Well the idea was that units wouldn't have to mesh exactly, once the "octagons" that each puts down overlap they are in range to attack each other. The victor doesn't move into the tile its opponent occupied because there are no tiles.

But its ackward all the same, we might as well stick witht he 7 and 5 square tile system.

I have absolutely no idea how plausible this is, but do we even need a grid? Would it not be possible to give a unit a number of 'steps' and depending on if it is a person or a mount, each step is a measurment in distance away from the unit. I realize that if you want to step onto a specific space to say, attack an army, that could be problematic, but maybe it could be set so that you have a circle around your unit and that anything inside that circle can be activated.

Again, I do not know how feasible such an idea is, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

We are talking about a computer game, not a board game. There shouldn't be any reason for the player to calculate how many moves he have. Just have an option (pressing a key) to light all squares where the selected unit can still go during its turn, taking also into account that he will walk on roads or swamps or forest, whatever. Would also be cool to have the option to draw from you unit to the destination you want and see the computer showing the fastest path available like in Alpha Centauri.

I'm not really sure why we have squares at all.  Why not just have a map, with distances between two points?  Squares are useful for abstracting city creation, etc., but do they help with managing tactical combat, much less strategic movement?  I can imagine AI creation would be a lot easier with squares: it adds quite a more finite set of states, for starters.  But in terms of gameplay, do people on this thread think squares help?

I'd prefer to have a "Zone", map, whatever filled with 3 dimensional space and units would move accordingly. That however isn't very likely with a TBS so squares/hexes/ octagons makes no difference to me.  

Having a tiled map helps for a lot of things, not just AI.

When you animate movements and have characters that walk, uniform distances allow for cleaner movements.  Designing tiled maps allows for easier judgements on things like unpassable terrain.  If you have a control zone around units for instance, blocking a two tile wide access point with a unit that has a one tile control radius is simplicity.  Without tiles, you have to be careful of your measurements or your pass might be a pixel too wide.  It's the same for player controlled armies.  With tiles, it's easier to position them usefully, code for things like razing a building at your location is more simple, all kinds of stuff.

If you're not going with a tiled map, you want full physics, the works.  Otherwise it's not really worth it.

The two are not mutually exclusive. Ability to see how far you can move is essential to good planning and logistics. What if I want to calculate how many turns it will take for a unit to reach X ? Fine, you can make it like in Heroes of Might and Magic games where it displays number of turns to the cursor. But it gets complicated when you visit some places along the way, or do other time-consuming actions like casting adventure spells. Highlighting squares reachable within current turn doesn't cut it for anyone who wants to do a halfway-decent job planning turns. By keeping distances fairly simple game designer pushes some calculations on the player, but also encourages more careful planning. There's a good reason why so many puzzle games are tile-based. (No, I don't consider games like Zuma 'puzzle games'. I had DROD or Fish Fillets in mind)

Lack of any time/distance measuring tool must be on of reasons why so many RTS games suck strategy-wise.

Heh...  HoMM games are on tiles. :)  They just have it defaulted to not show them.

Depends. From the screenies, it looks like map control happens on the cloth map, and the actual combat tactics on a square grid. The former could happen on a hex grid, but the latter shouldn't ever take place on a hex grid, for the sake of the player's sanity. Just like there's plenty of good reasons map control oriented wargames (think Panzer General and the like) use hex grids, there's equally many great reasons miniature wargames don't.

There are a number of turn based board games that have real movement systems. Most miniatures games for instance. There is no grid. You move where ever you want, but you only have X units of range. You can engage anything within Y units of range, etc.

Might be more complicated though in implementation than it'd be worth.

On paper it sounds simple that a group of 10 units can all move 2 inches or whatever per round. But are you actually going to use a ruler to measure each and every one? Or would you just do it by eye?

Well, you say that.  But a lot of newer miniatures games use grid systems.    And some games (like pretty much everything wizards of the coast) that once were not grid-based are now switching or have switched to grid systems from regular measurements.   I suspect the only thing keeping warhammer and 40k from going grid is the 20+ years of not-grid system, and the only thing keeping other mini games from boing it, like warmachine, is the years of using warhammer terrain.

