As in Rome Total War CIV4 should make it possible to zoom in and out in a kind of continuous map. With a free camera one could see the rivers flowing and the citizens walking the streets. Proudly you inspect the progress of the work on the Pyramids. And when in war you can see the battle taken place.

Civ 4 will be in 3D but maybe not in the detail that you suggest. I for one do not need to see workers working on buildings or people walking through the streets or flowing rivers.

Being able to zoom on the battle should be great. That will be a great update for civ retro-graphics.

I would love to see Civ IV in 3D. Zooming over the terrain, flying over your cities, etc. It would be great. 3D units, of course.

-V

Just remember for every hour they spend making better graphics that is one less hour they spend on large game concepts, improvements and innovations.

Just remember for every hour they spend making better graphics that is one less hour they spend on large game concepts, improvements and innovations.

I imagine, that those people who are working on graphics would'nt do much good if they should be assigned to concepts/AI and stuff.

Or i am mistaken and civ IV is developed by one-two coders who do-it-all?

Just remember for every hour they spend making better graphics that is one less hour they spend on large game concepts, improvements and innovations.

Good point. Perhaps Civ IV should be entirely text-based :rolleyes:

In all seriousness, they spent a tremendous amount of time with the Civ III graphics, and they still managed to create a good game. Rome Total War is boasting insane graphics, and I have this gut feeling it's going to be a good game as well. In the end, I'd rather have compelling gameplay than good graphics, but what's wrong with hoping they can do both?

-V

Good point. Perhaps Civ IV should be entirely text-based :rolleyes:

In all seriousness, they spent a tremendous amount of time with the Civ III graphics, and they still managed to create a good game. Rome Total War is boasting insane graphics, and I have this gut feeling it's going to be a good game as well. In the end, I'd rather have compelling gameplay than good graphics, but what's wrong with hoping they can do both?

-V

Nothing is wrong with that but beware of comparing games against each other. You will soon focus only on what is wrong with each.

I imagine, that those people who are working on graphics would'nt do much good if they should be assigned to concepts/AI and stuff.

Or i am mistaken and civ IV is developed by one-two coders who do-it-all?
More complicated systems of any sort require more testing and more bugfixing, at the very least. Any time you add something new to a code base it adds more problems to be dealt with. Plus there's the time issue (implimenting x may take longer than y), and then there's the extra artwork you have to deal with... So it increases strain on the project as a whole.

And while there isn't complete overlap between people working on different parts of the game, there is some, especially for the programming lead who has to tie everything together. The more things to do in one area means less for him (aka the expert at everything ;)) to do in another.

Nothing is wrong with that but beware of comparing games against each other. You will soon focus only on what is wrong with each.

Was your comment directed at me? If so, why? I didn't compare Civ to RTW (in this thread). I would also posit that comparing games, or anything else, doesn't necessarily lead one to "focus only on what is wrong with each", since I routinely do it with games, movies, books, television programs, football teams, breakfast cereals, beer, wine, cheeses, etc -- and I'm left with as many positive impressions as negative.

So... to reiterate: If Civ IV can boast good graphics and good gameplay, then that would be wonderful. If they can't -- so be it; I'm sure it will still be fun to play.

-V

Zooming in on battles is a great idea, reminicent of Risk 2 for PC,

About the gut feeling about Rome: Total War.

We have just seen pictures, we know nothing about gameplay.

BUT I KNOW, as an avid Medieval: Total War fan, that Creative Assembly has a habit of NOT PATCHING lots of bugs, and to produce very buggy games.

I hope that Firaxis produces nice graphics, too, but I would prefer a less buggy game and better patch support as for Civ3. That Civ3/C3C will probably not patched to the very end and some issues, aka sub, armies etc. remain really makes me distrust gaming software companies. :-/

Firaxis alrady has a 3D engine, so making the game into a 3D game it mabe be easier than we think.

IIRC, Firaxis bought a game engine that was 3D. Artwork in 3D is actually easier than making tiny 3D models, then converting them into tiny 2D models with seperate animations for each direction. I wouldn't be surprised if 3D made it better.

Plus, 3D is more portable. It could be easily moved to Mac, Linux, even console, if every X-Boxer were to double their intelligence...

