Hexes would be a pretty significant change...I'm not qualified to speculate how much would change, but at meatshielding units at least would be harder, since any given unit could be attacked from six different squares instead of four, and in a straight line of units, each block of the wall could face up to three attacks up close instead of one.
The Roadways FFA game is going along at a nice pace. Here's an update for the interested bystander (other players don't look!):
For reference, the players are:
Black (Hachi) - Bob
Red (Colin)- Me
Yellow (Grit) - Brick
Teal (Hachi) - theether
The fighting's progressed to the point where I've managed to pop Gold Rush once, which is how I afforded the Stealth. It seems like Bob and Brick have really been going at it hammer and tongs because their CO meters have charged up quite fast and Brick hasn't made any moves towards me. Actually you can see one of Bob's Tanks next to Brick's Lab, breaking down the pipe seam. That's what I'm doing too - next turn, my Artillery and Neotank could finish breaking the southern seam and let me start capturing. Not sure if it will succeed, or even if I should try, however. It might be better to just stop Bob from capturing it and build up money, since even Hachi can't match Colin for unit spam once he gets going. Still, there's something to be said for having all of Brick's bases and cities...
Up north, theether and I are in a standoff. Neither of us can capture the city east of his Lab, so we're just twiddling our thumbs and building up indirects. I might be able to get his Lab if I can move enough Rockets and Bombers/Neotanks in range - must consider that option.
The Game Boy Wars games had hex tiles I think (or at least one of them did), but I don't know that much about the pre-AW wars games (other than the Classic maps are from the original game, and Sensei is from a SNES game I think).
Interesting that this came up because I commented briefly on this topic on our other forum not too long ago:
Xmo5 Wrote:Hex tiles are interesting to consider, and other similar games have used them (I enjoy the comparatively simple Hex Empire quite a bit). In a lot of ways I really like the idea because movement seems more realistic, but it could wreak havoc on gameplay, assuming other things were kept constant. Meatshielding would be so much different because of the number of exposed sides, etc. If we had a hex grid, I think we'd have to redistribute unit power (or cost, or both) to some degree to account for that- a flat wall of infantry in any orientation could still be broken with any 2HKOs, so defense, especially for infantry, might have to increase to account for that. Alternatively, I know some games don't allow units to pass through tiles adjacent to an enemy unit. You can move onto an adjacent tile, but you have to stop there. See Warnet's example here. I hated that rule, but it is realistic and probably a good idea for a more exposed hex grid format. I guess my general thought is "I do like hex grids, but I think other changes would be necessary to make the game equivalently playable and I'm not sure what those would be so I can't really say if it would make the game better or worse."
This is part of a greater discussion on diagonal vs horizontal fronts, brought up courtesy of Blanci. I'd curious to see if any of you guys have experience or input from your perspective; I think it's a really interesting discussion to have.
My current prototype (which can barely be called one since there's nothing resembling AW yet) uses a square grid, but I've been mulling over using a hex grid instead.
It was done in the Game Boy Wars games, yes, but with an offset square grid instead of hexes. Same thing functionally though.
As Xmo5's discussion shows, it would require a lot of balancing to make it work, or alternatively, a game designed around that from the beginning onwards.
Personally I wouldn't mind trying to make a game with a hex grid from the start, but the Grids plugin I'm working with costs more money to use hex grids so for now I'm prototyping with rect grid until I get deep enough into it to justify spending the money.
Are you using Unity? It seems odd that you have to pay for any middleware, especially for something so simple.
At any rate, squares are perfectly useful for strategy games and are somewhat helpful as it makes the AI more equal to the human player.
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(May 14th, 2016, 15:28)antisocialmunky Wrote: Are you using Unity? It seems odd that you have to pay for any middleware, especially for something so simple.
It's a preference choice, using a plugin to help manage some of the low level grid stuff. Not necessary for sure, but helpful.
GG guys, and congrats to Fenn for winning the FFA!
I came close to being able to capture Brick's lab, but Brick put up a dogged defense and I couldn't both kill his units and Fenn's who were trying to take the lab on the same turns. Theether abandoning the game spelled the end for me, as my troops on that front were largely static defenses and entirely out of place to contest most of his suddenly neutral holdings with Fenn. It also meant that Brick would have a permanent funding disadvantage to both Fenn & I, since he had no opportunity to grab any of the free properties, and it was entirely unnecessary to boot since I had a Rocket in position to deny Fenn's attempt to capture Theenter's HQ.
On that note, I propose two RB house rules for any additional 3+ player games we create on the site:
1. Do not abandon a match to prevent your HQ from being captured. Doing so is massively unfair to anyone who invests in seizing it and throws the game balance into chaos.
2. No diplomacy ("press") allowed. This wasn't a problem in the Roadways game to the best of my knowledge, but I have people in two other FFAs who keep pestering me with offers of collusion, as though Advance Wars has a victory condition besides "eliminate everyone". It's not particularly fun to join a game where you're doomed from early on because your opponents secretly agree to eliminate you first, and such arrangements eliminate the "game sense" aspect of Advance Wars strategy, removing one's obligation to make moves based on their reading of the board.
I'm also interested in joining another RB FFA game, but I'd kind of like to lurk one as well. I invite anyone curious in the game to participate; individual turns don't take more than a few minutes to play and the total time investment required is equivalent or less than that for most strategy board games.
If you do play another ffa or team game I'd love if someone makes a reporting thread. I know it's asking for lots of time from the player, but I found the reporting so far really interesting and I'd like to read more.
I'm still worried about joining another FFA, though a team game is more interesting. Of the two maps, the circle is more interesting (even though I still hate ghost units, they're your only solution here). Of course, what I really am in the mood for is another duel, but I just don't want to go search for a map
![[Image: Roadways1.png]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/sxprtg96mklrwa9/Roadways1.png)
![[Image: hqdefault.jpg]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/fcup8dEDVN0/hqdefault.jpg)
