*Resources not represented by tiles, but by 'areas'..
*You should be able to go over the poles (not sure how to do this)
*Elevation should be more realistic.. Mountains should not be tiles but areas of higher elevation.. Movement should be extremely slow, bringing mountain passes into play...
*Landmarks should be named...

*There should be different levels in the map.. What I mean is that units such as planes should be able to fly over ground units, and subs under sea units.. Subs would have to come colse to the surface to attack, tunnels should be buildable thru one level of earth under another etc..

Of course, if Firaxis could get the spherical world to work, it would be ideal..

(Also just wanted to mention that you can already do landmarks in SMAC and so they'll probably have the feature in Civ3)

Perhaps instead of moves per turn, units could have movement points.. Movement over different terrains could cost different amounts of points..

PS.. I've decided that the selection for the EC3 list is totally arbitrary.. I've seen millions of GREAT ideas (many of my own ) just fade away from view...

Tiles would probably be obsolete. The map would be made up of points (co-ordinates). This way, cities could grow and shrink, resources get spread more realisiticaly etc.

One more thing, in Civ3, trees should have benefits like pollution control, rainfall control, flood control (calamities? start a thread please) etc.,so that trees aren't cut down indiscriminately..

quote: So if your troops lived by the water for a long time then went up high, they'd be out of breath

is probably not very workable...

(And wow Par4 - your sig's longer than your post!)

As for my sig, I've been watching food network tv too much lately

For movement, something entirely new is needed. A system that allows units to move at a realistic speed but not allow them to 'be everywhere at once'. Like a supply line or communications limitations. The latter would be appropriate for pre-telecom eras: You give units orders and as soon as they're a certain distance from one of your cities, an AI takes control and tries to execute those orders and return to a friendly city. Any other ideas?

Maybe a 3d-world (as in round, spherical world) could be done. It would still have tiles, but to acommodate the true-round world, the tiles have to be changed, ie tiles are different in different places. So the end result would be that on the default zoom for a normal size map, you'd see that the ground curves slightly so that the centre of your screen seems closer to you (it's a bit hard to describe). Zooming out would be you'll eventually be able to see half the globe, but with the result that everything's really small and things at the edges are hard to make out. Once you zoom out enough you'll also be able to see clouds, large cities, some wonders, etc, and it'll just be like what movies often do (like in the end of the Matrix)

The main problem that this round world poses is that small maps would look weird, as the world would be very small and any particular area being shown in the screen would look unacceptably curved.

I know that this almost requires a 3d graphics engine, but I'm still against having one. Anyway, here's some more food for thought.

Nah.

*You should be able to go over the poles (not sure how to do this)

There are some goofy solutions, but I would prefer if things were left as they are.

*Elevation should be more realistic.. Mountains should not be tiles but areas of higher elevation.. Movement should be extremely slow, bringing mountain passes into play...

Thumbs up on real mountains (they just look cool), thumbs down on slow movement.

*Landmarks should be named...

I have nothing against labels.

*There should be different levels in the map.. What I mean is that units such as planes should be able to fly over ground units, and subs under sea units.. Subs would have to come colse to the surface to attack, tunnels should be buildable thru one level of earth under another etc..

A better solution would just have the game end in 1900.

quote: *There should be different levels in the map.. What I mean is that units such as planes should be able to fly over ground units, and subs under sea units.. Subs would have to come colse to the surface to attack, tunnels should be buildable thru one level of earth under another etc..

Come to think of it, this doesn't seem like a very good idea after all... I mean, how would you be able to show it on the screen?

But tonight (2:20 AM now) I was just thinking that the map is NOT the territory.

I mean, I usually travel by car with flat road map still the earth is a globe (well, it is, isn't it? ).

True, in my car travels I'm not limited by some "squares grid", but the point is that if we can divide the whole strategic view of the world (as a globe) on a somewhat stretched tactical representation (as a flat map with a grid of squares or hexagons) we can probably be OK.

