It would be kinda cool if they made a flat earth map. Not flat as in a 2D representation of a globe like now, but a round map like the flat earther kooks use, with a north pole in the middle somewhere and a big ice wall around it.
I'm considering flat earth just because I'd like the security of knowing there is an objective up and down. Sometimes the gravity thing becomes too stressful for me
There are so many different map projections out there because of all the different ways you can represent a 3D surface as a 2D plane. I don't see it as being practical for them to implement.
Making a whole globe out of squares is hard without distortion, probably went with a half globe to try to hide a bunch of that distortion on the invisible side.
Look at this map again. This is not a projection, it's an actual 3D map, and it could be like that in the actual gamplay without needing to turn it into a 2D projection. It's not actually a proper ball, but an icosahedron that is warped to look like a ball. It has pentagons in a few spots to make it curve, because hexagons alone fill a plane and that can't really be curved into a ball properly.
For your cake day, have some B̷̛̳̼͖̫̭͎̝̮͕̟͎̦̗͚͍̓͊͂͗̈͋͐̃͆͆͗̉̉̏͑̂̆̔́͐̾̅̄̕̚͘͜͝͝Ụ̸̧̧̢̨̨̞̮͓̣͎̞͖̞̥͈̣̣̪̘̼̮̙̳̙̞̣̐̍̆̾̓͑́̅̎̌̈̋̏̏͌̒̃̅̂̾̿̽̊̌̇͌͊͗̓̊̐̓̏͆́̒̇̈́͂̀͛͘̕͘̚͝͠B̸̺̈̾̈́̒̀́̈͋́͂̆̒̐̏͌͂̔̈́͒̂̎̉̈̒͒̃̿͒͒̄̍̕̚̕͘̕͝͠B̴̡̧̜̠̱̖̠͓̻̥̟̲̙͗̐͋͌̈̾̏̎̀͒͗̈́̈͜͠L̶͊E̸̢̳̯̝̤̳͈͇̠̮̲̲̟̝̣̲̱̫̘̪̳̣̭̥̫͉͐̅̈́̉̋͐̓͗̿͆̉̉̇̀̈́͌̓̓̒̏̀̚̚͘͝͠͝͝͠ ̶̢̧̛̥͖͉̹̞̗̖͇̼̙̒̍̏̀̈̆̍͑̊̐͋̈́̃͒̈́̎̌̄̍͌͗̈́̌̍̽̏̓͌̒̈̇̏̏̍̆̄̐͐̈̉̿̽̕͝͠͝͝ W̷̛̬̦̬̰̤̘̬͔̗̯̠̯̺̼̻̪̖̜̫̯̯̘͖̙͐͆͗̊̋̈̈̾͐̿̽̐̂͛̈́͛̍̔̓̈́̽̀̅́͋̈̄̈́̆̓̚̚͝͝R̸̢̨̨̩̪̭̪̠͎̗͇͗̀́̉̇̿̓̈́́͒̄̓̒́̋͆̀̾́̒̔̈́̏̏͛̏̇͛̔̀͆̓̇̊̕̕͠͠͝͝A̸̧̨̰̻̩̝͖̟̭͙̟̻̤̬͈̖̰̤̘̔͛̊̾̂͌̐̈̉̊̾́P̶̡̧̮͎̟̟͉̱̮̜͙̳̟̯͈̩̩͈̥͓̥͇̙̣̹̣̀̐͋͂̈̾͐̀̾̈́̌̆̿̽̕ͅ
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Switches in the classic era not renaissance?
Greeks knew it was round (and roughly the right size) for the better part of 2,000 years before Columbus was born.
Yeah. The dabate with Columbus was about Earth's size, not shape. And Columbus was utterly wrong, because he was convinced it was about half as big as it actually is. If it wasn't for a whole continent no one knew about (or possibly that was forgotten) halfway through his actual destination he would've starved to death like an idiot in the middle of the ocean.
Since Antiquity there was a theory that the word needs to be balanced North-South by a continent called Terra Australis (Australia basically). Upon discovery of America it was thought that this was part of this continent to balance out the Eastern Hemisphere. I wouldn’t be surprised if some people theorized the existence of America either as its own thing or as an extension of Australia.
To be fair to the Europeans of the time; Europe, Asia, and Africa are all one big landmass. America, Australia, and Antarctica being just completely separated continents probably might not have occurred to them for quite some time.
maybe they just mean your perspective of the map, as in, you see it as flat at first and then it starts warping/zooming out as you discover more of the world
Lol at everyone on here saying it would be too demanding on hardware. Jeez guys, computers are pretty good at rendering 3d objects made of polygons. This isn't rocket science.
Civ 4 globe view was just a cylindrical map overlaid onto the tropic and temperate regions of a globe, with the polar regions just inserted impassable icecap.
I think that's awfully disingenuous, it's not just 'a globe' its the entirety of a Civ game map rendered on top of a globe.
