eXplore, the first of the X's

[Draco18s]

Re, fully explored tiles and Never Again:
Yeah, "discovering" new resources in Civ 4 and having those deposits automatically show up anywhere I've sent units before (even in the stone age!) doesn't make any sense.

Per fog, there's no unit movement so maintaining visual presence isn't important.  I could be OK with that.

[Velihopea]

at the moment I'm not doing any sort of "visual fog of war."  What are folks' thoughts about that?

Fog of war is interesting when there are units that are hidden in it: It creates tension of the unknown and can be used to make surprise assaults on the unwary and provides tactical depth to the game.

Since there are no units, I don't see the point of fog of war. Seeing what the enemy is building once you have located them sounds ok.

[x4000]

 

[Toranth]

If you were willing to add the complication, a distance-based time delay might be interesting.  No fog of war, so you'll always find out what your opponent is building - but if his city is 10,000 miles away, your info will be a few turns behind.  Then having trade routes, or some form of faster travel to-and-from could reduce that delay.

[x4000]

That's intriguing, but I see a lot of interface problems with it and "bug reports" from players when things pop into view fully constructed when they approach, when the things weren't even visible under construction prior to that, heh.

[doctorfrog]

I'd be sure to have a plausible in-game explanation for not having fog of war, because that's the kind of thing that certain folks will kvetch about. Low-resolution sats would do this well enough.

Alternative, for the heck of it (not because I think it's an amazing idea): The need to maintain a spy satellite network (technology accessible from the beginning of the game). But nothing that requires much work or takes too long to re-enable. Just something that causes, or allows you to cause, temporary blind spots, by destroying or losing the controlling buildings.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how this title develops. Skyward Collapse didn't grab me, but I've been hoping that Arcen would take another stab in the nX genre direction.

[x4000]

Yeah, I've thought about having to maintain a satellite network, too, but it is one of those things that seems like it would either be too powerful or too fiddly.  Not sure.

Anyway, I'm not 100% absolutely ruling out the other level of fog of war in the first place.  I'm not sure that it's warranted, but just graying out tiles is pretty straightforward to do and would look fine enough.  My main gripe isn't a technical one, it's that I'm not sure it really adds anything for this game.  I could be wrong, though -- the sense of the unknown really might be something that is helped by having that in a positive way, so we'll see.

Skyward Collapse definitely isn't something I consider 4X, by the way.  It's a very experimental god game in my opinion.  In a 4x you need a lot more direct control over things.  Anyhow, thanks for the kind words.

[screamingpalm]

Some people get hyped for new releases based on pretty graphics and screenshots. I find myself drooling over reading Chris Park's ideas for a new game.

So hyped! <3



(Whoops meant to post this in the announcement thread )

[doctorfrog]

Skyward Collapse definitely isn't something I consider 4X, by the way.  It's a very experimental god game in my opinion.  In a 4x you need a lot more direct control over things.  Anyhow, thanks for the kind words.

I think what I wanted to say was "game what plays on a map," but I got lazy. :

Also I'm probably going to circle back to Skyward Collapse one of these days because the concept is still worth trying out, but the early concepts for this game are very tantalizing. I enjoyed about 2/3 of the Civ 4 games I played, until it got down to moving giant stacks of units around, and then it got kind of tiresome. It's a model that deserves being shaken up--and it was in Civ 5 a bit, but not quite enough for my interests.

You got my attention, Arcen, but then again, you always do!

[ElOhTeeBee]

Your scouting ships leave microsensors seeded in their wake that, while harmless aside from the intel they gather, are impractical to clean up due to their tiny size. It'd be like finding a needle in a thousand haystacks, over and over again.

There, an explanation for why you can't see stuff you haven't scouted but you can always see stuff you have.

[x4000]

Your scouting ships leave microsensors seeded in their wake that, while harmless aside from the intel they gather, are impractical to clean up due to their tiny size. It'd be like finding a needle in a thousand haystacks, over and over again.

There, an explanation for why you can't see stuff you haven't scouted but you can always see stuff you have.

Nice!  That is absolutely perfect.

[Nodor]

I think one of the most annoying things about Civ:BE is that you land on a planet, you didn't bother to scout it from space, and while you can launch satellites, you can't see over a hill...

Sometimes, even in a 4x; exploration can be dumb.