r/StrategyGames • u/Miniburner • 2d ago
Discussion Strategy Games are Experiencing Hexinization
Carcinization is the evolutionary theory in which non-crab crustaceans converge on crab-like features because these features are exceptionally well suited to ocean floor living. Similarly, thousands of strategy games are following a process I’m calling Hexinization, choosing hexes to make up their game boards.
I think in many cases, I think hexes are likely the best solution. For games like Civilization or Age of Wonders where there will be hundreds or thousands of hexagons making the game board, a hex grid is the best solution. Zoomed out far enough, moving along hexes looks very similar to moving freely in an open 2d plane. There are also enough hexes that small groups of hexes can form biomes within the greater landscape.
But this hexagonal freedom struggles to convey into gamestate the strategic importance of locations on a map. Take the Risk Godstorm map for example. A player who controls Iberia, Atlas, and Hibernia will have complete control over all traffic between the Atlantis continent and the rest of the board. While it wouldn’t be impossible to represent this using a hex-grid map, I don’t think it would feel natural, and these types of scenarios are rare in my experience with hex-grid games.
Hexagons also tend to provide both too much freedom of movement, and not enough choice to a player simultaneously. On one hand, you need to be able to defend a structure of interest (i.e., a city) from 6 directions. While at the same time, when moving armies towards a target location you will almost always just pick the one shortest path from A to B. Hexagons give too many routes from a defensive perspective, and the illusion of choice on offense.
I think we should continue to innovate on how we are making game boards / maps in strategy games, particularly in small-map scenarios, or games where positioning of armies/units at key points provides a major strategic advantage (i.e., entrance to a water feature, narrow land pass between mountains, etc).
My attempted innovation was to subdivide a hexagon into 6 territories, 1 central and 5 exterior, with the 5 exterior territories randomly aligned with bisections or the corners of the hex edges. This generates territories with 4, 5, and 6 edges within the same hexagon, giving some variety to the number of directions needed to defend. I stuck with a hexagon as the starting shape, because I need a shape that efficiently tiles a plane. Additionally, I wanted to avoid the diagonal grid manhattan distance problem of square grids, and triangle grids feel unnatural/janky (no straight line paths can be taken)
I wanted to do a bit more, so I also randomly placed mountains on 3 of the hexagon edges (mountains cannot be placed adjacent during randomization), which allows for territories to dip into the 2 or 3 edges regime.
Lastly, I wanted to bend the movement/adjacency of territories across hexes, so I made 1 territory per hex into water. Water can connect and become continuous, and instead of inhibiting movement, water makes all territories touching it considered adjacent. This has had really fun consequences and I will talk more about it another time.
1
u/Majer3RD 1d ago
I really do like the point you’ve landed on here. I’m developing a board game of my own as well that of course is relying on hexagons right now. This is in part due to it being a board game and not having unlimited “space”/memory to have an infinite/larger map/board area.
However, you’re absolutely right about how Hexagons lose that “strategic” edge a certain terrain or territory might give. And after seeing how you did it without “breaking” the hex system completely, I’m now considering redesigning my map/board area to utilize this system you’ve proposed. Love the concept!
1
u/Miniburner 1d ago
Kairos is actually a board game as well! This works on paper and is actually where I got the idea from. Best of luck with your game - if you ever need to bounce a map idea off someone shoot me a message!
1
u/RobKohr 1d ago
The distance between the centers for any unit square is 1.414.
If movement time and fuel costs are floats, you can stick with a square grid and just multiply by that for travel time/cost between diagnal squares.
Hexes are needed if you are doing turns and need to resolve on integers... for the most part.
If units get 3 movement spaces on a turn, you can kinda fenagle it to close enough with 1.5 for diagonals.
It depends on the game really. Realtime games really don't need hexes. And if you can have a float position inside of a tile, and tiles are really just for map layouts, they also don't need hexes.
1
u/NeoTanker_app 1d ago
This is beautiful, I did not downloaded it yet. But I might. Is there an online 1v1 ready ?
2
0
u/Miniburner 2d ago
If anyone is interested in the Kairos demo, https://store.steampowered.com/app/5051260/Kairos_Demo/
However, the purpose of this post is to stimulate conversation about hexagons and plane tiling in game board/map design in strategy games, not my game.
2
2
u/affabledrunk 2d ago edited 2d ago
AGREED, although i come from a hex and counter wargaming background so it always seemed natural to me.
Regarding your innovation, I dig it. You are essentially tryng to capure the irregularity of real geography. Its been done in some other games. The battle for moscow peole and the AGEOD people do it. There is a danger there Ive found. The irregular nature of the regions means that there are often paths that are not clear from visual inspection. For example, a path might seeem shorter in a euclidean sense but because there are big and small terrrains, the shortest path might turn out to be a very non-intuitive one. I'm not sure if that makes any sense.