The reasons for using grids in tabletop systems are obviously tied to issues of usability and bookkeeping, which given a decent UI are -totally irrelevant- for a computer game.  It is pretty funny to see a bunch of people respond to a serious question with 'rar rar I like squares so there'.

Frankly, though, they're right; using squares makes essentially no sense (the arguable eyeball estimate advantage being obviated by the whole 1.4x cost for diagonal movement, which isn't present in hex or offset systems) but if enough nerds expect it, it's what they'll get.  Design ennui is a terrible thing, although concepts like ZOC etc are probably easier.

In short, squares suck for everyone who isn't OCD but they'll never, ever go away so just ... stop thinking about it.

It's actually pretty easy. You have a ruler, you move the first guy in a formation based on that then move the rest to just liine up where they were. If it's not a game with hard formations (ie. pure skirmish) you use the ruler for each guy. However, they tend to be nearby each other so most of the time you just move the one again and eyeball it for most of the others.

Also much of the time you're not moving your full amount, just enough to attack or reach the edge of the forest, etc. So you can often just sort of swing the ruler over a bunch of guys and go "yea, they can all make it to the fort entrance" and just move them.

As someone mentioned, some skirmish games (WotC primariliy) have gone grid, but most miniature games still are free form.

As for squares vs. hexes, I don't really care much. I've played enough board games with squares (e.g. chess) where the board is a pretty distant abstraction from the landscape that the movement part of things doesn't bother me. Hexes might be more accurate for distance, but that's just one small part of a large number of gameplay items. Plus, you can get "closer" to accuracy if you do something like 2 points to move horizontal/vertical, 3 points for a diagonal.

If there were a vote involved, I'd vote for a Hex grid.  However, I can live with squares.

I for one prefer hex grids for sci-fi games and squares for fantasy, just because I always thought that shapes with side numbers divisible by 3 look high-tech (go figure). But I would be happy with either one.

Most games

Most games that use squares are actually using rounded off (squared off) octagons. i.e. orthogonal and diagonal movement is the same cost, and the total movement is the sum of orthogonal and diagonal moves.

That about sums it up for me as well.

Sammual

I agree with Sammual's agreeance

A game is a game.  hex or square.   I'm sure I'll have fun either way.

Same here. I really don't care that much.

Why not triangles?

A grid of some sort is a necessary abstraction. Remember, the grid isn't just for movement, it also determines resources available to cities. Granted, it's probably possible to make it free-form, but the amount of programming involved in tracking the various interactions on such a map are more difficult by at least an order of magnitude. Furthermore, dealing with such a map is likewise harder on the player. Part of the fun of resource management games is that enough of the tedium of managing resources is abstracted enough to make it easy to follow. The ideal shape for this is a grid. It makes the movement and landform a little unrealistic, but it eliminates unnecessary "thinkery" while playing.

OK see if I can write this without power going out in house again.Was much longer and more in depth, but scratch that.

Squares vs. Hex in relation to calculations and AI, VERY much doubt has any significant impact on gameplay.

Squares force more units to be affected by AOE events.

Hexes force advancement or retreat on every move, this can have a large influence on gameplay. Two units on opposing sides just want to move up one space, this movement may force them to get 2 spaces closer to each other (1 per side, draw it if you have to ).

Squares allow for much easier placement of square structures, which most structures are. Formations are easier and I imagine... easier for an art team to design battlefields.

Hexes better calculate movement in 6 directions, however VERY poorly in 2 (up and down)

Squares allow for more flanking opportunities.

Squares are easier to relate to.

Any other shapes...

Triangle... a square represents two isosceles right triangles and a hexagon is 6 equilateral triangles....so we really are using triangles.

Octagon... is what square grids usually REALLY are in a game, just the holes are filled in visually.  And every unit in the game has the ability to warp past the holes.