| Centers of tiles | Edges of tiles |
|---|---|
|
|
Pros and cons
- Centers gives you STRAIGHT things (on a hex grid, it’s the only way to get straights!)
- Roman Roads
- Canals
- Large rivers
- Edges gives you meandering things (on a hex grid, centers only give wiggles at very large scale)
- River valleys
- Realistic medieval roads
- Modern roads in mountains and hills (tend to wiggle crazily)
- Movement is simplified with centers: If you’re on the tile, you’re on the road/river
- Inhibition of movement is simplified with edges: Civilization games have traditionally given a move penalty AND a combat penalty to any tile-to-tile move that crosses an edge containing a river
My leanings…
One thing in particular that struck me from looking at the pictures:
Straight roads look so terrible that every single Civilization game since Civ1 has artifically wiggled them when rendering!
In particular, with 3D games (Civ4, Civ5 especially) this actively damages gameplay – it’s much too hard for the player to see at a glance which tiles are connected by roads, and to what extent. So much so that they cry-out for a “disable the wiggling effect on road-rendering” setting.
Also: I’m happpy to solve the “movement” problem by saying that if you’re in a tile that borders a road or a river, you are assumed to be “on” that road/river, with special-case handling under the hood that handles cases where two roads/rivers border the same tile. It increases the connectedness “for free” – but that’s how Civ games tend to do it anyway: encourage the player to put roads everywhere!
Thoughts on a postcard…