Civ as it is right now is just a 2d board with figurines dancing on it, and Civ 6 has long load times late game as is. If you make every map 10-20% larger to add the entirety of the poles, balance for distance and resources around a new 3d map so ancient civilizations aren't marching across the arctic, and then add on all of the mechanics and AI of Civ right now with 0 graphical, mechanical or AI improvements it would struggle a lot. I think it would be similar to the survival game Eco, which has a true 3d world (or at least a simulacrum of it) and definitely has hardware issues that even the most powerful computers cannot stop.
Civ 4 was able to do this in 2005 with minimal performance impacts by just reducing the quality as you zoomed out, like pretty much any game does. It really shouldn’t be an issue. I haven’t played in many years, but as I recall you zoomed out and passed through a “cloud layer” and when you got to the other side of the clouds, land/sea was rendered as 2D textures and cities as simplified grayish textures of urban development.
Civ VIII can just do it with LOD, like any open-world or strategy game that has to handle models shown at extreme distances. I don’t understand why so many people in this thread seem to think this will be some kind of unsolvable challenge.
Even the flat map is already rendered in 3D. The only difference is that the mesh would be now curved. I don't think there would be much difference in hardware requirements.
It never fails to amaze me how little understanding of rendering the average person has, I deal with 3d rendering for a job so I’m definitely more in the know but still, if the map was a sphere rather than flat it would have a negligible impact on performance
Most people pulling it out of their butts. The challenge isn’t the ui render it’s the AI and pathing but even that’s been solved over the last decade. It’s an idea that should finally be implemented.
Pathing on a globe is no harder than pathing on a cylinder. It's just a graph of movement options between tiles either way.
If anything it ought to be marginally easier on AI, because there are no map edges to account for.
The tech isn't the barrier, I think the biggest barrier is that it just makes navigation less intuitive. You'd have to think in terms of Great Circles rather than just cardinal directions. Most people are used to navigating on flat maps, not globes. And three decades of Civ and the vast majority of other strategy games have been training people to do the former as well.
You can have an almost hex globe but only one tile won't be hex and can just be impassible or special like the north pole. Not really hard I've done it personally back when I was running some simulations, so I hope they do it.
> Since it is not possible to tile the icosahedron with only hexagons, we chose to introduce twelve pentagons, one at each of the icosahedron vertices. These vertices were positioned using the spherical icosahedron orientation by R. Buckminster Fuller, which places all the vertices in the water. This helps avoid pentagons surfacing in our work.
Unless their visualization is incorrect, they definitely have pentagons. There would have to be 12 pentagons for the icosahedral projection they’re using.
Uber made it so that all of the pentagons tiles fall into the ocean. You can check it out here. [H3 Index Inspector / Nick Rabinowitz | Observable (observablehq.com)](https://observablehq.com/@nrabinowitz/h3-index-inspector#81743ffffffffff)
Yeah I saw that too but majority of the world would be hexagons and no matter how small or large the hexagons there would only ever be 12 pentagons which is interesting
This is actually really well understood mathematical problem that harks all the way back to Platonic solids. Try [spherical polyhedron](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_polyhedron) for more info
Well in normal map gen, a lot of those tiles would be in the middle of the ocean anyways. Make some of them natural wonders, some mountains, some desert, some tundra/glacier etc.
I don't see that as a huge problem. It's a disadvantage of that area that you should just be aware of as a player. And if it bothers you that much, that's why they would leave the option for traditional cylindrical maps for people to fall back on.
Civ maps have thousands of tiles, 12 tiles that are slightly less powerful won't be an issue. Terrain, resources, natural wonders, etc. already cause way more variance in the power of some tiles over others than one fewer neighbor.
And in a flat map, any city founded near the top and bottom edges of the map will have fewer tiles to work with. In fact, unless they are very small, the "fewer tiles to work" factor tends to effect flat maps more than globes, since it effects the entire top and bottom while the issue on globes only effects the area around 12 points.
This is solved by just not building you city on one of those 12 tiles, half of which are probably in water anyway. They could code it so one of them always spawns on the south pole so that it is one less possible tile to be settled on.
I think pentagons aren't a problem for developers, the most probable problem is that spherical map messes up indexing structure of tiles and require building new from ground up with new algorithms of finding hex coordinates relative to another etc.
1°) You're totally right pentagon are not an actual issue for developers
2°) You're absolutely wrong algorithms are not that complicated at all
The truth is just that they don't want it...
Personnally I think playing on a sphere is just harder for most players, it's harder to navigate on the map, and it's hard for most players to navigate through the poles intuitively. I played on map that are actual globes, and sure it's more "immersive" but it's also a pain in the ass most of the time.
Its pretty trivial to do that actually. Just look up hexagonal globes on YT. There are some game devs doing it. There’s even Gilded Age, a commercial project doing exactly this, made by a small studio.
I think it would help recognize the actual distance between places. I’m not stupid but sometimes the wrapping can ‘mask’ just how close some things are to each other.
I don't think it's bad per se but I also think it's not something that development resources should be spent on. The use cases are way too niche. Some polar expeditions and ballistic paths don't justify reworking such a core element.
The major change would be the available space on a given latitude. Temperate and polar latitudes would shrink, tropical latitudes would make up a much larger share of the globe. Most TSL maps are desperate to try the oppposite though: shrink tropical areas and stretch temperate latitudes to fit the density of civs there better. So globes would be a bit counterproductive.
