21-03-2001 11:51									#1
	Hexes are more fun! Put an end to popups!

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

	21-03-2001 13:25									#3
	Support Apolyton

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

	21-03-2001 16:06									#4
	Increase Your PM Length

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

	21-03-2001 17:35									#5
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

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

	21-03-2001 17:53									#6
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

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:

	25-03-2001 23:39									#7
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

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.

	26-03-2001 00:59									#8
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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

	26-03-2001 10:12									#11
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

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

	26-03-2001 10:26									#12
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

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.

	26-03-2001 13:42									#13
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

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

	26-03-2001 20:15									#14
	Inflate your Upload Space

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.

	26-03-2001 21:42									#15
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

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.

	27-03-2001 02:52									#16
	Increase the size of your Attachments

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

	27-03-2001 10:36									#17
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

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.

	27-03-2001 11:52									#18
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

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.

	27-03-2001 13:01									#19
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

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

	27-03-2001 20:05									#20
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

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.

	27-03-2001 23:49									#21
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

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.

	28-03-2001 02:28									#23
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

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...

	29-03-2001 17:23									#25
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

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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