[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Idea/suggestion: Different city radii

[Jason Short <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ross W. Wetmore wrote:
> At 01:05 PM 02/04/04 -0500, Jason Short wrote:
>
> > Alan Schmitt wrote:
> > I do think you're going about it the wrong way: you should think not in 
> > terms of the specific shape that the city area takes, but instead make 
> > the shape a circle and just use the radius.  The same concept could 
> > apply to units' vision areas, which are also circles.
> > jason
>
> Except that constant distance on a civ map is a square, not a circle.
> Thus all these circle things produce really odd effects like being
> able to move out and bash something you can't see depending on just
> what direction it is coming from.
>
> Circles are obscene :-).
From a theoretical point of view, you are quite right.

From a practical point of view, circles look very Pretty, and they've 
been used for just about everything in every Civ game (if one considers 
that most of the squares Civ uses are also circles).  Currently they're 
only embedded in freeciv in a few locations (city radius & starting 
vision, AFAIK).  To try to get rid of them is probably a lost cause, but 
don't let that stop you from trying :-).
> In any event, Civ3 has a weighting function that totals the culture
> costs from all nearby cities. The area covered is not a simple centered
> shape.
Makes sense.  But the weight is based on pythagorean distance, not "real 
map distance".  So we're back to the point above - it's done this way 
because it looks pretty.
As an aside, if we had a hexagonally tiled map a real-map-distance 
radius would define a hexagon.  This would be both pretty and functional.
jason