Sure, zooming in & out will be a problem, so we should limit the whole thing.

Well, may be I'm probably just too tired to write a clever post. Better I go to sleep now.

But the main idea of the post was the continuous resources thing, layer thing, elevation/movement points etc..

PS. Adam, do you watch soccer?

Do you have any clue how much memory that would take?

Game turns would take months to complete.

The only way it would work, were if you were to have a grid (like now) with the area delinated within it having certain attributes. Certain entities would have coordinates (as a superset of the grid coordinates.)

Hey anyone here played the remarkable game , conquest ? if you did , you probably know what I mean .

I suppose that Alpha Centauri concept of Special landmarks is a step in the right direction. If you work tiles inside the special area you gain a bonus. It add some reason to try to control some world area, by army or by trade.

Last but not least, with special landmarks there is no need to introduce a "pixel-level" resource map (with all the memory and CPU time consuming).

About the map, the problem is that in a regular square grid we can't have a continuos reproduction (I mean, a scrollable one) of a round world on a flat screen (or piece of paper), if not using some kind of Mercatore or other correct but unpratical way to draw the thing.
It's time to try something different?

I suppose you refer to me as Adam (in fact my real first name is Marco (same of english Mark).
My nick name Admiral Naismith is the name of a fiction character from Science Fiction books of Ms. Lois McMaster Bujold. But that's another (off topic) story.

To answer your question:
yes, I watched some soccer (football for european) games, I've just finished to see italian players losing the final match of Euro 2000 against France team.
Why do you ask?

I like Juventus..

*The poles would NOT be on the map, you never see them, but they are there.
*When you move a unit towards the poles you'll be asked whether you want to or not, you choose.
*Let it be known that travelling over the poles is somewhat dangerous and could risk having your unit destroyed. It would be safer for Air and Sea units, but more dangerous for Land units.

How the computer would determine where you would end up after you cross of one of the poles:

Let's say you're on a LARGE map (75x120) and you cross of the North Pole at co-ordinates 0,0 (which on earth would be the Line of Greenwich) you would travel half of the way across the globe. Since the world is 75 squares across you would travel half that way over the map which is 37,0 (rounded down, and that would be earth's Int. Date Line). This would let the map stay the same with the new feature.

I hope that makes sense to everyone.

I must say, Civ 3 needs to have a 3-D world. This world must rotate, so that you won't always be looking ***down*** on the map from the same angle. You should be able to look ***down*** on the north pole, on the equator, and on the south pole.

The only conceivable way to do this (that I can think of) would be to create a world where you set the latitude and longitude of the point that you want directly under you. By moving the mouse left, right, up, or down, you will make the world rotate in that direction.

This brings up a tough logistical point. All the civ-genre games so far have been fought on a cylindrical world. Thus, there are an equal number of horizontal rows at the ***equator*** as at the ***pole***. I expect that this must be the easiest way to program. However, to really cross the pole, The Brain, you would need to have a different, exponentially decreasing number of squares in a row as you approach the pole. In short, you need a 3-D world.

I will return, when I become a king, by tomorrow I will be back tomorrow just 100 more

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fldmarshallpar4@icqmail.com

Brain - Oh my, a serious well thought out post from the Brain.

Par - yah, but how much of your post count is SPAM?

quote: Originally posted by OrangeSfwr on 07-09-2000 01:59 PM Brain - Oh my, a serious well thought out post from the Brain.

Well thought out? No, it took about 5 minutes!

quote: Originally posted by OrangeSfwr on 07-09-2000 01:59 PM Par - yah, but how much of your post count is SPAM?

Most of it

My only sensible posts come from some military stuff. Don't worry it'll return to sensibility once school starts again right now I have too much time on my hands to think.

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fldmarshallpar4@icqmail.com

You gain alot of movement points or 'speed' when charging down the slopes of a mountain into an attack..

As I would prefer:
- Stay in 2D or a 'flat 3D' (isometric) and just make large worlds.
- Don't miniturize too much. It will be too complicated.