Hi there, I've been working on some concepts for my next game, an online war game set on the Eastern Front. I've been playing war games since Gary Grisgby was making War in Russia on DOS. I've seen all kinds of maps. Most recently I've enjoyed playing Advance Wars on my DS, which used a square map. What do people think about hex versus squares as far as war games are concerned? It seems to me if flanking is a factor in your tactics, than hexes are the best choice? However some of the best games such as Panzer General and Advance Wars have done without flanking effects at the individual unit level. I'd like to start gather research for my design. If you're interested in this kind of project and you have suitable skills, I'd like to know! I'm an experienced software engineer, and I definitely want to make this happen! Kirby

Last non-computerised turn-based war game I played was a Warhammer varient, which didn't use hexes or squares. You can just move units their max move distance in any direction.
Last computer war game I played was Napolean Total War, which is simmilar - in the turn-based section it's pretty much like moving circular tokens across your dining table ;) When resolving a battle, any army tokens within a certain distance from the attacked-unit can count as 'flanking' units (i.e. you draw a circle around the attacked-unit, any armies within the circle participate in the battle).

Do you need to discretise the map into cells?

I feel like the appeal of turn based play is you have certainty about your moves. You know exactly how your units are able to maneuver on the terrain. Unless there's a great game play benefit to doing away with tiles, I don't see why I should?

Both the games I mentioned above are turn-based and do have certainty about how far your units can move without a descritised map. In Napoleon it's visualised the same as in many tile-based games - when you select a unit, the region that it can move to in a single turn is highlighted, it's just that this region is a smoother shape. You can also visualise the "attack region", which is usually a smooth circular shape instead of a group of 9 squares or 7 hexes.
Is there a great gameplay benefit to restricting movement to discrete tiles?

Wouldn't you be spending a lot of time trying to position your pieces, so they're just in-range or just out-of-range? Anyway I'd be interested to check out Napoleon Total War.

As a gameplay decision I would say that dividing the area into cells makes it a lot easier to reason about distances, which is useful in turn-based strategy. It also lets you be clear as to whether certain areas are occupied or not, and makes explicit the case when multiple units are grouped together.

It also makes it much easier to write planning algorithms for if you're developing an AI player.

Of the two, I would prefer hexes for wargames, although they come with their own issues (eg. having to go North-East then South-East to move 2 steps East).

I'm inclined to agree with Kylotan that a free-ranging map is not free from problems. Having a strongly quantized map makes it much easier to tell which units can reach you, which units can't reach you but will be close enough to bombard you, which units you'll be able to reach next turn, etc. I'm not saying that free-ranging maps can't work (they obviously do for the appreciable number of people who play tabletop wargames), but they aren't an obvious choice either.

I tend to prefer hex as well. Squares feel toyish for some reason.

In terms of time and distance scales, I'm thinking a movement speed of 3-5 squares per turn, 4 turns every 24 hours awarded at a randomized time for each player (but the same time each day). In a fighting advance, if the player advances 10 squares per day on average, he will cross half of the board (300 squares) in 30 days of online play. My board will measure 1024x1024. That should be able to comfortably handle half a dozen to a dozen players on each side of the front.

Just my opinion, but hexes feel much more natural than squares in terms of how distances work, what it takes to surround something, what it takes to go around something, etc. I haven't played much of this genre but I was definitely bothered by Civilization III operating on square grid when I tried it.

I agree hexes are better for tactical game play. On a square map, either you can attack diagonally, or you cannot. And they both feel unnatural.

Squares seem to make for nicer looking maps. A rectangular feature just "looks right".