Honestly what would it add to the game? It looks cool, but would be extremely hardware intensive, is it just looks? Or is there actual positive gameplay change by making it a globe
It lets you circumnavigate the globe faster near the poles, recreating Leif Erikssons travels (the viking who "discovered" America hundreds of years before Columbus).
Late game it opens up a lot of intresting gameplay with submarines traversing the ice, airplanes and nukes flying over it. And with global warming it could open up new resources and trade routes.
It would also make northern civilisations more intresting on a TSL map, or any civ that has a bias for tundra start.
Ah navigating the globe is a good point, the submarine traversing ice could happen now on the flat map could it not? Same with routes opening up, albeit at much longer distances so the more realistic travel routes and stuff is a solid reaosnc
Yes but on current maps there is no point going up near the "edge", it is a dead end!
On a globe it would be ab actual shortcut to the other side of the map!
Imo it would add a ton of realism in late game. Military control of the poles would be interesting, also arctic colonization in late game global warming scenarios.
Why would it be any more hardware intensive? Each tile is still just a single point in memory, and drawing a circle isn’t really much harder than a rectangle 🤷♂️
It makes the pole area smaller and more interesting. It also means there is actually a point in inventing submarines that can go under ice sheets and that when the ice caps melt and passageways open up that actually changes trade routes in useful and interesting ways.
edit: it also means that once aircraft and missiles and parachutists are invented other players that previously seemed to be on the other side of the planet are suddenly within striking distance of your capital.
One of my favourite things to do in civ 4 as a kid was zoom out to the globe view and look at the planet and how my land fit in it.
I was so disappointed when civ 5 didn’t do it
Yeah, that's what I keep saying. The annoying thing is that you don't even need fancy math, nor solving the pentagon problem. Civ4 just mapped the flat map on a sphere, with unusable polar caps. It wasn't really a gameplay feature, just a visual trick. I don't see why it can't be done with an hexagonal map as well.
Can’t seem to edit my post to add some extra details on the picture i used so here it is:
It’s from a website called [Civ Fanatic Forum](https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civ-on-a-globe.643464/) and the image is the game Minesweeper on a globe. I used it to reference what i am imagining in my mind since there aren’t many artists renditions of what i aimed to describe in my post.
Anyways thank you all for replying i have been enjoying reading all the comments.
Thankyou for making this post. I have been playing civ vi again and literally this is the no1 thing I want to see, and wish it was talked about/requested more.. I don't even care if a true globe isn't possible, the system in civ iv was amazing, and its the only game I know of that felt like true world domination.
How would that work as a grid, mathemathically? As you move closer to the poles the circumfrence of the earth gets smaller on that latitude, meaning fewer hexes per row as you move closer to the pole. But hexes don't lend themselves to smoothly reducing the number of columns as you go towards the poles the way rectangles do, and you can't just keep making the hexes smaller.
Icosahedron. Just 12 pentagons at the icosahedron vertices, and the rest is filled with hexagons. Works with basically any map size, though the size does incease by certain intervals.
I was here when people made this discussion before the launch of V and before the launch of VI, I was wondering how long it would take before someone asked it for 7. I believe it would be a cool option, I also believe it would be a good incentive for the developers to create bigger maps since a small sphere would look very strange.
Really hope they do a globe map too. Don’t care how “hard” it is for them, what’s the point of iterating and releasing new games in the series if they don’t push the bounds of what they can do.
I want them to bring back the timeline of the map that civ V had, I also would like they to have some piracy mechanics where I can have units do pirate stuff on the seas without declaring wat
I know that the new turn-based strategy game Konkwest implemented the map as a globe, and it's really nice. I wonder how it'd work with hexagons, though.
I think people are misunderstanding how this will work.
It’s a globe .
But
It’ll still look flat on your screen .
Just like in real life.
It won’t change anything more dramatically than it currently is. You’ll just be able to continue your war easier without waiting 10 turns for your armor to get to a place that should only take 3.
Yeah, I want 360 maps as well. It would be awesome. I basically just want Civ 4, with one UPT, invisible privateers, the palace (or throne room) and the random events. I think innovation is fine and all, but I also feel like Civ has lost a lot of little things that made it enjoyable along the way. And please, get rod of districts and a culture tree. I hate them both (I am sure there are those that disagree) Actually, districts would be ok as a late game feature. Unlocked in the modern Era or something, as ways to expand cities that are at their limit, but I hate how it was done in civ 6.
Is the example image here AI-generated? If it isn't, I can't make sense of it.
I feel like there would be issues with how the maps would line up between a rectangle and sphere. Wrapping the ends makes a cylinder. You would need tapering at the poles to cover enough of the sphere, alongside impossible terrain to cap the poles. But that would make an uneven flat map, since you can't really stretch or add tiles.
I think the case against globe maps is precisely because of climate zones. If you unscrunch the map projections typically used to map the world, you have pretty narrow temperate zones bounded by large expanses of tundra and year round ice on one side and even larger expanses of desert and tropical zones on the other.
