{"id":3853,"date":"2016-04-18T22:43:33","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T21:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/t-machine.org\/?p=3853"},"modified":"2016-04-18T22:45:14","modified_gmt":"2016-04-18T21:45:14","slug":"the-age-old-question-of-civ-games-roads-and-rivers-in-center-of-tiles-or-edges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/2016\/04\/18\/the-age-old-question-of-civ-games-roads-and-rivers-in-center-of-tiles-or-edges\/","title":{"rendered":"The age-old question of Civ games: Roads and rivers in center of tiles, or edges?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
Centers of tiles<\/th>\nEdges of tiles<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
\n\"Screen<\/a>\n<\/td>\n\n

\"Screen<\/a>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Pros and cons<\/h2>\n
    \n
  • Centers gives you STRAIGHT things (on a hex grid, it’s the only way to get straights!)\n
      \n
    • Roman Roads\n
    • Canals\n
    • Large rivers\n<\/ul>\n
    • Edges gives you meandering things (on a hex grid, centers only give wiggles at very large scale)\n
        \n
      • River valleys\n
      • Realistic medieval roads\n
      • Modern roads in mountains and hills (tend to wiggle crazily)\n<\/ul>\n
      • Movement is simplified with centers: If you’re on the tile, you’re on the road\/river\n
      • Inhibition of movement is simplified with edges: Civilization games have traditionally given a move penalty AND a combat penalty to any tile-to-tile move that crosses an edge containing a river\n<\/ul>\n

        My leanings…<\/h2>\n

        One thing in particular that struck me from looking at the pictures:<\/p>\n

        \nStraight roads look so terrible that every single Civilization game since Civ1 has artifically wiggled them when rendering!\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

        In particular, with 3D games (Civ4, Civ5 especially) this actively damages gameplay – it’s much too hard for the player to see at a glance which tiles are connected by roads, and to what extent. So much so that they cry-out for a “disable the wiggling effect on road-rendering” setting.<\/p>\n

        Also: I’m happpy to solve the “movement” problem by saying that if you’re in a tile that borders a road or a river, you are assumed to be “on” that road\/river, with special-case handling under the hood that handles cases where two roads\/rivers border the same tile. It increases the connectedness “for free” – but that’s how Civ games tend to do it anyway: encourage the player to put roads everywhere!<\/p>\n

        Thoughts on a postcard…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Centers of tiles Edges of tiles Pros and cons Centers gives you STRAIGHT things (on a hex grid, it’s the only way to get straights!) Roman Roads Canals Large rivers Edges gives you meandering things (on a hex grid, centers only give wiggles at very large scale) River valleys Realistic medieval roads Modern roads in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3853"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3853"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3859,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3853\/revisions\/3859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}