Being a veteran of the Civ series, my initial reaction is holy shit! Then I took a couple of moments to think, and then I thought, wait a sec, is it really time for a new Civ? Also, while the screenshots look great, is there a noticable difference from Civ 4?
-Chris
There’s…um…hexes…
Also, it looks like not just catapults, but archers can fire at range, judging by the SS. It would be really interesting if you could no longer stack units beyond a certain size and instead had to spread your army across the landscape.
Well hexes + no stacks will make the combat side fairly different at least :)
I think you misunderstood me. By next step up from Square to Hex, I meant what’s the next step up that can be used to ensure complete coverage for a map. Is there even such a shape?
I hope they don’t take out stacking and put in catapults bombarding a few hexes away.
That just doesn’t make sense for a game with this spatial scale.
Well, we don’t actually know what the spatial scale is at this point. Looking at the screenshots would lead me to believe it is similar to Civ 4 perhaps, but then the little graphics of the farms and towns and what not make me wonder if the tile system is not much larger then what we are used to.
Wikipedia sez: “Only three regular tessellations exist: those made up of equilateral triangles, squares, or hexagons.”
Stacking limits would dramatically change the game, making every tile important - not just those with cities, units or stacks of dudes. It would also mean a lot more army micromanagement since you can’t just stick them all in a group and move them as a unit. If you have as many units as you can get in a Civ 4 game and had to move every single one as a separate item, you would have a lot of clicking to do. Not to mention path finding - your units could accidentally (or intentionally) block other guys from coming through.
This one change, if confirmed, would completely transform the military end of Civ.
Troy
Going off topic a bit, but what are the design considerations between using square grids or hexagons?
Cheers, interesting site. And I’m sure there’s some interesting maths that’s far beyond me behind it all.
It would be utterly awesome if a successful Civ V caused a blanket return of hex-grid strategy games.
It’s what makes UniWar so awesome on iPhone.
Civ 4 is full of opportunity for improvement. Espionage and corporations for one. And maybe I just suck at it, but I didn’t find the combat very engaging. You were basically forced to make huge stacks of every “type” of combat unit, and chip away at defenses with artillery before having any hope in hell of capturing a city with even 50% of your army intact.
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I do just suck at it, huh?
Fewer angles of attack. (6 instead of 8)
Distances are easier to keep standardized. (Because you don’t have to pretend a diagonal is the same length as a square’s side).
Troy
Design wise I wouldn’t imagine it actually makes a tremendous difference to how the game plays (less potential angles to attack/be attacked from down from 8 to 6 I guess? Any others?), but I think hexes make it easier to visualise radial distances (like a city radius for example) as you get rid of the increased length of a diagonal on a square grid.
A circle maps a lot better to a hex grid than it does to a square one.
If stacking is reduced/gone that would be a much larger shake up and along with the confirmed attacking from several hexes away is going to mean whole new strategies.
Mostly hoping that the combat will finally be a bit more interactive, but otherwise pretty excited.
Judging from the screenshots, probably around 100 miles per hex I think.
So awesome! I’ve been waiting for a hex-based Civ game with a decent combat system ever since Civ 1.
This is awesome news! I would/have/will buy any Civ* branded game sight unseen. :)
*The Sid branding, not that crappy Activision crap of a few years back.
~C~
If the average landscape are much bigger, the game could support more pseudo-tactical battles in the same board, i mean without the need of switching to a minigame with a miniboard for tactical battles, but in the same strategic map. With lancers in one hex, archers could fire everything in a 2 hex distance, catapults with a 4 radius hex attack, latter modern firearms could have a proportional range engagement, movement could scale better (siege machinery 1 hex, infantry 2 hexes, scouts 3 hexes, cavarly 5 hexes, tanks 20 hexes, etc), instead of the simplistic combat of every Civ. It wouldn’t be “another game on top of the main game” which would slow everything, more or less the combat would be like is already in terms of unit stats (attack, movement, hitpoints, bombardement option, etc), just a bit more involved and more realistic. Also it would scale better across the Ages.
Damn, i am selling myself the game again!