Civ 5 Will Let You Import and Convert Civ 4 Maps 142
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.'"
Square to hexagon conversion (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Square to hexagon conversion (Score:2, Interesting)
What probably would be more interesting is ability to create, convert and design your own custom units.
Re:Square to hexagon conversion (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Well my only wish... (Score:5, Interesting)
It should really get a more heatfriendly graphics mode.
Re:Square to hexagon conversion (Score:3, Interesting)
I wouldn't be opposed to Civ5 having both hexagon and square modes. That would solve the conversion problem, too.
Re:Square to hexagon conversion (Score:5, Interesting)
Try looking at how the game Elemental, War of Magic [elementalgame.com] 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 (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow, that diagram was actually really informative. In hindsight it's amazingly obvious :D
Linux support (Score:1, Interesting)
I love Civ, and I've got the anthology + Civ IV expansions. Thing is, they all currently run under wine (with no-cd patches), mostly.
I hope (but not too highly), the same can be said for Civ V. 2000 bonus points for no DRM. I would buy it then.
Re:Square to hexagon conversion (Score:4, Interesting)
Going from a 8 neighborhood to a 6 neighborhood bears implications that are interesting but make conversion non ideal in most cases. If what you want is a nice map of Italy that looks about the same in Civ5, this is fine. But in the random map you loved so much in Civ4, some straits will disappear, some part of the sea will become lakes and just don't count on roads to be correctly converted.
Anyone remember SimCopter? (Score:4, Interesting)
Its not exactly the same, but I remember enjoying SimCopter a lot because I could take SimCity 2000 maps and load them up in SimCopter and fly around them in 3D. The nostalgia feeling of loading my best cities and being able to play in them was fantastic. I could see people not wanting to lose their custom maps in Civ4, and this is an excellent solution.
I loved loading up a SC2000 map with the army base and stealing the army chopper. This was the closest thing you could get to 3D GTA at the time.
Re:Game Speed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Square to hexagon conversion (Score:3, Interesting)
If I were doing it, I'd "render" the terrain, then re-divide it into the new hexes , and infer the new tiles by the contents of the new grid, including cities, rivers, bonuses, etc. I don't know whether that would work cleanly, but it gets rid of that problem, at least; what used to be in 1,1 is still geographically close to 0,0, even if cell contents get moved, merged, or divided. Further, if a waterway runs between diagonal squares, it's likely that the corresponding hexes will also be contiguous.
I have no idea whether they're going to do something like that, though, and it might take a heck of a lot of tweaking before that method became viable.