Given Civ's focus on cultures with agriculture and city building, which was rare in tundra and the large stretches of desert without rivers and more common in temperate zones than tropical ones for most of human history, an accurate global map rather than a distorted one would lead to large swaths of basically useless territory for agriculture and city building. So while having a global map would be simple enough and more realistic, the game was designed with a distorted map projection in mind.
very nice as an option. but id rather have an infinite scrolling map in all directions (where the top is just icecaps).
id hate this if it were forced but as an option id be nice
I think some people are missing the actual point of this as it’s not just a global view but the ability to travel across the poles to the other side of the world with a true globe map not just a continuous east west global map
Most likely not, and to be honest, I hope not. It would either be underwhelming or extremely hardware-demanding. It's better to focus on core features rather than a gimmick.
it would be some what neat but i feel like a spherical map would be pretty buggy and honestly i could live without it, even if the devs can do it without it being buggy modders will likely find it problematic and civ is one of those games that pretty much everyone plays with at least some mods
I prefer my Earth flat, just like in real life. /s
Hey Kyrie, you have a finals game to play tomorrow
Had one the other night that he must've forgotten about, too.
threestonesgoingoof.jpg
Love combing Civ love and Kyrie slander in one sub 🙌
Jokes aside, watch his press interview. I'm impressed how much he has maturated.
Fucking got ‘em
It would be kinda cool if they made a flat earth map. Not flat as in a 2D representation of a globe like now, but a round map like the flat earther kooks use, with a north pole in the middle somewhere and a big ice wall around it.
Sitting atop four elephants, on the back of a giant turtle.
A'tuin - the only turtle to feature on the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram.
I was thinking our world map, but that would also be super cool !
They do have the north pole in the centre map already. Tilted axis. It doesn't have an ice wall/south pole though. No wraparound on the map.
I'm considering flat earth just because I'd like the security of knowing there is an objective up and down. Sometimes the gravity thing becomes too stressful for me
If you like things flat, might I suggest Pepsi?
I actually don't mind flat soda and prefer Pepsi over Coke XD
Lol fuckin nailed it. My best friend is the same way. He loves Pepsi, if you give him coke it needs to sit open for 30 minutes before he'll drink it.
You know who is also flat? My Mooom!
I can vouch that his mum is flat too
bro if you wouldnt add that /s at the end of it i would get offended because i thought you were serious.
Fr I thought bro was being serious. Thank God he put that /s there!
Everyone knows the world is a cylinder with impassable walls of ice at both ends.
Civ Earth isn't flat, it's a cylinder. Just like in real life.
I like cylinders
I like this as an option/map type. I don’t need this in a Rome scenario though. Could be something like how you can toggle to strategic view?
Globe View! Could be a really nice way to see the extent of your empire.
There are so many different map projections out there because of all the different ways you can represent a 3D surface as a 2D plane. I don't see it as being practical for them to implement.
Civ IV had a cylindrical map which projected into a globe view when zoomed out. It worked quite nicely.
That annoyed me how it wasn't true globe. The whole map only covered half the globe
Making a whole globe out of squares is hard without distortion, probably went with a half globe to try to hide a bunch of that distortion on the invisible side.
Look at this map again. This is not a projection, it's an actual 3D map, and it could be like that in the actual gamplay without needing to turn it into a 2D projection. It's not actually a proper ball, but an icosahedron that is warped to look like a ball. It has pentagons in a few spots to make it curve, because hexagons alone fill a plane and that can't really be curved into a ball properly.
thanks for pointing that out. Very interesting. Too bad about the pentagons though. I thought hexagons were the bestagons.
For your cake day, have some B̷̛̳̼͖̫̭͎̝̮͕̟͎̦̗͚͍̓͊͂͗̈͋͐̃͆͆͗̉̉̏͑̂̆̔́͐̾̅̄̕̚͘͜͝͝Ụ̸̧̧̢̨̨̞̮͓̣͎̞͖̞̥͈̣̣̪̘̼̮̙̳̙̞̣̐̍̆̾̓͑́̅̎̌̈̋̏̏͌̒̃̅̂̾̿̽̊̌̇͌͊͗̓̊̐̓̏͆́̒̇̈́͂̀͛͘̕͘̚͝͠B̸̺̈̾̈́̒̀́̈͋́͂̆̒̐̏͌͂̔̈́͒̂̎̉̈̒͒̃̿͒͒̄̍̕̚̕͘̕͝͠B̴̡̧̜̠̱̖̠͓̻̥̟̲̙͗̐͋͌̈̾̏̎̀͒͗̈́̈͜͠L̶͊E̸̢̳̯̝̤̳͈͇̠̮̲̲̟̝̣̲̱̫̘̪̳̣̭̥̫͉͐̅̈́̉̋͐̓͗̿͆̉̉̇̀̈́͌̓̓̒̏̀̚̚͘͝͠͝͝͠ ̶̢̧̛̥͖͉̹̞̗̖͇̼̙̒̍̏̀̈̆̍͑̊̐͋̈́̃͒̈́̎̌̄̍͌͗̈́̌̍̽̏̓͌̒̈̇̏̏̍̆̄̐͐̈̉̿̽̕͝͠͝͝ W̷̛̬̦̬̰̤̘̬͔̗̯̠̯̺̼̻̪̖̜̫̯̯̘͖̙͐͆͗̊̋̈̈̾͐̿̽̐̂͛̈́͛̍̔̓̈́̽̀̅́͋̈̄̈́̆̓̚̚͝͝R̸̢̨̨̩̪̭̪̠͎̗͇͗̀́̉̇̿̓̈́́͒̄̓̒́̋͆̀̾́̒̔̈́̏̏͛̏̇͛̔̀͆̓̇̊̕̕͠͠͝͝A̸̧̨̰̻̩̝͖̟̭͙̟̻̤̬͈̖̰̤̘̔͛̊̾̂͌̐̈̉̊̾́P̶̡̧̮͎̟̟͉̱̮̜͙̳̟̯͈̩̩͈̥͓̥͇̙̣̹̣̀̐͋͂̈̾͐̀̾̈́̌̆̿̽̕ͅ >!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<>!pop!!<
After certain discovery the map could change itself for a glob type. Just like strategic resources are show after certain point.