Here's to hoping for an easy linux port!

I hope that Firaxis produces nice graphics, too, but I would prefer a less buggy game and better patch support as for Civ3. That Civ3/C3C will probably not patched to the very end and some issues, aka sub, armies etc. remain really makes me distrust gaming software companies. :-/
Well, things didn't end up that way for lack of trying. Each iteration of Civ had an average of 5 patches. That's a total of about 15 over the last three years. That's a lot better than most companies do.

I only think that they should have zoom and rotate map features, and possibly you could view a tile and see what it would look like in a real life perspective (I know I know, more time gameplay, less time graphics, but I think this would be cool, plus it wouldn't take very long to implement, so really, the time factor barely comes in here at all :lol: ).

I think keeping the same 'chess board' look of Civ III with its beautifully crafted units and terrain but making it 3-D is all I need. It allows for variable zooming, panning and map rotation.

I don't need to see individual units in battles. But making the whole board 3-D has the advantage of making the visuals more dynamic.

One of the things that irked me with Civ2 and 3 was that there were only so many different looks for cities. And when Cities hit a certain size they stop growing. a 3-D board could potentially have a unique look and subtle differences between each culture and between each civ (Japanese tileset will be slightly different from the Chinese) and as your cities grow, it can grow incrementally, with the potentially of truly massive core cities with skycrapers shooting up into the sky later in game.

This also ties into city view, which can be made more dynamic and variable from the use of 3D. That's pretty much my wishlist.

IMHO, once CIV is making individual units in battles, all is lost. That's just not what this game is about. I'd be happy with 3d if that means the kind they did for SMAC, or slightly fancier, but c'mon, this is not a game about graphics, it's a game about strategy. I'm sure it's true that the more effort they put into graphics, the less they will put into things like improving the AI. Even if it comes down to the kinds of programmers they hire or subcontracts they issue. If I want to play a heavy graphics game, there are many to choose from - while there are very few good strategy games to choose from.

(Oh - the one thing I really would like is more zoom levels - 2 just ain't enough).

Since the project lead for CIV is also the lead AI programmer at Firaxis, I don't think that a good challenge will be forgotten about.

A 3D CIV would have round worlds.

I think the graphics are tottaly perfect the way they are.I mean it would be nice to have a better zoom feature but it shouldnt be 3d.

I think the graphics are tottaly perfect the way they are.I mean it would be nice to have a better zoom feature but it shouldnt be 3d.
But the whole point of the 3D engine is that the graphics aren't perfect - the FLC files they are stored in are huge, the units take WAY too long to render, and are much more difficult to modify.

People seem to have the conception that 3D is harder to make. Civ3 had 3D units, but unit production time was MASSIVELY inflated because every 3D animation had to be converted to a 2D animation in attack, move, etc animation in ALL EIGHT DIRECTIONS.

Actually, I heard a preview say that Rome: Total War runs faster than it's medieval counterpart, because it has been changed to 3D. It would also be way more portable - if you have tried Civ3 in linux, you will understand that the 2D unit animations are headachingly painful to watch.

3D is much faster, easier to make, more portable, and more versatile. 2D pales in to insignificance by comparison.

About the gut feeling about Rome: Total War.

We have just seen pictures, we know nothing about gameplay.

I agree. I'm looking forward to playing it, but I'm not entirely convinced that it's going to be the "be all, end all" of strategy games. Basically, their tactical battle engine is/was wonderful, but the strategic/diplomatic/informational aspects of MTW were sorely lacking (far inferior to Civ III, IMHO) -- and I'm somewhat worried that the same thing is going to happen in RTW. And, to me, the tactical battles are merely "cute", unless they're coupled with an engaging strategic model.

-V

Also remember from the stand point of the modders and Total Conversioners. In general a real 3d engine would make things harder for some who still do their work in photoshop, while it would make the work for those who do their art in 3d much more easy (then again polygon counts for the models will become an issue -- hopefully not a major one where there is a loss of quality with the human units). But for those of you who want to be able to zoom in and see little workers building that wonder of your... that is just one more thing a Star Trek modder will have to change for her project! Then again I am a lazy basdard who likes to do as little work as possible.