I was just wondering why the world war maps can't... well, wrap around, in a global, spherical sense.

I first noticed this when I had some naval troops towards the bottom left of Wasserworld, and thought it would be a good idea to invade areas int he upper right of the globe.

To my discontent the camera doesn't exactly wrap around the globe, thus proving that all planets other than earth are actually flat planes and not spheres.

Just wondering if theres any possibility of this being changed in the future.

Yes , I agree that the maps could be wrap-around. I remember playing a game called Empire Deluxe about 10 years ago that had the option of making maps that had an east - west wrap-around. You could send units off the left side of the map and they would appear on the edge of the right. But Icarus, there's no such thing as a North/South shortcut even on the Earth

"there's no such thing as a North/South shortcut even on the Earth"

Not true, you can airlift over the North and South poles.

The South Pole would be virtually impossible, but the US theoretically has the equipment, capabilities, and manpower to airlift over the North pole if they wanted to.

It wouldn't necessarily be the best idea in the world, but it's plausible.

Me.

I think you missed the point. Airlifting over the North Pole would only put you at ..... well, still the North Pole, just a different longitude. It'll never make you appear at the South Pole. :)

If earth had been shaped like a doughnut, however, it would have been possible

I think it would be more interesting to turn the earth inside out (like a bubble). Then you could look up and see China. Vehicular travel would be easier.
It would be aufully dark, however.

well if the hexes were linked together in a manner similar to a soccer ball, or d20 for example, you'd get a wrapping affect. one thing that flat maps fail to convey, and something that people apparently forget, is that there is no way to perfectly map a round object on to a square, so when you talk about the lack of a north south wrap, well hmm, an identical map fitted to a globe would have to lose hexes along the top so you'd get a warping affect instead of a wrap (Like instead of 10 moves from island a to B it'd be 3). I don't know if I'd like all the maps to be retrofitted like that necessarily, or even if it'd be possible for you guys to make such maps, but I think it'd be very interesting to play one all the same.

Well, if they do decide to do spherical wrapping, then they may also proceed to make a spherical chess game.

Then you wouldn't make it square, you'd go the Populous 3 route and actually show the globe as just that... a globe.

Right...

I guess this topic isn't one of my technical strong points.
My goof with the north south
But my original point still stands.

All of this is just convention, N and S are absolute, E and W are relative. I.e. there is such a thing as a north pole, but no such thing as a west pole. North is a LOCATION, west is a DIRECTION. You could just as well have had N and S be relative (a direction) as well: say travelling "up" on a conventional map of America as well as "down" on a conventional map of China would both be travelling North.

Bottom line, no matter which direction (N, SW, E, W, NW, etc.) you travel on a sphere, you eventually wrap around and get back to where you started. This can be approximated on a "flattened" map by having the left and right edges meet, as well as the top and bottom edges. It is not possible to have such a configuration of a 2D surface in a "flat" 3D space, but it is a close enough approximation to a sphere that it works very well in games (and is much easier to program than an actual sphere). Another benefit of such a psudo-sphere over an actual sphere would be that angles and distances would not be affected (see traj's posting). Of course, Strategos believes that the Earth is flat (since it says so in the Bible), so for his sake alone we should keep the game as is.

It should be remembered that the Earth is sphere-like, not an actual sphere.

Of course, there is good reason for this "convention", seeing as the earth rotates around a north-south pole. I imagine that this verbal orientation comes to us from an appreciation of astronomy (there not being a west-east pole) and not from geometry (any line through a sphere).

the north south wrapping does work you just have to shift your prespective if the noth pole is the middle of the map then the entire edge of the map is the south pole and with only a minimum lose of reality then the wrapping is fairly geograpicly correct

Yes, but it's "incompatible" with east/west-wrapping. If you have both, the world will be donut-shaped.

i'm affraid you've misunderstood what i was getting at the donut shaped word isn't required

geographicly most maps are composed by imagining the sphere is cut from the poles to the equator and then the gaps are then filled in. using this method does create a donut map if you then add north-south wrapping

but this isn't the only method, the one i'm talking about has the globe sliced from pole to pole with the image making a star shape not the row of boats. this can then be mapped and if using this representation you can do 4 point wrapping,

the accuracy of this sort of map can be greatly improved if you use two maps (1 for each hemishpere) then the wrapping is a straight cross over from one map to the other

Assumptions:
- The request is to go from flat square maps to maps that can be directly mapped onto a sphere/spheroid.
- This will mean the world map will lose its simple grid structure and gain more realistic distances.

Opinion:
It's not worth it. A good strategy game must make sacrifices in realism in favour of simplicity and comprehensibility.

(WOOT! 100 posts! This must be celebrated with coffee!)

i agree it's not worth it and in fact i never wanted it, i just wanted to point out that tou could do it if you wanted