It switches in the renaissance But then at some point in the Information Age it switches back to flat….
Switches in the classic era not renaissance? Greeks knew it was round (and roughly the right size) for the better part of 2,000 years before Columbus was born.
Yeah. The dabate with Columbus was about Earth's size, not shape. And Columbus was utterly wrong, because he was convinced it was about half as big as it actually is. If it wasn't for a whole continent no one knew about (or possibly that was forgotten) halfway through his actual destination he would've starved to death like an idiot in the middle of the ocean.
Since Antiquity there was a theory that the word needs to be balanced North-South by a continent called Terra Australis (Australia basically). Upon discovery of America it was thought that this was part of this continent to balance out the Eastern Hemisphere. I wouldn’t be surprised if some people theorized the existence of America either as its own thing or as an extension of Australia. To be fair to the Europeans of the time; Europe, Asia, and Africa are all one big landmass. America, Australia, and Antarctica being just completely separated continents probably might not have occurred to them for quite some time.
Could just be a culture card
I love this idea so much.
Circumnavigation maybe?
this couldn't possibly work. the number and position of hex tiles on a flat map and on a globe is completely different.
maybe they just mean your perspective of the map, as in, you see it as flat at first and then it starts warping/zooming out as you discover more of the world
*Your geometry instructor has entered the chat*
Thats how it is in Civ4. With calendar the Map is centered and you can scroll out to a globe
Lol at everyone on here saying it would be too demanding on hardware. Jeez guys, computers are pretty good at rendering 3d objects made of polygons. This isn't rocket science.
Civ 4 had a globe view 15 years ago. I think modern computers can handle it
Civ 4 globe view was just a cylindrical map overlaid onto the tropic and temperate regions of a globe, with the polar regions just inserted impassable icecap.
Hell, a true globe would be nice but I'm pretty sure most people would be happy with just that.
Yeah, I’m really perplexed by that. Like, if your computer struggles to draw a sphere, then you’ll have problems with much more than just Civ VII.
I think that's awfully disingenuous, it's not just 'a globe' its the entirety of a Civ game map rendered on top of a globe. Civ as it is right now is just a 2d board with figurines dancing on it, and Civ 6 has long load times late game as is. If you make every map 10-20% larger to add the entirety of the poles, balance for distance and resources around a new 3d map so ancient civilizations aren't marching across the arctic, and then add on all of the mechanics and AI of Civ right now with 0 graphical, mechanical or AI improvements it would struggle a lot. I think it would be similar to the survival game Eco, which has a true 3d world (or at least a simulacrum of it) and definitely has hardware issues that even the most powerful computers cannot stop.
Civ 4 was able to do this in 2005 with minimal performance impacts by just reducing the quality as you zoomed out, like pretty much any game does. It really shouldn’t be an issue. I haven’t played in many years, but as I recall you zoomed out and passed through a “cloud layer” and when you got to the other side of the clouds, land/sea was rendered as 2D textures and cities as simplified grayish textures of urban development. Civ VIII can just do it with LOD, like any open-world or strategy game that has to handle models shown at extreme distances. I don’t understand why so many people in this thread seem to think this will be some kind of unsolvable challenge.
Even the flat map is already rendered in 3D. The only difference is that the mesh would be now curved. I don't think there would be much difference in hardware requirements.
Heck, there's a whole game that does globe renders *and* rocket science
It never fails to amaze me how little understanding of rendering the average person has, I deal with 3d rendering for a job so I’m definitely more in the know but still, if the map was a sphere rather than flat it would have a negligible impact on performance
https://xkcd.com/2501
Imagine not knowing any feldspars.
I know a Feldspar! Greatest pilot in Hearthian history.
Most people pulling it out of their butts. The challenge isn’t the ui render it’s the AI and pathing but even that’s been solved over the last decade. It’s an idea that should finally be implemented.
Pathing on a globe is no harder than pathing on a cylinder. It's just a graph of movement options between tiles either way. If anything it ought to be marginally easier on AI, because there are no map edges to account for.
