What I mean is that the areas are devided into segements that give basically bonuses or negative bonuses. It is a hidden layer of the areamap.
@Vaipen
Bees have hexagonal mapped eye-cells and they construct their honey combs similarly consequently.
Your idea of a hidden matrix is classic in game design and while squares seem to be a favourite for easy programming, hexagons have been used when radial symmetry was critically necessary.
In fact, hexagons are the crudest circles and they fit perfectly and seamlessly in a plane, so I guess that hexagons should be your best choice.
However, I would like to know why would a square tile be less than appropriate for implementing your idea concerning a “land-magic-value”?
If you realise that the land graphics was laid out as square tiles then would it not be more appropriate to assign a magic value to the same tile of graphics visible by the player to give an indicator of the type of spell most appropriate to use from that tile and onto another tile?
To give you an example of what I mean, I think that using the spell of thunderbolt in swamps would be perfectly effective due to electric conductivity of the ground.
Similarly, casting fire balls or magma bolts on arid and dry ground in dungeons that have cracks through which the red lava is showing would be fabulous as well.
So your idea is like as if the magician would really harness the available powers of nature in that place and concentrating it and directing it at the enemy.
Such an idea does not demand octagons or hexagons but demands an identical tile frame that coincides with that used for laying out graphic features of the terrain.
Kindest regards.
