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Turnbased strategy: Free movement on a risk-like map?

Erik · 2018-06-10T20:17:02

Hi Im doing a turnbased strategy game like (the management part of) total war. It's near sci-fi post apoc, you control an empire in ww3. The map is risk-like (each managemable "city" is a region of land such as "western europe" or "west coast US"). Im thinking about leaving army/navy movement "free", meaning they move on a high-resolution grid instead of jumping between the actual regions (which is normally what these games do). See pic below for an example. You move both your armies (blue rectangles. The rightmost army will move along the lines into the western region) into the western region and press end turn. Both these armies will then fight in that region and try to conquer it. Is this too wierd? It gives distance a better feel than single-jump between regions, but might become unclear to the player. (basically an army/navy is always in a single region (the region "under" the current tile), it just uses the real distance when moving around).

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by suliman June 06, 2018 07:10 AM

13 comments, last by suliman 6 years ago

Kavik Kang

-217

June 09, 2018 01:38 AM

"Gamers don't miss what they have never had."

I don't want to discourage the original poster, I hope he or she succeeds in what they are trying to do. This discussion just really caught my attention because it is such a perfect illustration of how the modern gaming world is three generations behind where game and simulation design already was in the 1980's. "Lost knowledge" is a much more common thing than people think it is, and this is exactly what has happened in the game industry.

You wouldn't believe what my suggestion would be here if I was willing to give it. Literally 3 generations of simulation design ahead of the discussion. The modern game industry really and truly is 3 generations behind where we already were before they even started re-inventing the wheel from scratch.

"I wish that I could live it all again."

jbadams

26,386

June 09, 2018 01:47 AM

Enough Kavik.

If you want to actually contribute to the discussion by providing suggestions, that is welcome. People would read and evaluate your suggestion.

If you're not willing to actually give your suggestion, please just stop posting instead. You're derailing an otherwise productive discussion for no reason. Rhetoric about lost history or what you perceive to be the failings of the video game industry are off topic within this discussion.

//EDIT: To be 100% clear, I am not censoring you or preventing you from discussing those topics if you really wish to do so. I am telling you they aren't welcome in other people's on topic discussions. Use your blog, or start your own topic.

Suggesting existing games that may be a good reference for relevant mechanics is a relevant and welcome contribution.

Suggesting how to implement or improve something would be a relevant and welcome contribution.

Rambling about lost history, how far ahead table top design is, how far behind video game design is or anything similar is off topic and should be taken elsewhere, and for the benefit of other members anything further along those lines will be removed.

- Jason Astle-Adams

Scouting Ninja

4,574

June 09, 2018 02:18 AM

On 6/6/2018 at 9:10 AM, suliman said:

Im thinking about leaving army/navy movement "free", meaning they move on a high-resolution grid instead of jumping between the actual regions (which is normally what these games do).

What about a Navmesh? Then you could also do fancy stuff like movement per day etc.

Since it is a 2D game you wouldn't even need a complex Navmesh. Just something to store the volume of the surface the objects can move on. If a point is not in that volume, you can't move to it.

The other advantage is that you can use linear algebra to make your AI "intercept" targets and flank. With a grid the possible paths could be too long for such manovers; reducing the available options.

Although the grid is probably still a good idea. It makes unit arrangement easier. Especially with a hex grid if you use the hex point to arrange units.

If your map is build with bottlenecks and the AI doesn't react immediately then intercepting and flanking could still be achieved with ease.

suliman

1,720

Author

June 10, 2018 08:17 PM

The armies would work exactly like in modern total war games moving on the map, but there wouldn't be any cities on the map. Instead the region you end your turn in determines if you fight that region (actually fight all enemy armies positioned in that region).

Having "free movement" (a tilebased grid, instead of region-based movement) might make it easier for me to handle land vs sea. Land-armies would turn into "transported" armies if you move into a sea tile, and turn back into their normal state if moved back. Navies ("armies" composed of ship units) would only be allowed to move on sea tiles.

But the region-based movement would simplify for the player I think. And be more in line with what the player would expect from such a game-map.

Im still not decided Changing it into region-movement isn't trivial with my setup so that is also a factor.

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Turnbased strategy: Free movement on a risk-like map?

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