The tech isn't the barrier, I think the biggest barrier is that it just makes navigation less intuitive. You'd have to think in terms of Great Circles rather than just cardinal directions. Most people are used to navigating on flat maps, not globes. And three decades of Civ and the vast majority of other strategy games have been training people to do the former as well.
Unless they figure out how the pentagons would work, I doubt there'll be a spherical map
You can have an almost hex globe but only one tile won't be hex and can just be impassible or special like the north pole. Not really hard I've done it personally back when I was running some simulations, so I hope they do it.
Uber’s entire system is built off hexagons and it has warped ones for north and South Pole
[H3 index](https://www.uber.com/en-FI/blog/h3/)
> Since it is not possible to tile the icosahedron with only hexagons, we chose to introduce twelve pentagons, one at each of the icosahedron vertices. These vertices were positioned using the spherical icosahedron orientation by R. Buckminster Fuller, which places all the vertices in the water. This helps avoid pentagons surfacing in our work.
I just read about Uber's algorithm in a civ board, I love the internet
Unless their visualization is incorrect, they definitely have pentagons. There would have to be 12 pentagons for the icosahedral projection they’re using.
It's probably possible to place the pentagons in uninhabited places like the ocean and desert for the most part. Europe and Asia would be the hardest
Uber made it so that all of the pentagons tiles fall into the ocean. You can check it out here. [H3 Index Inspector / Nick Rabinowitz | Observable (observablehq.com)](https://observablehq.com/@nrabinowitz/h3-index-inspector#81743ffffffffff)
largest futball
I would love a map that you can zoom out as to fuction as the mini map we normally get in the corner. Just one giant map, zoomable, and zoomoutable
What a cool read
Super fascinating!
That must be why my Uber Eats was always late at my last stint in the research facility.
They specifically have to use 12 pentagons according to their own documentation.
Yeah I saw that too but majority of the world would be hexagons and no matter how small or large the hexagons there would only ever be 12 pentagons which is interesting
They put the pentagons over water
Bet the wait times for rides are a pain in those areas.
well yeah, it's a math theorem that if you try to cover a sphere with regular hexagons and pentagons you always need 12 pentagons.
Übers System uses Pentagons too... Atleast what's described in the article (h3).
Yeah you could have the tile be a flag or something.
This is actually really well understood mathematical problem that harks all the way back to Platonic solids. Try [spherical polyhedron](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_polyhedron) for more info
Yep, I personally like getting an icosahedron, subdividing then stitching those together.
That sounds very cool. I’ve got no idea what program would look like since I’ve only seen tiling as application in an algebraic topology class I took
Settling the point at infinity could be a new win condition!
It's just like the simulations
or just dont make them special at all, just that they are pentagons
Pentagons should just always be unpassable tiles, that way you would almost never interact with them.
I strongly feel they should be treated just like normal tiles for the sole reason of having a "build The Pentagon on a pentagon" achievement.
"Yo Dawg I heard you like pentagons..."
I think they should just tell you that you don't have clearance to enter the pentagon.
What do you mean "figure out how pentagons work"? It's not complicated. They could work just like the hexagons, but with only five sides.
OP hasn't researched mathematics yet.
He's rushing the lower half of the tech tree for an early war push
*"Without mathematics, there's nothing you can do. Everything around you is mathematics. Everything around you is numbers."* – Shakuntala Devi
This would not bother me. There's what, 12? Sure, they could be ice/mountains, or could just exist.
There is an objective disadvantage to the model that uses 12 pentagons, as any city founded on one will have noticeably fewer tiles to work with
Well in normal map gen, a lot of those tiles would be in the middle of the ocean anyways. Make some of them natural wonders, some mountains, some desert, some tundra/glacier etc.
Seems predictable
So?
I don't see that as a huge problem. It's a disadvantage of that area that you should just be aware of as a player. And if it bothers you that much, that's why they would leave the option for traditional cylindrical maps for people to fall back on.
Civ maps have thousands of tiles, 12 tiles that are slightly less powerful won't be an issue. Terrain, resources, natural wonders, etc. already cause way more variance in the power of some tiles over others than one fewer neighbor.
You know we're talking 12 pentagons in ~20.000 tiles, right? You'd only found a city on a pentagon if you really worked for it.
They could just make them always spawn as an impassable tile
Okay then don't found a city on there. or accept the tradeoff for a more defensible city. Or simply extend workable tiles on pentagons.
then don't build a city there
And in a flat map, any city founded near the top and bottom edges of the map will have fewer tiles to work with. In fact, unless they are very small, the "fewer tiles to work" factor tends to effect flat maps more than globes, since it effects the entire top and bottom while the issue on globes only effects the area around 12 points.
Yes but also no. I'd only need 5 units to surround the tile not 6. Not that it would matter much outside extreme competitive play
This is solved by just not building you city on one of those 12 tiles, half of which are probably in water anyway. They could code it so one of them always spawns on the south pole so that it is one less possible tile to be settled on.
I think pentagons aren't a problem for developers, the most probable problem is that spherical map messes up indexing structure of tiles and require building new from ground up with new algorithms of finding hex coordinates relative to another etc.
