Because the triangles that make up the globe (and any other 3D surface, really) hopefully are way too small to use them as tiles. Optimally, the number of triangles making up the globe adjust to your hardware capabilities, ie dynamic LOD. And of course, the globe shouldn't be a perfect globe, mountain ranges and such deviate from it, just as the real Earth - you can't leave those out since they are critical to the game. Of course, you can have a grid of additional overlay set of triangles that are based on the visual geometry but a lot larger. (Setting the game grid to the geometry triangles would be similar to equating the grid on a 2D game with the pixels that make up everything.)
Overall, I like the idea of a gridless Civilisation a lot, though, I think you can convert all game mechanics without too much loss and it would be both better looking and more realistic. On the other hand, you'd probably have to add or change mechanics to make the gridless element add anything to the gameplay, and depending on how you do it it might be more complicated than the grid abstraction.

Ever since, in Elite: Frontiers, I lifted off and was able to fly my ship through the atmosphere slowly recognizing the curvature of the planet and then seeing the planet's continents and eventually the globe become smaller as I left it, I'm hooked at displaying globes in games. To me it was a pretty mindblowing experience - and that's with the graphics capabilities of, what, a 386? Today we could draw lush landscapes, oceans, woods, farms, industry, pollution, an atmoshpere, fairly stunning. Maybe there could be a projection to a flat Earth available - like the ones you get on a real map. Actually, that could be the only available view until your civilisation is aware of the global nature of their planet...

The Globe will be made from triangles anyhow, why not use some system with those ?

I liked it in Populous 3, actually that was a neat game overall. But anyway, a Civilisation globe would have to be a lot larger, the Populous 3 globes were basically pebble-sized. I'd love to see a tileless, globed Civilisation. But I'll also take a tiled, cylindrical Civ if that's what they're delivering.

Populous 3 had that. I hated it. The globe was pretty small, though. If it weren't so curved it may have been better. Unless that's not what you mean.

http://www.strategyplanet.com/populous/bart5986/pop3_pics.html

Hey, that was my idea. It is available at a very reasonable price...

Quboid

It's funny you're all saying that, because it was one of the starting idea for SP2, to have a fully zoomable 3D globe of the earth. Maybe Sid has our offices bugged...

Jean-René Couture
GolemLabs

The Globe idea is actually pretty cool, and it would facilitate my recomendation from yesterday about actually physically growing cities. Although Sid never makes that much of a chabnge between Civ games, he will call it something else with that fundamental of a change. I mean after all there is not that much different between Civ1 and Civ3.

I just hope they work on the AI, Muliplayer bugs, and a larger Tech Tree that is more branched than just research everything.

I've no doubt it's possible but it is in contrast to how Civ cities work, with each population point working a tile and choosing tiles being (in theory) a tactical consideration. I say in theory because generally there was an optimal configuration and there was no way to change the emphasis to a particular resource.

I'm not sure how a tileless system would work while keeping anything remoting like this and I can't see them completely removing this.

Fixing the AI would be a big plus - cheating just isn't right.

Quboid

So long as 'ol Sid takes some notes from Rome: Total War...you can't go wrong.

I think a grid-less civilization would actually be pretty cool, and I think it's entirely possible. Additionally to the unit movement outlined above, there's nothing you couldn't do just by drawing zones / placing objects on the map and dooing a lookup for "what's here", or "what's here on average, in the confines of this circle" to conform to Civ's ruleset - resources, vegetation, whatever.

X-Com had a really nice zoomable globe, well before there was any kind of 3D on PCs. I don't know much about tiles, as I've never played Civilization (unless you count Master of Magic), but I don't see why it'd be impossible to implement them on a globe...

Unit movement would actually be pretty easy, just measure actual distance instead of tiles, and draw a circle around every unit - if that circle intersects with an enemy unit, you got contact. I mean, that's how many turn-based warfare tabletop games work, right? With tape measures, etc.

This comment was edited on Oct 22, 13:39.

i don't see how they could eliminate the tiles... they're essential to the board-style of gameplay.. too many rules associated with them. i agree that tiles wouldn't be entirely necessary for the city resources, but for unit movement i don't see how they could remove them and still use the same rules.

after all, civ is not an rts.. in many ways it's more like chess

even if they just made the map wrap N-S it would be a big change. It currently wraps E-W why not N-S. Also some (any!) AI to facilitate actual S-t-r-a-t-e-g-y gameplay would be nice, instead of just giving the computer a 400% troop build bonus each time you increase the "difficulty" slider. I've kept civIII on my hd for years, but it's really an extremely simplistic game.

Can it be done using tiles, while keeping the tiles to a simple, understandable shape and pattern? Tiles are fundemental to Civ beyond things like unit movement - city resources rely on them for example

There is a long time since I've played Civ but I don't think tiles are really necessary. RTS were tile based at first but now there are not anymore and still work well.
So in Civ, maybe cities could use a circular zone around them which will be divided like pieces in a pie. Or they could still uses tiles with the tiles not being aligned between two cities.
The biggest issue is build roadways and railways. Especially that when you build them in a tile, they automatically link to all neighborhood tiles already built.

I've often wondering how fiesable it is to make a Civ style game with a globe for a map, which would be rotatable and (to some extent) zoomable at will. It would really have to be 3D accelerated but I think that can be a given even for some of the market that Civ appeals to with even things like business laptops having some acceleration. It would make for an interesting experience and of course, more realistic than Civ's cylindrical worlds.

The question is, how to implement it. Can it be done using tiles, while keeping the tiles to a simple, understandable shape and pattern? Tiles are fundemental to Civ beyond things like unit movement - city resources rely on them for example.


Quboid
This comment was edited on Oct 22, 11:07.