cephalo

Should rivers be between map tiles, or on map tiles?

▼

Should rivers be between map tiles, or on map tiles?

from Elemental Forums

I want to start a debate regarding whether rivers should run between squares or on squares. This may or may not be an important issue for Elemental, but down the road this will have a big impact on what we can do with mods. I want to get people talking about this early because this issue might involve changing the game engine. Modding is going to be an important part of Elemental and those of us with modding experience ought to be thinking ahead and thinking out loud.

Back in the old days, square tiled game maps used to run rivers through the center of each map tile. This natural, obvious setup allowed ships to travel along rivers, as they are known to do in the real world. Take a look at this screenshot from Merchant Prince II:

I took this picture of Budapest because the river running through it, the Danube, is a major trade corridor. I think it is very cool and fun that you can sail from Venice, through the Black Sea and up the Danube all the way to Budapest by boat! This doesn’t just happen in the real world either, as witnessed by this scene from a popular fantasy movie:

By the time Civ3 and Civ4 came around we were seeing rivers that actually flowed between map tiles. I am not sure why the Civ series switched to this method of presenting rivers.

The only advantage that I can see for presenting rivers this way is that if you want to assign a penalty for crossing a river to attack another tile, having the player actually ‘cross’ the river can make this mechanic more clear. However, using the old style method of river tiles, it is also very easy to give a river tile a defensive bonus. For example, in the Total War series, whoever is defending a river tile can set up his defense on the opposite bank of the attackers approach. It works just fine.

Aside from that one slight advantage, I can see only disadvantages. For one thing, the later Civ series also uses rivers as lines of communication like roads, but because the rivers are between the tiles and the roads are on the tiles, it can be very unclear when cities and resources are connected by a river/road combination. It takes a bit of investigation by an experienced player to predict the results, and is very unintuitive.

The biggest disadvantage of running the rivers between tiles is then you cant use them for units that travel on water! That’s a big disadvantage in my opinion. I can’t make a Merchant Prince mod with that! I can’t even make an LotR mod unless I leave out stuff! ^^^ According to the existing Elemental screenshots, so far at this early stage they are going the Civ4 route and running rivers between tiles.

I for one would like to see them redo the river mechanics from scratch, and do it the old fashioned way, on the tiles. I know it would take alot of work to make navigable rivers. Units in Elemental arent simply icons as in earlier games, they need to fit into a 3D world. Maybe it's too much work, but I hope not.

What do you guys think?

elemental
64,248 views 31 replies
Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

The crux of the matter is that rivers are interesting and strategic from one major point: which side of the river are you on? When placed between tiles this logic is built into the map system...youre on either on tile x or tile x+1.

I wouldn't say that's the only major strategic interest of rivers. I'd say river transportation is at least as interesting, and sections of rivers that are too wide to ford would be plenty interesting, as well. (Although I suppose the latter is perfectly manageable with in-between tile rivers as well - any chance we'll be seeing any of those?).

I imagine it might be possible to include river transportation anyways, though it wouldn't be as straightforward as in-tile river transportation... Just like determining "which side of the river are you on?" isn't as straightforward as with between-tile rivers. I suppose it comes down to which of those you care about more, and/or on how much work would go into resolving each of those issues in the respective river system...

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

I agree that adding places along rivers that are impossible to pass, and being able to build bridges across these wide-zones, and later destroying said bridges to make them impassable again, could add alot of fun.

Also, some nifty water magic could flood the rivers to delay your enemy's invasion :D

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top

hmmm not sure if said yet, i would like to see rivers on tiles and have them directly effect the land areound them, so when i cast move water on the river i will change the land scape around where the old river use to travle. could be used to stop city bounses, mabie destroy a town to have a river diverted into the center of it. just think it would be cool. soory for the slopy post dont have much time but want to get this idea out before i forget hehe.

Reply #29 from Elemental Forums Top

One other problem with rivers in tiles is it may require a hex based map instead of square based.  Otherwise it may be hard to get the river sections to join up when they're 'diagonals'.   Hex maps have an 'east-west' problem but it's less a problem and rivers on hexes look quite natural.

Oh well, as the idea is nixed, it's moot.

Too bad tho.  It'd be nice, and I've liked hexes better'n squares since Avalon Hill came out with them in Gettysburg(?) and  mostly dropped squares since Tactics 2.

Reply #30 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting BoogieBac, reply 11
Gonna have to veto this converstaion...we originally had rivers ON tiles and, after discussing it over internally (and with some insight from Soren Johnson and the civ4 team) we're definatly going with the 'inbetween tiles' method.

The crux of the matter is that rivers are interesting and strategic from one major point: which side of the river are you on? When placed between tiles this logic is built into the map system...youre on either on tile x or tile x+1. Placing the river down the center of the tile requires a secondary system to be built in to determine such things and clutters up logic and movement code. It may sound like a better solution, but seriously consider all ALL the ways rivers can merge in a tile based system.

Plus most of the above suggestions can be built into the 'between tiles' river system, so everyone should be happy

I don't think that we were really advocating moving the skinny rivers from between tiles to the middle of the tile. That does sound difficult.

However, rivers that are an entire tile seem to offer a lot more tactical and strategic options because you can have different types of river tile (ford, shipping lane, bridgeable, etc). It seems like it'd be pretty easy to mod in, but why not include it? I'd like having rivers with a little more variety.

Of course, if it's already been decided, it'll just have to be modded in.

Reply #31 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Teucrian, reply 30


Of course, if it's already been decided, it'll just have to be modded in.

That's kinda my concern. This is a kindof complicated issue with the graphics engine, and as such it may or may not be modded in. I was hoping to catch this early, but it appears the decision was made pre-beta.