What's so hard about making it top to bottom scrolling? All's you need to do is think of the world as a cubic monopole. The pole would be the eight corners of the cube, with each face of the cube representing the entire earth.

But I just wanted to pick on some details:
Civ3 could come out in 2002, I saw here.

And also, don't assume that just 'case it'll be 2001/2002, all the computers willl be good. I mean, my primary computer's four years old - it's a Pentium 166.

Eg of good idea --> Overlapping resources.

So 3D looks interesting too me, as well as overlapping recourses which are not very discussible I think, they just should be there. But I hope that the 3 D graphics are used correct.

The way I was thinking is a 3D-tiled map. So you can 'look around anywhere', but the movement stay a little basic. I think turn based games are not very open too free terain movement, don't you think?

The Railroad Tycoon II is exactly what I was thinking about.. At least the elevation /tunnels part.. The resource model of rr2 appeals to me too, as some of you'll might know

And resources.. And industry..

When a unit crosses the 'edge' of the map it should appear at a point half-way from where it entered. Not accurate, but simple.

About the strategic value of the poles: during the 80s the north pole was the scene of a mini arms race as US and USSR made subs capable of traveling undetectably under the ice. Tracking stations and bases like Alert were built, and both sides had many Sub-Zero arctic units, with some mechanized snowmobile units (Canadian).

Just a thought

Say 1 ground level, 2 above and 2 below (underwater/tunnel/underground bases??/nuke silos)

I like these Tycoon games..

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Underground rail? Missile silos?

Expanded bunkers?

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In turn-based play of course..

Just a thought..

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You should also be able to build irrigation underground with 'artificial heat lamps' they would be called artificial irrigation.

Some underground resources
Diamonds (Shields)
Fossils (Research)
Gems (Shields)
Worms (Food)
Grubs (Food)

I don't think these improvements need underground layers though.. Underground is where tunnels and underground bases/bunkers etc. come in..

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More Resources:

Magma [Power resource *Volcanic Power* (Theoretical Geothermal powersource-Total Annihilation]

Types of underground terrain:

Other additions:
*River delta - for land near large rivers, bays etc. Provides extra food obviously.
*High tides - for seas squares, harnessing tidal energy on the square will give a bonous.
*Coral reef - extra marine life?, economy bonus (more tourists)
*Freshwater sea - was a special square in SMAC, but should be made a normal terrain type.

Some more map squares:

*sea caves/underground caves - both provides extra money because of tourism.
*rock formations - (like the good ol' rock in the middle of Australia) - provides more tourism again.

Also, the forests should be different in different parts of the world (they could just look different but do the smae thing) - eg rainforests, pine forests, bamboo forests, conifer forests, blah blah.

There could also icebergs (not actually a square, but a unit of sorts), like I mentioned in my thread.

Imagine that permanent tiles are only generated for the city map and temporary tiles are used for unit movement and such: each time you centralize on something you see tiles around it, but the exact co-ordinates of those tiles are different.

Hexes seem easier to use than squares for this purpose.

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Has this been said berfore - maybe the map should be done away all together. The game could instead have a RTS-type map (!) where the units still have limited movement, etc, but everything would be controlled like in a RTS game. To move a unit, the player just drags the unit to the intended location with the mouse.

The problems with a spherical map have been well explained in this thread and a viable solution (as far as I can tell with my vast knowledge of programming) can be constructed out of a number of ideas already listed.

Sir Shiva, in his second post on this thread, put forward the idea of movement points for units, and different terrains costing differing mp's to traverse.

This would provide a solution on how to make polar areas behave semi-correctly. If the movement cost of a terrain square is also made dependant on latitude so that units can simply move faster in polar areas.

I think that's enough to explain that idea. Now I'll try to explain my solution on how to construct a map which looks somewhat like it should.

I think most will agree that while a pixelised map (see above posts) would be ideal, it would simply be too demanding on the system (I will struggle to afford the game let alone an upgrade) Therefor I think it safe to say that some sort of tile system is necessary.

Sorry I thought I had a solution to this but as I was typing it discovered too many flaws. I only tell you this because it highlighted what the problem actually was.

Attempting to use any variation of a flat map projection is useless because in effect you're not playing on a map, but the globe itself. It appears flat, but is infact spherical.

Ribannah's idea of dynamic tiles is perhaps the only way of gaining a sherical map, whilst still keeping keeping something remotely similar to what we have (though I don't think it would save any memory over pixelising)

Perhaps we should just leave well and good alone .

The movement idea is still valid though.

But I do like your idea.. Drag units to move.. It'd help in simultaneous play too...

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Before I go further, I think underground is ridiculous. I think all of the underground stuff should be taken out. Also, the airplanes... you want the planes to be able to fly over what? Enemy cities? I doubt you could just do that. The Iraqis weren't waving at the F-117s, they were shooting at them. And if you mean allied or peaceful units and cities, I think that ALL units should be allowed to occupy the same space under such conditions.

Here's my problem with the pixel system. How are you intending on doing it? Would you use a system like with Paint Brush? How would this be different from just using smaller tiles? And also, a pixel is TINY! How would you know what your looking at on the screen? Could you even SEE cities or units in a single pixel??
And also, theres the issue of the individual pixel attributes. It would not be thousands of pixels. The game has thousands of tiles. No, this would be hundreds of thousands to millions of pixels. Thats a lot of stuff for the computer to know. The game already has enough new features to deal with. I think it would make it impossible to play. Maybe if you could convince NASA to let you borrow one of their computers, you could do it.

As for moving, the RTS system COULD work, but what happens if the units decide the fastest way to a place is not following a railroad or road? They'd be throwing away their movement rate. And if we do it the old-fashioned way... moving pixel by pixel? A painfully tedious experience, no?

Don't get me wrong... I'd love to see a new system. I was always kind of frustrated that I couldn't put Boston, New York and Washington in their real spots on a world map. but I wanna be sure it works.

Maybe having the old grid but with pixels of land would be better. So if you were say creating a map of the World in the editor, Italy would look like it really does rather than being a 3-square blob. It would still occupy 3 grids, but it would still have its shape because you would be painting one pixel at a time. Each grid square would have attributes for all of the pixels inside it (in other words, a mountain square has all mountain pixels in it). Granted, I know this is not what people want, but I think it will have to do.

And as for layers, subs DO sail underneath enemy ships and planes like the U2 can fly over enemy cities...

One more thing - maybe Warlords and above should be allowed to post pictures in their posts.. I'm feeling too lazy to link to the Shogun pics, but I feel that if you guys have the time, hop over to www.totalwar.com and check out the battle-map screenshots of Shogun: Total War...

THAT's what I mean by pixels...

quote: Originally posted by Hannibal3 on 09-26-2000 06:12 PMHere's my problem with the pixel system .... Theres the issue of the individual pixel attributes. It would not be thousands of pixels. The game has thousands of tiles. No, this would be hundreds of thousands to millions of pixels. Thats a lot of stuff for the computer to know.

There is no need to store all pixels. Pixel contents can be generated and regenerated by seeds. With the speed of present-day computers, there should be no problem.

Underground and Aerial layers are also a damn good idea. Recon planes two layers higher would be hard to destroy except with special equipment, subs will be more realistic.(tranports can't find subs anymore- until it's too late )

If Firaxis does use this pixel format they'd obviously do it well but
I have a few questions.

How big is a pixel?
How many pixels on an average world?
How many citizens to harvest a pixel? wouldn't micromanagement become insane if you had to harvest each individual pixel?
How many pixels is a unit?

Thx for any explanations.