Huh? I can think of few systems less dynamical and arbitrary as the the civ system. Not only is the map generated (unless you play a scenario of course)->arbitrary, but the province sizes are set and of same shape and size->not dynamic. Unless you're thinking about the way cultural borders work in civ4, those are pretty dynamic...General_Sun said:
Let me see if I got this right; you want a provincial system like the current system (maybe smaller provinces), with the opportunity of moving an army both between provinces and inside a single province? So if an army is within a given province, it will receive combat modifiers from that province only? So the army can only be in one province at a time?
I think you should rethink that a little, considering a single sprite is usually >1000pixels
But I do get your point Something else to consider is that the hardcore paradox fans aren't graphics fanatics. Many enjoy making their own little sprites and stuff to make the game "visually stimulating". My point is that the easier it is, the better. Many of us, including me, also appreciates that the less time paradox spends on graphics, the more time they can spend on the things that matters.You can't have a working system of free movement without a zone of control for each and every unit. It's not optional, and it's not, and I'm willing to bet on this, implementable to the degree where the game consists of literally thousands of independent units. Unless you are willing to go into a complete turn based game like rtw, it's just not possible.
It's the "when invading" where the problem lies. The area that is expanded have to be correlated with the area the army controls, or atleast have controlled. The current system does this very well I think.
I meant that in a system with free movement, a unit can be everywhere, i.e 28,5% of the unit is in a city, and 71,5% is in a forest nearby. The unit then have to have 28,5% combat penalty for beeing in the city and 71,5% for beeing in the woods. To calculate these ratios, there's alot of cpu cycles. In my opinion they're wasted when the province system we have now is available.
Now to the really crazy part. You want to let armies, that consists of thousands of soldiers, to be able to take small objectives like forts, mines and harbours. In grand strategy, armies takes control over areas, not smaller objectives. At some point you have to abstract things, and I like that abstraction to be on geographical areas (read: provinces) and not anything smaller. You quite simply want a lower level of abstraction, and that's a perfectly valid opinion. But at that point it's not a grand strategy game anymore, it's just a strategy game. RTW tries to combine both, and in my opinion it's just neither here nor there. Too simplistic in a grand strategy sense to be grand strategy and too simplistic in a tactical sense to be a regular rts. The whole game is a big compromise between semi-historical, semi-complicated and semi-tactical, and not something I'm willing to spend alot of time on. It's not that it's a bad game in itself, but it's pandering to the masses where war=cool stuff=alot of fun. Since every company has finite resources (and I gotta say, people who come up with ideas like this usually forgets that), something has to go. RTW isn't pandering to the map-loving, spreadsheet-writing and history-interested guys most of us are, and therefore they have focused more on action and immediate entertainment than the more complex features that paradox is so good at. So let us let paradox do what they're good at, instead of asking for a system that is unattainable at best, gamebreaking at worst. (Hate to leave it at that, but I'm gonna
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