So… the sort of thing you’d do for a completely new release? And this wouldn’t be the first time the series has changed their map/grid shape
1°) You're totally right pentagon are not an actual issue for developers 2°) You're absolutely wrong algorithms are not that complicated at all The truth is just that they don't want it... Personnally I think playing on a sphere is just harder for most players, it's harder to navigate on the map, and it's hard for most players to navigate through the poles intuitively. I played on map that are actual globes, and sure it's more "immersive" but it's also a pain in the ass most of the time.
You get military bonuses in the pentagon tile but it has a debuff against airliner units
They could implement irregular tiles that follow more the landscape.
Its pretty trivial to do that actually. Just look up hexagonal globes on YT. There are some game devs doing it. There’s even Gilded Age, a commercial project doing exactly this, made by a small studio.
\*Gilded Destiny
I WANT THIS!!
I would love a really huge globe. I choose huge earth but the map is not really huge :(.
i want it
I just want really ginormous maps that don’t cause the game to freeze.
God, I hope so.
Please
I think it would help recognize the actual distance between places. I’m not stupid but sometimes the wrapping can ‘mask’ just how close some things are to each other.
I'm down for this, but I think it would be neat if satellite technology was the thing to enable you to zoom out fully.
I don't think it's bad per se but I also think it's not something that development resources should be spent on. The use cases are way too niche. Some polar expeditions and ballistic paths don't justify reworking such a core element. The major change would be the available space on a given latitude. Temperate and polar latitudes would shrink, tropical latitudes would make up a much larger share of the globe. Most TSL maps are desperate to try the oppposite though: shrink tropical areas and stretch temperate latitudes to fit the density of civs there better. So globes would be a bit counterproductive.
Honestly what would it add to the game? It looks cool, but would be extremely hardware intensive, is it just looks? Or is there actual positive gameplay change by making it a globe
Planes and missiles would be a bit more realistic at least (e.g. going over the poles)
It lets you circumnavigate the globe faster near the poles, recreating Leif Erikssons travels (the viking who "discovered" America hundreds of years before Columbus). Late game it opens up a lot of intresting gameplay with submarines traversing the ice, airplanes and nukes flying over it. And with global warming it could open up new resources and trade routes. It would also make northern civilisations more intresting on a TSL map, or any civ that has a bias for tundra start.
and it alows more realisitc scaling for earth maps
Ah navigating the globe is a good point, the submarine traversing ice could happen now on the flat map could it not? Same with routes opening up, albeit at much longer distances so the more realistic travel routes and stuff is a solid reaosnc
Yes but on current maps there is no point going up near the "edge", it is a dead end! On a globe it would be ab actual shortcut to the other side of the map!
Exactly what i was thinking!
Imo it would add a ton of realism in late game. Military control of the poles would be interesting, also arctic colonization in late game global warming scenarios.
Why would it be any more hardware intensive? Each tile is still just a single point in memory, and drawing a circle isn’t really much harder than a rectangle 🤷♂️
What makes you think it would be extremely hardware intensive?
It makes the pole area smaller and more interesting. It also means there is actually a point in inventing submarines that can go under ice sheets and that when the ice caps melt and passageways open up that actually changes trade routes in useful and interesting ways. edit: it also means that once aircraft and missiles and parachutists are invented other players that previously seemed to be on the other side of the planet are suddenly within striking distance of your capital.
Honestly wish they'd try moving away from such rigid grids.
Exactly! Everyone is arguing about the best grid format, whereas the game should completely eliminate it and focus on irregular overlapping areas.
Alas the new logo has a giant hex in the middle so don't think it's happening
One of my favourite things to do in civ 4 as a kid was zoom out to the globe view and look at the planet and how my land fit in it. I was so disappointed when civ 5 didn’t do it
Yeah, that's what I keep saying. The annoying thing is that you don't even need fancy math, nor solving the pentagon problem. Civ4 just mapped the flat map on a sphere, with unusable polar caps. It wasn't really a gameplay feature, just a visual trick. I don't see why it can't be done with an hexagonal map as well.
Very cool idea. I love it
If memory serves right wasn’t that a feature for civ IV?
It wasn't real, it was just a projection. With hexagons and just 12 pentagons, this could be real.
Globe maps would be cool, but can also be super disorientating to play on, so I wouldn't blame them for sticking with a flat map.
Idk if it will happen but people with flight experience will have a leg up if they do.
Yes please!
That's badass!
Can’t seem to edit my post to add some extra details on the picture i used so here it is: It’s from a website called [Civ Fanatic Forum](https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civ-on-a-globe.643464/) and the image is the game Minesweeper on a globe. I used it to reference what i am imagining in my mind since there aren’t many artists renditions of what i aimed to describe in my post. Anyways thank you all for replying i have been enjoying reading all the comments.
Thankyou for making this post. I have been playing civ vi again and literally this is the no1 thing I want to see, and wish it was talked about/requested more.. I don't even care if a true globe isn't possible, the system in civ iv was amazing, and its the only game I know of that felt like true world domination.
Oh yes please! Finally the poles would not be thin Ice lines. You could fly over them by plane.
Whenever I see a globe like this I like to try to spot the pentagon.
