Civ 5 Will Let You Import and Convert Civ 4 Maps

bbretterson writes "From an interview Bitmob conducted with Civilization 5 Lead Designer Jon Shafer: 'You can import Civ 4 maps into the world builder and convert them into Civ 5 maps, including all the units and cities and stuff on it — the conversion process will just do that for you automatically. We're hoping that the first week Civ 5 is out, people will use that function and port all of the Civ 4 stuff over to Civ 5, so everything will be out there already.'"

Comments

Square to hexagon conversion

[Maian]

Civ 4 map plots are squares. Civ 5 are hexagons. I don't see an easy conversion process that won't produce real not-just-semantic map differences (e.g. how to convert diagonal waterways where in a 4x4, one diagonal is water and the other diagonal is land, and ships can travel through the water diagonal?)

Re:Square to hexagon conversion

[Shrike82]

Yeah this was my first question too. Nothing in the article about it, but it hesitantly alludes to the fact that the only things confirmed to "carry over" will be cities and units. So this could very well be an approximation rather than a conversion. Cities roughly in the same place, land masses roughly the same size and shape, rivers running the same general course and touching the same cities etc.

Units will be interesting though. If you import a map with huge unit stacks they'll have to be spread out to conform to the new one-unit-per-hex requirement. Suddenly a stack of doom will become a huge traffic jam across your civilisation!

Re:Square to hexagon conversion

[Anonymous Coward]

From a computational chemist point of view, who uses both square and hexagonal lattice all the time, it isn't that difficult/strange actually. Thanks to the fact that periodic boundaries are used, it will just be a 'simple' conversion. The main issue one might encounter though is the fact that you'll go from 8 neighbours to 6 neighbours (if I am not mistaken the diagonals are also counted as neighbours in Civ4..., otherwise it's 4 to 6).
Plus I believe they actually wanted to limit the diagonal travelling, so it makes sense to prevent the diagonal 4x4, instead of encouraging it.
No, I am not worried about the conversion of the lattice/map. What I am worried about is the fact that in Civ5 it won't be possible to have more than 1! army per tile. So what will happen to the other dozen armies that were on the converted tile?

Re:Square to hexagon conversion

[sjwt]

Try looking at how the game Elemental, War of Magic development is going, that might be more your cup of tea.

Its been developed with the Mod tools, and they are realeasing them with it, its currntly in a true Beta, you know the kind where one can post feedback, and sugest changes that are more then cosmetic or extreamly minor.

Re:Square to hexagon conversion

[gravos]

Civ 4 map plots are squares. Civ 5 are hexagons. I don't see an easy conversion process that won't produce real not-just-semantic map differences

Someone at reddit posted a diagram of how to do this fairly easily: http://i.imgur.com/lpJRd.png

The only problem is with moving resources out of city limits, etc... things which may or may not be practical problems.

Re:Square to hexagon conversion

[dingen]

Hexagons? What are they doing to Civ? :D

Heh, a true fan I see, learning of new features through a comment on Slashdot, months after the developer released this info to the world.

Re:Square to hexagon conversion

[Ed Avis]

The map for Civ 6 is going to be based on Penrose tiles.

Re:Square to hexagon conversion

[Tridus]

Making it so that moving in every direction uses the same amount of movement to go the same distance. Unlike the diagonals on squire tiles in Civ 4.

The real question is why hexes weren't in use all along.

Well my only wish...

[g4b]

My only wish about civ is, that I can turn down graphics more, than in part 4.

It should really get a more heatfriendly graphics mode.

Rumours

[Mr Europe]

Reliable rumours say that civ5 will use a super close view where most of the screen is filled with face of the selected unit. This enables the player to fully see the facial expressions and and have richer gaming experience. Of course You can take a bigger view, but then you will see only clouds.

And the "Large World" consists of 20 hexagons.

To give all the equal opportunity to fight in wars, all unit are of same power. The Phalangs will successfully defend against Warships. This is good, because it would be sad if rich people would win all the wars.

Alpha Centauri II

[metamatic]

I've never been into the Civ games, but I'd buy Alpha Centauri II. I wish Firaxis would develop it.

YO DAWG

[Anonymous Coward]

YO DAWG, we heard you like things that stand the test of time, so we made a game that could stand the test of time, whilst you built a civilization to stand the test of time.

The Alpha Corollary to Godwin's Law

[twoallbeefpatties]

As a discussion about Civilization increases in length, the probability that someone will suggest a sequel to Alpha Centauri approaches 1.