhuarc · March 29, 2001, 08:23

I know that they already said the way it is going to be, but I was just wondering if anybody here has ever played Command and Conquer? The movement in that game is much closer to real life. I think that they still use either squares or hexes, they make them a lot smaller, so that the player can give the units more than just eight directions to go (because of the smaller blocks the units can take routes that would be inbetween the normal eight moves system. Just thought I'd throw in my two cents worth!!

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DO, OR DO NOT, THERE IS NO TRY - Yoda