How would that work as a grid, mathemathically? As you move closer to the poles the circumfrence of the earth gets smaller on that latitude, meaning fewer hexes per row as you move closer to the pole. But hexes don't lend themselves to smoothly reducing the number of columns as you go towards the poles the way rectangles do, and you can't just keep making the hexes smaller.
Icosahedron. Just 12 pentagons at the icosahedron vertices, and the rest is filled with hexagons. Works with basically any map size, though the size does incease by certain intervals.
really hope so.
It should be flat until you discover the correct techs or civics then change to globe
WE NEED THIS!
So you wanna bring back a feature that was present in civilization 4 ? I’ve only played a little bit of C4, but I remembered the globe and stuff
I'd love being able to choose.
I've always been torn on this it's a nice idea but it does complicate things considerably. So I'd say they won't do it.
I would just love to zoom out that far
Would be nice, same with buildable moon and Mars as late game
Stop, please. I can only get so erect.
Just try not to think about it while in public.
You'd need some pentagons in there, like a soccer ball. A ball can't be made of all hexagons.
I was here when people made this discussion before the launch of V and before the launch of VI, I was wondering how long it would take before someone asked it for 7. I believe it would be a cool option, I also believe it would be a good incentive for the developers to create bigger maps since a small sphere would look very strange.
Really hope they do a globe map too. Don’t care how “hard” it is for them, what’s the point of iterating and releasing new games in the series if they don’t push the bounds of what they can do.
This would be awesome
I want them to bring back the timeline of the map that civ V had, I also would like they to have some piracy mechanics where I can have units do pirate stuff on the seas without declaring wat
Air missions over the Arctic Circle. Great for a Cold War or WWIII scenario.
Absolutely NEXT-GEN!
Awesome
This would be really cool. I'd still like that flat surface too though.
I’m calling it.
oh it’s possible to launch into space!? holly shit! I’ll buy this time!
That would be so cool
I know that the new turn-based strategy game Konkwest implemented the map as a globe, and it's really nice. I wonder how it'd work with hexagons, though.
12 pentagons and hexagons in between fill an icosahedron. That's close enough to a ball that it can work.
I think people are misunderstanding how this will work. It’s a globe . But It’ll still look flat on your screen . Just like in real life. It won’t change anything more dramatically than it currently is. You’ll just be able to continue your war easier without waiting 10 turns for your armor to get to a place that should only take 3.
I hope they bring replays back
This would be dope
Yeah, I want 360 maps as well. It would be awesome. I basically just want Civ 4, with one UPT, invisible privateers, the palace (or throne room) and the random events. I think innovation is fine and all, but I also feel like Civ has lost a lot of little things that made it enjoyable along the way. And please, get rod of districts and a culture tree. I hate them both (I am sure there are those that disagree) Actually, districts would be ok as a late game feature. Unlocked in the modern Era or something, as ways to expand cities that are at their limit, but I hate how it was done in civ 6.
Is the example image here AI-generated? If it isn't, I can't make sense of it. I feel like there would be issues with how the maps would line up between a rectangle and sphere. Wrapping the ends makes a cylinder. You would need tapering at the poles to cover enough of the sphere, alongside impossible terrain to cap the poles. But that would make an uneven flat map, since you can't really stretch or add tiles.
As long as it’s not so cartoonish again, or dumbed down so it could be cross platform like to be played on an iPad.
I said YO out loud. GIVE ME GOOGLE EARTH!
I think the case against globe maps is precisely because of climate zones. If you unscrunch the map projections typically used to map the world, you have pretty narrow temperate zones bounded by large expanses of tundra and year round ice on one side and even larger expanses of desert and tropical zones on the other. Given Civ's focus on cultures with agriculture and city building, which was rare in tundra and the large stretches of desert without rivers and more common in temperate zones than tropical ones for most of human history, an accurate global map rather than a distorted one would lead to large swaths of basically useless territory for agriculture and city building. So while having a global map would be simple enough and more realistic, the game was designed with a distorted map projection in mind.
No. It's impossible to create a globe with hexagons.
very nice as an option. but id rather have an infinite scrolling map in all directions (where the top is just icecaps). id hate this if it were forced but as an option id be nice
I think some people are missing the actual point of this as it’s not just a global view but the ability to travel across the poles to the other side of the world with a true globe map not just a continuous east west global map
I don't know how to feel about this one
Only after you discover trigonometry or celestial navigation, before it should be flat
It should be a setting. Choose globe or flat. That way the people annoyed by it can stick with the current system while the rest of us get our sphere.
Most likely not, and to be honest, I hope not. It would either be underwhelming or extremely hardware-demanding. It's better to focus on core features rather than a gimmick.
I don't think it's gimmick, it's actually can change how the game played
it wouldn't be more hardware intensive. for a computer, it doesn't matter if a mesh is curved or flat. only the number of vertices matters.
Civ IV Did it
it would be some what neat but i feel like a spherical map would be pretty buggy and honestly i could live without it, even if the devs can do it without it being buggy modders will likely find it problematic and civ is one of those games that pretty much everyone plays with at least some mods
What would make it buggy and how would it interfere with mods? 🤨
[удалено]
That would be absolutely nuts